Speaker 1: Do you ever find yourself stuck overthinking decisions instead of
Speaker 1: taking action? What if you had a set of simple,
Speaker 1: proven strategies that didn't just help you start making decisions,
Speaker 1: but make the whole process faster, easier, and far more effective.
Speaker 1: Jake Knapp has faced countless tough decisions, and it's clear
Speaker 1: that he's mastered the art of making brilliant ones. Jake
Speaker 1: isn't just a best selling author. He's the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: truly amazing ideas. He's the New York Times best selling
Speaker 1: author of Sprint and Make Time, the creator of the
Speaker 1: design sprint that you might have heard of, which is
Speaker 1: a groundbreaking process for solving complex problems and testing big ideas,
Speaker 1: and his method has been embraced by some of the
Speaker 1: world's most influential companies, including Google, Microsoft, Uber, Meta, Lego,
Speaker 1: and countless others. Now, in his latest book, Click, he
Speaker 1: aims to help teams pinpoint the right problem to solve
Speaker 1: and develop solutions in just forty eight hours. And with
Speaker 1: his wealth of expertise, I was eager to tap into
Speaker 1: Jake's insights on transforming our decision making processes. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we explore his approach that ensures you involve your team
Speaker 1: rather than shut them out of decision making, and how
Speaker 1: you can structure your meetings to guarantee optimal outcomes. Jake
Speaker 1: also shares why you should be declining certain commitments if
Speaker 1: they don't genuinely align with your priorities or passions. Welcome
Speaker 1: to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and
Speaker 1: strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: Making a complex decision often means we have to work
Speaker 1: through a lot of different perspectives and angles. But how
Speaker 1: do we actually do that? Well, it turns out Jake
Speaker 1: has some answers.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is going to come across as a shameless
Speaker 2: book plug right off of the bat, but the new
Speaker 2: book is about this new sprint process that we run
Speaker 2: with the startups we invest in, and a part of
Speaker 2: the process is making complex decisions. So your startup, you're
Speaker 2: beginning your company, and you're trying to figure out a
Speaker 2: lot of things. Who's our customer? What problem are we
Speaker 2: solving for them? We cover all this stuff in this
Speaker 2: foundation sprint, which is what the book Click is about.
Speaker 2: And the second half is sort of Okay, we've established
Speaker 2: a bunch of these baseline things, what do we think
Speaker 2: is going to make us stand out in the market.
Speaker 2: But then there are a lot of different approaches we
Speaker 2: might take to doing whatever that is, which is the
Speaker 2: best approach? And so there's a structure that we use
Speaker 2: to help think through this complex decision where you want
Speaker 2: to weigh different perspectives, different ways of looking at it,
Speaker 2: and not fall prey to the biases that we all
Speaker 2: have about you know, we have limitations in our brain.
Speaker 2: There's only so much we can keep in our heads
Speaker 2: at once, so we have recency bias and tend to
Speaker 2: have a hard time wing the thing that we just
Speaker 2: heard versus the thing that we heard at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the meeting, or earlier today or three weeks ago. Anyway,
Speaker 2: in my day to day life, I also have questions
Speaker 2: decisions to make that are too complicated to easily weigh.
Speaker 2: And so one of the experiments I've been doing recently
Speaker 2: is using the same method we use on our startups
Speaker 2: on myself. It's charting out these different perspectives, looking at
Speaker 2: them all at once, and trying to see, okay, which
Speaker 2: of these perspectives really is the right way to look
Speaker 2: at it, and perhaps is there a path, does one
Speaker 2: solution or one answer consistently show up in kind of
Speaker 2: the top right of these charts, which is sort of
Speaker 2: the good part.
Speaker 1: Now, are you talking about magic lenses?
Speaker 2: I am, yeah, this is magic lenses? Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: Can we go into more datail that because I would
Speaker 1: love to hear, like, in your day to day how
Speaker 1: do you use the magic lenses process? And maybe if
Speaker 1: we could go into more detail as to what that involves.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, first I should. I'll preface by saying, in
Speaker 2: my day to day life, it's only a big decision
Speaker 2: that warrants using magic lenses, because when you hear me
Speaker 2: describe magic lenses, you might say, WHOA, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that when I'm picking my lunch,
Speaker 2: you know. So if you're looking at the menu at
Speaker 2: the sandwich shop, this is not the time. But you know,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to decide, if your kid is trying
Speaker 2: to decide what to do after they've graduated from school,
Speaker 2: or if you're trying to decide if you know what
Speaker 2: to do with your career, or you know, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to decide what kind of card to buy, or
Speaker 2: of this nature where it's like, well, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of things to weigh. They are real life issues,
Speaker 2: but they're big. Here's what magic lenses is. It's a
Speaker 2: simple idea, which is that you make a two y
Speaker 2: two chart for every perspective that you think is an
Speaker 2: important perspective for thinking about a question. So, to use
Speaker 2: the example of the car that I just described, you're
Speaker 2: trying to decide what kind of car should I get?
