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