Productivity Pros Reveal 12 Tactics To Make Time For Everything

00:00:00.000 | Time is a limited resource that we all want more of.

00:00:03.780 | So today, we're going to share the secret to make time in your life.

00:00:07.560 | It's not going to be a bunch of productivity hacks to get more done,

00:00:10.800 | finish your to-dos faster, or outsource your life.

00:00:13.300 | Instead, we're going to share a framework and a bunch of tactics designed to help you

00:00:18.000 | actually create more time in your day for the things you care about.

00:00:22.560 | Whether that's spending time with your family, starting a side business,

00:00:26.080 | learning a new language, writing a book, or anything else that's important to you.

00:00:30.720 | Big favor before we jump in is to give us a quick thumbs up to help others find this channel.

00:00:35.040 | And if you're new here and want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, consider subscribing.

00:00:39.680 | What do you think most people are getting wrong when it comes to how they manage their time?

00:00:45.200 | Managing your time is not all about productivity.

00:00:48.640 | In fact, we think that's sort of the wrong way to look at it entirely.

00:00:53.280 | Instead, managing your time is about figuring out what matters the most to you

00:00:58.080 | in your work, in your life, and finding a way to bring your best efforts to bear

00:01:04.240 | on those things that matter the most to you.

00:01:07.280 | So to make that happen, we have to forget about a lot of the conventional wisdom about

00:01:12.640 | staying on top of things, being as responsive as possible,

00:01:18.240 | being the best employee possible in the traditional sense.

00:01:21.840 | And we've created a framework for rethinking the way you spend your energy every day

00:01:28.800 | and modifying all of these things that sometimes become invisible in the way that we behave,

00:01:35.120 | the way we eat, exercise, respond to email, sleep, everything,

00:01:40.880 | and restructuring it around spending your energy on what is most important.

00:01:45.520 | So it's a four-part framework, and it all starts with a very simple idea that we call the highlight.

00:01:51.120 | And the rest can be a mess.

00:01:52.640 | But if you get the one most important thing,

00:01:54.880 | it's the biggest way to transform what you're doing at work

00:01:58.000 | and transform your experience in your life in general.

00:02:00.400 | - I think that seems obvious, right?

00:02:02.000 | Oh, just get the one thing done.

00:02:03.200 | It's not the first time I've heard that.

00:02:04.560 | What did you guys uncover in all the research you've done

00:02:08.720 | that kind of makes it for a different perspective?

00:02:11.360 | Or how did you approach it differently?

00:02:13.120 | - We had a really unique opportunity to do research,

00:02:17.280 | to back up the things that we've seen firsthand.

00:02:20.640 | Our weird research lab is that for the past, I don't know, what is it now?

00:02:26.400 | It's well over a decade.

00:02:27.760 | John and I have had the opportunity to work with teams in these sprints.

00:02:33.280 | So we run design sprints, a process I created at Google.

00:02:36.640 | John and I kind of perfected working with you at Google Ventures, Chris.

00:02:40.000 | And we get the chance to take a team for a week at a time

00:02:45.200 | and totally control the schedule as they're starting off their most important projects.

00:02:50.080 | And in that sort of lab, we can see what happens

00:02:54.160 | when you clear away all of the defaults of the way people normally work,

00:02:58.400 | normally behave at work, normally have conversations,

00:03:01.200 | normally manage their email and all that stuff.

00:03:03.280 | You clear all of that away and do it in a different way, what happens?

00:03:06.000 | As we did that, these lessons came out that John and I started applying

00:03:10.880 | to our own projects and then eventually our own lives, like our own day-to-day lives.

00:03:14.880 | - I remember a lot of that process doing design sprints.

00:03:17.280 | So I love that we broke it all down.

00:03:18.960 | But why do you think it matters?

00:03:20.960 | Why is this happening right now?

00:03:22.480 | Why are people not able to be productive?

00:03:24.720 | Has this been tested, you know, lasted the entirety of human existence?

00:03:28.480 | - I definitely think it's lasted the entirety of the digital era of human existence.

00:03:34.080 | And perhaps, you know, even a little bit longer than that.

00:03:37.360 | The thing that's really new are these sources of effectively unlimited

00:03:41.920 | information that we now pay attention to, right?

00:03:44.400 | So your email, which is, I guess, not technically infinite,

00:03:47.680 | but effectively infinite, and Slack, and news, and social media, and all these things.

00:03:53.760 | And we sort of fused that phenomenon with some ideas about industrial productivity.

00:04:02.640 | And when we put those together, we created this situation where we feel like

00:04:06.720 | the best way to be productive is to get really good at responding to those things,

00:04:11.360 | to become really effective reaction machines,

00:04:14.880 | instead of focusing on the things that we actually care about,

00:04:18.800 | and the things that we actually need to spend time on, and want to spend time on.

00:04:23.200 | And so all of the world that we've constructed around ourselves,

00:04:27.440 | the, you know, the defaults is a word that we use a lot.

00:04:30.960 | And, you know, we use it partially because we, you know,

00:04:34.400 | our background is in software product design.

00:04:37.280 | And, you know, when you install a new piece of software, it has defaults.

00:04:40.400 | But we think it's a really important word to understand,

00:04:42.560 | just kind of like the way things work, the status quo,

00:04:45.520 | sort of the normal mode of operation in the world.

00:04:48.000 | All these defaults, they don't encourage us to, you know,

00:04:52.160 | take Jake's advice and focus on one thing each day,

00:04:55.520 | but they encourage us instead to react to the next thing and to say yes to every meeting,

00:05:00.480 | and to pay attention to what's, you know, new on our screens.

00:05:04.000 | And so that has just made it really hard.

00:05:09.040 | And it continues to get worse because, you know,

00:05:11.120 | anybody listening to this or watching this knows that the tools that I just mentioned,

00:05:17.360 | and the content that I just mentioned, it's only getting better and faster and more irresistible.

00:05:22.960 | So in some ways, these things are very old problems, very familiar human problems.

00:05:28.800 | But in other ways, they continue to get harder to deal with.

00:05:32.160 | - And Jake, we talk about productivity.

00:05:34.640 | And I think that's so often gets lost in the world of work, right?

00:05:38.080 | Like, I got to get more, you know, widgets made and, you know, email sent and projects built.

00:05:43.440 | But when you guys wrote "Make Time", was it just about work?

00:05:47.920 | - No, it's not just about work.

00:05:49.920 | And I think that the thing that really it's like, it's kind of hard to divide.

00:05:58.240 | I think a lot about the feeling at the end of the day, when you look back on the day,

00:06:02.240 | and you kind of, you know, have a feeling of how the day went,

00:06:06.320 | and maybe think like, oh, what was the, you know, if you're talking to your,

00:06:11.280 | you know, your significant other at dinner or your, you know,

00:06:14.800 | I keep this little journal where I write down like,

00:06:17.360 | just things that I'm grateful for that happened during the day.

00:06:20.800 | What are the things that happened in the day that make you feel good about the day?

00:06:24.000 | That make you feel like, oh, this is a nice day.

00:06:25.680 | And usually it's a moment, right?

00:06:27.040 | It's like, it's a moment in the day.

00:06:29.120 | It's some kind of a highlight.

00:06:31.120 | And that highlight might come from work,

00:06:33.600 | but they also often come from just day-to-day life.

00:06:37.040 | The real trigger for me in kind of trying to take some of these ideas

00:06:41.760 | that we had been thinking about for work itself and applying them outside of work was,

00:06:47.280 | I remember when my kids were little, playing on the floor with them with wooden trains.

00:06:52.560 | And my son all of a sudden saying like, hey, dad, what's going on on your phone?

00:06:57.200 | And he's just like genuinely wondering what interesting,

00:06:59.760 | fascinating thing I'm looking at on my phone.

00:07:01.520 | Because I'm, I didn't even realize it, but was looking at my phone while we were playing.

00:07:05.440 | After all of my efforts to be as, you know,

00:07:08.560 | on top of my work as possible and as efficient as possible.

00:07:11.440 | Like, it was like, you know, in, in, uh, in the Lord of the Rings,

00:07:16.800 | when like Bilbo Baggins reaches in his, in his pocket to pull out the ring,

00:07:20.400 | like you don't even know you're doing it.

00:07:21.760 | The thing I realized at that moment was that this, this pull of react,

00:07:25.840 | like the reaction machine thing that John talked about.

00:07:28.320 | It's, it's ever present in our lives.

00:07:31.120 | And if you take this lens of, I'm going to focus on the one most important thing,

00:07:37.360 | and I'm going to try to eliminate those defaults, all those polls,

00:07:41.600 | wherever I possibly can, wherever they don't serve me,

00:07:44.640 | wherever I'm serving them rather than them serving me,

00:07:46.960 | then the game changes in your, in your larger life too.

00:07:51.680 | And in that moment, I like deleted every app on my phone that had infinite content in it.

00:07:58.080 | You know, and this is like 2012.

00:07:59.600 | So I was like, deleted like my, my email off the phone.

00:08:02.880 | I deleted all of the, you know, the games I deleted Facebook and Instagram.

00:08:07.680 | And I deleted, you know, the, uh, I figured I would turn off the browser.

00:08:12.160 | I was so angry at myself, you know, I was just like,

00:08:14.080 | so frustrated that I would give up this time that I knew was precious with my kids

00:08:18.240 | for unknown, the unknown poll of, of the infinite.

00:08:21.840 | And, uh, and I haven't got, I haven't gone back actually.

00:08:25.600 | And so that like, just as kind of like feeling that the default settings

00:08:29.520 | that the world is asking of us are crazy.

00:08:32.480 | And they're pulling us away from the people we love the most.

00:08:36.320 | And at work, they pull us away from the projects where we can actually do the most good,

00:08:40.960 | where we can have the largest effect,

00:08:43.040 | because nobody has a better insight into what you can do.

00:08:45.920 | That's going to be of outsized importance and probably in you yourself,

00:08:49.040 | everywhere, these forces are kind of working against us.

00:08:53.280 | So everywhere we can benefit from fighting back.

00:08:56.000 | Before we just tell everyone to delete everything on their phone, which we might do.

00:08:59.680 | You talked about this infinite stuff, which kind of dovetails to these two important things,

00:09:04.160 | busy bandwagon, infinity pools.

00:09:06.240 | Let's talk about what those are and how they're probably taking away our time.

00:09:10.640 | Yeah.

00:09:10.880 | So the busy bandwagon is where these defaults show up in culture.

