Speaker 1: Hello there, it's Amantha.
Speaker 2: I'm currently on a break, so I've handpicked a bunch
Speaker 2: of my favorite episodes from the last year to share
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, on with today's best of episode?
Speaker 2: Can everybody see me? Just wait, I'm going to share
Speaker 2: my screen. Wait, hang on a second. Okay, how about
Speaker 2: Now we've all sat in these dry zoom presentations that
Speaker 2: are slow, boring and engaging and often just plain painful.
Speaker 1: We think to ourselves, how much longer is this going
Speaker 1: to go?
Speaker 2: For and don't forget to smile and look like you're listening.
Speaker 2: But does it actually have to be this way? Co
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Phil Libbin thinks definitely not.
Speaker 1: He's designed a tool that will.
Speaker 2: Have your colleagues entertained and even laughing during presentations by
Speaker 2: providing you with lots of fun tools and gadgets to
Speaker 2: utilize so to stop your workmates from tuning out. And
Speaker 2: this isn't the first time Phil has looked to make
Speaker 2: life better and easier with technology, because before m Phil
Speaker 2: and his team created the life changing note taking app
Speaker 2: Ever note which I have been using every single day,
Speaker 2: many times a day, for the better part of a decade.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to building a business, which Phil
Speaker 2: has plenty of experience doing. Why are the numbers three
Speaker 2: and ten critical? And why is it better to be
Speaker 2: positive during a meeting instead.
Speaker 1: Of trying to appear to be smart?
Speaker 2: And how can working from a museum help you solve
Speaker 2: complex problems? And why is it important to differentiate between
Speaker 2: difficult versus unpleasant decisions. My name is doctor Amantha Imbat.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 2: consultancy in Ventium, and this is how I work a
Speaker 2: show about how to help you do your best work.
Speaker 2: So I've been using Phil's latest technology product mm HMM
Speaker 2: spelled mmmmm for about six months. Solves one of my
Speaker 2: biggest frustrations with traditional meeting software, which is that the
Speaker 2: slides when you're making a presentation are really big, and
Speaker 2: the human presenting becomes the size of a postage stamp.
Speaker 2: So with m HMM, you can superimpose your slides in
Speaker 2: the background and put yourself in the foreground at any
Speaker 2: size that you want to be, which is great for
Speaker 2: actually making a connection with the people that you're speaking to.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to know from Phil, who has obviously
Speaker 2: thought a lot about this, what is the ideal way
Speaker 2: to use slides in a meeting or a presentation.
Speaker 3: Well, I think companies who make presentation software, you know,
Speaker 3: who are in the business of making slides, they very
Speaker 3: naturally act as if the slide is the most important thing,
Speaker 3: and so like this whole like PowerPoint culture of slides.
Speaker 4: Kind of comes from that.
Speaker 3: And it isn't like you're you're much more important than
Speaker 3: the slides that the presenter, the person doing that the
Speaker 3: talking is much more important. So the slides are really
Speaker 3: there as background material, which is why we literally put
Speaker 3: them in the background instead of you know, right next
Speaker 3: to you or in front of you in most setups,
Speaker 3: because the focus really should be on you and your face,
Speaker 3: on on how you're communicating, and having the slides be
Speaker 3: you know, a visual reinforcement of it. We're trying to
Speaker 3: change the cognitive style of presentations because they think that
Speaker 3: the cognitive style of PowerPoint is is quite weak. It's
Speaker 3: the style of you know, of pitching of bullet points
Speaker 3: of things like that. They're these sort of lazy crutches
Speaker 3: that don't lead to very effect presentations, and I think
Speaker 3: on video they're just terrible. Like they think PowerPoint is
Speaker 3: barely you know, effective in real life on video, it's
Speaker 3: it's pretty much unbearable. Luckily, there's plenty of examples of
Speaker 3: really effective video communications and slides. You just have to
Speaker 3: go to TV. You have to go to comedy shows,
Speaker 3: I don't know it live or the Daily Show, that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. So we just tried to recapture that
Speaker 3: kind of spirit where it's a person talking or multiple
Speaker 3: people talking, and the slides are meant to kind of
Speaker 3: be the punchline, the visual reinforcement from time to time.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's in a way, it's kind of it's
Speaker 2: such an obvious thing to do to put the person
Speaker 2: in front of the slides, And certainly one of my
Speaker 2: pet hates in terms of how Zoom works is that
Speaker 2: the presenter is the size of a postage stamp and
Speaker 2: the slides are enormous. And for me that was a
Speaker 2: game changer when I started using HMM and suddenly the
Speaker 2: focus is on the human. So I'm curious for you,
Speaker 2: when you're creating a slide deck, when you're trying to
Speaker 2: put forward an idea or a presentation, what are some
Speaker 2: of the rules that you're thinking about when you're designing slides.
Speaker 3: In the beginning, I think I just started. I was
Speaker 3: just using my keynote slides out of power slide. I
Speaker 3: was importing him in there you can drag him into
Speaker 3: MHM and doing that, and some people still do that.
Speaker 3: I pretty much stopped doing that almost immediately because I
Speaker 3: realized that actually I wanted the constraint of altering the
Speaker 3: slides in MM because they're.
Speaker 4: Much they're much briefer, they're much shorter.
Speaker 3: So usually it's just a couple of words or a
Speaker 3: gift or a picture or maybe one chart. There's no
Speaker 3: point in having, you know, multiple sentences, multiple points, multiple
Speaker 3: equations on a single slide. But when you have something
Speaker 3: like PowerPoint, it really it really breeds this style of
Speaker 3: trying to just load it up with stuff, which makes
Speaker 3: I think the presentations really, you know, really untenable, really unwatchable.
