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Speaker 1: holidays everybody. In case you're just recently joining us, or
Speaker 1: however long you've been a listener of the show, you
Speaker 1: may not realize that we have many years of incredible
Speaker 1: episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests
Speaker 1: that we've decided to hand pick some of our favorites
Speaker 1: that may be new to you, but if not, they
Speaker 1: are definitely worth another listen, So we're rereleasing a few
Speaker 1: of these during the holiday. In this episode is with
Speaker 1: John Zeratsky. The expectation that when we receive an email,
Speaker 1: we're going to see it right away, we're gonna respond
Speaker 1: to it right away, We're gonna stay on top of things.
Speaker 1: That level of respondness doesn't really fit with the way
Speaker 1: that humans evolved. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we
Speaker 1: have quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are
Speaker 1: what you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Zeratski.
Speaker 1: He was a designer in the tech industry who became
Speaker 1: obsessed with the idea of redesigning time. He's also the
Speaker 1: author of multiple books. John's writing has been published by
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, Time, Harvard Business Review, Wired Fast Company,
Speaker 1: and many others. His new book is Make Time, How
Speaker 1: to Focus on What Matters every Day. Hi, John, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thanks a lot for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. Your book is called Make Time,
Speaker 1: How to Focus on What Matters every Day, and I
Speaker 1: think there's so much to learn in this book about
Speaker 1: creating a life worth living. So I'm excited to get
Speaker 1: into it. But let's start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. When I think about that parable,
Speaker 1: I immediately think about how I'm going to choose to
Speaker 1: feed the good wolf. Right. So it's so the choice
Speaker 1: is clear, but the question that is is how do
Speaker 1: you do it? And I think that the initial temptation
Speaker 1: is to focus on willpower and self control and discipline
Speaker 1: and and have this this attitude that with constant vigilance,
Speaker 1: you can make sure that you're you're feeding the good wolf,
Speaker 1: and you're the things that you want to do. You're
Speaker 1: becoming the person that you want to become. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that really has been an important lesson
Speaker 1: for me is understanding the limits of willpower and understanding
Speaker 1: that if we want to make decisions that we feel
Speaker 1: good about, if we want to feed that good wolf,
Speaker 1: we need to change our environment. We need to adopt habits,
Speaker 1: we need to kind of set up our world around
Speaker 1: us so that we so that it's easier to make
Speaker 1: the right decisions. That's a great point, and a lot
Speaker 1: of what you cover in the book is how to
Speaker 1: do that. So let's just jump in. Let's first talk
Speaker 1: about the title is called Make Time, how to focus
Speaker 1: on what matters every day? And you say that what
Speaker 1: it's you and a co author, Jake is his name, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I'll reference you for the rest of it,
Speaker 1: but listeners will know it's the two of you. Um,
Speaker 1: you say, make Time is not about productivity, it's not
Speaker 1: about getting more done, finishing your twodues faster, or outsourcing
Speaker 1: your life. It did. It's a framework design to help
Speaker 1: you actually create more time in your day for the
Speaker 1: things you care about. And I think that's such an
Speaker 1: important distinction. So You then go on to say that
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century, we all have two very
Speaker 1: powerful forces that compete for every minute of our time.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what those are and maybe we
Speaker 1: can talk a little bit more about them. Sure. The
Speaker 1: first one of those forces is what we call the
Speaker 1: busy bandwagon, and that is our culture of constant buzziness,
Speaker 1: the expectation that when we receive an email or a method,
Speaker 1: we're going to see it right away, we're gonna respond
Speaker 1: to it right away, we're gonna stay on top of things.
Speaker 1: And that level of business, of connectedness, of responsiveness is
Speaker 1: quite exhausting, it's quite draining. It doesn't really fit with
Speaker 1: the way that humans evolved. Um, we evolved in a
Speaker 1: world where most of the time nothing happened, and if
Speaker 1: something distracted us or grabbed our attention, it was usually
Speaker 1: for a good reason. So so we're kind of kind
Speaker 1: of being wound up by the busy bandwagon. And so
Speaker 1: when we have a break, when we're looking to unwind,
Speaker 1: we turn to all the amazing sources of entertainment that
Speaker 1: exists in our world, things like Instagram and YouTube and
Speaker 1: Netflix and video games, and we call those the infinity pools.
Speaker 1: There's always more water in the pool. You can always
Speaker 1: dive in for a nice refreshing swim. But but they
Speaker 1: never stop. Um, you could spend every minute of every
Speaker 1: day pulling to refresh, streaming, diving back in. And they're
Speaker 1: sort of positioned as being a source of entertainment. Their
Speaker 1: positioned as a break oftentimes, But the mechanisms behind them,
Speaker 1: the ways that they work, are really the same as
Speaker 1: the tools that cause us so much stress and anxiety
Speaker 1: in our work lives, those busy bandwagon tools, And so
Speaker 1: as humans we kind of feel ourselves just torn between
Speaker 1: these two forces, with this feeling that we're not necessarily
Speaker 1: in control of the ways that we're spending our time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the busy bandwagon is so interesting because it's so interesting
Speaker 1: that it's become such a status symbol. And I realized
Speaker 1: I was falling into that how are you doing busy? Busy? Busy?
Speaker 1: You know, And and I would say it with this
Speaker 1: sort of combination of I guess, a little bit of
Speaker 1: pride and a little bit of like weariness, busy, busy,
Speaker 1: And it was really helpful for me to realize, like
Speaker 1: I was choosing that I was choosing to be busy,
Speaker 1: but that leads me to the next point that you
Speaker 1: talk about, which is so important, is because even though
Speaker 1: everything we do is a choice, you say that the
Speaker 1: busy bandwagon infinity pools are so powerful because they've become
Speaker 1: the default for us. So a default is kind of
Speaker 1: what's already set. When you open up your phone, it
Speaker 1: has certain default it's on it right when you plug
Speaker 1: in your TV, it as certain defaults. And so instead
Speaker 1: of these being things that we consciously choose to opt into,
Speaker 1: they're pretty much the default for everybody in today's world,
Speaker 1: and we have to actually make very conscious choice to
Speaker 1: opt out of the busy bandwagon in the infinity pools.
