Speaker 1: Instead of focusing my energy on what I don't want
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: I e.
Speaker 1: Don't check Twitter, don't check Facebook, don't check YouTube, don't check.
Speaker 2: Slack, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I try to just put all of my energy and
Speaker 1: kind of focus on what do I want to do
Speaker 1: and be very sort of intentional and focused about that.
Speaker 1: And what I find happens is when I say something like, Hey,
Speaker 1: here's what I want to get done today, and I
Speaker 1: just spend less time on whether it's Twitter or or
Speaker 1: whatever other kind of digital distraction because I have this
Speaker 1: like I'm sort of motivated to do what I said
Speaker 1: I was going to do.
Speaker 3: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 3: you use by the world's most successful people to get
Speaker 3: so much out of their day.
Speaker 4: I'm your host, Doctor Amantha.
Speaker 3: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 3: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work.
Speaker 2: Date.
Speaker 3: Hi there, Before we get started on today show, I
Speaker 3: just wanted to do a little call out for listener questions.
Speaker 3: I wanted to experiment with a new format on the
Speaker 3: Tuesday episodes where I answer any questions that you as
Speaker 3: a listener, have on your mind about work and productivity
Speaker 3: and particularly this new world of work. So I'd love
Speaker 3: it if you could send me through anything that's on
Speaker 3: your mind. My email address is Amantha at inventium dot
Speaker 3: com dot au and that's also in the show notes.
Speaker 3: So I look forward to hearing from you. Okay, let's
Speaker 3: get on to today's guest. Who is Ashatosh Priya Dashi.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Ashatosh and I got connected by Judy Anderson, the CEO
Speaker 3: of startup vic because we both spoke at an event
Speaker 3: for startup Vick very recently about productivity and.
Speaker 4: I was so impressed with Asher.
Speaker 3: I feel like he almost out geeks me on the
Speaker 3: productivity front, so I invited him to.
Speaker 4: Be on the show.
Speaker 3: So Ashatosh is the founder of sin Sama, which is
Speaker 3: a startup over in San Francisco that went through the
Speaker 3: very famous and respected Why Combinator program in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Sinsama is a daily planner for elite professionals that helps
Speaker 3: you plan out a focused work day by pulling together
Speaker 3: your tasks from all your tools. And I've been having
Speaker 3: a go at using cin Sama and I reckon it's
Speaker 3: pretty awesome. It kind of takes what I do in
Speaker 3: more of an analog way and helps make it a
Speaker 3: little bit easier to do and streamline things. So Ashatosh
Speaker 3: has spent most of the last decade building and launching
Speaker 3: productivity hardware and software. So he's thought so much about
Speaker 3: productivity and his goal is to build products that help
Speaker 3: us navigate our work in life mindfully and intentionally. So
Speaker 3: I really love this chat. I feel like there's a
Speaker 3: lot of really interesting strategies that Ashatash thinks about and
Speaker 3: has experimented with in his own life and also in
Speaker 3: his startup. There's certainly quite a few strategies that I
Speaker 3: was inspired to try out that I hadn't come across before.
Speaker 3: So on that note, let's head to Ashotage to hear
Speaker 3: about how he works. Ashatash, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to be speaking to you.
Speaker 3: I feel like you're maybe even more of a productivity
Speaker 3: nerd than I am.
Speaker 4: Possibly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, the last time we spoke, I was I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, you're almost like a productivity scientist or doctor,
Speaker 1: whereas I like to think of myself more as like
Speaker 1: a productivity mystic, where I'm trying to like figure it
Speaker 1: out from my own experience. So I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: just spend some time talking with you.
Speaker 4: H I love that. A productivity mystic. That's a cool label.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I know that you think a lot about rituals, and
Speaker 3: you've got like a lot of rituals and routines in
Speaker 3: your own life. I want to let's start with daily
Speaker 3: and I want to know what are the things that
Speaker 3: you do on a daily basis to help keep you
Speaker 3: focused and productive.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'll start with sort of the foundational
Speaker 1: elements of my daily routine, and that's the stuff that's
Speaker 1: sort of outside of work, and that's you know, sleeping properly.
Speaker 1: I have the flexibility to sort of wake up when
Speaker 1: I want. So for me, one of my big kind
Speaker 1: of daily routines is sleeping until I'm done sleeping. So
Speaker 1: that has been one of the most sort of important
Speaker 1: parts for me to be productive each day, is just
Speaker 1: simply getting enough sleep.
Speaker 3: Can I ask, though, what does that mean to sleep properly?
Speaker 3: Like what are the things that you've put around your
Speaker 3: sleep to help you get a good night's sleep? And also,
Speaker 3: I feel like that's a novel like waking when you
Speaker 3: finish sleeping. I want to dig into both those things.