00:09:15.680 | So the expectation that you say yes to every meeting,

00:09:19.360 | the expectation that you should constantly monitor your email and respond right away.

00:09:24.720 | The expectation that you should be busy,

00:09:27.280 | that being busy is a sign that you are an important and successful person in the world.

00:09:34.400 | So that's kind of the culture.

00:09:36.240 | And I think we all find ourselves either on the bandwagon or

00:09:40.480 | wishing we were on the bandwagon at some point in our lives.

00:09:44.800 | The infinity pools, that's kind of our term for the places where defaults show up in our

00:09:51.600 | technology and in our media and content.

00:09:55.760 | And we came up with this term because when you think about email, you think about social media,

00:10:02.640 | even streaming, there's an infinite source of content.

00:10:05.440 | There's always water in the pool.

00:10:07.440 | You can always jump back in at any time.

00:10:10.320 | Those are infinity pools.

00:10:13.680 | And the bad news is that those are really irresistible.

00:10:17.520 | They're very effectively designed and engineered and optimized to be irresistible.

00:10:24.240 | But the good news is that they're actually pretty easy to put up barriers around.

00:10:28.880 | It's pretty easy to change the defaults so that it's maybe not totally impossible to access.

00:10:35.120 | Because I use all those things that I just mentioned.

00:10:38.320 | I help design some of them.

00:10:41.760 | I find a lot of value in them.

00:10:43.920 | But it's relatively straightforward.

00:10:46.160 | If you know a few tricks, if you know a few, we call them tactics, specific ways of creating

00:10:54.240 | barriers, of changing the defaults, basically to make it just harder to get sucked in, to

00:10:59.840 | make these things slightly less irresistible, to add some friction that then kind of frees

00:11:04.400 | you up and frees up your energy so that you don't have to be fighting these things and

00:11:11.040 | trying to stay super focused and productive.

00:11:15.040 | But instead, you're freed up to really effortlessly spend time on the things that matter.

00:11:20.000 | We're going to go through your framework.

00:11:21.360 | We're going to talk about these tactics.

00:11:23.120 | But what's the end result of how the day feels, the week feels, life feels?

00:11:27.920 | I want to share one quick thing that you will feel right away, which is bored.

00:11:32.480 | And I know that sounds odd.

00:11:34.800 | That doesn't sound very appealing.

00:11:36.640 | But it's actually kind of refreshing to feel that.

00:11:40.880 | I remember when I first adopted the distraction-free phone, which is what we call this idea of

00:11:50.320 | a smartphone that has all of the infinity pools removed from it.

00:11:53.920 | I remember just having these moments where I was like, "Oh, wow.

00:11:56.720 | There's nothing I have to check right now.

00:11:59.200 | I'm on a walk or I'm waiting in line."

00:12:02.800 | Or even better, I just sat down to do some work, and I don't have that sense that I have

00:12:08.400 | to check something.

00:12:09.200 | That pull is gone.

00:12:11.280 | And at first, it's sort of alarming.

00:12:12.560 | You're like, "Whoa, that's weird."

00:12:13.920 | And then you're like, "Oh, wait a second.

00:12:15.280 | I can just pay attention to the things that I actually care about."

00:12:18.080 | So that's sort of the immediate feeling.

00:12:20.560 | But Jake, maybe you could talk about how it feels over time.

00:12:24.960 | Because you're far more diligent about this than I am.

00:12:30.240 | And you've had a truly distraction-free phone for like 12 years now or something, right?

00:12:35.040 | - Yeah, I mean, I backslide occasionally.

00:12:37.760 | I'll have something on there, take a trip and put email on there.

00:12:41.760 | And then I'll take it off because it's true that once you get used to this feeling of

00:12:48.480 | not having the pull, it's like there's been a rope around your neck that's gone.

00:12:55.760 | It's a feeling of freedom.

00:12:58.240 | And it does manifest first.

00:12:59.840 | I think first it's stressful.

00:13:01.680 | It's stressful to think like, "What am I missing?"

00:13:03.600 | And I guess I'm old enough to remember what it was like before we had smartphones.

00:13:11.360 | And so I do have this pretty solid bedrock knowledge that you can survive.

00:13:18.080 | You can be an effective person without having access to your email or Slack or the internet

00:13:23.680 | or whatever at any moment of the day.

00:13:26.240 | That feeling at first is stressful.

00:13:28.240 | And then maybe the next feeling is boredom.

00:13:31.040 | Another manifestation of boredom is that time slows down

00:13:35.360 | and that you feel like you actually get more lifetime

00:13:40.080 | because your time is going a little bit slower.

00:13:43.040 | When I'm in the mode, when I have everything on my phone

00:13:49.200 | and sometimes I have to turn it on for a trip, right?

00:13:52.720 | Like I said, for whatever reason, or I try out some app and then I realize,

00:13:56.480 | "Oh my God, this is an infinity pool."

00:13:58.160 | And at those times, I feel like I'm just constantly on.

00:14:01.440 | My brain has no rest.

00:14:03.120 | And time just starts to blur by.

00:14:04.800 | It starts to go by faster.

00:14:06.560 | And our experience of time, it's not fixed.

00:14:10.560 | Sometimes it goes really, really fast and sometimes it slows down.

00:14:13.600 | And I found that it slows down in a really good way

00:14:17.760 | when the defaults are, when we create barriers.

00:14:20.800 | Just so anyone listening who hasn't read the book yet knows,

00:14:24.240 | this isn't a book of distraction-free phone.

00:14:27.840 | There are a lot of tactics.

00:14:28.720 | So if someone's listening and thinks,

00:14:29.920 | "Wow, that one is not where I want to start."

00:14:32.640 | We're going to get through a lot of options.

00:14:35.280 | You don't have to get rid of every app on your phone.

00:14:37.600 | It's just one of the tactics.

00:14:39.760 | So maybe the best thing to do now is just start

00:14:42.320 | and kind of walk people through what are the kind of high-level framework,

00:14:46.720 | how people can start to make time.

00:14:49.200 | Make time is this framework that Jake and I created.

00:14:52.800 | And it's comprised of four different categories or four steps.

00:14:57.360 | The first is highlight, which we talked about.

00:15:00.480 | It's this idea that you should identify the single most important thing

00:15:06.480 | that you want to spend time on each day and then focus on it.

00:15:10.560 | The second step is laser.

00:15:13.040 | And this is really about setting up these barriers to distraction,

00:15:17.840 | changing the defaults around the technology that you use

00:15:22.000 | so that you can maintain laser-like focus on your highlight

00:15:26.240 | on that one thing you've identified.

00:15:27.760 | The third part is energize.

00:15:30.960 | And this is sort of a recognition that the first two steps

00:15:35.920 | aren't really going to work if we don't take care of ourselves,

00:15:38.560 | our brains and our bodies, our mental health and our physical health.

00:15:44.560 | And so, the advice in energize is all about simple ways

00:15:49.760 | to reset some of the more physical defaults in our world

00:15:53.760 | so that we can have more energy, so that we can pay better attention,

00:15:57.200 | we can make really good use of that time in those moments.

00:16:00.720 | And then the fourth, the final part of make time, the final step is to reflect.

00:16:05.840 | And we take an experimental approach to this stuff.

00:16:11.600 | And really, in a lot of things, I mean, we both have worked

00:16:14.880 | in the technology industry for a long time, and we work with a lot of startups.

00:16:19.680 | And we're always encouraging those teams to run experiments,

00:16:24.480 | to sort of create tiny loops of feedback from their product

00:16:29.680 | to their customers and back.

00:16:31.440 | And we think that's really important in our own lives, our own days.

00:16:36.000 | And so, the final step of make time is really to pay attention

00:16:40.880 | to what's working and what's not working and say,

00:16:43.200 | "Oh, I tried removing everything from my phone, but it was too much.

00:16:47.600 | Or I actually felt that I wasn't able to get this important thing done,

00:16:51.280 | or I ended up just reinstalling everything.

00:16:53.600 | That didn't work, so maybe I'm going to try something else.

00:16:55.360 | Maybe I'm going to pick a different tactic out of the book."

00:16:58.720 | But I think even if you're not trying a ton of different stuff,

00:17:03.680 | simply paying attention, treating your time and your life as an experiment,

00:17:08.880 | a series of experiments, just like you might do at work, is really important.

00:17:14.160 | And it's the thing that kind of completes the loop

00:17:16.720 | and just makes it all click together much more effectively.

00:17:19.760 | This framework comes from when we were running these design sprints,

00:17:23.520 | and we still are, so we've run hundreds of these now with companies.

00:17:26.480 | And we sort of saw that this notion of having a highlight

00:17:30.400 | that we focused on each day, one most important thing

00:17:33.280 | that we brought our peak energy to, that we were sure

00:17:35.760 | there was time and attention for, that having laser focus during that time,

00:17:40.880 | clearing away all distractions was super important,

00:17:43.120 | and that the energy of the team was important that we needed to carefully monitor.

00:17:47.920 | When are people having snacks?

00:17:49.280 | You know, when are we taking a stretch break?

00:17:51.680 | What are the kind of max hours we can work

00:17:54.640 | where we're still in the optimal mode?

00:17:56.640 | And reflecting and looking back and finding ways to improve it.

00:17:59.840 | When we started applying these ourselves to our own lives,

00:18:02.480 | when John and I started saying, "Hey, the stuff that we've learned here

00:18:04.960 | with these hundreds of startups, let's apply it for ourselves,"

00:18:07.440 | we found that there are some things that work for me that don't work for John,

00:18:11.760 | some things that work for John that don't work for me.

00:18:13.760 | So we don't think of it as this one-size-fits-all recipe.

00:18:18.400 | It's just the framework is kind of undeniably true, we think.

00:18:22.240 | And the way you apply that framework, it's going to depend.

00:18:25.920 | It's going to depend on what floats your boat.

00:18:27.680 | But no matter who you are, it sounds like

00:18:29.920 | everybody should start the day with a highlight.

00:18:32.240 | That has certainly turned out to be the thing from this book

00:18:35.440 | that people have unanimously said, "Wow, that is transformative."

00:18:40.640 | And, you know, like, of course, we love to have people

00:18:43.680 | buy the book, read the book, or listen to the book on Audible or whatever.

00:18:47.120 | But if you just start making a practice of every day in the evening

00:18:52.080 | or in the morning, identifying a highlight for the next day,

00:18:55.600 | and we can talk more about how to do that,

00:18:57.520 | how we think about doing that so it works best.

