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Speaker 1: Instead of focusing my energy on what I don't want

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Speaker 1: to do.

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Speaker 2: I e.

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Speaker 1: Don't check Twitter, don't check Facebook, don't check YouTube, don't check.

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Speaker 2: Slack, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: I try to just put all of my energy and

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Speaker 1: kind of focus on what do I want to do

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Speaker 1: and be very sort of intentional and focused about that.

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Speaker 1: And what I find happens is when I say something like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: here's what I want to get done today, and I

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Speaker 1: just spend less time on whether it's Twitter or or

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Speaker 1: whatever other kind of digital distraction because I have this

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Speaker 1: like I'm sort of motivated to do what I said

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Speaker 1: I was going to do.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics

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Speaker 3: you use by the world's most successful people to get

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Speaker 3: so much out of their day.

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Speaker 4: I'm your host, Doctor Amantha.

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Speaker 3: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,

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Speaker 3: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work.

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Speaker 2: Date.

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Speaker 3: Hi there, Before we get started on today show, I

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Speaker 3: just wanted to do a little call out for listener questions.

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Speaker 3: I wanted to experiment with a new format on the

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Speaker 3: Tuesday episodes where I answer any questions that you as

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Speaker 3: a listener, have on your mind about work and productivity

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Speaker 3: and particularly this new world of work. So I'd love

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Speaker 3: it if you could send me through anything that's on

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Speaker 3: your mind. My email address is Amantha at inventium dot

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Speaker 3: com dot au and that's also in the show notes.

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Speaker 3: So I look forward to hearing from you. Okay, let's

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Speaker 3: get on to today's guest. Who is Ashatosh Priya Dashi.

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Speaker 2: So.

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Speaker 3: Ashatosh and I got connected by Judy Anderson, the CEO

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Speaker 3: of startup vic because we both spoke at an event

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Speaker 3: for startup Vick very recently about productivity and.

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Speaker 4: I was so impressed with Asher.

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Speaker 3: I feel like he almost out geeks me on the

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Speaker 3: productivity front, so I invited him to.

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Speaker 4: Be on the show.

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Speaker 3: So Ashatosh is the founder of sin Sama, which is

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Speaker 3: a startup over in San Francisco that went through the

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Speaker 3: very famous and respected Why Combinator program in twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 3: Sinsama is a daily planner for elite professionals that helps

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Speaker 3: you plan out a focused work day by pulling together

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Speaker 3: your tasks from all your tools. And I've been having

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Speaker 3: a go at using cin Sama and I reckon it's

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Speaker 3: pretty awesome. It kind of takes what I do in

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Speaker 3: more of an analog way and helps make it a

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Speaker 3: little bit easier to do and streamline things. So Ashatosh

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Speaker 3: has spent most of the last decade building and launching

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Speaker 3: productivity hardware and software. So he's thought so much about

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Speaker 3: productivity and his goal is to build products that help

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Speaker 3: us navigate our work in life mindfully and intentionally. So

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Speaker 3: I really love this chat. I feel like there's a

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Speaker 3: lot of really interesting strategies that Ashatash thinks about and

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Speaker 3: has experimented with in his own life and also in

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Speaker 3: his startup. There's certainly quite a few strategies that I

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Speaker 3: was inspired to try out that I hadn't come across before.

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Speaker 3: So on that note, let's head to Ashotage to hear

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Speaker 3: about how he works. Ashatash, Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

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Speaker 4: I'm excited to be speaking to you.

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Speaker 3: I feel like you're maybe even more of a productivity

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Speaker 3: nerd than I am.

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Speaker 4: Possibly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, the last time we spoke, I was I

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Speaker 1: was like, Wow, you're almost like a productivity scientist or doctor,

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Speaker 1: whereas I like to think of myself more as like

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Speaker 1: a productivity mystic, where I'm trying to like figure it

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Speaker 1: out from my own experience. So I'm really excited to

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Speaker 1: just spend some time talking with you.

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Speaker 4: H I love that. A productivity mystic. That's a cool label.

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Speaker 4: All right.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 3: I know that you think a lot about rituals, and

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Speaker 3: you've got like a lot of rituals and routines in

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Speaker 3: your own life. I want to let's start with daily

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Speaker 3: and I want to know what are the things that

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Speaker 3: you do on a daily basis to help keep you

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Speaker 3: focused and productive.

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Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'll start with sort of the foundational

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Speaker 1: elements of my daily routine, and that's the stuff that's

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Speaker 1: sort of outside of work, and that's you know, sleeping properly.

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Speaker 1: I have the flexibility to sort of wake up when

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Speaker 1: I want. So for me, one of my big kind

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Speaker 1: of daily routines is sleeping until I'm done sleeping. So

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Speaker 1: that has been one of the most sort of important

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Speaker 1: parts for me to be productive each day, is just

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Speaker 1: simply getting enough sleep.

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Speaker 3: Can I ask, though, what does that mean to sleep properly?

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Speaker 3: Like what are the things that you've put around your

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Speaker 3: sleep to help you get a good night's sleep? And also,

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Speaker 3: I feel like that's a novel like waking when you

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Speaker 3: finish sleeping. I want to dig into both those things.