Speaker 1: That's right. You touched on some of the technological defaults.
Speaker 1: Um For example, when you get a brand new smartphone,
Speaker 1: the first time you take it out of the box,
Speaker 1: it's going to ask you to sign into an account
Speaker 1: of Google account and Apple accounts something like that. By default,
Speaker 1: it has an email app installed, and by default that
Speaker 1: email app is going to check for new messages all
Speaker 1: the time. By default, the phone is gonna let you
Speaker 1: know when there's a new message. It's gonna make a noise,
Speaker 1: or it's gonna buzz and it's gonna show one of
Speaker 1: those little red badges on the corner so that you
Speaker 1: know you have a new message. It's all the stuff
Speaker 1: that you mentioned that technology products that we use have
Speaker 1: defaults that if we don't consider them, they tend to
Speaker 1: suck away our time. They tend to eat up a
Speaker 1: lot of our time. But it's not just technology defaults
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with here. There's also sort of cultural defaults.
Speaker 1: For example, in the office, every meeting is either sixty
Speaker 1: minutes or thirty minutes long, even if really you only
Speaker 1: need a quip chat. By default, Uh, these meetings are
Speaker 1: just sort of scattered about our calendar. They're not clumped
Speaker 1: together at times of day um that might be be
Speaker 1: best for us or best for our team and our
Speaker 1: ability to do work that matters, and and the expectations
Speaker 1: that you're going to be constantly online and responsive. Those
Speaker 1: things are defaults too. And these weren't put into place
Speaker 1: by some genius who made a master plan for exactly
Speaker 1: what's the best way for us to spend our time
Speaker 1: and energy. They just kind of collected over the years,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of what Make Time is about
Speaker 1: is questioning those defaults and finding concrete ways that we
Speaker 1: can change our behavior or our technology so that we're
Speaker 1: putting ourselves first exactly. And I want to get into
Speaker 1: the specifics of Make Time, but I first wanted to, um,
Speaker 1: have you tell a story about you know. You start
Speaker 1: off by saying it was early two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: the beginning to one of the snowiest winners in Chicago history.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a great way to lead us into,
Speaker 1: particularly the first point of Make Time, which is to
Speaker 1: create a highlight. But um, I just thought you could
Speaker 1: walk us through that because I think it's a really
Speaker 1: good story that sets up that first point. Sure, I
Speaker 1: was living in Chicago and I had been working at
Speaker 1: a tech startup. It was a great opportunity for me.
Speaker 1: There was an amazing team, experienced team, very competent, talented people,
Speaker 1: and I was basically just a kid right out of college.
Speaker 1: It was sort of my first real job, and so
Speaker 1: I wanted to make the most of that opportunity. I
Speaker 1: wanted to really be able to thrive in that opportunity,
Speaker 1: this fast paced start up, this big opportunity. So I
Speaker 1: became obsessed with productivity and I pushed myself to make
Speaker 1: the most of every hour, every minute and try to
Speaker 1: fill my time. And after a couple of years at
Speaker 1: that tech startup, we were acquired by Google UM, which
Speaker 1: was a great thing. This was it was exciting, and
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like, you know, life is life
Speaker 1: is good. Now I've got this great job. This thing
Speaker 1: I've been working on has been sort of validated by
Speaker 1: this acquisition. I had a great girlfriend, she's not my wife.
Speaker 1: We were living in this brand new condo together in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and things were Things were great. But like you said, uh,
Speaker 1: one day in in two thousand and eight, which which
Speaker 1: I actually looked it up, it was one of the
Speaker 1: snowiest winters in the history of Chicago, which is saying
Speaker 1: a lot for Chicago. I woke up with kind of
Speaker 1: this feeling that time was just slipping away. It was
Speaker 1: almost as if I couldn't remember what had been happening
Speaker 1: for the last couple of months. If you had said,
Speaker 1: what do you do over the weekend or what you
Speaker 1: do on Thursday, I wouldn't be able to answer that question.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like a blur. I felt like
Speaker 1: time was slipping by and I didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: hold onto. So UM that was one of the early
Speaker 1: experiences that really made these decisions about how I spend
Speaker 1: my time, really drew my attention to those and made
Speaker 1: those something that I really wanted to focus on trying
Speaker 1: to get right. I think what was really interesting is
Speaker 1: you recognize this problem and you said, okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and solve this right. And you started by
Speaker 1: trying to get super productive. And you thought, if I
Speaker 1: pack more into each day, I'd have more to remember.
Speaker 1: And you get so focused on the small test, but
Speaker 1: the days slipped by even faster. Yeah, so that didn't help.
Speaker 1: Then you decided to overhaul your approach and you said,
Speaker 1: you know what, instead of managing my minutes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn my attention to the long term. I'm going
Speaker 1: to create you know, one year, three year, five, your
Speaker 1: ten year goals and um. But that didn't work because
Speaker 1: you were sort of living a someday life. You quote
Speaker 1: James Clear, who I'm actually interviewing this Friday. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: we both live in Columbus, and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough yet, but I will be when
Speaker 1: I reach my goals. So you had tried to be
Speaker 1: super productive, you know, focus on tasks. You tried to
Speaker 1: sort of look longer term, and still things felt like
Speaker 1: they were kind of blurring. And what you stumbled upon
Speaker 1: was this idea of trying to find more meaningful moments.