00:19:00.560 | And then reflecting back at the end of the day and saying, like,

00:19:03.040 | "Was I able to make time for my highlight?"

00:19:05.360 | Incredibly powerful shift in the way you get things done at work,

00:19:11.600 | pay attention to what you care about in your life,

00:19:14.240 | unlock projects that you thought you couldn't get to,

00:19:16.640 | and slow down your life in a really, we think, transformative way.

00:19:21.840 | And having one highlight doesn't mean you only do one thing a day, right?

00:19:26.800 | So the one highlight is the single thing that you want to bring

00:19:31.440 | your best energy to, your best focus to.

00:19:34.080 | And we tend to find that there's a couple different categories

00:19:39.120 | that those highlights fit into.

00:19:40.880 | So sometimes it's urgency.

00:19:42.800 | Sometimes it's a project that, you know, really needs to get done.

00:19:45.840 | It's important, and you want to give it its proper, you know,

00:19:50.240 | do its proper respect and make it happen.

00:19:52.960 | Sometimes it's satisfaction.

00:19:54.400 | It's a project, like Jake mentioned, where, you know,

00:19:57.120 | maybe it's not going to happen otherwise.

00:19:59.360 | And, you know, it's going to feel really good

00:20:01.200 | to have finally spent time on that thing.

00:20:03.680 | And sometimes it's just based in joy, right?

00:20:05.600 | Sometimes it's just something that is going to be fun for you.

00:20:07.840 | It's going to be, you know, kind of restorative.

00:20:10.320 | It's going to, you know, help you spend time with yourself,

00:20:13.760 | with your family, with your friends.

00:20:14.960 | But, you know, we kind of think of it as this, like,

00:20:18.000 | 60 to 90 minute sort of block in the day.

00:20:21.520 | And then the rest of your day is, you know, everything else, right?

00:20:26.080 | And so, you know, when I look at my days,

00:20:29.840 | most days I have a focus block in the morning.

00:20:32.880 | And then my meetings are after lunch.

00:20:36.160 | And then I have an admin block at the end of the day

00:20:38.640 | to get through, you know, email and things like that.

00:20:41.680 | And, you know, it might not sound that, I don't know,

00:20:46.960 | earth shattering to say,

00:20:48.400 | "Oh, I'm going to spend 60 to 90 minutes on something."

00:20:51.200 | But it's an amount of time that if you truly use it

00:20:54.320 | to focus on one thing, actually is pretty huge.

00:20:57.600 | You know, it's a level of focus that I think most people

00:21:00.080 | don't have in their day-to-day lives.

00:21:01.920 | And once you get in the habit of doing that,

00:21:06.160 | a lot of the other things start to fall into place.

00:21:08.240 | A lot, you get this clarity about what really matters

00:21:10.960 | and what can take the back seat.

00:21:12.880 | And so it's not about, you know, doing only that one thing,

00:21:17.280 | but really making sure that you identify

00:21:20.480 | and then make time for that one most important thing

00:21:23.440 | each day.

00:21:23.940 | I have two questions.

00:21:25.280 | So one, yesterday, I had these two things

00:21:28.000 | that were going to happen.

00:21:28.880 | So one, I needed to finish this part of the website

00:21:31.280 | I was building.

00:21:32.000 | And I was like that, in my mind,

00:21:33.920 | that was like the urgency highlight.

00:21:35.680 | But then my wife and I, we both took one of our kids.

00:21:39.680 | And instead of going out to dinner as a family,

00:21:41.920 | I took our youngest daughter out on a date.

00:21:43.920 | My wife took our oldest daughter out on a date.

00:21:46.400 | And then we didn't plan on this,

00:21:48.320 | but we ended up meeting for dessert after.

00:21:50.720 | Like, were both of those the highlight?

00:21:52.800 | Can I have two?

00:21:53.760 | How do I think about like two very different

00:21:56.320 | and competing things?

00:21:57.440 | The way that I think about it is,

00:21:59.200 | is the highlight is the thing

00:22:00.720 | that wouldn't otherwise get your time

00:22:03.200 | or wouldn't otherwise get your energy.

00:22:05.600 | And that varies day to day and week to week and month.

00:22:08.000 | Like, you know, even as you go through different,

00:22:09.840 | you know, eras in your life, different seasons,

00:22:12.240 | you might find that you need to, you know,

00:22:14.480 | your highlight needs to be something different.

00:22:17.280 | And so, you know, it's, I can't answer your question

00:22:21.760 | without like being inside your head,

00:22:23.200 | but like, it sounds like the, you know,

00:22:26.160 | the urgent thing during the day was like the thing that,

00:22:28.640 | you know, it could have easily gotten away from you.

00:22:30.480 | It could have easily been like,

00:22:31.520 | oh, I'm doing all this other stuff

00:22:32.720 | and I can never get to that one thing.

00:22:34.080 | But, you know, on the other hand,

00:22:36.640 | maybe you've been meaning to, you know,

00:22:39.120 | kind of take your kids out and, you know,

00:22:41.280 | to dinner and these, you know, in this way for a while,

00:22:44.160 | but you had never quite got around to it.

00:22:45.760 | And so then maybe that's what you needed.

00:22:47.440 | But, you know, I think it's part of the,

00:22:50.160 | what's helpful about this daily cycle

00:22:51.920 | of reflecting and paying attention is

00:22:54.080 | you can ask yourself, like, what do I need now?

00:22:57.440 | Like, what do I need my highlight to be?

00:23:00.560 | And what's going to take care of itself?

00:23:02.240 | What's going to happen anyway,

00:23:03.280 | either because it's scheduled

00:23:04.320 | or because I have a routine for it or a habit for it.

00:23:06.640 | And that's a little bit outside of this idea

00:23:10.400 | of the really intentional focus with the highlight.

00:23:13.200 | - And it can change throughout the day, right?

00:23:14.880 | - Yeah, it can, it absolutely can.

00:23:17.040 | Well, I have a different one from yesterday.

00:23:18.720 | So the, so yesterday, for example,

00:23:22.080 | I just finished the manuscript for our book

00:23:26.240 | and I'm really excited to send it

00:23:27.920 | to some of our test readers.

00:23:29.360 | And I was, that was gonna be my highlight.

00:23:34.160 | It's like, I cannot wait to do that.

00:23:35.520 | And then as it happened,

00:23:37.440 | because I've been in like a bit of crunch mode

00:23:39.520 | getting this thing done, I was like, wait a second,

00:23:43.280 | I can hang out with my younger son

00:23:46.800 | and do some projects with him around the farm here.

00:23:50.320 | And that ended up being what I did during that time slot

00:23:54.160 | when I pictured I was going to send out the manuscript

00:23:56.800 | because the reality was, I realized in the moment,

00:23:59.200 | I was like, will it really kill me

00:24:00.880 | if I send those out tomorrow instead of today?

00:24:04.000 | I was like, no, it won't.

00:24:04.800 | But this is a really special opportunity.

00:24:06.560 | I'm gonna switch my highlight.

00:24:07.760 | This is where I wanna put that peak energy.

00:24:10.080 | This is the one thing I wanna make sure

00:24:12.320 | I give my strongest attention to.

00:24:15.520 | And it was worth it.

00:24:17.600 | It was absolutely worth it.

00:24:18.800 | It was a special opportunity, right?

00:24:20.720 | And the thing that looking back on the day,

00:24:22.480 | I was like, I can remember that.

00:24:23.920 | So the notion that your highlight has to be set in stone

00:24:30.080 | when you, once you pick it,

00:24:31.280 | sometimes you're gonna change your mind during the day.

00:24:35.360 | Sometimes an opportunity is gonna come up

00:24:37.440 | and that's gonna be the right thing to do

00:24:38.800 | or you're gonna realize it.

00:24:39.920 | But as John says, it's just this practice of day in

00:24:42.640 | and day out thinking about what's most important.

00:24:45.840 | Where do I wanna make sure if nothing else happens,

00:24:49.600 | I bring my peak energy to it.

00:24:51.760 | I bring my best focus to it.

00:24:53.440 | The thing that I'm gonna enjoy.

00:24:54.560 | And that's for us really the power of the highlight.

00:24:59.200 | - One other nice thing about the highlight

00:25:02.240 | is that even when you switch your highlight,

00:25:05.200 | when, like Jake said, you were planning to do this thing,

00:25:07.600 | but you ended up doing something else.

00:25:09.440 | If you've created this habit of choosing a highlight

00:25:12.800 | and making time for it each day,

00:25:14.800 | it's like you have some slack in your schedule.

00:25:17.760 | If you were booked back to back from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

00:25:22.800 | and a cool opportunity came up to hang out

00:25:25.360 | with your son or a friend or whatever,

00:25:29.200 | there's no slack.

00:25:30.000 | There's no room for that thing to happen.

00:25:33.600 | You have to go and cancel stuff

00:25:34.800 | but it's a bunch of extra work to email people

00:25:37.760 | and rearrange it or whatever.

00:25:39.120 | But when you've built your day around one block,

00:25:43.200 | it becomes a little easier to move things

00:25:47.280 | in or out of that block

00:25:48.480 | depending on what you need in that particular day.

00:25:52.320 | - Now, we talked earlier, the book's filled with tactics.

00:25:54.960 | So maybe let's pick a few.

00:25:56.560 | Let's highlight a few highlight tactics

00:25:58.800 | and flag some of the things people might want to do

00:26:04.240 | to really make this work well.

00:26:05.600 | - I'll start with a tactic that's actually

00:26:08.400 | not in the book.

00:26:09.120 | It's based on a tactic in the book.

00:26:11.120 | So I'll tell you the one it's based on

00:26:12.240 | and I'll tell you what I actually do.

00:26:13.360 | So there's a tactic in the book called design your day

00:26:16.720 | and it is sort of what it sounds like.

00:26:19.200 | The idea is to use your calendar

00:26:22.800 | not as kind of this list of things you have to do

00:26:26.320 | or this list of things that somebody else dictated for you

00:26:29.280 | but think of it as a canvas.

00:26:30.720 | Think of it as your planner for the day

00:26:32.880 | where you can sort of draw out,

00:26:34.240 | you can design out your day,

00:26:35.760 | how you want to spend time, what's important to you.

00:26:38.480 | I realized a couple of years ago

00:26:40.800 | that most days I kind of want the same things,

00:26:44.640 | I need the same things

00:26:45.760 | and that I could create a calendar template.