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Speaker 1: I think over the years, I've iterated and kind of

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Speaker 1: refined and found the things that help me like both

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Speaker 1: fall asleep, stay asleep, and sleep well. So and I've

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Speaker 1: experimented with a lot of things. But i'd say, if

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Speaker 1: we're kind of talking about what's my current sort of

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Speaker 1: stack for sleep, if you will these days, it's really

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Speaker 1: just the basics, like close the blinds, close the windows,

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Speaker 1: get the fan going so that it stays cool even

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Speaker 1: with the windows closed. We don't have central air. I

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Speaker 1: sleep with earplugs because we live in a downtown area

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Speaker 1: so it can be very loud. And I found that,

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Speaker 1: like those little things, they kind of add up to

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Speaker 1: just give me much better, better sleep quality. So nothing

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Speaker 1: really sort of groundbreaking, just putting a lot of little

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Speaker 1: pieces together to make sure that I'm kind of getting RESTful,

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Speaker 1: high quality sleep.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And then how do you know when you're done sleeping?

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Speaker 3: I don't know if that's an obvious question, but I

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Speaker 3: feel like most people in the world would probably have

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Speaker 3: no awareness of that because we're being driven by other

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Speaker 3: people's schedules.

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Speaker 4: So how do you know.

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Speaker 1: When I open my eyes of the morning, then it's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm awake, So I guess we're going to get at

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Speaker 1: it today.

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Speaker 4: All right, So you're just waking naturally with no alarm.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: And you know, there are some sort of natural elements

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Speaker 1: that sort of nudge me out of my sleep, whether

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Speaker 1: it's you know, just the light and the noise from

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Speaker 1: the outside starting to kind of pick up, or you know,

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Speaker 1: my wife starting her kind of daily routine and those

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Speaker 1: kind of things, like they're kind of like in the

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Speaker 1: background and they kind of push me out of my

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Speaker 1: sleep a little bit. But I don't kind of use

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Speaker 1: an alarm clock or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: So when you're done sleeping, what then happens for your

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Speaker 3: for your daily routine?

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Speaker 1: For me, the first thing I do is just sit

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Speaker 1: quietly and drink coffee. I have like a really slow

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Speaker 1: kind of boot up in the morning, from like the

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Speaker 1: point where I open my eyes to the point where

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Speaker 1: I'm like sort of excited about the day is like

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Speaker 1: a solid twenty minutes or so. So I'll usually have

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Speaker 1: have my coffee and I'll do a variety of things

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Speaker 1: just kind of depending on my mood on a given day,

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Speaker 1: I might start by just sitting and staring out the

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Speaker 1: window and drinking my coffee. I may read something that

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Speaker 1: I was I've been reading, or you know, some days,

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Speaker 1: I may just scroll through Instagram because that's what I'm

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Speaker 1: feeling like, So I switch it up and I'm not

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Speaker 1: sort of tied to the routine of you know, this

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Speaker 1: is exactly what I do. And I'm sure we can

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Speaker 1: probably talk about this more in depth later. But one

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Speaker 1: of the things I found is having a lot of

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Speaker 1: kind of smaller routines that kind of match my mood

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Speaker 1: and energy for a particular day. So I don't try

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Speaker 1: to do all of the exact same things every single

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Speaker 1: day as much as like, you know, what are the

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Speaker 1: things that I, you know, need to get done today,

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Speaker 1: Like how is my energy, Like what other obligations do

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Speaker 1: I have, And which of my like kind of sequences

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Speaker 1: of routines that I have that I like will kind

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Speaker 1: of help me get the most out.

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Speaker 2: Of this day.

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Speaker 4: That's interesting, and so is that quite conscious?

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Speaker 3: Then You've sort of got a series of different routines

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Speaker 3: that I guess asserted to different moods or states that

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Speaker 3: maybe you want to create or that you're in and

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Speaker 3: then you'll kind of like deliberately go about sort of

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Speaker 3: matching that.

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Speaker 4: Is it as conscious as that?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it's it's it's semi conscious.

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Speaker 1: It's it's sort of an intuition developed over just working

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Speaker 1: through so many days sort of alone as an entrepreneur,

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Speaker 1: where you have to kind of figure out what you

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Speaker 1: want and there's not a lot of like sort of

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Speaker 1: external stimuli to push you to do certain things.

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Speaker 2: It's all sort of self motivated.

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Speaker 1: And I kind of think of it as, Oh, I'm

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Speaker 1: a big basketball fan, and so I kind of think

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Speaker 1: of it as almost like you're just reacting to the situation.

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Speaker 1: So you may have wanted to go one way and

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Speaker 1: sort of score the ball today, but it turns out

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Speaker 1: that there's a bunch of you know, defenders in that direction.

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Speaker 1: So like what is what is like your move? Like

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Speaker 1: how are you going to kind of adapt to the day.

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Speaker 1: So some days I wake up and for example, I

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Speaker 1: may have gotten a message from a colleague saying like

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Speaker 1: uh whatever, like our app is down and like somebody

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Speaker 1: needs to do something, and so that those kind of

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Speaker 1: things can derail your day. But I've kind of found

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Speaker 1: ways to almost kind of cope with that, and later

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Speaker 1: in the day I may go through like a Okay,

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Speaker 1: I don't usually do this, but maybe now's a good

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Speaker 1: time to go for go for a run, have some lunch,

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Speaker 1: and that like mini routine kind of resets me so

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Speaker 1: that later in the day I might be able to

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Speaker 1: kind of refocus my energies.