Speaker 3: And it's almost as if like your slides are meant
Speaker 3: to be viewed, like your deck is meant to be
Speaker 3: something to be viewed without you, but that never works,
Speaker 3: Like you should never send your slides ahead or behind
Speaker 3: or something like. Your slides are not a document, it's
Speaker 3: not a novel. It's not meant to it's not meant
Speaker 3: to exist without you presenting it. You should make a
Speaker 3: video with you presenting the slides together. But if you
Speaker 3: look at it that way, then like, well, how complex
Speaker 3: and intricate to the slides have to be? Well, not
Speaker 3: very at all. So I just try to keep it
Speaker 3: as simple as possible. So you know, yes about rules
Speaker 3: like trying to keep things simple. So the first the
Speaker 3: first rule of simplicity is simple as hard. And the
Speaker 3: second rule of simplicity is there's obviously only one rule
Speaker 3: of simplicity. You clearly haven't understood the first rule.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know, like, what are the features that
Speaker 2: you're using in M and maybe if we take a
Speaker 2: step back from that, I mean, I guess I've kind
Speaker 2: of described how I use but how do you describe
Speaker 2: and what it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a video communication tool. It's really meant
Speaker 3: to give you, you know, video superpowers. I think most
Speaker 3: people start by using it by when they're presenting on
Speaker 3: Zoom or Google Hangout or Google Meet or Microsoft Teams
Speaker 3: or WebEx or something like that.
Speaker 4: That's the most common use case right now.
Speaker 3: People just using it to present to make the presentation
Speaker 3: a lot more more interesting, more more, more expressive, more dynamic.
Speaker 3: What I and I still do that all the time,
Speaker 3: but what we're doing now and our company is actually
Speaker 3: shifting almost all of our communication to asynchronous. So we've
Speaker 3: gone from talking to each other live when we're doing
Speaker 3: status updates to just sending recordings around. So we have
Speaker 3: you know, TV where people are just sending recordings of
Speaker 3: them doing presentations and updating each other. And we save
Speaker 3: the synchronous communication for for what you and I are
Speaker 3: doing right now, for actually having a conversation where we
Speaker 3: you know, we take turns talking, not for one person
Speaker 3: lecturing and the other person listening. So more and more
Speaker 3: it's about it's about shifting from synchronous asynchronous communication and
Speaker 3: kind of smoothly going back and forth between those two.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: I want to know what features your planning on building
Speaker 2: in m and and what you're most excited about.
Speaker 4: Well, we are.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm easily excitable. I'm excited about lots lots
Speaker 3: of stuff. We've got a really ambitious roadmap. We announced
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff this summer. We had this
Speaker 3: content series called Summer, which is on our website. If
Speaker 3: you go to that app and click on the events section,
Speaker 3: you can see a bunch of our demos and keynotes
Speaker 3: and all of that stuff that we announced and demo
Speaker 3: and preview that's all coming out. There's a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff around what I kind of think of as the
Speaker 3: djification of the world, where like you can kind of
Speaker 3: be a DJ and smoothly mixed between synchronous and asynchronous
Speaker 3: parts of your of your video, so you can started
Speaker 3: meeting live and then switch to something pre recorded and
Speaker 3: then switch back to live and do that, do that
Speaker 3: kind of smoothly and effortlessly. We're launching versions on an iOS,
Speaker 3: on Windows, We're launching a new version for the Mac.
Speaker 3: We've got, you know, lots of lots of product updates
Speaker 3: coming out. But yeah, just watch watch the watch the
Speaker 3: keynotes from from the summer to get a sense of
Speaker 3: all the stuff that's coming, you know, between now and
Speaker 3: a month or two from now. Now.
Speaker 2: I imagine, because of the timing of when you started
Speaker 2: m HM and you've been building lots of features along
Speaker 2: the way that you would have had to rely heavily
Speaker 2: on virtual collaborations. So I'm wondering what's been your approach
Speaker 2: to doing that.
Speaker 3: Well, Well, I don't know if we've done it well,
Speaker 3: but we've done it. You know, it's actually been great.
Speaker 3: I think when we started in May. We launched May
Speaker 3: twenty seventh of twenty twenty, so we started a couple
Speaker 3: of months after we all went into lockdown, and it
Speaker 3: really started as a.
Speaker 4: Joke, like we were just you know, we were so bored.
Speaker 3: All the all of the video calls are so tedious,
Speaker 3: and we were just goofing around. We're just trying to
Speaker 3: find something to make us laugh while working on other projects.
Speaker 3: But it kind of snowballed from there and so mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It was completely created in a distributed way. You know,
Speaker 3: we're up to close to one hundred people now working
Speaker 3: on and the vast majority of them I've never met
Speaker 3: each other in person. You know, it all hired them
Speaker 3: during the pandemic. Fully globally. They're spread out all over
Speaker 3: the world and it's great. I think the main thing
Speaker 3: is we don't think of ourselves as remote. No one
Speaker 3: is remote, because remote implies a certain disadvantage, like you're remote,
Speaker 3: but other people are somewhere, you know, together.
Speaker 4: We're not remote. We're distributed.
Speaker 3: We're distributed by design, kind of like you know, the
Speaker 3: Internet is a distributed system. It's a distributed network, not
Speaker 3: because the people who created the Internet didn't know how
Speaker 3: to make a centralized network, but because, like, being distributed
Speaker 3: is kind of its whole point, that that's the superpower
Speaker 3: of the Internet, and it makes certain things a little
Speaker 3: bit harder. You know, a few things would be easier
Speaker 3: if the Internet had one big central server, but obviously,
Speaker 3: like no one thinks that that's a viable thing because
Speaker 3: it has to be distributed by design. On so we
Speaker 3: are we have we have designed our company to be distributed,
Speaker 3: not because we had to, not because like we don't
Speaker 3: know how to be in an office, but because of
Speaker 3: the massive advantages it gives us.
Speaker 4: And when you think.
Speaker 3: About it like that, we're rather than focusing on the
Speaker 3: on the few things that are harder, when you're a
Speaker 3: distributed team, you really focus on the many things that
Speaker 3: are better and that are easier. It makes everything, makes
Speaker 3: everything more fun, it makes everything more productive.