Speaker 1: Maybe tell us a little bit about that and how
Speaker 1: you guys sort of arrived at the first part of
Speaker 1: how to make time, which is to have a daily highlight. Sure,
Speaker 1: I had started with with trying to maximize my productivity because,
Speaker 1: like I said, that had been working well for me
Speaker 1: in the office. And then when that wasn't helping slow
Speaker 1: down the of time I I decided to try to
Speaker 1: set big goals. And these are I think are two
Speaker 1: very common kind of schools of of self help advice
Speaker 1: that you might read about. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff out there about productivity. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff about goal setting and how important that can be.
Speaker 1: And so I tried both of those things, but I
Speaker 1: didn't feel that it really helped with the problem that
Speaker 1: I was feeling. And and you said that I stumbled
Speaker 1: onto a solution, which is absolutely right, because it was
Speaker 1: not on purpose. I didn't have, you know, this amazing
Speaker 1: flash of insight. Instead, what happened is the winter ended
Speaker 1: and it was spring, and uh, the you know, the
Speaker 1: sun came out and the birds began to sing, and
Speaker 1: and just like we all do in the Midwest, when
Speaker 1: spring arrives, people come out of their houses and and
Speaker 1: they start to get more social and they make plans.
Speaker 1: And that was the case for me. For example, I
Speaker 1: had a group of friends and we would meet for
Speaker 1: lunch every Friday across town and and that would become
Speaker 1: something that I would I would look forward to and
Speaker 1: I would plan my day around it because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to, you know, be late. I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I finished all my work and I could leave
Speaker 1: on time. I wanted to enjoy that lunch. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to have to eat and run, so I'd make
Speaker 1: sure that I didn't have anything scheduled immediately after the lunch.
Speaker 1: And I found that I would look forward to that
Speaker 1: all week. And and the same thing happened with sometimes
Speaker 1: going for a run after work, running along like Michigan
Speaker 1: downtown Chicago. I noticed that when I had these types
Speaker 1: of medium sized activities, not these grand plans, but not
Speaker 1: these little things on a checklist, they gave my days
Speaker 1: and my weeks meaning and structure and gave me something
Speaker 1: to hold onto. So eventually I started doing this at
Speaker 1: the office too. If I had a presentation that I
Speaker 1: needed to get done, for example, instead of trying to
Speaker 1: slice it up and cram it in between all the
Speaker 1: meetings and work on it a little bit here and
Speaker 1: a little bit there, I started to think of it
Speaker 1: as this bigger chunk of work that needed to be
Speaker 1: done and really plan my day and plan my time
Speaker 1: around it. And eventually that's what I started to call
Speaker 1: the highlight and the idea. What the highlight is. If
Speaker 1: you look back on the day and you ask yourself,
Speaker 1: or if somebody asks you, what was the highlight of
Speaker 1: your day? I want every day to have a really
Speaker 1: good answer. It doesn't have to be something life changing,
Speaker 1: but I want every day to have at least one
Speaker 1: thing that made me feel like I really made good
Speaker 1: use of my time. And I found that when I
Speaker 1: do that that one thing, it makes everything better in
Speaker 1: my life. Yeah. I want to just read what you
Speaker 1: guys say, because I really like it. You said that
Speaker 1: we believe that focusing on these in between activities, in
Speaker 1: the space between goals and tasks, is the key to
Speaker 1: slowing down, bringing satisfaction to your daily life, and helping
Speaker 1: you make time plenty of self help gurus have offered
Speaker 1: suggestions for setting goals, and plenty of productivity experts have
Speaker 1: created systems for getting things done, but the space between
Speaker 1: has been neglected. We call the missing piece a high light.
Speaker 1: And I love that because, as listeners know, I talk
Speaker 1: about it probably way too often, but I'm such a
Speaker 1: fan of the Buddhist teaching of the Middle Road, and
Speaker 1: I love this because it's again, you're sort of splitting
Speaker 1: the difference between two extremes, and I think that's that's great,
Speaker 1: and the idea really has resonated with me. And you say,
Speaker 1: your highlight might be something you don't necessarily have to do,
Speaker 1: but you want to do. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what the highlight is and and how do
Speaker 1: we go about picking a highlight. So the highlight is
Speaker 1: the one thing that you want to prioritize and protect
Speaker 1: in your day. Some of the strategies that we use
Speaker 1: to choose our highlights are to focus on things that
Speaker 1: that are time sensitive, things that need to get done,
Speaker 1: and we call that the strategy of of urgency. So
Speaker 1: you might be looking through your to do list or
Speaker 1: your email, your calendar and noticing, oh, this this thing
Speaker 1: absolutely needs to get done today. Um, I've I've certainly
Speaker 1: been in the situation where I had something like that,
Speaker 1: but being in the office, running from meeting to meeting,
Speaker 1: trying to keep up with my email. I get to
Speaker 1: the end of the day and then realized that I
Speaker 1: didn't actually have time for the thing I needed to
Speaker 1: do that day. So it's sort of like, alright, the
Speaker 1: day is done. Finally, you know, I'm done with my work.