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Speaker 2: And all of this really.

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Speaker 1: Is is possible because I have so much flexibility and freedom.

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Speaker 1: But don't know if that makes sense that idea of

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Speaker 1: like kind of micro routines or they're like moves more

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Speaker 1: than they are kind of routines.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I

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Speaker 4: like that.

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Speaker 3: I want to know, like, what else are you doing

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Speaker 3: on a daily basis.

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Speaker 1: Exercise is a is a really big one. That's something

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Speaker 1: I do pretty much every day. Some sort of kind

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Speaker 1: of personal spiritual or meditation practice is another thing that

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Speaker 1: I do on a daily basis. And then the rest

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Speaker 1: of my day is pretty much work, so that that

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Speaker 1: kind of rounds out the vast majority of my time,

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Speaker 1: especially on working days.

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Speaker 3: And I know that you have a daily planning ritual,

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Speaker 3: which I think you do the evening before the next

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Speaker 3: day to set out what your priorities are going to

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Speaker 3: be can you can you talk me through what that

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Speaker 3: looks like.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So I sort of plan out my day Almost twice.

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Speaker 1: I do a light planning the night before where I

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Speaker 1: kind of say like, Okay, these are the things that

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Speaker 1: I want to do, and obviously I use sin sama

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Speaker 1: for that, which is my company, and sin sama is

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Speaker 1: basically a guided daily planner. It kind of walks you

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Speaker 1: through the process of planning out your work day and

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Speaker 1: pulling things in from.

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Speaker 2: All of your tools.

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Speaker 1: So I use sin sama to kind of plan out

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Speaker 1: here are the things I want to do today or

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Speaker 1: tomorrow rather, and then the next morning sort of after

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Speaker 1: I've had my coffee and I'm sitting down, that's when

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Speaker 1: I'll actually kind of get into the to the nitty

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Speaker 1: gritty and see it, you know, were there are things

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Speaker 1: that came into my email or kind of requests that

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Speaker 1: came in from colleagues that I need to stitch into

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Speaker 1: the to the fabric of my work day.

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Speaker 3: When you're planning at your day. Because I've I've been

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Speaker 3: trying out sin sama and finding it really helpful and

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Speaker 3: really interesting. Do you leave buffer time? Because I find

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Speaker 3: where I can sometimes fall down when I've been using

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Speaker 3: this process and I sort of use it in a

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Speaker 3: sort of used a similar process before trying out cin

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Speaker 3: Sama is that if I don't leave buffer time, then

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Speaker 3: my day can get a bit chaotic, like if lots

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Speaker 3: of things are taking longer than I thought that they

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Speaker 3: would take. So what does that look like for you?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely I do two things. I sort of

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Speaker 1: double buffer. I leave buffer time in my day, and

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Speaker 1: I sort of overestimate how long I think things will take,

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Speaker 1: and so that gives me just usually plenty of time.

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Speaker 1: Of course, it's one of the things about estimating work

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Speaker 1: is that it's basically impossible, but you try and do

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Speaker 1: your best.

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Speaker 2: So what I try to do.

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Speaker 1: Is when I'm planning out my day, I kind of

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Speaker 1: add time estimates to all of my tasks, even little

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Speaker 1: tasks that may only take five or ten minutes. I

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Speaker 1: say that, you know, I'm going to spend five minutes

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Speaker 1: on this or ten minutes on that, and I try

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Speaker 1: to get it to the point where the sort of

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Speaker 1: total sum of my day is around seven hours, and

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Speaker 1: I'm typically in front of the computer kind of working

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Speaker 1: for longer than that.

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Speaker 2: But that's kind of I found over.

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Speaker 1: At this point, like years of when I plan out

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Speaker 1: my day, if I sort of allocate about seven seven

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Speaker 1: and a half kind of at max, that's my total

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Speaker 1: capacity for how much sort of focused, heads down work

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Speaker 1: I can get in a day. And now, of course

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Speaker 1: you'll have days where you know, just some sort of

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Speaker 1: emergency comes up in the middle of the day and

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Speaker 1: you can't always predict those things, but sort of on average,

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Speaker 1: that number has been the sweet spot for me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's interesting to work out what that

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Speaker 3: sweet spot is and does that include meetings as well?

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Speaker 4: That's seven hour total.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's sort of like all of my work

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Speaker 1: related activities. So meetings plus like tasks, and I only

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Speaker 1: have about two days a week where I have meetings

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Speaker 1: and tasks on the same day. Otherwise I try extremely

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Speaker 1: hard to separate those two so that they don't blend.

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Speaker 1: And again, I have that flexibility and so I I

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Speaker 1: take full advantage of it.

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Speaker 4: Ah, really, so how does that work?

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Speaker 3: Do you have almost a weekly rhythm, like days that

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Speaker 3: you'll do meetings and then days that will be more

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Speaker 3: for deep work and maybe shallow work as well.