Speaker 2: And so, aside from the obvious advantage that you can
Speaker 2: find talent anywhere on the planet, what have been some
Speaker 2: of the other really big advantages around being distributed.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the talent piece is like, let's not
Speaker 3: dismiss that too quickly. I mean, that's that's just that's
Speaker 3: worth it, right, Like you know you've talked to CEOs before,
Speaker 3: all right, And I'm sure whenever you talk to a CEO,
Speaker 3: literally one hundred percent of the time, if you ask, hey,
Speaker 3: what's the hardest thing about this company? I guarantee you've
Speaker 3: only ever gotten one answer, because you know, when we
Speaker 3: go to CEO school, they teach us if anyone ever
Speaker 3: asks like, what's the hardest thing about your companies, only
Speaker 3: one answer we're legally have to give. We have to say, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's it's the people, it's the talent, it's hiring and
Speaker 3: getting the best people. Like that's literally the only thing
Speaker 3: that any CEO's ever said in response to that question.
Speaker 3: And it's true for the most part. And so here
Speaker 3: we are we as you know CEOs you say in
Speaker 3: the past, you know, fifty years winding about how the
Speaker 3: hardest thing is people, and the universe has just given
Speaker 3: us as great latest gift, the superpower where every single
Speaker 3: job in my companies is now global. Is now I
Speaker 3: can hire people from everywhere in the world, and they
Speaker 3: they can stay where they are. They could do the
Speaker 3: job the top of my talent a funnel has just
Speaker 3: expanded by thousands of times, and I'm going to give
Speaker 3: that up, Like, of course not, I'm never going to
Speaker 3: give that up. So yeah, the fact that it's a fully,
Speaker 3: fully globally distributed workforce is amazing. But that's just the
Speaker 3: type of the iceberg. Another big, you know, benefit is,
Speaker 3: you know, no one wastes any time commuting. Like one
Speaker 3: hundred percent of the people who work at our companies
Speaker 3: don't spend any time commuting. Imagine if, like somehow magically
Speaker 3: that had always been the case in our company, like somehow,
Speaker 3: you know, like alternate Earth, you know, Harry Potter style,
Speaker 3: like people who just teleport to work to the office.
Speaker 4: No one ever commuted, And.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, like I come into the office
Speaker 3: the next day and I say, hey, everyone, like, everyone
Speaker 3: gather around.
Speaker 4: I've got a CEO idea. I'm going to need each
Speaker 4: of you to spend.
Speaker 3: To waste two hours a day sitting in traffic. Yes
Speaker 3: it's not very productive, and you can't work, and yes
Speaker 3: you're not any of the time with your friends and family,
Speaker 3: and yes you can go like to a good restaurant
Speaker 3: or listen to music, and yes it's very unhealthy and
Speaker 3: very stressful and oh my god, it is terrible for
Speaker 3: the environment. But two hours a day, every single person
Speaker 3: wastes city and traffic go right, Like the board would
Speaker 3: be like, see you, it's gone crazy. It would fire
Speaker 3: me immediately. But you know, that's kind of what we're
Speaker 3: asking people to do if we want them to quote
Speaker 3: unquote go back to the office. And then you know
Speaker 3: the fact that that one hundred percent of our employees
Speaker 3: can choose where they want to live. They can they
Speaker 3: can live in a nice house if that's what they want.
Speaker 3: They can send their kids to a good school. They
Speaker 3: can live in a city, they can live in a
Speaker 3: small town. If someone's always wanted to live on the
Speaker 3: beach and surf, they can do that today and still
Speaker 3: have their job. And then, like for the first time ever,
Speaker 3: every single person who works in our companies, who works
Speaker 3: in a distributed company, can choose where they live to
Speaker 3: have their best life independently from where they work to
Speaker 3: have their best job. I mean that that's amazing. We're
Speaker 3: never giving that up. And there's like there's like twenty
Speaker 3: other superpowers that are kind of like of this level
Speaker 3: of caliber, and when you think about them, you're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'm never giving these up.
Speaker 3: So sure it's worth solving some problems to keep these,
Speaker 3: but I'm definitely keeping them.
Speaker 2: And so when it comes to collaborating with people that
Speaker 2: you've potentially never met face to face, like, is there
Speaker 2: is there almost like a template or a system that
Speaker 2: you use, Like when do you know when to be
Speaker 2: asynchronous versus synchronous?
Speaker 1: For example?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm constantly surprised by by by how tall or
Speaker 3: not tall people are when I first meet them in person.
Speaker 3: I realize I never get that right, Like my mental
Speaker 3: image is always off when they're like know someone for
Speaker 3: a few months, you know, but on only online that
Speaker 3: I see him in person for the first time, I
Speaker 3: always like, wow, yeah I was wrong about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have you know, for synchronous and asynchronous is a
Speaker 3: really important thing that we're trying to get better at.
Speaker 3: I have a test for this. I call it the
Speaker 3: facehle test. It goes like this, When there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of people and they're having a conversation and one person
Speaker 3: is moving their face hole a lot, like for minutes
Speaker 3: at a time, and no one else is moving theirs,
Speaker 3: then something's gone wrong. That that's not a conversation, that's
Speaker 3: a lecture, and it shouldn't be happening synchronously. If I
Speaker 3: am doing all the talking and other people are listening,
Speaker 3: they shouldn't be doing this in real time. I should
Speaker 3: have recorded it. They can watch it when they want
Speaker 3: to watch it. They can watch it at you know,
Speaker 3: one point seven x speed. They can jump around, they
Speaker 3: don't have to take notes like it's just any kind
Speaker 3: of information transfer where it's primarily one person speaking for
Speaker 3: multiple minutes shouldn't be synchronous. Should be It should be asynchronous.
Speaker 3: Synchronous communication should be what we're doing here, which we're
Speaker 3: having a conversation, you know, I move my face hole
Speaker 3: for a few minutes and then you go and it's
Speaker 3: like back and forth and then then okay, then that
Speaker 3: should be synchronous. But so much of what we used
Speaker 3: to do at work was we were having synchronous communications
Speaker 3: in a way where it really was just noledge transfer
Speaker 3: as one person at.
Speaker 4: A time, And we just don't do that anymore. And
Speaker 4: it's amazing.