Speaker 1: I think over the years, I've iterated and kind of
Speaker 1: refined and found the things that help me like both
Speaker 1: fall asleep, stay asleep, and sleep well. So and I've
Speaker 1: experimented with a lot of things. But i'd say, if
Speaker 1: we're kind of talking about what's my current sort of
Speaker 1: stack for sleep, if you will these days, it's really
Speaker 1: just the basics, like close the blinds, close the windows,
Speaker 1: get the fan going so that it stays cool even
Speaker 1: with the windows closed. We don't have central air. I
Speaker 1: sleep with earplugs because we live in a downtown area
Speaker 1: so it can be very loud. And I found that,
Speaker 1: like those little things, they kind of add up to
Speaker 1: just give me much better, better sleep quality. So nothing
Speaker 1: really sort of groundbreaking, just putting a lot of little
Speaker 1: pieces together to make sure that I'm kind of getting RESTful,
Speaker 1: high quality sleep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then how do you know when you're done sleeping?
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's an obvious question, but I
Speaker 3: feel like most people in the world would probably have
Speaker 3: no awareness of that because we're being driven by other
Speaker 3: people's schedules.
Speaker 4: So how do you know.
Speaker 1: When I open my eyes of the morning, then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm awake, So I guess we're going to get at
Speaker 1: it today.
Speaker 4: All right, So you're just waking naturally with no alarm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are some sort of natural elements
Speaker 1: that sort of nudge me out of my sleep, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, just the light and the noise from
Speaker 1: the outside starting to kind of pick up, or you know,
Speaker 1: my wife starting her kind of daily routine and those
Speaker 1: kind of things, like they're kind of like in the
Speaker 1: background and they kind of push me out of my
Speaker 1: sleep a little bit. But I don't kind of use
Speaker 1: an alarm clock or anything like that.
Speaker 3: So when you're done sleeping, what then happens for your
Speaker 3: for your daily routine?
Speaker 1: For me, the first thing I do is just sit
Speaker 1: quietly and drink coffee. I have like a really slow
Speaker 1: kind of boot up in the morning, from like the
Speaker 1: point where I open my eyes to the point where
Speaker 1: I'm like sort of excited about the day is like
Speaker 1: a solid twenty minutes or so. So I'll usually have
Speaker 1: have my coffee and I'll do a variety of things
Speaker 1: just kind of depending on my mood on a given day,
Speaker 1: I might start by just sitting and staring out the
Speaker 1: window and drinking my coffee. I may read something that
Speaker 1: I was I've been reading, or you know, some days,
Speaker 1: I may just scroll through Instagram because that's what I'm
Speaker 1: feeling like, So I switch it up and I'm not
Speaker 1: sort of tied to the routine of you know, this
Speaker 1: is exactly what I do. And I'm sure we can
Speaker 1: probably talk about this more in depth later. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I found is having a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of smaller routines that kind of match my mood
Speaker 1: and energy for a particular day. So I don't try
Speaker 1: to do all of the exact same things every single
Speaker 1: day as much as like, you know, what are the
Speaker 1: things that I, you know, need to get done today,
Speaker 1: Like how is my energy, Like what other obligations do
Speaker 1: I have, And which of my like kind of sequences
Speaker 1: of routines that I have that I like will kind
Speaker 1: of help me get the most out.
Speaker 2: Of this day.
Speaker 4: That's interesting, and so is that quite conscious?
Speaker 3: Then You've sort of got a series of different routines
Speaker 3: that I guess asserted to different moods or states that
Speaker 3: maybe you want to create or that you're in and
Speaker 3: then you'll kind of like deliberately go about sort of
Speaker 3: matching that.
Speaker 4: Is it as conscious as that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it's it's it's semi conscious.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of an intuition developed over just working
Speaker 1: through so many days sort of alone as an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: where you have to kind of figure out what you
Speaker 1: want and there's not a lot of like sort of
Speaker 1: external stimuli to push you to do certain things.
Speaker 2: It's all sort of self motivated.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think of it as, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: a big basketball fan, and so I kind of think
Speaker 1: of it as almost like you're just reacting to the situation.
Speaker 1: So you may have wanted to go one way and
Speaker 1: sort of score the ball today, but it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's a bunch of you know, defenders in that direction.
Speaker 1: So like what is what is like your move? Like
Speaker 1: how are you going to kind of adapt to the day.
Speaker 1: So some days I wake up and for example, I
Speaker 1: may have gotten a message from a colleague saying like
Speaker 1: uh whatever, like our app is down and like somebody
Speaker 1: needs to do something, and so that those kind of
Speaker 1: things can derail your day. But I've kind of found
Speaker 1: ways to almost kind of cope with that, and later
Speaker 1: in the day I may go through like a Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't usually do this, but maybe now's a good
Speaker 1: time to go for go for a run, have some lunch,
Speaker 1: and that like mini routine kind of resets me so
Speaker 1: that later in the day I might be able to
Speaker 1: kind of refocus my energies.
Speaker 2: And all of this really.
Speaker 1: Is is possible because I have so much flexibility and freedom.