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Speaker 4: What does that look like?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I'll give you the kind of the

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Speaker 1: structure of my week. So Monday for me is just

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Speaker 1: kind of my miscellaneous variety day and looking forward to

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Speaker 1: the week. So that's when I have like my meeting

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Speaker 1: with the rest of my team, and then I just

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Speaker 1: kind of do any sort of small stuff that just

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Speaker 1: has kind of piled up, and I just that's a

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Speaker 1: day where I'm really just cranking and looking for like

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Speaker 1: a lot of throughput. Tuesday is the day I focus

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Speaker 1: entirely on our customers, So I have a number of

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Speaker 1: calls with customers, I do customer support tickets, and I

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Speaker 1: review all things like customer surveys. And one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons I do all of that on one day is

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Speaker 1: basically that it allows me to sort of concentrate all

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Speaker 1: of my focus and attention on what are our customers thinking,

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Speaker 1: what do they need, as opposed to kind of dispersing

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Speaker 1: that thought and focus throughout the week. And then Wednesday

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Speaker 1: and Thursday are deep work days, so I don't have

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Speaker 1: any meetings at all on those days, and that those days,

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Speaker 1: you know, each week, it changes what I might what

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Speaker 1: I might do on those days, but it's you know,

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Speaker 1: oftentimes like building a feature or doing some product development

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Speaker 1: or designing something. It's it's that kind of work that

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Speaker 1: happens on Wednesday and Thursday for me, and then Friday

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Speaker 1: is a day for reflection for me. So I'll review

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Speaker 1: metrics and dashboards, I'll do my one on ones with

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Speaker 1: my teammates, so we do those all sort of asynchronously

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Speaker 1: over email. And I also do my kind of one

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Speaker 1: on one and sort of thinking ahead for the next

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Speaker 1: week with my co founder on Fridays, So they're kind

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Speaker 1: of thematic in a sense.

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Speaker 2: The days.

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Speaker 4: I love that.

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Speaker 3: I find that super fascinating and that makes so much

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Speaker 3: sense just to reduce the context switching and so you

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Speaker 3: can just really admit to the thing that you're doing on.

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Speaker 4: Whatever day it is. I like that a lot.

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Speaker 3: I want to know in terms of quarterly or even

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Speaker 3: annual rituals or planning cycles or things that you find

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Speaker 3: really serve you that you repeat sort of on that

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Speaker 3: sort of longer cycle. Are there things that you do quarterly,

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Speaker 3: six monthly, annually to help you keep focused on what matters.

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Speaker 1: I actually don't have any goal setting or planning rituals

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Speaker 1: outside of my weekly and daily ones. And what we

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Speaker 1: do at least as a company is when we feel

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Speaker 1: like our longer term sort of roadmap has reached the

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Speaker 1: end of its life cycle. That's when we'll decide, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: it's time to kind of refresh this either because we've

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Speaker 1: learned some new stuff and it just feels out of

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Speaker 1: date and not kind of aligned with maybe what our

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Speaker 1: customers want, and that's kind of when we do it.

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Speaker 1: But like we have as a company, haven't gotten to

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Speaker 1: that level of sort of process yet. And I also

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Speaker 1: haven't a personally found that to be something particularly valuable

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Speaker 1: to me, because I find that if I'm being thoughtful

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Speaker 1: day after day and week after week, the things that

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Speaker 1: I want to do on longer term time skills, they

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Speaker 1: just kind of tend to work out for me. And

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Speaker 1: maybe it's just kind of how I think, but it's

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Speaker 1: easier for me to think about, like what are the

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Speaker 1: things I want to do today and next week, as

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Speaker 1: opposed to like, what are the things I want to

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Speaker 1: get done in a year. One of the things I've

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Speaker 1: always struggled with is when you're thinking about really large

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Speaker 1: time skills, and for me, that's like anything larger than

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Speaker 1: two weeks, it just feels so kind of abstract. It's

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Speaker 1: just never something that has resonated with me.

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Speaker 4: I can definitely relate like I do.

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Speaker 3: I go as far out well, I guess Inventium has

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Speaker 3: annual company goals which help everyone set their individual goals

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Speaker 3: and kind of know where we're heading.

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Speaker 4: But yeah, I can definitely relate to that.

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Speaker 3: My natural disposition is to be like you, but I

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Speaker 3: feel like I've tried to at least look twelve months

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Speaker 3: out and then my personal goals is six months at

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Speaker 3: which kind of I've sort of gotten used to, but

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Speaker 3: I completely understand where you're coming from.

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Speaker 4: How does that then.

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Speaker 3: Work in terms of the team and your team knowing

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Speaker 3: what they're working on if your preference is for kind

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Speaker 3: of just sort of thinking about the week ahead and

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Speaker 3: relying on.

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Speaker 4: Obviously very up to date data to make those decisions.

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Speaker 1: To date, it hasn't really been sort of an issue

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Speaker 1: for us, And again, we're such a small team where

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Speaker 1: we're only five people, so we're able to be a

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Speaker 1: bit more agile and kind of change direction quickly. And

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Speaker 1: for us, it's like all of the kind of planning

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Speaker 1: that we do or sort of anytime we come up

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Speaker 1: with like a hey, here's a roadmap for like the

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Speaker 1: things we want to accomplish in the next three months,

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Speaker 1: it's often within the first month that we've learned something

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Speaker 1: new from customers or usage, or from the data that

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Speaker 1: we have about the business that's sort of invalidates that.