Speaker 2: That does sound amazing now, I know that you like, Well,
Speaker 2: while a lot of people that work in a distributed fashion,
Speaker 2: they do work from home a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: But I've heard that you maybe work from home perhaps
Speaker 2: thirty percent of the time, So I want to know
Speaker 2: where else are you're working from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is a This is another big
Speaker 3: kind of misunderstanding. People think that distributed work means working
Speaker 3: from home.
Speaker 4: It doesn't.
Speaker 3: It meant working from home when we were all forced
Speaker 3: to do it, you know, with no preparation because of COVID.
Speaker 3: You know, we've had to work out of our apartments
Speaker 3: and homes with screaming children in an environment that wasn't
Speaker 3: set up for it. But distributed work means you can
Speaker 3: you can figure out where your environments are and you
Speaker 3: can pick. You can pick the work environment to best
Speaker 3: accomplish whatever you're trying to accomplish. So I've got I've
Speaker 3: got a few different places, so I work from home
Speaker 3: some of the time, you know, about a third of
Speaker 3: the time. I have a nice like av setup. So
Speaker 3: if I'm like, like, for example, now I want to
Speaker 3: be on a good microphone, I've got a good setup
Speaker 3: at home, so I'll do that for my home studio.
Speaker 3: But sometimes I work from a museum. There's two amazing
Speaker 3: museums within walking distance of me. Without a ten minute walk.
Speaker 3: I live in Benonville, Arkansas, and there's a museum called
Speaker 3: Crystal Bridges, which is just breathtaking. It's like thee I've
Speaker 3: ever been to. And you know, I can walk there
Speaker 3: in ten minutes, and I can walk around the grounds
Speaker 3: outside and inside, and it's amazing. Like whenever I need
Speaker 3: to puzzle puzzle through something, I go and I do
Speaker 3: it in the museum. Sometimes I go to the library
Speaker 3: and sit down there if I just want a breathtaking
Speaker 3: view with a lot of art. Sometimes I pace around.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when I have co workers over, we go for
Speaker 3: a walk together, and it's an amazing environment for being creative,
Speaker 3: much better than like sitting in the conference room. And
Speaker 3: sometimes I work from There's a club that I joined
Speaker 3: which was a really nice pool and a gym, and
Speaker 3: so I'll go work at the club and if I
Speaker 3: feel like being around other people who aren't my employees,
Speaker 3: just other you know, professional adults, sometimes that's useful. And
Speaker 3: then I can do like a couple of zoom calls
Speaker 3: in the club and then go go swim a few
Speaker 3: laps in the pool, and then you know, a half
Speaker 3: hour later, be back on a zoom call.
Speaker 4: Because there's nice showers and things there.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that like swimming laps in a
Speaker 3: nice pool is like the exact opposite of being in
Speaker 3: a zoom call, Like every sensation is the opposite of
Speaker 3: it is like the ultimate recharge. And I would never
Speaker 3: do this before. I could never before, like go for
Speaker 3: a swim in the middle of the day, because what
Speaker 3: I'd have to like drive to the gym and like
Speaker 3: they just wouldn't happen. But now I can work from there.
Speaker 3: So this idea of like being able to choose where
Speaker 3: I want to be that I think is best for
Speaker 3: accomplishing whatever I want to accomplish over a few hours
Speaker 3: is kind of amazing. I'm never giving that up. And
Speaker 3: all of this is walking distance, so it's not so
Speaker 3: much walk work from home. It's really it's really walked
Speaker 3: to work, Like I just walk around everywhere for these places.
Speaker 3: And one hundred percent of my current lifestyle is accessible
Speaker 3: to everyone in our companies. Like it's not because I
Speaker 3: have more money. It would have been the case if
Speaker 3: I had if I had this lifestyle in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: But you know, when I used to live in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: my my quality of living was much lower than it
Speaker 3: is now. But to the extent that it was okay,
Speaker 3: it was because I was spending a lot of money.
Speaker 3: But now, like I think all of our employees can
Speaker 3: literally afford to live in the house that I'm currently
Speaker 3: living in and can afford to like be a member
Speaker 3: of this club and go to the same museums because
Speaker 3: it's all, you know, either free or inexpensive, because most
Speaker 3: of the world is when you're not forced to congregate
Speaker 3: in the same exact place as everybody else.
Speaker 2: I love the idea of walking around a museum when
Speaker 2: you're trying to puzzle through something. And something that always
Speaker 2: fascinates me about founder CEOs is that I always imagine
Speaker 2: this person who's a maker at heart that has had
Speaker 2: to find a way to also be a manager in
Speaker 2: terms of thinking about their diary or their calendar. And
Speaker 2: I'd love to know for you, how do you think
Speaker 2: about segmenting your calendar between maker versus manager activities that
Speaker 2: you're doing.
Speaker 3: So one thing I've done is I have canceled almost
Speaker 3: all of our like I said, synchronous update meetings, which
Speaker 3: freeze up many many hours a day for me. So
Speaker 3: I used to when I used to look at my calendar.
Speaker 3: What was I spending time on while I was having
Speaker 3: I was having fourteen fifteen synchronous meetings a day, and
Speaker 3: you know, fully half of those were just like one
Speaker 3: on ones, you know, catch up meetings, standing meetings with
Speaker 3: various people. Get rid of our percent of those. Now,
Speaker 3: when when I need to exchange information, we exchange recordings asynchronously.
Speaker 3: That lets me lets everyone watch them anytime. I don't
Speaker 3: have to do it at a particular time, and much
Speaker 3: faster because it turns out everyone sounds better and it's
Speaker 3: actually more fun to watch at like one point five
Speaker 3: to two point zero speed rather than one x Like literally,
Speaker 3: it's just it's just true. So why would you Why
Speaker 3: would I want to watch someone updating me at the
Speaker 3: same time they're speaking. Imagine if like when you're reading,
Speaker 3: imagine you're reading something, then you were forced to read
Speaker 3: at the same speed that the person who wrote it wrote.