Speaker 1: Finally I've got time for my work, you know the
Speaker 1: real thing I needed to do. Another strategy is satisfaction,
Speaker 1: So that's looking for things that are not necessarily time sensitive,
Speaker 1: but they are important and there are things that you
Speaker 1: know if you do, you'll be glad you made the
Speaker 1: time for. An example, at work, might be a new
Speaker 1: project that you um want to get off the ground
Speaker 1: or a new way of doing something, and nobody's asking
Speaker 1: you for that thing. Nobody, you know, there's there's no
Speaker 1: deadline attached to it. But by making it your highlight,
Speaker 1: you can make sure that you give it a chance
Speaker 1: to have some space, to have some breathing room. The
Speaker 1: third strategy that we talk about in the book is
Speaker 1: is joy. So really just choosing a highlight that is
Speaker 1: just playing fun, just something that you want to do,
Speaker 1: because those activities often get pushed to the margins, they
Speaker 1: often get pushed to the sidelines. And even when we
Speaker 1: do get to them, you know, if we have something
Speaker 1: fun planned after work, too often I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're racing through the day and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: skidting into that that activity with you know, with no energy,
Speaker 1: no ability to focus on it. And although it was
Speaker 1: a you know, it was a fun thing that we
Speaker 1: wanted to do, we end up not really enjoying it
Speaker 1: all that much because it's not something we're focusing our energy.
Speaker 1: One you say that the highlight isn't the only thing
Speaker 1: you'll do each day, but it will be your priority.
Speaker 1: It ensures that you spend the time on the things
Speaker 1: that matter to you and don't lose the entire day
Speaker 1: reacting to other people's priorities. You also say that ideally
Speaker 1: a good rule of thumb is to say it takes
Speaker 1: between sixty and ninety minutes. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that. I guess let's talk about you know,
Speaker 1: the sixty and ninety minutes. But also we all do
Speaker 1: have a lot of things that need to happen each day,
Speaker 1: or that we think need to happen each day. So
Speaker 1: talk about a highlight versus the rest of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you do, and kind of what the distinction is, UM,
Speaker 1: and maybe how you plan and schedule. We've talked about
Speaker 1: what the distinction is in how we UM frame it
Speaker 1: up in our mind, but maybe what's the distinction and
Speaker 1: how we protect the highlight and make sure it gainst
Speaker 1: Maybe two explain. I can just kind of tell you
Speaker 1: about my day today, which I think, uh had a
Speaker 1: few different things going on and sort of encapsulates a
Speaker 1: lot of these ideas. UM. My highlight for today was
Speaker 1: actually to UM launch the web page for a workshop
Speaker 1: that I'm putting on in Minneapolis. It's a workshop for
Speaker 1: people who want to learn about the design sprint process,
Speaker 1: and that's the subject of the previous book that Jake
Speaker 1: Napp and I wrote together. This five day process for
Speaker 1: teams to take an idea through prototyping and testing it
Speaker 1: with customers in a week. UM. I'm gonna try not
Speaker 1: to be hurt that this interview wasn't but carry on
Speaker 1: fair enough. UM, But that was the thing that UM,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of felt fell into that um that
Speaker 1: satisfaction bucket. There was no there was no real urgency
Speaker 1: to do it. There was nobody who was expecting it.
Speaker 1: It was something that that I wanted to get done.
Speaker 1: I wanted to launch it, and I knew that I
Speaker 1: was going to have a chunk of time in the
Speaker 1: morning that I could get it done, so I scheduled
Speaker 1: that for the morning my highlight time. The reason that
Speaker 1: that this podcast was not my highlight was that I
Speaker 1: knew that it was going to happen no matter what,
Speaker 1: because I I had it scheduled, had been scheduled for
Speaker 1: a long time. And that's kind of the other component
Speaker 1: to to my day, and really too many days is
Speaker 1: is there's you know, often a small number of meetings
Speaker 1: or appointments or things that are on the calendar, and
Speaker 1: try to schedule those things for the afternoon because I
Speaker 1: know for me and everybody's different, but I know for
Speaker 1: me that morning is the time when I have the
Speaker 1: best creative energy to work on something like creating a
Speaker 1: website for an event and launching that, which knows a
Speaker 1: lot of writing and designing and that kind of work.
Speaker 1: The other component of the day is to really do
Speaker 1: all the little administrative stuff, and I try to leave
Speaker 1: that for the time of day when I'm when I
Speaker 1: know I'm going to have the lowest energy, which is
Speaker 1: usually the late afternoon. And so um, what I will
Speaker 1: do is is, you know, sort of I don't often
Speaker 1: block it on my calendar, but I will mentally know
Speaker 1: that and the end of the day, as as the
Speaker 1: afternoon is winding down, as my energy starts to wane,
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna go through my email in box. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna reply to a few things. I might have a
Speaker 1: list of odds and ends that I need to do.
Speaker 1: But I kind of planned my days around those three
Speaker 1: big types of activities, with the highlight being the thing
Speaker 1: that gets prime position, the thing that I'm scheduling at
Speaker 1: the time of day when i know I'm going to
Speaker 1: have my best energy. And so what you recommend is
Speaker 1: that we determine what our highlight is, we write it down,
Speaker 1: and then we actually put it on the calendar. We
Speaker 1: give it a time that we know it's going to happen. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: as as we all know, the day can be over
Speaker 1: before it starts, you know, and like you said, it's
Speaker 1: six pm, and we go, well, I didn't that there
Speaker 1: that didn't happen again. So that's one thing. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question about this because this is something
Speaker 1: I struggle with sometimes, which is that the highlight for
Speaker 1: me is sometimes i'll say, the most difficult task for me,
Speaker 1: Like you said, it's going to take more creative energy,
Speaker 1: it takes more focus, there's more um perhaps risk associated
Speaker 1: with it. Right, I need to be in the right
Speaker 1: spot to do it, and it it does take more energy,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit easier to procrastinate. So how
Speaker 1: do you guys recommend working with that. I think that
Speaker 1: when your highlight is something that is particularly challenging or
Speaker 1: it is, it's going to require that kind of deep concentration.