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Speaker 1: Every time we try to plan ahead, we find that

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Speaker 1: there's something new that comes up that is just so

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Speaker 1: much more obviously impactful. So in terms of the rest

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Speaker 1: of the team, it's so easy for them to just say,

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Speaker 1: here's what customers have been saying, or here's what we

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Speaker 1: decided was like the highest priority things, and we'll just

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Speaker 1: kind of chip away at those.

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Speaker 3: And how do you prioritize which features to build, because

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Speaker 3: I imagine you must be getting a lot of customer

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Speaker 3: feedback and things that they would like to see. How

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Speaker 3: does that decision making process work for you and your team.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to explain this, but there's some things that

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Speaker 1: just feel obvious. So we kind of, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: we may generate like a like whatever, like fifteen ideas

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Speaker 1: of things that we want to do, for example, and

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Speaker 1: if there's anything on there that just doesn't feel obvious,

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Speaker 1: we just discard it immediately and stick to the ones

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Speaker 1: that are obvious. Within those, we usually have some sort

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Speaker 1: of guiding usually a metric that we're trying to optimize for.

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Speaker 1: So one of the things we've been working on recently

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Speaker 1: to give you a kind of a practical example, is

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Speaker 1: we noticed that people who kind of finished the process

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Speaker 1: of planning out their day two times at least two

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Speaker 1: times in the product were had a fifty percent chance

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Speaker 1: of upgrading to a pro plan. Obviously, that's like a

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Speaker 1: great sort of correlation there. So you know, we just

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Speaker 1: looked at each feature on at roadmap and we're like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: which of these things will either help people get through

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Speaker 1: those first two days of planning their day and which

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Speaker 1: of those things will also kind of help them have

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Speaker 1: a good experience around planning their day. And so just

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Speaker 1: like looking at that and having kind of a metric

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Speaker 1: in mind that we're trying to optimize for makes it

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Speaker 1: easier to evaluate like which things should we build. And

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Speaker 1: from time to time, we you know, we change what

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Speaker 1: metric we're looking at, Like right now we're looking at

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Speaker 1: that kind of activation metric. There were times where we're

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Speaker 1: kind of focused on, Okay, why do people who have

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Speaker 1: been using the product end up stop using the product

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Speaker 1: and what's causing churn? And so we always just try

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Speaker 1: to have a particular metric in mind when we're making decisions.

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Speaker 1: But again, you can't always predict which features will kind

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Speaker 1: of move the needle, So there is just that constant

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Speaker 1: need for experimentation.

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Speaker 3: Something that you've written about. I imagine you're a fan

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Speaker 3: of Paul Graham, having graduated from Y Combinator, and in

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Speaker 3: something you wrote, you referenced his essay Lives Too Short,

427
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Speaker 3: where he writes about pruning bullshit from his life, and

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Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could talk about what this

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Speaker 3: means and how you apply that in your own life.

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Speaker 2: I was just thinking about this the other day.

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Speaker 1: It's so easy to fill your workday with stuff that's

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Speaker 1: tangentially relevant or not totally obvious how it helps your

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Speaker 1: end goal. And for me, it's like the way I

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Speaker 1: try to sort of remove bullshit from my working life

435
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Speaker 1: is like I look at everything that I plan to

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Speaker 1: do in a given day and I just ask myself,

437
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Speaker 1: is this thing like obviously and directly correlated with the

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Speaker 1: results that I want. If it's two or three steps

439
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Speaker 1: away from what I want, that's usually for me a

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Speaker 1: good indicator that this thing is probably bullshit. So you know,

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Speaker 1: something like, for example, like you get invited to, like

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Speaker 1: a networking event or something like that. In the kind

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Speaker 1: of work I do, that's usually like a couple steps

444
00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: away from having a direct impact on like the thing

445
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:53,719
Speaker 1: that I'm working on, for example, improving activation and getting

446
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 1: more customers to use Sinsama. Maybe I meet someone there

447
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:02,480
Speaker 1: and maybe that person helps me get some attention for

448
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:04,919
Speaker 1: some some et cetera. It just feels like it's not

449
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,399
Speaker 1: obvious enough, and so anyway, my basic point is I

450
00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:11,640
Speaker 1: just try to do the things that feel so obvious

451
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:15,920
Speaker 1: and urgent and important and just forget about the rest.

452
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that answers your question, but that's

453
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:19,440
Speaker 1: kind of how I think about it.

454
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:22,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, it absolutely does answer my question, because I feel

455
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:26,639
Speaker 3: like they're like, not many people are doing this, and

456
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, particularly in large corporates who

457
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,280
Speaker 3: form a lot of Inventium's clients. I think about what

458
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:36,080
Speaker 3: they're doing during the day, and I think about friends

459
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:38,640
Speaker 3: of mine that work for, say, what are the big

460
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 3: banks or something like that, and I just feel like

461
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:45,000
Speaker 3: meetings in particular, there are so many meetings that I

462
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 3: think would be classed as bullshit, as things that are

463
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 3: two or three steps away from what really matters in

464
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:55,399
Speaker 3: terms of making meaningful progress. I just think it's a

465
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 3: really interesting barometer that perhaps not that many people are using.