Speaker 3: That don't make any sense. So we said I got
Speaker 3: rid of most of my synchronous stuff. That freed up
Speaker 3: probably two hours a day. When I need to have
Speaker 3: a synchronous conversation, I of course, you know, jump on
Speaker 3: a call. We have a synchronous conversation, but by then
Speaker 3: we're all in the same page. We're really having a
Speaker 3: live discussion, so it's much better and much briefer. And
Speaker 3: then I don't waste any time commuting, so that's another
Speaker 3: like two hours a day, so you know, just pure
Speaker 3: calendar time. I've got four or five hours extra free
Speaker 3: time every single day that needs to be for which
Speaker 3: is kind of amazing. And I use that to you know,
Speaker 3: to be to be productive.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing when you describe it like that.
Speaker 2: Now I want to talk about ever Note because I
Speaker 2: feel really privileged.
Speaker 1: To be talking to one of the people that actually
Speaker 1: created it.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting here in front of my iMac and
Speaker 2: the only software applications that I've got open are Chrome
Speaker 2: because that's how I'm using Zancaster to record this interview.
Speaker 1: I've got Scrivener opened.
Speaker 2: Because I'm on a deadline for a manuscript that's due
Speaker 2: in under four weeks and I've.
Speaker 4: Strong strong choice scriven or strong choice.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's good, it's good. I just can't work out
Speaker 2: how to do the bloody.
Speaker 1: Reference list anyway.
Speaker 2: My problem, not yours, and ever Note is the other
Speaker 2: thing that's open, and I've used ever note for years
Speaker 2: and years and years. I can't remember a life where
Speaker 2: I didn't use ever note, and I wouldn't know. I feel,
Speaker 2: how are you using ebanote? What can you teach me about?
Speaker 2: How can I use abonoe better?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I use it, I mean use it every day.
Speaker 3: Obviously it's great. I have become I think as I've
Speaker 3: like gotten older, I've become more selective about what kinds
Speaker 3: of things I put in there. So I used to
Speaker 3: put absolutely everything in there because I like it gave
Speaker 3: me this feeling of security that I wasn't forgetting anything.
Speaker 3: And then I think as I've gotten older, I've like
Speaker 3: gotten to appreciate the feeling of security that I get
Speaker 3: from being okay and about forgetting things Like so, I
Speaker 3: just know there's likes of stuff I'm just not going
Speaker 3: to retain.
Speaker 4: I'm like that, that's cool. You know, I'll learn it again.
Speaker 4: I'll be happy.
Speaker 3: So I'm more intentional now, like I put things in
Speaker 3: every note that I tend to like have a higher
Speaker 3: confidence level that I'm going to need again that I'm
Speaker 3: going to want to you know that I'm going to
Speaker 3: want to use Whereas it used to be, you know,
Speaker 3: probably like I would probably look at two percent of
Speaker 3: the things that I wound up putting in EVERYNOE, and
Speaker 3: now I probably look at fifty to eighty percent of
Speaker 3: the things that I wund up putting in there. So
Speaker 3: that's but that's that's more about like my lifestyle, like
Speaker 3: I just like care less about remembering, you know, every
Speaker 3: single scrap of information and more about using it for work,
Speaker 3: for organizing my thoughts, for organizing projects.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I use it.
Speaker 3: All the time, you know when when when I was
Speaker 3: and I haven't been at EVERYNOE for six seven years,
Speaker 3: so I can't can't take credit for for most of
Speaker 3: the new stuff.
Speaker 4: One of the things that we.
Speaker 3: Found when I was still there, which really explained a
Speaker 3: lot to me when we realized this from our research,
Speaker 3: was people who used Evernote for something that they loved,
Speaker 3: that they cared passionately about were much much, much much
Speaker 3: like more valuable power users than people who used it
Speaker 3: for things that they don't quite care about, like people
Speaker 3: who were like using every note at work because like
Speaker 3: their company like forced them to use it or something,
Speaker 3: they didn't really care about the stuff they were putting
Speaker 3: in there. As totally makes sense in hindsight, but those
Speaker 3: were kind of you know, lacksadaisical users, whereas people who
Speaker 3: were using it for their like life's work, for the
Speaker 3: things that are most important to them were like really
Speaker 3: power users were really in love with it. And you know,
Speaker 3: we figured we had lots of data to kind of
Speaker 3: back this up. But the thing that made it really
Speaker 3: clear to me is I was talking to a pretty
Speaker 3: good friend of mine who had, you know, I'd known
Speaker 3: for many years already had ever Note, and he said
Speaker 3: one to me one day, a you know, like i'd
Speaker 3: been using every note for like three or four years now,
Speaker 3: because you know, you started, and I figured, yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: try it out. And I used it a bunch and
Speaker 3: use it a work, and I never're like I was
Speaker 3: never that into it. Like it was fine, but it
Speaker 3: was never like that into it. And then I like
Speaker 3: decided that I was going to write a book, and
Speaker 3: I started using it to like collect ideas for the book.
Speaker 3: And then I like understood how amazing it was because
Speaker 3: I was finally using it for like the most important
Speaker 3: thing in the world, tree and I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 3: put it down, and I thought that was like a
Speaker 3: really beautiful thing. Like make a product that if you
Speaker 3: use it for something you really care about, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: And maybe've been trying to recapture.
Speaker 4: Some of that.
Speaker 2: And so we will be back with Phil shortly where
Speaker 2: he'll be talking about the rule of three and ten
Speaker 2: for business and how this was life changing, and we'll
Speaker 2: also hear from Phil about the difference between difficult versus
Speaker 2: unpleasant decisions and why it's critical that you make that distinction. Now,
Speaker 2: if you are after more content, you might want to
Speaker 2: follow me on the socials, where I.
Speaker 1: Produced quite a lot of content.