Speaker 1: But don't know if that makes sense that idea of
Speaker 1: like kind of micro routines or they're like moves more
Speaker 1: than they are kind of routines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: I want to know, like, what else are you doing
Speaker 3: on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Exercise is a is a really big one. That's something
Speaker 1: I do pretty much every day. Some sort of kind
Speaker 1: of personal spiritual or meditation practice is another thing that
Speaker 1: I do on a daily basis. And then the rest
Speaker 1: of my day is pretty much work, so that that
Speaker 1: kind of rounds out the vast majority of my time,
Speaker 1: especially on working days.
Speaker 3: And I know that you have a daily planning ritual,
Speaker 3: which I think you do the evening before the next
Speaker 3: day to set out what your priorities are going to
Speaker 3: be can you can you talk me through what that
Speaker 3: looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I sort of plan out my day Almost twice.
Speaker 1: I do a light planning the night before where I
Speaker 1: kind of say like, Okay, these are the things that
Speaker 1: I want to do, and obviously I use sin sama
Speaker 1: for that, which is my company, and sin sama is
Speaker 1: basically a guided daily planner. It kind of walks you
Speaker 1: through the process of planning out your work day and
Speaker 1: pulling things in from.
Speaker 2: All of your tools.
Speaker 1: So I use sin sama to kind of plan out
Speaker 1: here are the things I want to do today or
Speaker 1: tomorrow rather, and then the next morning sort of after
Speaker 1: I've had my coffee and I'm sitting down, that's when
Speaker 1: I'll actually kind of get into the to the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty and see it, you know, were there are things
Speaker 1: that came into my email or kind of requests that
Speaker 1: came in from colleagues that I need to stitch into
Speaker 1: the to the fabric of my work day.
Speaker 3: When you're planning at your day. Because I've I've been
Speaker 3: trying out sin sama and finding it really helpful and
Speaker 3: really interesting. Do you leave buffer time? Because I find
Speaker 3: where I can sometimes fall down when I've been using
Speaker 3: this process and I sort of use it in a
Speaker 3: sort of used a similar process before trying out cin
Speaker 3: Sama is that if I don't leave buffer time, then
Speaker 3: my day can get a bit chaotic, like if lots
Speaker 3: of things are taking longer than I thought that they
Speaker 3: would take. So what does that look like for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely I do two things. I sort of
Speaker 1: double buffer. I leave buffer time in my day, and
Speaker 1: I sort of overestimate how long I think things will take,
Speaker 1: and so that gives me just usually plenty of time.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's one of the things about estimating work
Speaker 1: is that it's basically impossible, but you try and do
Speaker 1: your best.
Speaker 2: So what I try to do.
Speaker 1: Is when I'm planning out my day, I kind of
Speaker 1: add time estimates to all of my tasks, even little
Speaker 1: tasks that may only take five or ten minutes. I
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I'm going to spend five minutes
Speaker 1: on this or ten minutes on that, and I try
Speaker 1: to get it to the point where the sort of
Speaker 1: total sum of my day is around seven hours, and
Speaker 1: I'm typically in front of the computer kind of working
Speaker 1: for longer than that.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of I found over.
Speaker 1: At this point, like years of when I plan out
Speaker 1: my day, if I sort of allocate about seven seven
Speaker 1: and a half kind of at max, that's my total
Speaker 1: capacity for how much sort of focused, heads down work
Speaker 1: I can get in a day. And now, of course
Speaker 1: you'll have days where you know, just some sort of
Speaker 1: emergency comes up in the middle of the day and
Speaker 1: you can't always predict those things, but sort of on average,
Speaker 1: that number has been the sweet spot for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's interesting to work out what that
Speaker 3: sweet spot is and does that include meetings as well?
Speaker 4: That's seven hour total.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's sort of like all of my work
Speaker 1: related activities. So meetings plus like tasks, and I only
Speaker 1: have about two days a week where I have meetings
Speaker 1: and tasks on the same day. Otherwise I try extremely
Speaker 1: hard to separate those two so that they don't blend.
Speaker 1: And again, I have that flexibility and so I I
Speaker 1: take full advantage of it.
Speaker 4: Ah, really, so how does that work?
Speaker 3: Do you have almost a weekly rhythm, like days that
Speaker 3: you'll do meetings and then days that will be more
Speaker 3: for deep work and maybe shallow work as well.