00:26:49.520 | So this is a really important tactic for me

00:26:52.640 | is that I have basically,

00:26:53.840 | I have a template for my time for the week

00:26:57.360 | and there's certain parts of the week

00:26:58.880 | that are for focus work,

00:27:00.240 | certain parts of the week that are for meetings,

00:27:01.920 | parts of the week that are for admin work,

00:27:04.480 | sort of shallow work.

00:27:06.960 | And that basically repeats every week

00:27:09.600 | and it's just this like scaffolding

00:27:11.680 | that I can kind of build on.

00:27:13.200 | And then the extra cool thing

00:27:16.720 | is that there's this company called Reclaim

00:27:21.120 | that we invested in at Character,

00:27:24.240 | which is our VC firm.

00:27:25.680 | But initially, I was just a user of the product

00:27:27.920 | that sort of manages that template for you.

00:27:29.920 | So you kind of define,

00:27:31.200 | you know, these are the habits that I have,

00:27:32.960 | these are the things that I need to do

00:27:34.320 | and approximately when I want to do them

00:27:36.000 | and how much time they're going to take.

00:27:38.160 | And then your calendar sort of gets adjusted

00:27:40.880 | around those things.

00:27:41.680 | Reclaim sort of adjusts your calendar around,

00:27:43.920 | "Oh, if a meeting pops up here,

00:27:45.120 | we'll move lunch forward by 30 minutes

00:27:46.880 | to make room for that."

00:27:47.920 | Things like that.

00:27:48.640 | And so that's been probably one of my

00:27:52.000 | most important and durable tactics

00:27:54.560 | is this idea of a calendar template

00:27:57.120 | to make sure that sort of week in and week out,

00:27:59.680 | I'm sort of big picture,

00:28:02.080 | you know, spending time on the things that matter

00:28:04.640 | rather than kind of getting sucked back into,

00:28:07.200 | you know, the busy bandwagon

00:28:08.640 | of just filling more and more of each subsequent day

00:28:11.520 | with meetings and email and things like that.

00:28:13.760 | - On the opposite end of the spectrum,

00:28:16.080 | because that's a very powerful tool

00:28:19.120 | and a very like a powerful way

00:28:20.880 | to take control of your time over,

00:28:23.040 | you know, not just a day,

00:28:24.640 | but you can extend it to weeks and months

00:28:27.520 | and it can become the template for how you work.

00:28:29.520 | And I've learned from John

00:28:31.280 | and apply that to my own calendar.

00:28:34.720 | But on the opposite end of the spectrum,

00:28:36.400 | a sticky note is an incredible tool

00:28:38.960 | for setting your highlight.

00:28:40.080 | So you start out the day,

00:28:42.000 | say, "Okay, what's the thing

00:28:43.600 | that's gonna be the most urgent

00:28:45.280 | or the most important,

00:28:47.040 | bring the most satisfaction or joy?"

00:28:48.560 | Whatever it might be to me.

00:28:49.600 | You take your best guess at what that's gonna be.

00:28:52.000 | You write it down on a sticky note

00:28:53.680 | and you stick it on a visible place on your phone.

00:28:56.720 | You stick it on your computer display.

00:28:58.960 | You stick it on your laptop or whatever,

00:29:01.200 | wherever you're gonna be.

00:29:02.240 | You stick it somewhere where you can see it,

00:29:03.840 | stick it in the kitchen,

00:29:04.800 | stick it on the dashboard of your car.

00:29:06.240 | And then you just see that thing

00:29:08.160 | and you're like, "Right, that's right.

00:29:09.520 | That's the thing I wanna make sure

00:29:11.040 | I bring my peak energy to."

00:29:12.640 | And then at the end of the day,

00:29:13.680 | you look back and you see if you did it.

00:29:16.240 | I think that that practice

00:29:19.680 | simply of identifying it

00:29:20.880 | and writing it down somewhere that I can see it

00:29:23.040 | is really powerful for me

00:29:24.160 | because I don't think I'm alone in this.

00:29:27.360 | I think I can do more in a day than I can.

00:29:30.000 | I always think I'm gonna do this and this and this

00:29:31.760 | and there's like 10 things I'm gonna do today.

00:29:33.840 | And I vastly overestimate what I'll be able to get done.

00:29:37.600 | And as a result, I'm constantly,

00:29:39.440 | if I don't have rails to protect myself,

00:29:42.080 | I'm constantly kicking myself for what I did not do.

00:29:45.600 | I'm constantly feeling like I did not measure up

00:29:48.000 | to the standards that I set

00:29:49.440 | because the to-do list was so long.

00:29:51.200 | The inbox was so long

00:29:52.320 | and I thought I'd be able to get through

00:29:53.680 | all of these things.

00:29:54.960 | The highlight is a really powerful way

00:29:56.640 | to steer me back and just writing it down.

00:29:58.800 | It's like, okay, look, realistically, pal,

00:30:01.040 | your previous self from like 10,000 previous days

00:30:04.480 | says you probably only gonna get one thing done

00:30:06.720 | if you're lucky that's on your list

00:30:08.720 | and really do it well.

00:30:10.080 | So you do that.

00:30:11.120 | Maybe you get lucky today,

00:30:12.400 | you get three or four things done,

00:30:13.760 | but just seeing that one thing,

00:30:15.440 | it's a powerful thing to help me reset my own expectations.

00:30:18.720 | - I'll add a couple more highlight tactics

00:30:22.320 | that I think are helpful and that I use a lot.

00:30:25.520 | One is called batch the little stuff.

00:30:27.760 | And I bring it up partially 'cause it's really important,

00:30:31.680 | but partially because I know that we're at the point

00:30:34.480 | in the conversation where most people listening are like,

00:30:37.520 | yeah, yeah, that sounds nice.

00:30:39.680 | But like, I got a lot of stuff to do.

00:30:41.280 | Like, when do I do all this stuff?

00:30:42.720 | You know, my day is made up of like 15 little things

00:30:45.440 | I have to do, not like one big thing that I need to do.

00:30:48.240 | And so whenever possible,

00:30:50.240 | I try to batch the little stuff together.

00:30:52.800 | So rather than like an email here,

00:30:54.320 | oh, jump back to that blog post I'm trying to write.

00:30:57.600 | Oh, another email came in.

00:30:58.880 | Okay, back to the blog post.

00:31:00.160 | You know, multitasking doesn't really work.

00:31:02.960 | We're not really capable of multitasking.

00:31:05.040 | Instead of doing that, I will save all those little things,

00:31:08.640 | all those emails for a chunk of time.

00:31:11.520 | And I mentioned earlier this idea of an admin block.

00:31:14.880 | And the cool thing about it is that not only are you

00:31:20.080 | sort of not feeling like you're pulled back and forth

00:31:23.440 | between things you're able to focus,

00:31:25.040 | but you actually get better at doing that thing, right?

00:31:28.240 | Like if you spend an hour going through your email,

00:31:31.360 | you're better at email.

00:31:32.480 | You're more efficient at email

00:31:33.760 | than if you tried to do one email every five minutes

00:31:38.240 | throughout the entire day.

00:31:39.440 | So that's, I think, an important one

00:31:42.000 | and just a practical one that I would encourage people

00:31:45.920 | to keep in mind, batch the little stuff.

00:31:48.880 | - How do you keep track of that little stuff?

00:31:51.200 | - Well, a lot of it has its own inbox.

00:31:55.600 | It lives in a place.

00:31:56.720 | And so I, you know, I think a lot of productivity experts

00:32:02.480 | so-called would say, don't use your inbox as a to-do list.

00:32:05.920 | But I do.

00:32:08.080 | I basically, my inbox is my to-do list

00:32:10.000 | for all the little stuff.

00:32:11.200 | So it's like, if there's a notification from, you know,

00:32:14.240 | something in Notion, you know, we use Notion internally

00:32:17.120 | at character for kind of our OS for the team.

00:32:20.240 | If there's a notification, it'll be in my inbox.

00:32:22.960 | There's something I need to follow up on.

00:32:24.320 | It's in my inbox.

00:32:25.360 | I send myself a lot of email.

00:32:26.640 | I have an app that is, it's called Compose.

00:32:30.640 | And all it does is it opens the Compose sheet on iOS

00:32:34.640 | so I can send myself an email without looking at my inbox.

00:32:37.760 | And so then at the end of the day,

00:32:39.120 | when I get to that admin block, I open my inbox

00:32:42.000 | and I just kind of work through those things.

00:32:44.480 | Anything that isn't a little thing,

00:32:46.240 | that's a big thing, then it has to go on my calendar.

00:32:49.440 | A big thing, you know, needs to have some time dedicated to it

00:32:53.280 | or I need to decide that I'm not doing it right now,

00:32:57.120 | that it's going to get deferred until later.

00:32:59.040 | And the last thing before we move on is,

00:33:01.360 | what about days where you just don't get the highlight done?

00:33:04.560 | Can you do it the next day?

00:33:06.080 | Absolutely.

00:33:07.520 | Yeah, you can just try again the next day.

00:33:09.760 | I mean, certainly that happens to me all the time.

00:33:12.800 | And the part of the Notion with this too,

00:33:15.120 | is that you see each day as an experiment.

00:33:20.240 | Now, these are the combination of tactics I tried today.

00:33:24.240 | And if it didn't work today, maybe I picked the wrong highlight

00:33:28.240 | that wasn't accurately what was most important.

00:33:31.120 | Or maybe the system just broke down.

00:33:35.280 | But again, I think maybe this is like oversharing or it's about me.

00:33:40.000 | But personally, I'll default to kind of kicking myself

00:33:42.720 | if I don't do things right.

00:33:43.920 | But this notion of like, it's one day at a time,

00:33:46.080 | let's look and reflect on what happened today

00:33:48.560 | and then figure out like, OK, there was probably some thing

00:33:53.600 | that was working against me.

00:33:55.920 | There's all these powerful forces, these social pressures,

00:33:59.120 | and all this software that's working against me all the time.

00:34:02.960 | What's a way I can battle it differently tomorrow?

00:34:04.960 | And maybe I'll try this highlight again.

00:34:06.400 | Or maybe like that highlight was just bigger than I thought it was

00:34:08.880 | and there's more to it.

00:34:10.000 | And so I'm going to do it again.

00:34:11.440 | Or maybe I'm going to do it again because I did it

00:34:13.520 | and it was great.

00:34:14.320 | And like, I can go back to that.

00:34:16.240 | Well, like any of those things are fine.

00:34:18.640 | And this all plays into feedback loops, right?