466
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 3: I like, how you think consciously about that? And so

467
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 3: is that something that you that is almost in the

468
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 3: back of your mind every day as you're looking at

469
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 3: your day and planning the things that you're going to

470
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 3: get done today.

471
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 4: Does that essentially pass the bullshit test?

472
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:13,560
Speaker 2: Yeah?

473
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:16,199
Speaker 1: And I think one of the really interesting things that

474
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: happens when you sort of plan your day often, and

475
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: by often, I mean every day, you just you kind

476
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 1: of build these safety checks into your day, and it

477
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 1: just makes it harder for you to kind of accept

478
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:35,280
Speaker 1: bullshit into your day. So it's it's almost like a practice,

479
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: like when somebody emails you and they're like, hey, can

480
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:42,159
Speaker 1: we get on a quick call or whatever it's And

481
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 1: I've done plenty of I've said yes plenty of times

482
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:47,439
Speaker 1: when I when I really shouldn't and shouldn't have and

483
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,800
Speaker 1: I took a meeting that was basically bullshit, And it's

484
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,119
Speaker 1: kind of like a practice and an awareness of knowing

485
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:57,120
Speaker 1: like Okay, like I've been down this road before and

486
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,439
Speaker 1: there was just like these things are not really that

487
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 1: valuable and yeah, you just eventually just it becomes second nature.

488
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 2: I think something.

489
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 3: Else that I know that you apply in your working

490
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 3: life and think about is Parkinson's Law. And for those

491
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,719
Speaker 3: that are not familiar with Parkinson's Law, it's basically saying

492
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 3: that the task will stretch to as long as the

493
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 3: time that you give it. So if you have a

494
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 3: report to write and you've blocked out an hour in

495
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 3: your diary to write it, it will.

496
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:30,360
Speaker 4: Take an hour. Same thing applies to meetings.

497
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 3: And I want to know, how do you think about

498
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 3: Parkinson's Law in your own working life and how do

499
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:39,400
Speaker 3: you apply it.

500
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: I think one of the most interesting applications I've found

501
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: for Parkinson's Law is to basically pick almost insanely small

502
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,640
Speaker 1: time periods for certain things and try to force your

503
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: problem and solution into that space. So one of the

504
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: things that we did in the really early days of

505
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 1: building Sinzama is that we started operating on two day sprints.

506
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 1: So basically what we would do is we were a

507
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: really small team at the time, there was just four

508
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: of us. So on Monday we would say like, hey,

509
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: these are the Monday morning we're going to build. Each

510
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:18,360
Speaker 1: of us would say, hey, these are the things I'm

511
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: going to build, and we would sort of demo it

512
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: and ship it to like our production website by Tuesday evening,

513
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: and then Wednesday morning we would repeat the same process

514
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: and demo it to the team on Thursday afternoon and

515
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 1: then ship it. And the really interesting thing was, basically

516
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: we gave ourselves this kind of like two days.

517
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:42,199
Speaker 2: It was really like a day and a.

518
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: Half to make progress, and a lot of really interesting

519
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:50,159
Speaker 1: things happen. One we figured out ways to take what

520
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: we thought were really hard problems and just break them

521
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: down into things that could be done in two days.

522
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: So a very practical example was we wanted to build

523
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 1: integrations with other services, and usually the development time on

524
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 1: something like that is just a lot longer, and so

525
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: we were sort of forced to find really creative solutions

526
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: to how can we make our users and customers get

527
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: the value of having kind of an integrated experience in

528
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 1: the app in a way that it's something we can

529
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: build in two days. And so we kind of used

530
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: Parkinson's law to force us to one think of new

531
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: ways to solve the problem and not and basically get

532
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 1: our engine of iteration moving really fast so that we

533
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 1: could learn a lot faster.

534
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:41,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

535
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:43,679
Speaker 3: I like that a lot because typically people think about,

536
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:46,679
Speaker 3: you know, the classic like Google design sprint which is

537
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 3: five days, and then doing that in a day and

538
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 3: a half ready to ship. I think that's that is

539
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 3: a really cool application of Parkinson's law.

540
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:58,440
Speaker 4: When you were talking about that, I was I was thinking, you.

541
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 3: Know, in my own life, like just challenge of going, okay,

542
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,679
Speaker 3: can I get this task that could take hours actually

543
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 3: done a whole lot more quickly. And something I do

544
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 3: every week is I'll generally be writing a column or

545
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,560
Speaker 3: an article or something like that for some media publication.

546
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,320
Speaker 3: That tends to be a weekly task that is on

547
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 3: my list to do. And I know myself, I know

548
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 3: that I could easily spend hours doing that, but typically

549
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 3: when I'm time boxing my diary and essentially setting a

550
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 3: meeting with myself to write the article, I'll generally keep

551
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,399
Speaker 3: it to one hour, sometimes ninety minutes.

552
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 4: And I'm almost like surprised that, Oh.

553
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 3: Hang, I know I can do that, and it just

554
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 3: forces me to be very focused and work very hard

555
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 3: and get it done.

556
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 4: So I can absolutely relate to that.