Speaker 4: What does that look like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I'll give you the kind of the
Speaker 1: structure of my week. So Monday for me is just
Speaker 1: kind of my miscellaneous variety day and looking forward to
Speaker 1: the week. So that's when I have like my meeting
Speaker 1: with the rest of my team, and then I just
Speaker 1: kind of do any sort of small stuff that just
Speaker 1: has kind of piled up, and I just that's a
Speaker 1: day where I'm really just cranking and looking for like
Speaker 1: a lot of throughput. Tuesday is the day I focus
Speaker 1: entirely on our customers, So I have a number of
Speaker 1: calls with customers, I do customer support tickets, and I
Speaker 1: review all things like customer surveys. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I do all of that on one day is
Speaker 1: basically that it allows me to sort of concentrate all
Speaker 1: of my focus and attention on what are our customers thinking,
Speaker 1: what do they need, as opposed to kind of dispersing
Speaker 1: that thought and focus throughout the week. And then Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Thursday are deep work days, so I don't have
Speaker 1: any meetings at all on those days, and that those days,
Speaker 1: you know, each week, it changes what I might what
Speaker 1: I might do on those days, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes like building a feature or doing some product development
Speaker 1: or designing something. It's it's that kind of work that
Speaker 1: happens on Wednesday and Thursday for me, and then Friday
Speaker 1: is a day for reflection for me. So I'll review
Speaker 1: metrics and dashboards, I'll do my one on ones with
Speaker 1: my teammates, so we do those all sort of asynchronously
Speaker 1: over email. And I also do my kind of one
Speaker 1: on one and sort of thinking ahead for the next
Speaker 1: week with my co founder on Fridays, So they're kind
Speaker 1: of thematic in a sense.
Speaker 2: The days.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: I find that super fascinating and that makes so much
Speaker 3: sense just to reduce the context switching and so you
Speaker 3: can just really admit to the thing that you're doing on.
Speaker 4: Whatever day it is. I like that a lot.
Speaker 3: I want to know in terms of quarterly or even
Speaker 3: annual rituals or planning cycles or things that you find
Speaker 3: really serve you that you repeat sort of on that
Speaker 3: sort of longer cycle. Are there things that you do quarterly,
Speaker 3: six monthly, annually to help you keep focused on what matters.
Speaker 1: I actually don't have any goal setting or planning rituals
Speaker 1: outside of my weekly and daily ones. And what we
Speaker 1: do at least as a company is when we feel
Speaker 1: like our longer term sort of roadmap has reached the
Speaker 1: end of its life cycle. That's when we'll decide, like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's time to kind of refresh this either because we've
Speaker 1: learned some new stuff and it just feels out of
Speaker 1: date and not kind of aligned with maybe what our
Speaker 1: customers want, and that's kind of when we do it.
Speaker 1: But like we have as a company, haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: that level of sort of process yet. And I also
Speaker 1: haven't a personally found that to be something particularly valuable
Speaker 1: to me, because I find that if I'm being thoughtful
Speaker 1: day after day and week after week, the things that
Speaker 1: I want to do on longer term time skills, they
Speaker 1: just kind of tend to work out for me. And
Speaker 1: maybe it's just kind of how I think, but it's
Speaker 1: easier for me to think about, like what are the
Speaker 1: things I want to do today and next week, as
Speaker 1: opposed to like, what are the things I want to
Speaker 1: get done in a year. One of the things I've
Speaker 1: always struggled with is when you're thinking about really large
Speaker 1: time skills, and for me, that's like anything larger than
Speaker 1: two weeks, it just feels so kind of abstract. It's
Speaker 1: just never something that has resonated with me.
Speaker 4: I can definitely relate like I do.
Speaker 3: I go as far out well, I guess Inventium has
Speaker 3: annual company goals which help everyone set their individual goals
Speaker 3: and kind of know where we're heading.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I can definitely relate to that.
Speaker 3: My natural disposition is to be like you, but I
Speaker 3: feel like I've tried to at least look twelve months
Speaker 3: out and then my personal goals is six months at
Speaker 3: which kind of I've sort of gotten used to, but
Speaker 3: I completely understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 4: How does that then.
Speaker 3: Work in terms of the team and your team knowing
Speaker 3: what they're working on if your preference is for kind
Speaker 3: of just sort of thinking about the week ahead and
Speaker 3: relying on.
Speaker 4: Obviously very up to date data to make those decisions.
Speaker 1: To date, it hasn't really been sort of an issue
Speaker 1: for us, And again, we're such a small team where
Speaker 1: we're only five people, so we're able to be a
Speaker 1: bit more agile and kind of change direction quickly. And
Speaker 1: for us, it's like all of the kind of planning
Speaker 1: that we do or sort of anytime we come up
Speaker 1: with like a hey, here's a roadmap for like the
Speaker 1: things we want to accomplish in the next three months,
Speaker 1: it's often within the first month that we've learned something
Speaker 1: new from customers or usage, or from the data that
Speaker 1: we have about the business that's sort of invalidates that.
Speaker 1: Every time we try to plan ahead, we find that
Speaker 1: there's something new that comes up that is just so
Speaker 1: much more obviously impactful. So in terms of the rest
Speaker 1: of the team, it's so easy for them to just say,
Speaker 1: here's what customers have been saying, or here's what we
Speaker 1: decided was like the highest priority things, and we'll just
Speaker 1: kind of chip away at those.