Speaker 1: Just getting in the habit of scheduling it for the
Speaker 1: time of day when you know you have your best
Speaker 1: energy is really going to help you give it the
Speaker 1: attention that it deserves. And I think that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of the tactics in the book around laser mode,
Speaker 1: around beating distraction. I'm sure we'll talk about that later
Speaker 1: where those come in because they sort of pushed to
Speaker 1: the sides um all those little things that you feel
Speaker 1: like you should be checking, or you want to be checking,
Speaker 1: or you want to just you know, quickly sort of
Speaker 1: flip over to a different tab and look at something. Um.
Speaker 1: When you know that those are held at bay, and
Speaker 1: you've scheduled your highlight for the time when you have
Speaker 1: the best energy, it becomes so much easier. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of this freeing sensation of being able to pour
Speaker 1: your energy into the task at hand. But some highlights
Speaker 1: still are really just too big, they're too daunting to
Speaker 1: handle in one session, and so um it can often
Speaker 1: be really helpful to to break those down, to look
Speaker 1: at them and break them into sort of sequential pieces.
Speaker 1: And this is something that we actually learned from one
Speaker 1: of the most famous productivity guides of all time, called
Speaker 1: getting Things Done. This idea of not, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: of a project as this monolithic beast, but thinking of
Speaker 1: it as a series of activities that you need to do,
Speaker 1: some of which are quite small and some of which
Speaker 1: are a little bit bigger. And so to use my
Speaker 1: example of working on a presentation as making that your highlight,
Speaker 1: the act of creating that presentation contains a lot of
Speaker 1: little pieces, some bigger, some smaller. And if you say
Speaker 1: that working on the presentation is going to be your
Speaker 1: highlight doesn't mean that you'll finish the whole thing or
Speaker 1: or chain yourself to your desk until it's done, but
Speaker 1: that you will you will kind of work through the
Speaker 1: steps involved, um until you run out of time or
Speaker 1: run out of energy, or you know, until the sort
Speaker 1: that piece of your day is up. So that idea
Speaker 1: of breaking the highlight into smaller pieces really could help
Speaker 1: make it less intimidating. Yeah, that's such an important idea
Speaker 1: to to deconstruct things down into something that actually resembles
Speaker 1: a task. I'll notice things I procrastinate are things that,
Speaker 1: like you said, they're more like a project, Like I
Speaker 1: had one on there for like get a video done,
Speaker 1: and that's like ten steps, you know, there's like ten
Speaker 1: steps involved in that. And so when I have it
Speaker 1: written down is get video done right, it just sits there.
Speaker 1: But when I deconstructed, and maybe the highlight is write
Speaker 1: the video script, I'm like, okay, all right, that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's I can start with. Or I've been creating these
Speaker 1: series of many episodes for supporters of the show, UM
Speaker 1: where we do like a poem and a song and
Speaker 1: a teaching and I've realized, like deconstructing that down into
Speaker 1: like one of those things like all right, find the
Speaker 1: teaching right that, you know, right it up, do that,
Speaker 1: you know, deconstu Acting into smaller tasks makes it much
Speaker 1: easier to action. And there's kind of a flip side
Speaker 1: to that too, which is when there's a lot of
Speaker 1: little tasks that are unrelated, you know, something like catching
Speaker 1: up on email, those can kind of feel like they're
Speaker 1: they're always sort of nagging at us, trying to steal
Speaker 1: our attention. And and one of the tactics that we
Speaker 1: read about in the book is called batch the little stuff,
Speaker 1: and the idea is to actually let those things pile up,
Speaker 1: let those little things pile up, and then bundle them
Speaker 1: together into a batch and one day make that your highlight.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems kind of weird to say, like
Speaker 1: catching up on email is going to be my highlight.
Speaker 1: Nobody really looks forward to that, but it is surprisingly
Speaker 1: satisfying to do that. Instead of trying to just you know,
Speaker 1: play whackable with all the messages, it is quite satisfying
Speaker 1: to let it stack up and then just kind of
Speaker 1: crank through it one day. So that's sort of the
Speaker 1: inverse of what you're saying is is, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to deal with lots of little things. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: let's move on to the second part of Make Time.
Speaker 1: Is this idea of laser. So step one, pick a highlight.
Speaker 1: Step two is laser, which is basically get into a
Speaker 1: mode where you are focused like a laser beam on
Speaker 1: that target. So let's talk about maybe just a couple
Speaker 1: of the tactics. You've got lots of different tactics for
Speaker 1: each of these things the way the book is structured,
Speaker 1: so highlight, there's a lot of tactics. For laser, you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of tactics, maybe just pick one or
Speaker 1: two that you'd like to talk about, um for what
Speaker 1: we can do to get into laser mode, so to speak.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of tactics here. Because Jake and I
Speaker 1: both worked in the tech industry, we we actually designed
Speaker 1: some of the Infinity Pool apps that I talked about,
Speaker 1: some of the things that are so distracting. I worked
Speaker 1: at YouTube for a couple of years. Jake worked on
Speaker 1: Gmail when he was at Google, and so we have
Speaker 1: this really unique perspective of knowing how these things were
Speaker 1: made and what makes them so compelling, but also having
Speaker 1: operated in the tech company environment, which in many ways
Speaker 1: is the most intense, the most fast paced, with the
Speaker 1: highest expectation of being online and being responsive at all times.