Speaker 2: The two best places to follow me are on LinkedIn
Speaker 2: just search for my name Amantha Imba. I think I'm
Speaker 2: the only one on there, and also on Instagram, which
Speaker 2: I'm starting to post a lot more content too, And
Speaker 2: you can find me on Insta at Amantha. I something
Speaker 2: I have never really used religiously in ever, note firstly
Speaker 2: having different notebooks, like everything sits in my inbox, and
Speaker 2: I haven't relied too heavily on tags, and like, am
Speaker 2: I missing something really major?
Speaker 1: There? Should I be chain? How I use epanos?
Speaker 4: Well, you know.
Speaker 3: I'm similar, So I have notebooks, but you know I
Speaker 3: probably have like fifty notebooks but realistically, I only use
Speaker 3: like four or five on a regular basis, and I
Speaker 3: barely ever use tags. I mostly just search for things.
Speaker 4: And it worked great for me.
Speaker 3: Because usually, like I can just type in a few
Speaker 3: letters and I can find whatever I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna find, you know, I'll get it down.
Speaker 3: To like ten, and then when there's like ten notes,
Speaker 3: I just like the last mile of the search, I
Speaker 3: just see the one I want, right, so I can
Speaker 3: just like click on this. I don't have to get
Speaker 3: it like exactly right. So I don't use most of
Speaker 3: that stuff either, but there's a lot of people who
Speaker 3: religiously use it. What we found is that there's a
Speaker 3: group of people who I think are like organizational fetishists.
Speaker 3: Like they enjoy they derive pleasure from the act of
Speaker 3: organizing something. They like putting labels on things and putting
Speaker 3: things into little cupboards and stacking things up cleanly.
Speaker 4: There's people like this, I get it. That's cool.
Speaker 3: They're in to the organization for the sake of the organization.
Speaker 3: They enjoy it, and that's probably I don't know, five
Speaker 3: percent of the population. And they and these people have
Speaker 3: like all sorts of you know, cultish things. There's like
Speaker 3: getting things done people, and there's all sorts of like
Speaker 3: different warring camps about how are properly organized things and
Speaker 3: what taxonomies they want. And I'm not like that. I
Speaker 3: don't enjoy the act of organizing. I just want to
Speaker 3: have the benefits of it without actually doing the work.
Speaker 3: It's not actually clear to me that like, well organized
Speaker 3: people are inherently more productive than disorganized people. I am
Speaker 3: fundamentally disorganized them in normal life, but I'm pretty productive.
Speaker 3: But that's I guess one of the reasons why we
Speaker 3: were so interested in ever note is like I wanted
Speaker 3: to have the benefit of having this organizational fetish without
Speaker 3: actually liking organizing things. So yeah, I just throw everything
Speaker 3: in there and it you know, and it kind of
Speaker 3: works out. But there's a there's a very hardcore user
Speaker 3: base that loves, you know, nest the tags and multiple
Speaker 3: notebooks and flags of different colors, and we were constantly
Speaker 3: getting bombarded with requests for additional taxonomies, additional ways of
Speaker 3: organizing for people who are into the organizing.
Speaker 2: Now, given you describe yourself as being more on the
Speaker 2: disorganized side of things, how do you organize your task
Speaker 2: list and just what your priorities are on a daily, weekly,
Speaker 2: monthly basis.
Speaker 3: So you know, I've never actually succeeded in keeping a
Speaker 3: to do list a task lisk. I don't have one,
Speaker 3: like I've obviously tried all of them. We have them,
Speaker 3: I never note, I just don't use one. I was
Speaker 3: actually going to start at one point, I was going
Speaker 3: to start a company. Most of my company ideas are jokes.
Speaker 3: So if someone actually wants to build this, by all means,
Speaker 3: please build that, I'll be a customer. I wanted to
Speaker 3: start a task manager to do you know list that
Speaker 3: was called too done or too did, And the way
Speaker 3: it would work is there'd be no input. So I
Speaker 3: would start this program, this app, and it would figure
Speaker 3: out what I did just by looking at like my
Speaker 3: calendar where I've been, and it would like it would
Speaker 3: automatically put items that I'd already done and check them off.
Speaker 4: So I would look.
Speaker 3: At it and it would say, like watch Netflix for
Speaker 3: two hours, check done, went swimming, check done, and that
Speaker 3: was it. I would just look at it. The only
Speaker 3: way the only thing you can do is look at it,
Speaker 3: and I would just tell you if you already did,
Speaker 3: and then you can be like Yep, that's what I did,
Speaker 3: and you like feel a sense of accomplishment as if
Speaker 3: you would like planned it, but it didn't really happen.
Speaker 3: But I don't do that ahead of time. I generally
Speaker 3: I live off my calendar. So I do have a
Speaker 3: pretty well organized calendar. But that's because I have Leah
Speaker 3: was my assistant, who does an amazing job and keeping
Speaker 3: keeping the calendar organized. That's like my single source of truth.
Speaker 3: I wake up in the morning, I look at my calendar.
Speaker 3: I do what my calendar tells me to do. I
Speaker 3: don't question it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And but in terms of like the kinds of topics
Speaker 3: and things I'm working on, look, if they're not important
Speaker 3: enough for me to remember, they're probably not really important
Speaker 3: enough to do.
Speaker 1: That's such an interesting way of thinking about things.
Speaker 2: Now, I've heard you talk about the rule of three
Speaker 2: and ten and how life changing that was for you.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a bit more about the rule
Speaker 2: of three and ten?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is something that one of my one
Speaker 3: of my friends and really one of my best mentors,
Speaker 3: is a guy named a Mickey Harusha mccattuaney son. Mcatony
Speaker 3: son is the founder and CEO of Rakuten which is,
Speaker 3: you know, started in Japan, but now it's a big
Speaker 3: global internet company and he was, you know, the first
Speaker 3: employee and now it's I don't know, hundred thousand employees
Speaker 3: and he's still the CEO. He's one of the most
Speaker 3: amazing people that actually is like the best CEO from
Speaker 3: one person to tens of thousands of people. And he
Speaker 3: came up with this rule of three and ten, which
Speaker 3: basically says that every time something important triples, everything breaks.
Speaker 3: So every time in your company something important triples, everything breaks.