Speaker 3: And how do you prioritize which features to build, because
Speaker 3: I imagine you must be getting a lot of customer
Speaker 3: feedback and things that they would like to see. How
Speaker 3: does that decision making process work for you and your team.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain this, but there's some things that
Speaker 1: just feel obvious. So we kind of, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we may generate like a like whatever, like fifteen ideas
Speaker 1: of things that we want to do, for example, and
Speaker 1: if there's anything on there that just doesn't feel obvious,
Speaker 1: we just discard it immediately and stick to the ones
Speaker 1: that are obvious. Within those, we usually have some sort
Speaker 1: of guiding usually a metric that we're trying to optimize for.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we've been working on recently
Speaker 1: to give you a kind of a practical example, is
Speaker 1: we noticed that people who kind of finished the process
Speaker 1: of planning out their day two times at least two
Speaker 1: times in the product were had a fifty percent chance
Speaker 1: of upgrading to a pro plan. Obviously, that's like a
Speaker 1: great sort of correlation there. So you know, we just
Speaker 1: looked at each feature on at roadmap and we're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: which of these things will either help people get through
Speaker 1: those first two days of planning their day and which
Speaker 1: of those things will also kind of help them have
Speaker 1: a good experience around planning their day. And so just
Speaker 1: like looking at that and having kind of a metric
Speaker 1: in mind that we're trying to optimize for makes it
Speaker 1: easier to evaluate like which things should we build. And
Speaker 1: from time to time, we you know, we change what
Speaker 1: metric we're looking at, Like right now we're looking at
Speaker 1: that kind of activation metric. There were times where we're
Speaker 1: kind of focused on, Okay, why do people who have
Speaker 1: been using the product end up stop using the product
Speaker 1: and what's causing churn? And so we always just try
Speaker 1: to have a particular metric in mind when we're making decisions.
Speaker 1: But again, you can't always predict which features will kind
Speaker 1: of move the needle, So there is just that constant
Speaker 1: need for experimentation.
Speaker 3: Something that you've written about. I imagine you're a fan
Speaker 3: of Paul Graham, having graduated from Y Combinator, and in
Speaker 3: something you wrote, you referenced his essay Lives Too Short,
Speaker 3: where he writes about pruning bullshit from his life, and
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could talk about what this
Speaker 3: means and how you apply that in your own life.
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about this the other day.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to fill your workday with stuff that's
Speaker 1: tangentially relevant or not totally obvious how it helps your
Speaker 1: end goal. And for me, it's like the way I
Speaker 1: try to sort of remove bullshit from my working life
Speaker 1: is like I look at everything that I plan to
Speaker 1: do in a given day and I just ask myself,
Speaker 1: is this thing like obviously and directly correlated with the
Speaker 1: results that I want. If it's two or three steps
Speaker 1: away from what I want, that's usually for me a
Speaker 1: good indicator that this thing is probably bullshit. So you know,
Speaker 1: something like, for example, like you get invited to, like
Speaker 1: a networking event or something like that. In the kind
Speaker 1: of work I do, that's usually like a couple steps
Speaker 1: away from having a direct impact on like the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm working on, for example, improving activation and getting
Speaker 1: more customers to use Sinsama. Maybe I meet someone there
Speaker 1: and maybe that person helps me get some attention for
Speaker 1: some some et cetera. It just feels like it's not
Speaker 1: obvious enough, and so anyway, my basic point is I
Speaker 1: just try to do the things that feel so obvious
Speaker 1: and urgent and important and just forget about the rest.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that answers your question, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of how I think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it absolutely does answer my question, because I feel
Speaker 3: like they're like, not many people are doing this, and
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, particularly in large corporates who
Speaker 3: form a lot of Inventium's clients. I think about what
Speaker 3: they're doing during the day, and I think about friends
Speaker 3: of mine that work for, say, what are the big
Speaker 3: banks or something like that, and I just feel like
Speaker 3: meetings in particular, there are so many meetings that I
Speaker 3: think would be classed as bullshit, as things that are
Speaker 3: two or three steps away from what really matters in
Speaker 3: terms of making meaningful progress. I just think it's a
Speaker 3: really interesting barometer that perhaps not that many people are using.
Speaker 3: I like, how you think consciously about that? And so
Speaker 3: is that something that you that is almost in the
Speaker 3: back of your mind every day as you're looking at
Speaker 3: your day and planning the things that you're going to
Speaker 3: get done today.
Speaker 4: Does that essentially pass the bullshit test?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I think one of the really interesting things that
Speaker 1: happens when you sort of plan your day often, and
Speaker 1: by often, I mean every day, you just you kind
Speaker 1: of build these safety checks into your day, and it
Speaker 1: just makes it harder for you to kind of accept
Speaker 1: bullshit into your day. So it's it's almost like a practice,
Speaker 1: like when somebody emails you and they're like, hey, can
Speaker 1: we get on a quick call or whatever it's And
Speaker 1: I've done plenty of I've said yes plenty of times
Speaker 1: when I when I really shouldn't and shouldn't have and
Speaker 1: I took a meeting that was basically bullshit, And it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a practice and an awareness of knowing
Speaker 1: like Okay, like I've been down this road before and
Speaker 1: there was just like these things are not really that
Speaker 1: valuable and yeah, you just eventually just it becomes second nature.