Speaker 1: So a lot of our tactics come from trying to
Speaker 1: take back control of our time and our energy in
Speaker 1: that environment. Um And and the one that is is
Speaker 1: the scariest, probably but but certainly the most powerful for
Speaker 1: both of us is the distraction free phone. And this
Speaker 1: is this is not about turning off notifications or making
Speaker 1: a little tweaks. This is about removing the sources of distractions,
Speaker 1: So actually deleting Infinity pool apps from your phone. So
Speaker 1: my phone, UM, I don't have Twitter installed, I don't
Speaker 1: have Facebook, Instagram, I don't have any way of reading
Speaker 1: the news. I don't even have an email app on
Speaker 1: my phone. Now this sounds a little bit scary, but
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind is that I can
Speaker 1: always reinstall these things very easily, or in the case
Speaker 1: of email, I can re enable it very easily. And
Speaker 1: with something like Twitter, I do spend time on Twitter
Speaker 1: every day, but I do it on my computer and
Speaker 1: it's something that I have sort of a scheduled block
Speaker 1: four because I enjoy using Twitter and I like to
Speaker 1: hear from people who have read my books, and I
Speaker 1: like to answer questions and that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but taking those things away from that shiny device that
Speaker 1: is in your pocket or in your bag, or in
Speaker 1: your hand or right in front of you on the
Speaker 1: table is amazingly effective. It creates a barrier to getting distracted.
Speaker 1: That means we don't have to use willpower, we don't
Speaker 1: have to use self control, and doing that we can
Speaker 1: reclaim a ton of time. I read the Distraction Free
Speaker 1: iPhone with a mix of trepidation and curiosity. Um, you
Speaker 1: mentioned like sort of the low hanging fruit, Like I
Speaker 1: turn off all notifications like the thing never well except
Speaker 1: for when you are getting ready to talk, never really
Speaker 1: beeps at me unless it's like an incoming phone call.
Speaker 1: And um, the other thing that maybe you're a you're
Speaker 1: a smart tech guy. Maybe you've got an answer to this, right.
Speaker 1: So I love do not disturb on my iPhone. It's
Speaker 1: like my favorite feature, flip do not disturb on. My
Speaker 1: problem is that I never turn it off, which is
Speaker 1: generally okay, except I don't get calendar reminders when I
Speaker 1: do not disturb is on, which reeks havoc on my
Speaker 1: on my life because I end up showing up late
Speaker 1: to things because I turn it on, get to turn
Speaker 1: it off. And so if you don't need to answer that,
Speaker 1: but if you know of any way to make calendar
Speaker 1: notifications work while do not disturb ason, I actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to fix that particular problem. And
Speaker 1: I actually use an Android phone, so especially um about
Speaker 1: iPhone stuff. But I will say that that's that type
Speaker 1: of problem is one of the reasons why I have
Speaker 1: stuck with the distraction free phone for so long. I
Speaker 1: think that when I remove the source of the distraction, um,
Speaker 1: then I don't have to worry about all these you know,
Speaker 1: settings and configurations and working about is this thing going
Speaker 1: to get through or not that thing? Um. I have
Speaker 1: a sort of a mantra that I tell myself, which
Speaker 1: is that my friends are not a distraction, And so
Speaker 1: that means if I get a phone call or I
Speaker 1: get a text, you know, they're not always for my friends,
Speaker 1: of course, but just generally speaking, if somebody is reaching
Speaker 1: out through one of those channels, I don't mind being distracted.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think of my of my calendar
Speaker 1: in the same way if if I if something on
Speaker 1: my calendar, and it's something that I'm going to actually do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna actually spend time on. I don't mind that
Speaker 1: it's showing me a notification to remind me to do it.
Speaker 1: Um it's the it's the infinity pool stuff. It's the
Speaker 1: stuff that that nags at us and just sort of
Speaker 1: quietly reminds us that it's there, even if it's not
Speaker 1: making a noise or or making a sound or flashing
Speaker 1: that that I find really really tough to deal with.
Speaker 1: Ye And so the essence of this tactic, you know,
Speaker 1: you can take it is as far as you want
Speaker 1: to take it to lead all that stuff off your iPhone.
Speaker 1: Different things, but the basic idea is that if we
Speaker 1: rely on our willpower to not check those things, it's
Speaker 1: gonna wear out. Right. We may resist it for the
Speaker 1: first day, we may resist it, but eventually the old
Speaker 1: habits assert themselves were back on it, and so you know,
Speaker 1: getting rid of it, rid of it makes it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to do. You know. Basically, the idea of
Speaker 1: if you don't want to do something, put as many
Speaker 1: obstacles between you and doing it as you can, um right,
Speaker 1: And so that's the distraction free iPhone where you delete
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So I took part of the advice
Speaker 1: there and I got rid of some of it the
Speaker 1: email app I have not quite been able to bear
Speaker 1: doing yet. What I did do is I moved, I
Speaker 1: took the advice. I got it all off of the
Speaker 1: front screen. So the front screen is just a clear
Speaker 1: picture of my dog, and I have to go looking
Speaker 1: for I have to go looking for mail or Facebook
Speaker 1: or any of that stuff. I have to I have
Speaker 1: to make a concerted effort and just that moment of
Speaker 1: like wait a minute, like do I really want to
Speaker 1: do this right? You know that that helps, but I
Speaker 1: suspect I'm going to end up deleting uh email off
Speaker 1: the phone. But like you said, one of the things
Speaker 1: for some people who have like customer support type stuff
Speaker 1: or sales stuff, to do quick response to some of
Speaker 1: that stuff is is important, and so that's part of
Speaker 1: my challenge. Yeah, definitely. I think that the underlying idea
Speaker 1: is to create barriers to distraction, because if you think about,
Speaker 1: or if you know anything about how these apps are made,
Speaker 1: how they're designed, you realize that people like me, designers
Speaker 1: in the tech industry, we have spent years and years
Speaker 1: making this stuff as friction free as possible, as easy
Speaker 1: to get into, as efficient as possible, and so that
Speaker 1: that also points to the solution, which is to add
Speaker 1: some of that friction back in. And I think that
Speaker 1: we really hope that people will experiment with this stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they'll try one of these tactics that
Speaker 1: seems a little scary and try it for a day
Speaker 1: or two or a week and see how it goes.