00:34:21.520 | Like you could process what you did.

00:34:23.280 | How quick are those feedback loops?

00:34:25.200 | Are you trying to get that feedback daily, weekly, monthly?

00:34:28.240 | Do you visit them in different ways?

00:34:30.080 | Or do we punt on that and come back to it?

00:34:32.240 | We think daily is the right level of focus.

00:34:36.080 | We think that looking at this day by day is zoomed in enough

00:34:41.520 | that you can do something about it.

00:34:43.600 | Like Jake said, if you didn't get to your highlight

00:34:48.560 | or you didn't complete it and you want to try it again tomorrow

00:34:51.280 | or you want to try something different tomorrow,

00:34:52.800 | you can do something about it.

00:34:55.120 | It's actionable.

00:34:55.840 | But it's also zoomed out enough that you are, I don't know,

00:35:01.600 | able to think a little bit more holistically,

00:35:04.480 | sort of bigger picture about how you're spending your days,

00:35:08.720 | which is how you're spending your life.

00:35:11.200 | So we recommend that people,

00:35:14.240 | when they're just getting started with this reflection stuff,

00:35:18.480 | that they do it daily.

00:35:19.360 | We think that's kind of the sweet spot.

00:35:20.640 | So we've got our highlight.

00:35:22.320 | We know what we want to focus on.

00:35:23.840 | We picked it the night before the morning of.

00:35:25.680 | I'm really excited to talk about how we get laser focus

00:35:30.000 | because I've seen it myself, right?

00:35:31.680 | I know that when I hit that moment,

00:35:34.000 | I can get done things in an hour that otherwise I'm like,

00:35:38.480 | wow, I've been I've tried to work on this 10 times over multiple days.

00:35:42.400 | And then I just found that spot.

00:35:44.000 | What are some of the best ways to find that focus?

00:35:47.360 | One way that we think about this is there's

00:35:50.320 | the first half of finding that focus is identifying what you want to focus on.

00:35:55.840 | And then if you're trying to point a laser at that target,

00:35:59.920 | the next question is, how do you get the disco ball of distraction

00:36:03.440 | out of the way so that the laser can hit the target?

00:36:06.560 | John and I and you will, you too, Chris, you built products for years and years.

00:36:10.640 | And you know that we all know that the there's a lot of effort

00:36:16.960 | always being put into making things simpler for us, taking steps away from things.

00:36:23.600 | Right.

00:36:23.840 | So whether that's, you know, one click by on Amazon or AI results on search,

00:36:29.920 | instead of having to dig through web pages, whatever it is,

00:36:32.640 | people are always trying to take a step away so you can get to the thing faster.

00:36:36.640 | That's a big business.

00:36:37.520 | There's a lot of there's a lot of economic incentive

00:36:39.840 | for people to take steps away and make it easier for us to do other things.

00:36:42.960 | Doing projects that we care about, there usually are extra steps.

00:36:47.040 | We usually have to spend some extra time to get there.

00:36:49.920 | So one of the first things we do is to try to build steps to get to the distractions,

00:36:56.160 | try to add some steps back in so that the disco ball is pushed out to the side.

00:37:02.080 | And similarly to how we might, you know, I take apps off of my phone

00:37:08.400 | that I think are going to distract me.

00:37:09.760 | You can do the same thing on your computer.

00:37:14.080 | So you can use there's an app called Freedom that'll either block a specific

00:37:20.560 | list of websites or block the Internet altogether for a period of time.

00:37:25.120 | So you can say, I want freedom for, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes,

00:37:29.600 | 60 minutes, 90 minutes, the whole day, whatever.

00:37:32.000 | And it'll shut down access to those things.

00:37:34.480 | You can go so far as to put like a vacation timer on your router

00:37:38.480 | so that you just turn off the Wi-Fi.

00:37:40.480 | Then there are also things you can do to reset the expectations

00:37:43.200 | other people have of how fast you're going to respond to messages, email and the like.

00:37:49.280 | The reset expectations one.

00:37:51.600 | I think my I don't want to say favorite because there are a lot of good things, but

00:37:55.600 | the idea of setting up an autoresponder that's like,

00:37:58.320 | I've broken up my day or this is how I focus.

00:38:02.800 | I might not get back to you.

00:38:04.080 | If it's urgent, you can text me.

00:38:05.920 | You probably have a better template for that.

00:38:08.400 | But that just was really interesting because I think the fear we all have is,

00:38:12.640 | "Well, if I don't check my email, but once a day, what if there's something important?"

00:38:15.920 | And the answer, one way is to say, "Get over it. Nothing's that important."

00:38:19.760 | The other way is to create another avenue

00:38:22.720 | and set up a barrier if it really is that important.

00:38:25.920 | We have a friend that we work with, a business partner named Connor Swenson,

00:38:30.080 | who has taken make time and he teaches it to teams.

00:38:34.240 | You know, he works with big companies and sort of

00:38:36.720 | helps them figure out how to implement this stuff inside their companies.

00:38:39.840 | And one of the things that he does with those teams is

00:38:42.320 | he walks them through what their minimum viable frequency is of checking email.

00:38:48.880 | And it's an interesting exercise and you can do it for yourself.

00:38:51.520 | You can kind of think about, "In my work, in my life, how long could I go

00:38:56.560 | without checking email, without anything really bad happening?"

00:39:00.320 | And you can define bad however you want.

00:39:02.560 | Like if you're in a customer-facing role, you're in sales or something like that,

00:39:06.000 | maybe it's a little bit shorter than it is if you are

00:39:08.800 | a writer or a product designer or something like that.

00:39:11.200 | But when you ask people that question,

00:39:14.480 | the answer is almost always more than an hour, right?

00:39:18.960 | Like it's really hard to find somebody who would say,

00:39:22.240 | "Oh, if I don't check my email every hour, I'm screwed.

00:39:25.280 | Like I'm going to get fired from my job.

00:39:26.880 | Like it's going to be horrible."

00:39:28.560 | Yet even that alone is like, you know, sort of an easy change that you can make

00:39:34.080 | is to just like reduce the frequency of when you check your email.

00:39:37.760 | And this idea then of having sort of this cascade of like,

00:39:42.320 | "Well, I can't respond right now, but if you really need me to respond

00:39:45.680 | in the next four minutes, like contact me this other way."

00:39:48.160 | That just adds a little bit of extra friction.

00:39:50.160 | It enables you to push that frequency of when you check something,

00:39:54.000 | maybe even longer, maybe to four hours, maybe to a whole day, something like that.

00:39:57.840 | Yeah. Jake, you've gone the distraction-free phone route for a while.

00:40:02.160 | You've removed the apps, you've gotten rid of everything.

00:40:04.320 | There is an alternative for people who aren't ready for that, which is,

00:40:08.000 | well, you could keep the apps on your phone, but log out of them.

00:40:11.360 | So it's harder to get in or take them off your home screen or turn off the notifications.

00:40:16.720 | So, or I am guessing what you do is you just use them on your computer,

00:40:21.040 | or maybe you have another iPad that you use them on, but you're kind of,

00:40:24.240 | you're not saying don't do all these things.

00:40:26.640 | You're saying make it harder or make yourself have to do them somewhere else.

00:40:30.240 | Yeah, it's really nice if you can confine them to a spot.

00:40:33.920 | And, you know, I think that sometimes you may find,

00:40:39.760 | and I have found that when I create separation from those things,

00:40:44.640 | when I stop getting this sort of constant, like constant feedback loop with,

00:40:52.640 | I mean, this happened for me with social media, like with Facebook, with Instagram, whatever.

00:40:57.360 | Like when I stopped having the constant feedback loop with it,

00:41:00.960 | it started to feel a lot less necessary.

00:41:03.440 | And I realized it was more pleasant for me when I was in those times when I was away from it

00:41:07.840 | than when I was at my computer and could access it.

00:41:10.400 | And so I just gave up altogether.

00:41:13.280 | But for other things, it really is just about creating that, creating that bit of space.

00:41:17.440 | And that space can be device related.

00:41:20.960 | It could be geographic.

00:41:23.040 | Like, you know, I can do this stuff in my office

00:41:25.280 | because that's where my sort of desktop computer sits or whatever.

00:41:27.680 | It can also be a temporal space.

00:41:31.840 | Like this is the time block when I use this stuff.

00:41:34.880 | And this is the time when I don't.

00:41:36.000 | And again, that freedom app can be really helpful.

00:41:37.840 | You can have scheduled blocks.

00:41:39.120 | You can say, I always want these things or everything to turn off at this time

00:41:44.880 | and turn back on again at this time.

00:41:46.720 | And that's, you know, that it's not about necessarily giving everything up.

00:41:52.000 | And I don't think that's, I don't think it's realistic for most of us.

00:41:55.200 | And for all of us, there's probably things that we don't want to give up.

00:41:58.640 | But it's really just about changing the, changing the relationship

00:42:02.080 | and not feeling like we aren't going to get our money's worth out of our phone

00:42:07.520 | or we're going to miss out if we're not on top of things 100% of the time.

00:42:13.840 | When we wrote Make Time, I don't recall two-factor authentication being like

00:42:18.480 | a big deal and maybe it was, but I don't remember it.

00:42:21.520 | But now it is like virtual.

00:42:22.640 | I mean, you can set up two-factor off on Twitter, on LinkedIn,

00:42:26.320 | you know, on things that are not sort of like mission critical applications.

00:42:30.400 | And that's actually another great way to add friction.

00:42:32.160 | That's something I started doing in the last couple of years is turning on

00:42:35.680 | two-factor even for stuff that I don't care about.

00:42:38.400 | So in addition to logging out or enabling something like freedom,

00:42:42.000 | that's another really simple tactic that you can use.

00:42:44.240 | That's not in the book, but I use a ton and really helps.

00:42:47.360 | And all these things are reversible.

00:42:50.400 | Now, one tactic that I use, and I can't tell if it's a stalling tactic or a good tactic,

00:42:55.120 | but I find personally that that sensation of like, "Ah, things aren't in order.

00:43:01.440 | I haven't checked my inbox.

00:43:02.880 | My desk is a mess."

00:43:04.160 | When I can get rid of those things, I feel more capable of just diving in.

00:43:10.320 | Now, on the flip side, there's some advice, even a tactic in the book that's like,

00:43:14.400 | "Don't check all your email in the morning.

00:43:15.920 | Use the morning for productive time."

00:43:18.000 | Which I think for me, would have me the entire time I'm trying to be productive being like,

00:43:22.800 | "I still don't know if these things need to be resolved."