Speaker 2: I think something.
Speaker 3: Else that I know that you apply in your working
Speaker 3: life and think about is Parkinson's Law. And for those
Speaker 3: that are not familiar with Parkinson's Law, it's basically saying
Speaker 3: that the task will stretch to as long as the
Speaker 3: time that you give it. So if you have a
Speaker 3: report to write and you've blocked out an hour in
Speaker 3: your diary to write it, it will.
Speaker 4: Take an hour. Same thing applies to meetings.
Speaker 3: And I want to know, how do you think about
Speaker 3: Parkinson's Law in your own working life and how do
Speaker 3: you apply it.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most interesting applications I've found
Speaker 1: for Parkinson's Law is to basically pick almost insanely small
Speaker 1: time periods for certain things and try to force your
Speaker 1: problem and solution into that space. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that we did in the really early days of
Speaker 1: building Sinzama is that we started operating on two day sprints.
Speaker 1: So basically what we would do is we were a
Speaker 1: really small team at the time, there was just four
Speaker 1: of us. So on Monday we would say like, hey,
Speaker 1: these are the Monday morning we're going to build. Each
Speaker 1: of us would say, hey, these are the things I'm
Speaker 1: going to build, and we would sort of demo it
Speaker 1: and ship it to like our production website by Tuesday evening,
Speaker 1: and then Wednesday morning we would repeat the same process
Speaker 1: and demo it to the team on Thursday afternoon and
Speaker 1: then ship it. And the really interesting thing was, basically
Speaker 1: we gave ourselves this kind of like two days.
Speaker 2: It was really like a day and a.
Speaker 1: Half to make progress, and a lot of really interesting
Speaker 1: things happen. One we figured out ways to take what
Speaker 1: we thought were really hard problems and just break them
Speaker 1: down into things that could be done in two days.
Speaker 1: So a very practical example was we wanted to build
Speaker 1: integrations with other services, and usually the development time on
Speaker 1: something like that is just a lot longer, and so
Speaker 1: we were sort of forced to find really creative solutions
Speaker 1: to how can we make our users and customers get
Speaker 1: the value of having kind of an integrated experience in
Speaker 1: the app in a way that it's something we can
Speaker 1: build in two days. And so we kind of used
Speaker 1: Parkinson's law to force us to one think of new
Speaker 1: ways to solve the problem and not and basically get
Speaker 1: our engine of iteration moving really fast so that we
Speaker 1: could learn a lot faster.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like that a lot because typically people think about,
Speaker 3: you know, the classic like Google design sprint which is
Speaker 3: five days, and then doing that in a day and
Speaker 3: a half ready to ship. I think that's that is
Speaker 3: a really cool application of Parkinson's law.
Speaker 4: When you were talking about that, I was I was thinking, you.
Speaker 3: Know, in my own life, like just challenge of going, okay,
Speaker 3: can I get this task that could take hours actually
Speaker 3: done a whole lot more quickly. And something I do
Speaker 3: every week is I'll generally be writing a column or
Speaker 3: an article or something like that for some media publication.
Speaker 3: That tends to be a weekly task that is on
Speaker 3: my list to do. And I know myself, I know
Speaker 3: that I could easily spend hours doing that, but typically
Speaker 3: when I'm time boxing my diary and essentially setting a
Speaker 3: meeting with myself to write the article, I'll generally keep
Speaker 3: it to one hour, sometimes ninety minutes.
Speaker 4: And I'm almost like surprised that, Oh.
Speaker 3: Hang, I know I can do that, and it just
Speaker 3: forces me to be very focused and work very hard
Speaker 3: and get it done.
Speaker 4: So I can absolutely relate to that.
Speaker 1: I think that's like one of the most important things
Speaker 1: you can kind of keep in mind when you're also
Speaker 1: sort of planning out your day. Is when you say like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think I can do all this stuff in like
Speaker 1: seven hours. You kind of start off the day then
Speaker 1: feeling like, hey, if I stay focused, I can get
Speaker 1: this all done. Which is it kind of gets the
Speaker 1: like the flywheel of motivation inside of you going. And
Speaker 1: so for like the same thing, even on like a
Speaker 1: small scale, when you're like, hey, I'm gonna I'm going
Speaker 1: to get this done in an hour, you actually get
Speaker 1: it done in an hour. And if you didn't have
Speaker 1: that sort of almost artificial time constraint that you had
Speaker 1: created for yourself, you just you kind of move through
Speaker 1: the task with a bit more passivity than you would
Speaker 1: have otherwise. And it's like you're making that commitment to
Speaker 1: yourself and you're almost kind of challenging yourself like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I do this? And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of really kind of effective and productive behavior comes
Speaker 1: from setting basically like a goal or something to kind
Speaker 1: of strive for when you're when you're working towards something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: And now I imagine that there are probably listeners going, yeah,
Speaker 3: look that that's all well and good, but what about
Speaker 3: the myriad of distractions, particularly digital distractions that are out
Speaker 3: there and pulling our focus away from the task.