Speaker 1: But that ultimately people will will likely sort of step
Speaker 1: back from that most extreme experiment and find a balance
Speaker 1: that really works for them if they do need to
Speaker 1: be responsive to email because their job truly demands it,
Speaker 1: or because um there's an app like um a stock
Speaker 1: market app which technically has sort of this this infinitely
Speaker 1: updating content but maybe doesn't make you feel twitchy, but
Speaker 1: you know, you like being able to take a look
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. Uh. But he kind
Speaker 1: of finds their own sweet spot for this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the book is really great at laying out a
Speaker 1: lot of those different options. I found it. I found
Speaker 1: it really useful in that regards. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: great tactics there. Let's move on to the third part
Speaker 1: of the make time formula, which is um managing your energy.
Speaker 1: So we've got a highlight, we pick our highlight, we've
Speaker 1: got laser mode, we get into laser mode. But another
Speaker 1: important part of making time and using our time well
Speaker 1: as managing or energy. Talk to us a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. This is a lesson that Jake and I
Speaker 1: really learned when we were running design sprints. So I
Speaker 1: mentioned this earlier, this process where we take a team
Speaker 1: through a very particular set of exercises to help them
Speaker 1: go from a problem or opportunity to having a real
Speaker 1: concrete solution that they can test with customers before they
Speaker 1: spend months of time kind of executing on it. And
Speaker 1: when we were running these sprints, we basically got to
Speaker 1: control the environment and the schedule for a team of
Speaker 1: people for a week. We had them in a room.
Speaker 1: We could say no devices, we could say, you know,
Speaker 1: here's the schedule, here's when you come in and out
Speaker 1: of the room. And one of the things that we
Speaker 1: noticed when we were running these sprints is that people
Speaker 1: would really run out of energy at the end of
Speaker 1: the week. The work was demanding in the sense that
Speaker 1: it was intense, not that it was pulling people in
Speaker 1: a million directions, but that we were expecting them to
Speaker 1: really be focused and intent for the full week, and
Speaker 1: at the end of the week they would just kind
Speaker 1: of be drained. And so we started to experiment, and
Speaker 1: we found that things like having everybody get up and
Speaker 1: leave the room and go sit around a table and
Speaker 1: eat lunch, you know, getting face to face time talking,
Speaker 1: stepping away from the work gave people a huge energy boost.
Speaker 1: We found that shortening the day, we actually shortened the
Speaker 1: sprint day to five pm. We found that that allowed
Speaker 1: us to get the same amount of stuff done, but
Speaker 1: to actually have it be higher quality work and have
Speaker 1: everybody feel better at the end of the week. And
Speaker 1: so seeing this play out with team after team, in
Speaker 1: person after person, really opened our eyes to the importance
Speaker 1: of a lot of this basic stuff, you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff that everybody knows about, diet, exercise, sleep, Just how
Speaker 1: important it is because it enables us to not only
Speaker 1: make good decisions about how we're spending our time, but
Speaker 1: to really enjoy what we're doing and to really pour
Speaker 1: energy into those things that we've decided to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a drag that the answer is always diet, exercise, sleep. Well,
Speaker 1: Like you know, we all wanted easier answer than that, right,
Speaker 1: But man, it's just there isn't one that's you know.
Speaker 1: And and I think that's true for whether you want
Speaker 1: to talk about managing your energy, being more effective at work,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about dealing with mental health
Speaker 1: conditions like depress and or anxiety. I mean, it's over
Speaker 1: and over. It's the same sort of very core you know.
Speaker 1: I think of them almost as like the fundamentals, like
Speaker 1: if if those fundamentals aren't in place, you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: like crap. You may there might be twenty different varieties
Speaker 1: of crap you feel like. But but you know, but
Speaker 1: I just I always it just sounds like such a
Speaker 1: mom answer to do, like you gotta exercise, you gotta eat,
Speaker 1: you know, but it just there just doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be any getting around it. It's such a key component
Speaker 1: for I think happily and well and and productively. And again,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're talking about productive in the sense
Speaker 1: of being able to get ten more things done for
Speaker 1: your boss. I mean in the sense of being able
Speaker 1: to do the things that matter to you. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and I think we all come to this realization on
Speaker 1: our own at at some point, and you know, some
Speaker 1: people perhaps never truly realize the importance of these fundamental
Speaker 1: human things. UM. But I think the closest we can
Speaker 1: come to making it easy is to try to make
Speaker 1: the advice really concrete and to systematize it. So some
Speaker 1: of this stuff in the book, in the energized section
Speaker 1: is um for example, lowering the bar for what real exercises.
Speaker 1: You know, instead of the idea that you have to
Speaker 1: go to a gym for an hour, we suggest exercises
Speaker 1: that you can do at home that only take fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty minutes um. Instead of you know, uh, grinding
Speaker 1: it out on a treadmill, we suggest trying to build
Speaker 1: walking into your day, which not only is exercise, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna free up a little bit of mental space
Speaker 1: where you can you can listen to a podcast or
Speaker 1: make a phone call, or you can just think. You
Speaker 1: can just sort of, um, you know, allow that space
Speaker 1: to to bring in some some reflective energy or some
Speaker 1: creative energy. So the book is is full of of
Speaker 1: those kinds of ideas, concrete um and hopefully automatic type
Speaker 1: things that people can do that that go from the
Speaker 1: momlike advice of you really should eat healthier to the
Speaker 1: you know exactly how can I eat healthier? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book has lots of lots of great tactics and
Speaker 1: and that is so much of it is just simplifying
Speaker 1: these things, breaking down the barriers to getting them done.