00:43:26.000 | Whereas if I wake up, and sometime in the morning, I go through,

00:43:29.360 | make sure there's nothing urgent.

00:43:30.960 | I clean off my desk, and I'm like, "Now I'm going to focus."

00:43:34.000 | Am I kidding myself?

00:43:36.560 | Or is it different for everyone?

00:43:38.720 | I think one thing that we have learned is that it is different for everyone.

00:43:41.360 | So I never want to say like, "Chris, you're wrong.

00:43:44.080 | You're deluding yourself."

00:43:45.200 | I mean, you probably are.

00:43:46.160 | But the reality of it is that there's this discomfort that I think we kind of have to

00:43:51.680 | get used to because the prevailing culture and the prevailing expectation is that we're

00:43:58.000 | going to be on top of things.

00:43:59.920 | And so not being on top of things.

00:44:02.080 | And by on top of things, I mean, I've gone through my email, I've responded to everything

00:44:06.800 | that I feel like I either have to, or sort of socially obligated to in some way.

00:44:12.160 | I've checked my, you know, I've checked Slack, I've checked everything.

00:44:16.080 | I'm sort of up to speed.

00:44:17.120 | I've checked the news.

00:44:18.240 | Like there is a feeling of I've checked everything and done all that work.

00:44:21.920 | And now the decks are clear.

00:44:23.760 | And now I can truly focus.

00:44:26.400 | And I won't lie to you.

00:44:28.240 | There is a feeling of psychological freedom that happens when you feel like everything

00:44:33.360 | is taken care of.

00:44:34.240 | The cost, however, of achieving that level of psychological freedom for most of us is

00:44:40.720 | the cost of investing more deeply in these bigger things that are harder to make time

00:44:46.160 | for.

00:44:46.880 | And that cost comes both from the time that you spend catching up and clearing the decks

00:44:51.440 | and also from the attention residue.

00:44:53.600 | I've been working in my email.

00:44:56.000 | I've been reading the news or whatever.

00:44:57.520 | And now I feel like I'm caught up.

00:44:58.720 | But that stuff is still with me.

00:45:00.800 | It's still in my head in some way.

00:45:03.360 | And this idea of attention residue, it comes from the study by Dr. Sophie Leroy from the

00:45:10.720 | University of Washington.

00:45:11.840 | I think we first heard about it from Cal Newport.

00:45:13.840 | And it's a fascinating idea.

00:45:15.520 | These things just stick with us and make it harder for us to be fully all in on another

00:45:20.480 | topic.

00:45:21.200 | I think it helps to start off with an activity we call Stack Rank Your Life.

00:45:24.720 | So you just like make a list of every single project, work project, life project that you

00:45:31.680 | currently have going on and also the ones that you'd like to do but do not have time

00:45:35.680 | for.

00:45:35.920 | And then in whatever order, write that list out and then put them in order.

00:45:40.800 | Like what's the one, two, three, four, if you had a magic wand and had as much time

00:45:44.880 | as possible, where would you want to be spending it?

00:45:46.560 | And then just like circle the top one and figure out like, well, how do I make time

00:45:51.600 | for that most important thing?

00:45:53.120 | And if you look at that list and there is no deviation from the way your life actually

00:45:58.160 | is and the way your days actually are, then it doesn't matter.

00:46:00.480 | And you don't have to get comfortable with the discomfort or any of that.

00:46:04.560 | Like you can just keep doing things as they are.

00:46:06.960 | We sort of think like you want to apply more and more tactics if you feel like that list

00:46:13.120 | is more out of whack with what's actually happening.

00:46:15.760 | And if you feel like there is an important thing and I'm not getting to it, then you

00:46:19.040 | have to maybe get into this zone of getting comfortable with the discomfort, because that

00:46:25.440 | feeling of I can't start working yet because there's this pile of stuff and I need to clear

00:46:30.560 | the decks, you can get comfortable with that feeling of the decks being messy and get into

00:46:37.920 | the zone anyway.

00:46:39.200 | It's just one of those things.

00:46:40.400 | It's like that saying, like, you know, if you the more time you spend outside your comfort

00:46:44.640 | zone, the bigger your comfort zone gets and you can get comfortable with the mess of the

00:46:50.160 | stuff that doesn't really matter so that you can focus on what's most important.

00:46:53.920 | But it'll take a few reps.

00:46:55.120 | I think if you want to make a habit of clearing the decks work, then it's really important

00:47:04.000 | to constrain it along two dimensions.

00:47:06.400 | One is time and the other is channels.

00:47:09.440 | So it has to truly be time bound, because one of the big challenges with clearing the

00:47:15.200 | decks is that the amount of stuff that is on your deck will always increase.

00:47:18.960 | There will always be something else to look at or to take care of.

00:47:21.440 | And then constraining it along the line of channels allows you to say, OK, I'm not going

00:47:27.840 | to read the news in the morning.

00:47:28.960 | Like the news actually isn't like that's not actually going to change what I do during

00:47:32.400 | the day.

00:47:32.960 | But maybe email is important.

00:47:34.800 | Maybe Slack is important.

00:47:36.400 | And I do this.

00:47:37.760 | I have one of the habits that Reclaim schedules for me every morning is called pre-check.

00:47:42.560 | And it's 30 minutes only and it's email only.

00:47:47.920 | And I do this because I have decided that in my job, my minimum viable frequency for

00:47:53.520 | email is about four hours.

00:47:57.200 | So I can't go from the end of the day until the next day lunch.

00:48:02.560 | That would be too long for me to go.

00:48:04.240 | If there's an email from a founder that we're sort of working with or trying to invest in,

00:48:08.960 | there's an email from a potential LP in our fund who's expecting us to follow up.

00:48:13.920 | So I've kind of hacked that and accounted for that by having this pre-check block.

00:48:18.240 | But it's very, very tightly constrained.

00:48:20.320 | It's only 30 minutes and it's only email.

00:48:22.320 | Yeah, another thing that's worked well for me, which was hard to get comfortable with

00:48:27.600 | is you make this list that you said, Jake, or you put down all the things that are important.

00:48:32.560 | And I feel like you have to be really ruthless about the projects that you haven't made time

00:48:36.400 | for about whether you actually want to do them.

00:48:38.800 | And so if you look at my macro to do list, which is just like project level, I'm like,

00:48:45.360 | if something's been on there for three months and I haven't done it, sometimes the answer

00:48:49.440 | isn't make time for it.

00:48:50.400 | Sometimes the answer is like, let's just cut bait.

00:48:52.560 | Like this is not a project that I clearly prioritize.

00:48:55.280 | This is not an email that I actually want to respond to.

00:48:58.080 | And let's just not do it.

00:49:00.640 | And that has become harder and harder to get comfortable with.

00:49:04.880 | But once you get comfortable with it, it's really freeing.

00:49:08.720 | And I know a friend of ours that we both all worked with, Kevin Rose, he was really good

00:49:13.360 | a few times at like, "I got all these emails.

00:49:16.080 | I don't really want to respond to them.

00:49:17.200 | Command A, archive all."

00:49:19.680 | I'm not suggesting people go to that extreme all the time.

00:49:23.200 | But when there's a project that you have been pushing off and pushing off, if it's an option

00:49:27.440 | to not do it, that is a potentially viable option.

00:49:30.640 | Yeah.

00:49:31.680 | And maybe it's counterintuitive, but adopting some of these tactics of saying, "I am going

00:49:40.160 | to identify a highlight each day.

00:49:41.680 | I am going to focus on one thing at a time.

00:49:44.800 | I am going to make a list of what's important to me."

00:49:47.120 | That actually makes it easier to decide when something isn't going to happen because you've

00:49:53.520 | created a system for yourself.

00:49:54.880 | This is my system for what I spend time on.

00:49:58.080 | And if there's something that clearly doesn't fit the system, it's uncomfortable for sure.

00:50:03.600 | But I find it easier to say, "Okay, it doesn't fit.

00:50:07.040 | It hasn't fit for three months.

00:50:08.080 | It hasn't fit for a year.

00:50:09.120 | It's not going to happen."

00:50:10.080 | Instead of, I think if you operate in the conventional productivity paradigm of like,

00:50:16.000 | "Well, if I just get organized enough, I just get efficient enough, I can do everything."

00:50:19.680 | Then it's like, there's always a chance.

00:50:22.880 | You're always like, you keep hope alive for that thing on your list that maybe shouldn't

00:50:27.360 | be there at all, like you said, Chris.

00:50:30.080 | Lots of tactics to focus on things.

00:50:32.560 | What's required for this focus is energy.

00:50:36.720 | Let's talk about some ways that we can recharge ourselves.

00:50:39.840 | As much as it's about time and dividing things up, it's really about energy.

00:50:44.640 | It's about having the energy to do the thing and dive into it and get into that zone that

00:50:50.000 | you described, Chris, where you're just like, "In an hour, I can do what normally might

00:50:54.240 | have taken me weeks to do because I was so locked in."

00:50:57.280 | So much of that is actually about physical energy.

00:50:59.760 | The brain is a part of the body.

00:51:01.280 | Whatever the tactics are, getting very conscious about that is related to the work that you

00:51:09.600 | do or the time that you spend with your loved ones or the time that you spend doing this

00:51:15.440 | hobby or activity that you really care about.

00:51:18.000 | The way you sleep, the way you eat, the way you caffeinate or don't, when you walk and

00:51:23.200 | take a break and reset your brain, all these things have a powerful effect on what you

00:51:27.440 | can actually do with your mind.

00:51:29.280 | Some of them we've done full deep dives on, but what are some of the highlights of tactics

00:51:34.880 | around energy that people might not already know?

00:51:37.920 | We had the opportunity when we were at GV to work with Blue Bottle Coffee.

00:51:43.200 | And there were, as you might expect, some real coffee nerds at Blue Bottle.

00:51:49.040 | And there was this one guy in particular, Ryan Brown, that we worked with who had done

00:51:55.920 | a bunch of research himself on caffeine and how the body actually processes caffeine.

00:52:01.520 | And maybe people listening know this already, but caffeine doesn't give you energy.

00:52:07.280 | It basically prevents you from getting tired.

00:52:09.600 | So there's like a hormone that binds with the receptor in your brain and tells you it's

00:52:15.360 | time to be tired.

00:52:16.080 | And caffeine blocks that binding.

00:52:18.960 | And the thing that Jake actually turned me on to that I recently started doing is not

00:52:29.200 | having coffee first thing in the morning.