Speaker 3: So the idea is like, let's say, you know, you
Speaker 3: start a company and it's just you. You're the only
Speaker 3: person there, kind of figure out how to work, and
Speaker 3: then you like hire one more person and things are okay,
Speaker 3: and then you hire a third person and now it's
Speaker 3: tripled and everything's broken. So now you got to like
Speaker 3: reconfigure everything. So you figure all that stuff out and
Speaker 3: then four, five, six is all fine. But then you
Speaker 3: hire the tenth person, everything breaks again. So it's three
Speaker 3: and ten ten because it's just easier than keeping multiplying
Speaker 3: by three. Nothing magic about ten because you'd be nine,
Speaker 3: I guess, but three and ten is easier to remember
Speaker 3: and then you know, you figure it out for ten people,
Speaker 3: and then it breaks again to thirty, and then it
Speaker 3: breaks it one hundred, and then it breaks it three hundred.
Speaker 3: And by it I mean like everything, like how you communicate,
Speaker 3: how you pay people, how you keep your calendar, what
Speaker 3: kind of office setup you have if you have an
Speaker 3: office like it all, like every time you triple something
Speaker 3: important and tripling. The easiest thing is tripling headcount, tripling
Speaker 3: in place, but it could also been tripling the number
Speaker 3: of customers, tripling the amount of revenue, like you know,
Speaker 3: tripling the number of products that you have. Every substantive
Speaker 3: tripling puts extreme strain on all of your systems, and
Speaker 3: it's worth looking at them and anticipating it. And a
Speaker 3: lot of startups go through multiple triplings without noticing it.
Speaker 3: So like right now at we're at about we're getting
Speaker 3: close to a hundred people, right about one hundred people.
Speaker 3: Probably by the time this podcast there is will be
Speaker 3: a little over one hundred people. But you know, but
Speaker 3: we still have certain systems. You're only a year old,
Speaker 3: so we probably have some systems that we put in
Speaker 3: place when we were three people, and so we've missed
Speaker 3: now several triplings because we missed like three to ten,
Speaker 3: ten to thirty thirty tow one hundred. So those things
Speaker 3: are like way out of date and they need to
Speaker 3: be refreshed. So a lot of startups get into trouble
Speaker 3: when they kind of blow through a few triplings and
Speaker 3: then things start to creak and things start to break.
Speaker 3: The flip side of that is a lot of big
Speaker 3: companies waste a lot of time trying to be quote
Speaker 3: unquote innovative when they really don't have to. Like, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're a ten thousand person company, like you're good
Speaker 3: until you hit thirty thousand people. You don't need to
Speaker 3: like figure out too much stuff. But you know it's
Speaker 3: hard then that may take a decade, but it's hard
Speaker 3: to like sit around for a decade without changing things.
Speaker 3: So big companies tend to chase innovation and change a
Speaker 3: little bit too much, and small companies tend to forget
Speaker 3: about it and break things. So I just try to
Speaker 3: be mindful of that.
Speaker 2: Now, for people that are working as a manager, why
Speaker 2: is it important to learn the difference between difficult and
Speaker 2: unpleasant decisions?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a good's that's like that's probably
Speaker 3: one of my favorite kind of things that I've I've
Speaker 3: that I've learned, that I've figured out about myself. I
Speaker 3: found that whenever I think, oh man, that's a really
Speaker 3: hard decision, Like that's a hard decision. Whenever that happens,
Speaker 3: whenever I feel like something is a hard decision, I
Speaker 3: like a little red flag goes off and I ask myself,
Speaker 3: is it hard like it's difficult to know what the
Speaker 3: right answer is? Or is it hard like it's unpleasant?
Speaker 3: And usually the vast majority of time, when I force
Speaker 3: myself I think through that, I'm like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know what the right answer is.
Speaker 4: Is just unpleasant.
Speaker 3: So probably ninety percent of the decisions that I perceive
Speaker 3: as quote unquote hard, they're not actually difficult to know
Speaker 3: what the right answer is. I know what the right
Speaker 3: answer is. They're just unpleasant, they're scary. There's something about
Speaker 3: them that that's bad. And once I kind of identify
Speaker 3: which one it is, then then things become clear, not easy,
Speaker 3: but clear. Obviously, if a decision is unpleasant, you should
Speaker 3: still do the right thing regardless of whether it's pleasant
Speaker 3: or unpleasant. You just have to deal with the unpleasantness.
Speaker 3: But I think what I used to do is really
Speaker 3: conflate those two things. And I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people conflate that. I think a lot of people conflate
Speaker 3: difficult decisions with unpleasant decisions, and they pretend that it's
Speaker 3: hard to know what the right answer is when really
Speaker 3: it's just an unpleasant answer.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's that's like a that's probably my favorite.
Speaker 4: Like management hack or life hack. It's just like something's
Speaker 4: a hard decision, hard how.
Speaker 2: And when you have an unpleasant decision to action, how
Speaker 2: do you approach that conversation?
Speaker 4: Uh? I mean it's very situation right.
Speaker 3: It depends on what's what's unpleasant about it and how,
Speaker 3: and but ultimately you just you have to do the
Speaker 3: right thing and you have to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: Like I very much dislike words like fearless. I think
Speaker 3: for a while it seems to be receding, it seems
Speaker 3: to be in remission. But for a while, like a
Speaker 3: few years ago, everyone was like something something fearless, something something.
Speaker 4: It was like it was way overused word.
Speaker 3: And I think fearless is really like people. Fearless people
Speaker 3: are just genuinely stupid. They really don't have any fear.
Speaker 3: Then they're clearly too dumb to understand what the danger is.
Speaker 3: I never try to be fearless. Being brave is about
Speaker 3: experiencing fear. Like if you're not afraid, you're not brave,
Speaker 3: you're just dumb. So you have to, you know, you
Speaker 3: experience the fear and the trepidation, and you allow yourself
Speaker 3: to experience and you just do the thing that you
Speaker 3: have to do anyway, because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3: It's not easy, but it's simple.