Speaker 1: You know. I love that idea of you know, I
Speaker 1: think one of the most important, you know things for exercise,
Speaker 1: we had a guest. It's been a long time now,
Speaker 1: but she had a rule which was everything counts, right, Like,
Speaker 1: every every bit of movement that you do counts. So,
Speaker 1: you know, five minutes here walking, you know, taking the stairs,
Speaker 1: um doing a seven minute exercise, some push ups, like
Speaker 1: you can string lots of little things together if if
Speaker 1: the time doesn't seem to exist, to go to the
Speaker 1: gym for an hour. And I think that's such a
Speaker 1: powerful idea. And you guys really talk about that. You
Speaker 1: pointed to uh seven minute exercise routine. That is really helpful. Also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the the other thing that we tried to
Speaker 1: do in this part of the book is reframe it
Speaker 1: away from this is what you should do to be
Speaker 1: healthy and toward this is how you can build energy
Speaker 1: to enjoy your days, to do the things that you
Speaker 1: want to be doing so away from that long term
Speaker 1: what you should be doing to a short term here's
Speaker 1: what you can be doing for the immediate payoff. And
Speaker 1: for me anyway, that is so much more motivating because
Speaker 1: I can directly see the connection between eating healthier and
Speaker 1: and feeling better the rest of the day, for example,
Speaker 1: or walking to work and enjoying that that energy boost
Speaker 1: instead of slumping in the back of an uber you know,
Speaker 1: looking at my phone while I'm driven to the office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's such a key point. I mean, exercise
Speaker 1: became sort of a locked in thing for me when
Speaker 1: I really realized, like it wasn't about then I wouldn't
Speaker 1: get a heart attack in twenty years. I mean, that's great.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about how I looked. It was really about
Speaker 1: like I felt better or every time I exercise. There
Speaker 1: has never been a time that I didn't exercise that
Speaker 1: I didn't immediately after a goo boy, that felt good.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I did that. You know, you would
Speaker 1: think something that has a hundred success rate over forty
Speaker 1: years would be easy to do, Like, you know, I've
Speaker 1: never done it, and have it not been I've never
Speaker 1: been unhappy I did it, you know, and so you're
Speaker 1: right that that connecting to a more immediate goal can
Speaker 1: be is so important. That reminds me of something that
Speaker 1: I think James clear As has written about and probably
Speaker 1: others as well, the the value of focusing on the process,
Speaker 1: not the outcome. And so the in your example, the
Speaker 1: outcome would be, well, you're not going to get a
Speaker 1: heart attack in twenty years, you're gonna you're gonna live longer, whatever, um.
Speaker 1: But the process is that day and day out routine
Speaker 1: of doing some exercise, feeling better, doing some exercise, feeling better.
Speaker 1: And when you can focus on those things, you can, uh,
Speaker 1: you can really make those behaviors into habits, and you
Speaker 1: can get the short term boost. But the cool thing
Speaker 1: is you also get the long term boost. You also
Speaker 1: get that that eventual outcome, but it's just so much
Speaker 1: more motivating. Yeah, I agree. I think it's so useful
Speaker 1: to focus on, like even with eating, Like, notice how
Speaker 1: much better I feel when I eat a healthy meal
Speaker 1: versus a crappy meal. Like I'm talking immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: It's not like I have to wait, you know, two
Speaker 1: months for that. It's like I can feel it like now.
Speaker 1: And I think you guys tie this to energy, and
Speaker 1: I think that's such a useful short term marker, is
Speaker 1: how is my energy when I do this versus that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that many people are used to thinking
Speaker 1: about health related stuff in that way, but I think
Speaker 1: people are are less familiar with looking for those connections
Speaker 1: between you know, the way they use technology and how
Speaker 1: that affects the way they feel. And so one of
Speaker 1: our goals with the because that people will just start
Speaker 1: to be aware of that and and and we we
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's gonna have an overnight transformation or or
Speaker 1: even you know, even a transformation in a in a
Speaker 1: week or a month, but we do hope that people
Speaker 1: will be aware of how their choices about how they're
Speaker 1: spending time or how they're interacting with information or technology
Speaker 1: affect just how they feel in general. You know, that
Speaker 1: feeling that that I remember from being a kid before
Speaker 1: we had the Internet, of you know, just being totally undistracted, uninterrupted,
Speaker 1: pouring my energy into some hobby or activity. They cared
Speaker 1: about becoming reacquainted with that feeling for example. Um, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just so amazing. And I think that it
Speaker 1: starts with awareness and and and once we're aware of it,
Speaker 1: then we can start to make some decisions that intentionally
Speaker 1: create those feelings day in and day out. One of
Speaker 1: the things I loved about the book is at it
Speaker 1: gives you lots of little things to try and listeners know,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm such a big fan of baby steps,
Speaker 1: you know, like just start something small and and experiment,
Speaker 1: and the book really lays all that out. It's got
Speaker 1: a framework for doing that. Um, it's got lots of
Speaker 1: little tactics, and it's it's great in that way. Um,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time here. Um,
Speaker 1: but the book is wonderful. I'll have links in the
Speaker 1: show notes to the book, to your guys sites, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. You and I are going to have an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation here in the post show about optimizing caffeine.
Speaker 1: So for you caffeine lovers out here, these guys have
Speaker 1: even got a bunch of tactics for making that even better.
Speaker 1: So you and I are going to talk about that
Speaker 1: in the post show. Listeners, if you're interested, when you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash support, you can get access to those.
Speaker 1: You can also get access to something new. I'm doing
Speaker 1: the teaching poem song many episode when you feed dot
Speaker 1: net Slash support. John, thanks so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, me too, Thanks a lot, Eric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed reading the book, so thanks so much. Cool.
Speaker 1: Thank you bye. If what you just heard was helpful
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