Speaker 4: What strategies have you.
Speaker 3: Found most effective to help keep those digital distractions in
Speaker 3: check and not get lured in by them.
Speaker 1: This might sound crazy, but I've just learned to embrace
Speaker 1: them and live with them and use them and kind
Speaker 1: of be okay with them. And instead of focusing my
Speaker 1: energy on what I don't want to do, ie, don't
Speaker 1: check Twitter, don't check Facebook, don't check YouTube, don't check slack,
Speaker 1: et cetera, I try to just put all of my
Speaker 1: energy and kind of focus on what do I want
Speaker 1: to do and be very sort of intentional and focused
Speaker 1: about that. And what I find happens is when I
Speaker 1: say something like, Hey, here's what I want to get
Speaker 1: done today, and then I also tell, you know, my colleagues,
Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is what I'm planning to get done today,
Speaker 1: I sort of just naturally kind of focus my time,
Speaker 1: energy and attention on my work and the things that
Speaker 1: I actually want to do, and I just spend less
Speaker 1: time on whether it's Twitter or whatever other kind of
Speaker 1: digital distraction because I have this like I'm sort of
Speaker 1: motivated to do what I said I was going to
Speaker 1: do if that makes sense, And so it's not like
Speaker 1: I don't check those things at all. Now I do,
Speaker 1: but I'm able to just kind of push it aside
Speaker 1: and get back to what I want to do because
Speaker 1: I have that kind of goal and that commitment both
Speaker 1: to myself and to the people I work with.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: It actually reminds me of something I had Adam Grant
Speaker 3: on the show, the organizational psychologist from Wharton, very early on,
Speaker 3: and something he said stuck with me because we were
Speaker 3: talking about checking things like Facebook, and he will, you know,
Speaker 3: he will almost like let himself check social media almost
Speaker 3: as a you know, a several minute almost reward, I guess,
Speaker 3: after doing you know, a sprint of deep work, let's say.
Speaker 3: And he said, you know, if you're finding that you
Speaker 3: want to stay on Facebook for longer, and Facebook is
Speaker 3: suddenly seeming a lot more interesting than your actual work,
Speaker 3: then you might want to think about whether they are
Speaker 3: actually in the right job if that is becoming more
Speaker 3: interesting than the work that you do. It reminds me
Speaker 3: of that, and I feel like that is it's a
Speaker 3: really interesting thing to reflect on. I think when people
Speaker 3: are being pulled by digital distractions. Are you actually legitimately
Speaker 3: inherently interested in the work that you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think it's like what happens is when you say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: these are the things I want to do at work,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of assuming you're you know, you're interested
Speaker 1: and motivated and excited by that. You just kind of
Speaker 1: naturally get more satisfaction out of doing that, and you
Speaker 1: don't think and even if you are taking like a
Speaker 1: Twitter break or a Facebook break, it's just not as
Speaker 1: deep and fulfilling as the work you're doing, and you
Speaker 1: sort of naturally just want to get back to it,
Speaker 1: even if you spent you know, five minutes checking Twitter.
Speaker 1: And I think for me, I've just found it easier
Speaker 1: to forgive myself and just be okay with the fact
Speaker 1: that I sometimes scroll through garbage and that's okay, Like
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me a bad person. Maybe it does,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just I just find that
Speaker 1: so much easier.
Speaker 3: And I guess, like having said that, you know, I
Speaker 3: think we also all have days of low motivation where
Speaker 3: everything just feels a bit hard. What do you do
Speaker 3: for yourself when you're starting your workday and you're just
Speaker 3: feeling flat. Maybe you've had a bad night's sleep. I
Speaker 3: don't know, Like, how what do you do on those days?
Speaker 1: That's when I'll try to adjust and see kind of
Speaker 1: why am I feeling low motivation that day?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Is it that I, you know, didn't get enough sleep.
Speaker 1: In that case, I might just try to do something simple,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'll just get through my inbox, kind
Speaker 1: of get the day started, and then take a nap,
Speaker 1: have some lunch, and then try again. So I don't
Speaker 1: try to do things that just feel like they clash
Speaker 1: with how I'm feeling. Obviously, I'm not saying you should
Speaker 1: never kind of push through suboptimal feelings. I think there's
Speaker 1: value in that, but I try to listen and feel
Speaker 1: how I'm feeling and act accordingly.
Speaker 3: Now you're right in the heart of tech innovation land
Speaker 3: in San Francisco, and I want to know what your
Speaker 3: favorite software or applications and also gadgets that you're using
Speaker 3: at the moment, or maybe that you're feeling a bit
Speaker 3: excited about trying out.