Speaker 2: Now, on the topic of management hacks, and I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if this falls under that category, but I've heard
Speaker 2: that you always try to be the positive voice in
Speaker 2: a conversation.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 3: It's not so much that I try to be the
Speaker 3: positive voice. It's that there's there's a strong negativity bias
Speaker 3: in people. Kind of cognitively, I have it. Almost everyone
Speaker 3: has it, where basically it's easier to seem smart if
Speaker 3: you're being negative. And this is especially true in social situations.
Speaker 3: So you know, if you've got a bunch of people
Speaker 3: sitting around and you you ask for someone's opinion, they're
Speaker 3: kind of trying to seem smart and thoughtful in front
Speaker 3: of everyone else, and it's much easier to do that
Speaker 3: by pointing out the weakness, by pointing out the problems,
Speaker 3: by pointing out the risks. It's just just how our
Speaker 3: brains are wired. And then you know, the next person
Speaker 3: has to like top the first person and being like
Speaker 3: negative and afraid and so on. So typically, like decisions
Speaker 3: are overwhelmingly weighed towards towards negative, towards the safest option,
Speaker 3: the least bad option, not the most good option. And
Speaker 3: this is you know, there's evolutionary biology for this. There's
Speaker 3: like very basic brain science about this. You know, it
Speaker 3: used to be thought that the amigdala the portion of
Speaker 3: your brain. This is wrong and overly simplified, but still useful,
Speaker 3: The portion of your brain that's basically in charge of
Speaker 3: fight or flight responses. That's very old in evolutionary terms.
Speaker 3: It exists in almost all animals. And then there's like
Speaker 3: a much more recent human part of the brain that
Speaker 3: deals with you know, opportunity and like happiness and love
Speaker 3: and strategy, and that's that's in evolutionary terms, that's brand
Speaker 3: new and very very weak compared to the power of
Speaker 3: the of the dark side, of the fear and the
Speaker 3: negative and the risk aversion and so when you're making
Speaker 3: a decision, it's useful to understand is this the type
Speaker 3: of decision where it's important to pick the least bad option,
Speaker 3: or is this the type of decision where it's important
Speaker 3: to pick the most good option? Understanding that least bad
Speaker 3: and most good are often the same. They are often
Speaker 3: the same the same thing. Like something could be the
Speaker 3: most good if it works, but also the most dangerous
Speaker 3: or the most.
Speaker 4: Bad if if it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: So you just got to know, like are you going
Speaker 3: for least bad or are you going for most good?
Speaker 4: And you know, if you're one.
Speaker 3: Hundred thousand years ago, you know, one of our caveman ancestors,
Speaker 3: and you're standing in the middle of a you know,
Speaker 3: a grassy plane and you think you're saw a tiger
Speaker 3: hiding in the grass. That's like the part of your
Speaker 3: brain that's like meant you know, to do that, and
Speaker 3: you're thinking like, well, should I go into that grass?
Speaker 4: Maybe there's a tiger there?
Speaker 3: Then yeah, maybe this is a type of decisions where
Speaker 3: you should take the least bad outcome, which is like,
Speaker 3: you know, do everything possible to avoid being eaten by
Speaker 3: a tiger. But if you're like running a startup and
Speaker 3: you're not about to get eaten by a tiger, and
Speaker 3: you're trying to decide about a particular you know, what
Speaker 3: to name your product or whether or not to put
Speaker 3: in a feature, then like, maybe the downside is pretty
Speaker 3: limited because like I can be eaten by a tiger
Speaker 3: regardless of how you decide. So you may as well
Speaker 3: make the decision based on what's most good. And you
Speaker 3: can't do that if you allow any any focus on
Speaker 3: the negatives and the downsides, because then then the lizard brain,
Speaker 3: the amigdal a portion of your brain is going to
Speaker 3: kick in and you're gonna you're gonna.
Speaker 4: Buyas towards risk version.
Speaker 3: So when we're making decisions where it's important to get
Speaker 3: the most good, not not the least bad, I basically
Speaker 3: try to discourage anyone from saying anything negative, not out
Speaker 3: of some poly sense of like I only want to
Speaker 3: hear good things, but because I don't want people's brains
Speaker 3: shut off. So often I'll say, like, okay, I only
Speaker 3: want to hear what can go right. I only want
Speaker 3: to hear the good stuff intentionally as an exercise, as
Speaker 3: a meditation, because I don't want anyone to like start
Speaker 3: that cycle of being like, oh, but if.
Speaker 4: We screw it up, maybe we get eaten by a tiger.
Speaker 4: Which doesn't mean we don't look at the risks. Of
Speaker 4: course we do.
Speaker 3: We just we just try to separate those two things
Speaker 3: out and look at them look at them separately.
Speaker 4: But in startup life.
Speaker 3: There's many, many, many, many, many many decisions where it's
Speaker 3: more important to be the most good, not the least bad.
Speaker 2: Now, Phil, for people that want to connect with you
Speaker 2: and try out the wonderful things that you are putting
Speaker 2: out into this earth, what is the best way for
Speaker 2: people to do that?
Speaker 3: Well, you can send me an email, but I do
Speaker 3: have one hundred and you know other messages. Lay response
Speaker 3: is tough, but yeah, you know Twitter, I'm at P libbin,
Speaker 3: p L I B I N or that app or
Speaker 3: al turtle dot com. Really, any of those are ways
Speaker 3: to get in touch. And I am happy to happy
Speaker 3: to chat anytime.
Speaker 2: Amazing, Phil, it's just been such a privileged chatting to you.
Speaker 2: Your products have just made my life so much better.
Speaker 2: So thank you for the work that you've done.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much. It's extremely kind of you
Speaker 3: and really fun to chat.
Speaker 1: Hello there. I hope you liked my chat with Phil.
Speaker 2: And if you know someone that you think would find
Speaker 2: it really useful, why not share this episode with them.
Speaker 2: How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
Speaker 2: from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was
Speaker 2: Jenna Cooda, and thank you to Martin Nimba who is
Speaker 2: the audio mix for every episode and makes all of
Speaker 2: this sound much better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.