557
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: I think that's like one of the most important things

558
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: you can kind of keep in mind when you're also

559
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: sort of planning out your day. Is when you say like, hey,

560
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: I think I can do all this stuff in like

561
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: seven hours. You kind of start off the day then

562
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 1: feeling like, hey, if I stay focused, I can get

563
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: this all done. Which is it kind of gets the

564
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 1: like the flywheel of motivation inside of you going. And

565
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: so for like the same thing, even on like a

566
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: small scale, when you're like, hey, I'm gonna I'm going

567
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: to get this done in an hour, you actually get

568
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: it done in an hour. And if you didn't have

569
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: that sort of almost artificial time constraint that you had

570
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: created for yourself, you just you kind of move through

571
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 1: the task with a bit more passivity than you would

572
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: have otherwise. And it's like you're making that commitment to

573
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: yourself and you're almost kind of challenging yourself like, hey,

574
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: can I do this? And I think a lot of

575
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: sort of really kind of effective and productive behavior comes

576
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: from setting basically like a goal or something to kind

577
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,719
Speaker 1: of strive for when you're when you're working towards something

578
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: like that.

579
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 3: And now I imagine that there are probably listeners going, yeah,

580
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 3: look that that's all well and good, but what about

581
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 3: the myriad of distractions, particularly digital distractions that are out

582
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 3: there and pulling our focus away from the task.

583
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 4: What strategies have you.

584
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 3: Found most effective to help keep those digital distractions in

585
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 3: check and not get lured in by them.

586
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: This might sound crazy, but I've just learned to embrace

587
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: them and live with them and use them and kind

588
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: of be okay with them. And instead of focusing my

589
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: energy on what I don't want to do, ie, don't

590
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: check Twitter, don't check Facebook, don't check YouTube, don't check slack,

591
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: et cetera, I try to just put all of my

592
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: energy and kind of focus on what do I want

593
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: to do and be very sort of intentional and focused

594
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: about that. And what I find happens is when I

595
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 1: say something like, Hey, here's what I want to get

596
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: done today, and then I also tell, you know, my colleagues,

597
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is what I'm planning to get done today,

598
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: I sort of just naturally kind of focus my time,

599
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: energy and attention on my work and the things that

600
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 1: I actually want to do, and I just spend less

601
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: time on whether it's Twitter or whatever other kind of

602
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 1: digital distraction because I have this like I'm sort of

603
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: motivated to do what I said I was going to

604
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: do if that makes sense, And so it's not like

605
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: I don't check those things at all. Now I do,

606
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: but I'm able to just kind of push it aside

607
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: and get back to what I want to do because

608
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: I have that kind of goal and that commitment both

609
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 1: to myself and to the people I work with.

610
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense.

611
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 3: It actually reminds me of something I had Adam Grant

612
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 3: on the show, the organizational psychologist from Wharton, very early on,

613
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 3: and something he said stuck with me because we were

614
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 3: talking about checking things like Facebook, and he will, you know,

615
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 3: he will almost like let himself check social media almost

616
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 3: as a you know, a several minute almost reward, I guess,

617
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 3: after doing you know, a sprint of deep work, let's say.

618
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 3: And he said, you know, if you're finding that you

619
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 3: want to stay on Facebook for longer, and Facebook is

620
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 3: suddenly seeming a lot more interesting than your actual work,

621
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:11,280
Speaker 3: then you might want to think about whether they are

622
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 3: actually in the right job if that is becoming more

623
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 3: interesting than the work that you do. It reminds me

624
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 3: of that, and I feel like that is it's a

625
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 3: really interesting thing to reflect on. I think when people

626
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 3: are being pulled by digital distractions. Are you actually legitimately

627
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 3: inherently interested in the work that you're doing.

628
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

629
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: And I think it's like what happens is when you say, like, hey,

630
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: these are the things I want to do at work,

631
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of assuming you're you know, you're interested

632
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: and motivated and excited by that. You just kind of

633
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:47,720
Speaker 1: naturally get more satisfaction out of doing that, and you

634
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: don't think and even if you are taking like a

635
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: Twitter break or a Facebook break, it's just not as

636
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: deep and fulfilling as the work you're doing, and you

637
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 1: sort of naturally just want to get back to it,

638
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: even if you spent you know, five minutes checking Twitter.

639
00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:07,240
Speaker 1: And I think for me, I've just found it easier

640
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: to forgive myself and just be okay with the fact

641
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: that I sometimes scroll through garbage and that's okay, Like

642
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me a bad person. Maybe it does,

643
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just I just find that

644
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: so much easier.

645
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 3: And I guess, like having said that, you know, I

646
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 3: think we also all have days of low motivation where

647
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 3: everything just feels a bit hard. What do you do

648
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 3: for yourself when you're starting your workday and you're just

649
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 3: feeling flat. Maybe you've had a bad night's sleep. I

650
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 3: don't know, Like, how what do you do on those days?

651
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: That's when I'll try to adjust and see kind of

652
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: why am I feeling low motivation that day?

653
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 3: Is it?

654
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 2: Is it that I, you know, didn't get enough sleep.

655
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 1: In that case, I might just try to do something simple,

656
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'll just get through my inbox, kind

657
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: of get the day started, and then take a nap,

658
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,759
Speaker 1: have some lunch, and then try again. So I don't

659
00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: try to do things that just feel like they clash

660
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: with how I'm feeling. Obviously, I'm not saying you should

661
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: never kind of push through suboptimal feelings. I think there's

662
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: value in that, but I try to listen and feel

663
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 1: how I'm feeling and act accordingly.