00:52:32.000 | So when you have coffee first thing in the morning, your body learns that it needs that

00:52:37.600 | in order to wake up.

00:52:39.920 | And so it sort of like blunts the effectiveness of it.

00:52:43.520 | Coffee, you become more addicted to it and the caffeine is less effective.

00:52:48.400 | But if you can wait an hour or two hours or three hours to have your first cup of coffee,

00:52:54.000 | you'll wake up better.

00:52:56.080 | You'll actually have a better kind of energy first thing in the morning.

00:53:00.480 | And then if you want that additional boost from caffeine, if you want to experience that

00:53:05.920 | sort of "energy giving" effect of caffeine, you have it a few hours after you've been

00:53:10.800 | awake.

00:53:11.440 | It's way, way more effective.

00:53:13.200 | And so that's one that I think it's not obvious.

00:53:16.880 | And certainly the default of how most people consume caffeine first thing in the morning

00:53:21.200 | is different.

00:53:22.400 | But that was an interesting thing that we learned about that took me a long time to

00:53:28.240 | really implement in my own life.

00:53:29.520 | But I like it a lot.

00:53:31.280 | That has had a huge effect on my days.

00:53:33.760 | And it's always important to say with caffeine that it affects people differently.

00:53:39.360 | And there's this huge population.

00:53:40.880 | Like, I have friends who are Swedish who can drink coffee.

00:53:43.520 | Like, they just start the day, they're drinking just black coffee, like water all day long,

00:53:48.640 | you know, right up till they go to bed.

00:53:50.000 | No problem.

00:53:50.960 | For me, it's not like that at all.

00:53:52.320 | And I have to be mindful of it.

00:53:54.000 | And spacing out and really picking those spots.

00:53:57.040 | I think of it like if you're playing Super Mario Kart and you've got like the mushroom,

00:54:00.080 | like the turbo boost, and you want to pick like the right moment, like the straightaway

00:54:04.480 | to get that boost.

00:54:05.440 | If I burn up my mushroom, you know, and the turns in the beginning, that's like the first

00:54:10.400 | one out of the bag.

00:54:11.040 | It's like it's a waste.

00:54:12.000 | It's a waste.

00:54:13.040 | So the caffeine timing for most of us, I think, is a really big deal and really worth experimenting

00:54:21.440 | on for your highlights.

00:54:23.840 | Yeah.

00:54:24.080 | My caffeine optimization is quite different because I don't really drink caffeine and

00:54:28.080 | I don't drink coffee.

00:54:29.360 | But one time, so I never really liked the taste of coffee.

00:54:32.160 | And one time I went to Starbucks, I was like, "I don't know what to order."

00:54:34.880 | And so someone was like, "You should get a Nitro Cold Brew."

00:54:36.640 | And I was like, "I don't know what that is."

00:54:37.840 | So I ordered it.

00:54:38.880 | And best I can understand, a very large Nitro Cold Brew is like drinking two or three coffees,

00:54:44.160 | right?

00:54:44.320 | It's way more than you need.

00:54:46.080 | And it put me in this like, I felt like I had taken a drug.

00:54:50.720 | And I actually felt like I could focus.

00:54:53.040 | But I've saved that.

00:54:54.720 | And it's like a one or two time a year thing.

00:54:57.040 | I'm like, "Wow, I can't find the focus.

00:54:59.040 | Let's use it almost like as a drug, not as a thing every day."

00:55:04.400 | I'm not sure if I want to recommend that.

00:55:05.840 | But that is my experience.

00:55:08.080 | Another tactic that might be a little new to people is called leave your headphones at

00:55:17.200 | home.

00:55:17.680 | AirPods have created this incredible default at the intersection of culture, what's culturally

00:55:26.160 | acceptable, socially acceptable and technology.

00:55:28.320 | It's so easy.

00:55:28.960 | They're so light.

00:55:29.680 | They're so delightful to use that you leave the house.

00:55:32.720 | You're going for a walk.

00:55:33.440 | You're going to the store.

00:55:34.400 | You put your AirPods in, which is great.

00:55:36.560 | It's wonderful.

00:55:37.040 | I do it all the time.

00:55:38.240 | But there's kind of this surprising and novel kind of clarity and calm that comes if you

00:55:46.320 | just leave the headphones at home.

00:55:48.400 | You're going for a walk.

00:55:49.440 | You're going to run errands, and you just don't have your headphones.

00:55:53.360 | I mean, it sounds so obvious that it even has to be a tactic.

00:55:56.320 | But we have found that when the default is to always be listening to something, to always

00:56:01.920 | be consuming, to say, "Oh, well, I can't have downtime.

00:56:05.200 | I need to make good use of that time by learning something," whatever, if you can change that

00:56:10.800 | default and use that instead as an opportunity to recharge and to re-energize, it can be

00:56:17.040 | helpful.

00:56:18.000 | Where do breaks and exercise and all that fit into our ability to focus?

00:56:23.280 | Well, they're really important.

00:56:25.040 | We can't be on all the time.

00:56:26.880 | And this is something that John and I noticed when we have run design sprints.

00:56:32.560 | In the earliest days of doing it, we didn't have a schedule yet.

00:56:37.040 | We didn't yet know sort of what the structure of the day should be, how long we should go.

00:56:42.080 | And our tendency was-- so the notion with a design sprint is we're working with a team

00:56:47.440 | who's starting a big project.

00:56:48.960 | We want to help them go from sort of zero to a prototype that we're testing with customers

00:56:54.560 | by the end of the week.

00:56:55.760 | So you've got a team of three, four, five, six, seven people, something like that.

00:57:00.000 | For us, it's a startup usually, but people have adopted this in all kinds of places.

00:57:04.080 | And we have a lot to accomplish in a week to get there, to get from zero on this project

00:57:10.080 | to a prototype that's realistic that you can test with people.

00:57:12.640 | There's a lot to accomplish.

00:57:14.400 | At first, our instinct was, well, we need to work the longest days and cram in the most

00:57:19.360 | time.

00:57:19.600 | So quick breaks, long hours.

00:57:22.080 | Over time, we learned we actually get more done if we work in these sort of focused blocks

00:57:29.520 | of 60 to 90 minutes.

00:57:30.960 | And we have long breaks in between those blocks.

00:57:34.320 | So up to like 30 minutes where people can walk, have a snack, really kind of do some

00:57:40.480 | of that reset that we're just talking about without the headphones.

00:57:43.360 | And then come back and do another session.

00:57:46.080 | And so this notion that you have like 60 to 90 minutes for a highlight, it kind of comes

00:57:50.800 | it's informed by that observation that we saw teams reach their peak performance when

00:57:56.320 | they were working in those blocks, taking a big break, doing another block, taking a

00:58:00.320 | big break.

00:58:01.120 | And so that would make a case for kind of stepping away from your desk, like going on

00:58:05.920 | a walk in the middle of the day, kind of just breaking up the day.

00:58:08.240 | What about kind of more exercise?

00:58:11.280 | I feel like something that I'm sure is not unique to me is like, oh, I really want to

00:58:16.240 | work out, but I just got so much stuff to do.

00:58:18.560 | So maybe if I can like just catch up and and it seems like the overwhelming theme is like,

00:58:22.640 | you'll never catch up.

00:58:23.440 | So stop trying to catch up.

00:58:24.720 | But how do you guys think about exercise in your own lives?

00:58:28.160 | A couple of ways.

00:58:29.600 | I think there's I share your, your sentiment, Chris, which is that exercise is something

00:58:35.840 | that I, I really want to do is very important to me.

00:58:38.720 | But it if I don't have kind of a structure around it, it often slips to the end of the

00:58:44.720 | day or it doesn't it doesn't happen.

00:58:46.480 | So, you know, in the book, we actually recommended kind of finding a way to exercise

00:58:55.680 | on your own, you know, sort of not depending on a trainer or a gym or some some external

00:59:02.560 | setting in order to exercise, but rather to find a way to exercise on your own.

00:59:06.560 | And I've actually changed my my tune on that, not because it's ineffective, but because

00:59:11.120 | I found that more often than not, I just wasn't getting to it.

00:59:14.720 | It wasn't it wasn't as important or didn't seem as urgent to me as other things.

00:59:19.120 | And so I've started working with a trainer for a few reasons, partially because they're

00:59:26.800 | they're very good at what they do and they help me with some specific challenges that

00:59:30.320 | I have.

00:59:30.720 | But but also because now it's scheduled, right?

00:59:34.320 | It's I am accountable to that person and that person has a full schedule of their own.

00:59:39.680 | And so I if I if I cancel with them, it's not like I can just, you know, reschedule

00:59:44.000 | any time I want.

00:59:44.880 | And so I know that it's important to to keep that that that commitment.

00:59:50.320 | So so that's something that I've done to help me make sure that I am making time to

00:59:56.320 | exercise.

00:59:57.120 | But I think there's another there's another view of it for us, which is that exercise

01:00:02.640 | is not just something that like you you should do or that you need to do to stay healthy,

01:00:09.120 | but that it's actually like a tool you can use to build energy.

01:00:12.480 | And, you know, I'm sure that, you know, anybody in your audience has experienced the

01:00:18.400 | feeling of, you know, being stuck and, you know, taking a break or going to take a walk

01:00:23.200 | to clear their head or just sort of this this sense that when you when you start moving

01:00:27.520 | and you get away from the desk, like it, it just kind of gives you a new kind of energy,

01:00:32.000 | a new, you know, sort of a boost.

01:00:34.480 | And so, you know, that's that's kind of another view of it is is you can use exercise

01:00:40.000 | to actively give you energy to make it easier to then come back refreshed and really focus

01:00:46.720 | on the things that you want to make time for.

01:00:48.800 | Yeah, one thing that just made me realize when I go to run, I sometimes have all kinds

01:00:54.080 | of ideas.

01:00:54.560 | I know every time I'm running, I'm like, gosh, I wish I wish I could just write these

01:00:57.280 | ideas down.

01:00:57.760 | So I like sometimes I'll pull out the notes app and I'm like trying to run, trying to

01:01:01.360 | write down an idea just so I don't miss it.

01:01:03.360 | Another time I was like, should I just bring a Sharpie and start writing on my arm?

01:01:06.160 | Or it's always dawned on me that that is probably because I'm not distracted, right?

01:01:10.160 | Like I'm running.

01:01:11.280 | I'm not sitting there scrolling social media.

01:01:13.280 | I can't do that.