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 1: So one of the products I'm probably the most excited
Speaker 1: about is an email application called tempo. And so the
Speaker 1: reason I'm so excited about this product is, well, one,
Speaker 1: they kind of built the product around a workflow rather
Speaker 1: than it being a tools. Just like a tool that
Speaker 1: is about kind of speed and power and flexibility, it's
Speaker 1: really about helping you, as a user, as a person
Speaker 1: who has to do email, have a good workflow around email.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that I love about what
Speaker 1: they did is that they turned off all of the
Speaker 1: notifications by default, so you don't see new emails except
Speaker 1: for two times a day. And I thought that that's
Speaker 1: almost a courageous decision by the product designers to say, like,
Speaker 1: we're going to take the most addicting part of email
Speaker 1: and we're going to turn it off because we know
Speaker 1: what you really want deep down inside is to not
Speaker 1: be addicted to these intermittent rewards in your email and
Speaker 1: you want to kind of handle your email on your terms.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say it's courageous is because as
Speaker 1: a person who's designing a product, one of the things
Speaker 1: you want is your product to be sort of sticky
Speaker 1: and addicting. But I think they're doing it in a
Speaker 1: way that's almost virtuous, unlike something a product like Slack
Speaker 1: which just sort of praise on our desire for kind
Speaker 1: of intermittent rewards throughout the day.
Speaker 3: I love the sound of that, and I think it's
Speaker 3: really interesting these companies that are designing email around workflow,
Speaker 3: Like I think obviously about Hey, which I've been trying
Speaker 3: out for my personal email from the creators of base Camp,
Speaker 3: and I'm really liking that. And I'm finding for the
Speaker 3: first time my personal inbox is very clean, unlike how
Speaker 3: it was when I was just on Gmail. And look
Speaker 3: a couple of other questions I had for you. I
Speaker 3: know that for you, you know from what I've read
Speaker 3: and hearing you talk. You know, when you think about productivity,
Speaker 3: it's about output, not ours. And I feel like this
Speaker 3: is an important distinction, particularly in the world of remote working,
Speaker 3: where you know, when we're in the office, it's really
Speaker 3: easy to see productivity correlating, you know, even though it's
Speaker 3: quite nonsensical with hours spent in the office. But now
Speaker 3: you know people that have managers that don't really know
Speaker 3: how long their team is sitting in front of their
Speaker 3: computers or being productive for kind of has to be
Speaker 3: about output. But I think that's a hard mental shift
Speaker 3: to make, and I want to know for you, was
Speaker 3: there a point where you were aware of making that
Speaker 3: shift around productivity being about output instead of hours or
Speaker 3: have you always kind of thought about it like that.
Speaker 1: I think for me it's it's definitely not about the
Speaker 1: hours you put in. What it's really about is like
Speaker 1: picking the right things to work on and making sure
Speaker 1: that sort of the majority of my best hours of
Speaker 1: the day, my most energetic, my most focused times of days,
Speaker 1: time of day is spent on the things that I
Speaker 1: think is important because you can only control kind of
Speaker 1: your results and your output to a certain extent. But basically, yes,
Speaker 1: I've never thought thought about it as ours as much
Speaker 1: as just like, am I doing the things that I
Speaker 1: want to be doing and the things that I think
Speaker 1: are valuable? If so, that's that's really all I can
Speaker 1: ask of myself, because I honestly can't always kind of
Speaker 1: predict how long things will take or exactly what the
Speaker 1: result will be of the work that I'm doing.
Speaker 4: That makes complete sense.
Speaker 3: Now, my final question for you, for people that want
Speaker 3: to know more about you and also find out more
Speaker 3: about cin Sama as well.
Speaker 4: What is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to know more about me. You
Speaker 1: can just reach out to me personally on Twitter or
Speaker 1: just shoot me an email. It's my name A s
Speaker 1: h U t O s h at sun sama dot com.
Speaker 1: That's s U N s A m A dot com.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you wanted to try sin sama for
Speaker 1: planning out your workdays, just head over to sinsama dot
Speaker 1: com and give it a shot.
Speaker 3: Fantastic, awesome, Well, Ashatash I've loved chatting with you and
Speaker 3: just nerding out on productivity stuff. It's been awesome, So
Speaker 3: thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was great. Thanks thanks for taking the time today.
Speaker 4: That is it for today's show.
Speaker 3: If you liked my chat with Ashittagh, then maybe share
Speaker 3: it with someone that you think would also appreciate it.
Speaker 3: And if you're feeling in the mood to maybe leave
Speaker 3: a review for how I work in Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 3: if you listen to the show, that would be awesome.
Speaker 3: And thank you for all the hundreds of people that
Speaker 3: have done that. I'm deeply appreciative. So that's it for
Speaker 3: today and I will see you next time.