664
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 3: Now you're right in the heart of tech innovation land

665
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 3: in San Francisco, and I want to know what your

666
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 3: favorite software or applications and also gadgets that you're using

667
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 3: at the moment, or maybe that you're feeling a bit

668
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 3: excited about trying out.

669
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 2: That's a good question.

670
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: So one of the products I'm probably the most excited

671
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 1: about is an email application called tempo. And so the

672
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: reason I'm so excited about this product is, well, one,

673
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: they kind of built the product around a workflow rather

674
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 1: than it being a tools. Just like a tool that

675
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: is about kind of speed and power and flexibility, it's

676
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: really about helping you, as a user, as a person

677
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: who has to do email, have a good workflow around email.

678
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that I love about what

679
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:28,240
Speaker 1: they did is that they turned off all of the

680
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: notifications by default, so you don't see new emails except

681
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: for two times a day. And I thought that that's

682
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: almost a courageous decision by the product designers to say, like,

683
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: we're going to take the most addicting part of email

684
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 1: and we're going to turn it off because we know

685
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: what you really want deep down inside is to not

686
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: be addicted to these intermittent rewards in your email and

687
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 1: you want to kind of handle your email on your terms.

688
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: And the reason I say it's courageous is because as

689
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: a person who's designing a product, one of the things

690
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: you want is your product to be sort of sticky

691
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: and addicting. But I think they're doing it in a

692
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:16,240
Speaker 1: way that's almost virtuous, unlike something a product like Slack

693
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: which just sort of praise on our desire for kind

694
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:22,319
Speaker 1: of intermittent rewards throughout the day.

695
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 3: I love the sound of that, and I think it's

696
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:29,879
Speaker 3: really interesting these companies that are designing email around workflow,

697
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 3: Like I think obviously about Hey, which I've been trying

698
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 3: out for my personal email from the creators of base Camp,

699
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 3: and I'm really liking that. And I'm finding for the

700
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 3: first time my personal inbox is very clean, unlike how

701
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 3: it was when I was just on Gmail. And look

702
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 3: a couple of other questions I had for you. I

703
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 3: know that for you, you know from what I've read

704
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 3: and hearing you talk. You know, when you think about productivity,

705
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 3: it's about output, not ours. And I feel like this

706
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 3: is an important distinction, particularly in the world of remote working,

707
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 3: where you know, when we're in the office, it's really

708
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 3: easy to see productivity correlating, you know, even though it's

709
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,640
Speaker 3: quite nonsensical with hours spent in the office. But now

710
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 3: you know people that have managers that don't really know

711
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 3: how long their team is sitting in front of their

712
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 3: computers or being productive for kind of has to be

713
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 3: about output. But I think that's a hard mental shift

714
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:27,359
Speaker 3: to make, and I want to know for you, was

715
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 3: there a point where you were aware of making that

716
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 3: shift around productivity being about output instead of hours or

717
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:36,799
Speaker 3: have you always kind of thought about it like that.

718
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: I think for me it's it's definitely not about the

719
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: hours you put in. What it's really about is like

720
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: picking the right things to work on and making sure

721
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: that sort of the majority of my best hours of

722
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:55,320
Speaker 1: the day, my most energetic, my most focused times of days,

723
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,359
Speaker 1: time of day is spent on the things that I

724
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: think is important because you can only control kind of

725
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 1: your results and your output to a certain extent. But basically, yes,

726
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: I've never thought thought about it as ours as much

727
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: as just like, am I doing the things that I

728
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 1: want to be doing and the things that I think

729
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: are valuable? If so, that's that's really all I can

730
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: ask of myself, because I honestly can't always kind of

731
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: predict how long things will take or exactly what the

732
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: result will be of the work that I'm doing.

733
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 4: That makes complete sense.

734
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 3: Now, my final question for you, for people that want

735
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 3: to know more about you and also find out more

736
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 3: about cin Sama as well.

737
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:41,840
Speaker 4: What is the best way for people to do that?

738
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:46,080
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to know more about me. You

739
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: can just reach out to me personally on Twitter or

740
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 1: just shoot me an email. It's my name A s

741
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,240
Speaker 1: h U t O s h at sun sama dot com.

742
00:38:56,239 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: That's s U N s A m A dot com.

743
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you wanted to try sin sama for

744
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: planning out your workdays, just head over to sinsama dot

745
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: com and give it a shot.

746
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 3: Fantastic, awesome, Well, Ashatash I've loved chatting with you and

747
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 3: just nerding out on productivity stuff. It's been awesome, So

748
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 3: thank you so much for your time.

749
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:22,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was great. Thanks thanks for taking the time today.

750
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 4: That is it for today's show.

751
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,959
Speaker 3: If you liked my chat with Ashittagh, then maybe share

752
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 3: it with someone that you think would also appreciate it.

753
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 3: And if you're feeling in the mood to maybe leave

754
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 3: a review for how I work in Apple Podcasts or

755
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,360
Speaker 3: if you listen to the show, that would be awesome.

756
00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 3: And thank you for all the hundreds of people that

757
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 3: have done that. I'm deeply appreciative. So that's it for

758
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 3: today and I will see you next time.