01:01:13.760 | I'm running.

01:01:14.320 | So I just have to be with my thoughts.

01:01:15.920 | And oh, and I'm with my thoughts.

01:01:17.120 | Sometimes I come up with really interesting things.

01:01:18.880 | It's never dawned on me that you could just create that.

01:01:22.400 | It's like, oh, well, what if I just stopped using the social media ads?

01:01:24.800 | It sounds so obvious.

01:01:26.240 | But I was like, I just love that experience.

01:01:28.480 | And in my mind, I was like, I should just run more, you know, like not there's another

01:01:33.120 | way to get to that state.

01:01:34.800 | Yeah.

01:01:35.940 | I think that we will all be better off if we can exercise in some way every day.

01:01:41.520 | And the exercise, it can be a walk.

01:01:43.520 | It doesn't have to be a Herculean feat.

01:01:46.720 | And in fact, for myself, I've found it's better if I don't do those Herculean exercise

01:01:52.160 | things, that's going to usually be a recipe for me, like hurting myself and then stopping

01:01:58.480 | the program or wearing myself out too much and not being able to focus.

01:02:03.040 | But a regular whatever you can do that you can fit in.

01:02:07.120 | And I think for most people, you'll benefit from it more in the morning.

01:02:10.560 | Then I benefit from that time that you just described, Chris, like that that brain time

01:02:16.080 | and that the sort of cognitive boost that I get afterwards.

01:02:19.520 | I get to enjoy that all day long.

01:02:22.000 | It's it's really powerful.

01:02:23.920 | And it's, you know, there are obviously many reasons to exercise for our health and longevity

01:02:30.160 | and so forth.

01:02:30.720 | But just if you think about it as an equation for what can help you focus, what can help

01:02:36.080 | you do your work the best or bring the best attention to the people in the projects you

01:02:41.040 | care about, it's it's a great way to to get more out of each day.

01:02:45.040 | There are a lot of tactics.

01:02:46.960 | I'm like, there's no way we're getting through all of them.

01:02:49.120 | So I'm going to move us on to some reflecting and how you guys think about that process.

01:02:54.160 | We talked briefly about it, but maybe tactically, what do we do to reflect?

01:02:58.880 | I think the most basic reflecting is just asking yourself, like, how did the day go?

01:03:06.480 | Like, how did I feel today?

01:03:07.920 | What did I spend time on?

01:03:10.800 | Was that what I wanted to spend time on?

01:03:14.320 | And we in the back of the book and make time, we have a template for that.

01:03:19.200 | It's actually it's on our website, too.

01:03:20.640 | So it's it's free.

01:03:21.440 | You don't have to buy the book to get it, but it's a simple template that you can use

01:03:24.640 | if it's helpful to just sort of walk you through each of those questions.

01:03:27.920 | But I think that the the more important aspect of reflecting is to then think about what

01:03:36.720 | you're going to do differently tomorrow, because, you know, if you get in this habit of treating

01:03:42.320 | each day as an experiment, you can sort of look back and say, OK, how did it go?

01:03:46.160 | Did I make time for the things that I wanted to?

01:03:47.920 | And then if not, well, what am I going to do differently tomorrow?

01:03:52.480 | And, you know, you can use the tactics in the book or you can, you know, get inspired

01:03:56.320 | by other things that you that, you know, come to mind or that you read about, you hear about.

01:04:00.400 | But being somewhat deliberate about what you're going to do next is kind of the that's the

01:04:06.560 | secret to propelling this this daily experiment cycle.

01:04:10.320 | And over time, then getting to a point where you're not just like reading a book and following

01:04:15.840 | some advice from from us, but you're actually like constructing your own system.

01:04:19.840 | You're making your own personalized system that's based on results from your own life,

01:04:25.440 | based on the things that have actually worked for you and that you are confident work for

01:04:29.040 | you, that you enjoy doing.

01:04:31.200 | And so that's that's kind of both the mechanics of reflect, but also the bigger philosophy

01:04:37.840 | of why we think it's important.

01:04:39.680 | You can honestly just you can think about it as like you're playing Super Mario Brothers

01:04:43.600 | and it's like every day you you're at the end of a level.

01:04:46.800 | And I mean, you either died or you're at the end of you got through the level.

01:04:50.080 | And like maybe you didn't get through the level, but you went into a warp zone or something.

01:04:54.720 | And like, you know, you change your highlight, you went a different direction.

01:04:57.840 | But if you didn't make it through, if you look back and you're like, that did not go

01:05:01.280 | the way I wanted to.

01:05:02.240 | If you think of it as like, oh, I didn't measure up, I suck like you're not going to be having

01:05:08.000 | a good time, but hopefully people don't feel that way when they're playing Super Mario

01:05:10.880 | Brothers.

01:05:11.120 | You're like, man, that Goomba got me or like whatever, like the Koopa Troopa.

01:05:15.040 | I ran right into him.

01:05:15.840 | I got to do next time.

01:05:18.160 | I'm going to just jump a little bit sooner.

01:05:20.480 | I'm going to jump a little bit higher, whatever.

01:05:22.080 | And that's the way I think you can think about it.

01:05:25.200 | It's just like, oh, we tried one thing.

01:05:28.000 | Did it work or not?

01:05:29.280 | And if it didn't work, what might I correct about it?

01:05:32.160 | Because there's all these bad guys who are against me.

01:05:34.720 | And I feel like in the world of all of the distractions and all of the social expectations

01:05:43.200 | and all of the things that we pile on ourselves and expect ourselves to do, those are all

01:05:46.720 | bad guys that we have to avoid.

01:05:48.160 | And if we trip up for a day and if the bad guys get us, it's not necessarily this intrinsic

01:05:53.280 | problem with us.

01:05:54.560 | We're all going to have days like that.

01:05:56.640 | I have them all the time.

01:05:58.240 | It's just, okay, the old system wasn't working for me.

01:06:01.280 | I need to adapt.

01:06:02.000 | Things are new, or I'm trying to set up this new thing and it's not clicking yet.

01:06:05.680 | What am I going to change tomorrow?

01:06:07.280 | And it can be as simple as that.

01:06:09.600 | It sounds like even though you guys wrote the book and practice this daily, you still

01:06:13.680 | have days where you don't get stuff done that you want to.

01:06:16.960 | Oh, my God.

01:06:18.400 | Constantly.

01:06:18.900 | It's a constant battle for me.

01:06:21.680 | And I'm constantly getting distracted by stuff.

01:06:23.360 | You'd be like, "Really?

01:06:24.240 | You wrote a book on this and you're getting distracted by what you're doing right now?"

01:06:27.040 | All the time.

01:06:27.760 | It's just like, I'm the worst.

01:06:30.560 | I'm the absolute worst.

01:06:31.760 | How do you take someone who's really easily distractible and very poor self-control and

01:06:39.440 | get anything done?

01:06:40.240 | Make time is that for me.

01:06:44.000 | Where would you send people, and if that's different types of people, to follow up on

01:06:50.400 | everything you're doing from character to make time to anything else?

01:06:53.680 | I think it depends on what you're looking for.

01:06:56.400 | If you are specifically interested in getting started with some of these tactics, go to

01:07:01.840 | maketime.blog, which is our website.

01:07:04.640 | And there's a bunch of easy ways to start.

01:07:07.280 | There's a bunch of free resources.

01:07:08.640 | You can go as deep or stay as shallow as you want.

01:07:12.000 | We've talked a bunch about the work that we do with founders.

01:07:16.480 | We invest in startups.

01:07:19.040 | We love working with founders when they're at the earliest stages of building their companies.

01:07:25.280 | And we do that through our VC firm, Character.

01:07:28.080 | Our website is character.vc.

01:07:30.000 | And one thing that's really exciting in the Character world is that twice a year, we run

01:07:37.200 | a program called Character Labs.

01:07:38.880 | It's basically our version of a startup accelerator where we apply a lot of these

01:07:43.120 | lessons.

01:07:43.520 | We apply lessons from the hundreds of design sprints that we've run with companies.

01:07:48.800 | And we tailored this program to help people who are just getting started building something

01:07:54.480 | new.

01:07:55.760 | And so if you're at that stage, if you're in those early days, you should also check

01:08:01.040 | out Character Labs.

01:08:01.920 | And it's a cool opportunity to work with us as you're starting a new business.

01:08:06.560 | Yeah, as someone who has worked with you, with portfolio companies and my own, I can

01:08:11.680 | fully endorse and recommend anyone go do that.

01:08:17.200 | If it's one of those two times a year, go wait for the next one.

01:08:21.760 | Going through that design sprint process, yes, you can read the book and try to do it

01:08:25.440 | yourself.

01:08:25.920 | But going through it with someone who's done it is just one of the most interesting

01:08:30.480 | experiences you can have when you're building a company.

01:08:33.040 | Thank you for saying that.

01:08:34.000 | And it's also what's fun for us.

01:08:36.000 | And I think where we can have a big impact for founders is not just in leading them through

01:08:41.120 | the process.

01:08:41.760 | Because like you said, they can read the book, they can do it.

01:08:43.920 | But we get to contribute ideas then, right?

01:08:47.600 | If we were a normal investor, and we talked to a founder once a month, they were on the

01:08:52.480 | board or whatever, we throw out an idea like, "Hey, did you consider this?

01:08:56.880 | What if you did it that way?"

01:08:58.160 | It's hard to really have an impact in that way.

01:09:01.680 | But when we're running a sprint with the founders of a startup, with the core team of

01:09:06.080 | that startup, it creates an opportunity for us to bring our experience as designers and

01:09:11.680 | writers and contribute those ideas directly.

01:09:14.080 | So we're literally making sketches, we're writing copy, we're working on mockups and

01:09:19.760 | prototypes for those founders.

01:09:22.240 | So that's, I think, one of the things that's really unique about working in this way with

01:09:27.440 | founders.

01:09:28.660 | Yeah.

01:09:30.020 | I don't have a startup right now, or I'd be knocking on the door.

01:09:32.960 | You do.

01:09:34.480 | This is a kind of a startup, Chris.

01:09:36.000 | And come on.

01:09:36.480 | I don't have a venue.

01:09:37.600 | I'm not raising money.

01:09:38.400 | Awesome.

01:09:41.440 | Thank you guys so much for being here.

01:09:43.760 | Thanks, Chris.

01:09:44.320 | I'm such a big fan of all the hacks, and so this is really a treat to get to be on the

Productivity Pros Reveal 12 Tactics To Make Time For Everything

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