Speaker 2: It can be very overwhelming. There's so many options, you know,
Speaker 2: So one way of thinking about the decision is cost.
Speaker 2: What's the cost of purchasing the car? Where do I
Speaker 2: anticipate the ongoing maintenance or fuel or lack thereof, if
Speaker 2: it's electric, costs might be And so you can imagine
Speaker 2: a two y two chart of cost with you know,
Speaker 2: upfront costs and ongoing costs. And then you might have
Speaker 2: five or ten different cars you're thinking about. You design
Speaker 2: each one a color sticky note and you put them
Speaker 2: on there. And we do a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: in Mirro, which is an online whiteboard, but you might
Speaker 2: do this in real life. Okay, so now I've got
Speaker 2: one chart, and maybe there's one in the top right,
Speaker 2: or someone one or two or three up there look
Speaker 2: pretty good. Well, now we look at something else like
Speaker 2: maybe reliability, or maybe which one's the most fun to drive.
Speaker 2: When I'm working with a startup, there are consistently four
Speaker 2: lenses that are always a good idea for any kind
Speaker 2: of project they might be working on. And the first
Speaker 2: one of those is the pragmatic lens. So if you
Speaker 2: imagine your stereotypical engineer who perhaps is concerned with what's
Speaker 2: the fastest thing to build? What's the most expensive thing
Speaker 2: to build? So we want it, we want the cheap
Speaker 2: to build and you know, fast to build, that would
Speaker 2: be the top right of the pragmatic lens. And then
Speaker 2: a startup should think about growth. So where are there
Speaker 2: the most customers that this solution might reach, and how
Speaker 2: easy is it for people to adopt this thing? And
Speaker 2: we could chart all the options there, and then we
Speaker 2: might think about money. Which of these has the highest
Speaker 2: long term value and the most potential paying customers. Then
Speaker 2: we of course should think about the customer, and in fact,
Speaker 2: this might be the most important lens, which best solves
Speaker 2: the problem that we believe customers have, and which one
Speaker 2: of these is the easiest to use and adopt. And
Speaker 2: so this set of charts. If we plot all of
Speaker 2: our options in color. On those, we can see like
Speaker 2: maybe one, maybe the green one is always in the
Speaker 2: top right, Well, great, maybe we should do that, or
Speaker 2: maybe it's a mix, but one of those feels the
Speaker 2: most right. And when we're doing this with a startup,
Speaker 2: once we've gone through some basic ones, the obvious ones,
Speaker 2: we start to create some new custom fine tune perspectives. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it's a lot to hold in your head even be
Speaker 2: describing it. But the point of this is that I
Speaker 2: bounce from one thing to another. It's like I'm a
Speaker 2: pinball machine in my head. And the same thing happens
Speaker 2: with teams. And when you have a whole team of people,
Speaker 2: even if you just have two founders or three founders,
Speaker 2: they're pinballing around between these things. So when we make
Speaker 2: it plain and we think, if you had a team
Speaker 2: of advisors who have these different perspectives, what would each
Speaker 2: one of them say? And then what are the other
Speaker 2: viewpoints that you think might be interesting, Let's craft a
Speaker 2: chart for those. It's so helpful. It's like if you're
Speaker 2: a Harry Potter fan, there's the pen sieve where they
Speaker 2: take the memories out of their minds, and then you
Speaker 2: can see you can kind of go into the story.
Speaker 1: So how do you know that you've got the right
Speaker 1: or the best lenses when you're thinking through you know,
Speaker 1: cost and pragmaticism and growth and anything else with any
Speaker 1: kind of decision. How do you get to that point
Speaker 1: where you're like, yes, these will be the themes or
Speaker 1: the lens or the criteria for these two by.
Speaker 2: Twos, those four that I mentioned come from our experience
Speaker 2: working with a lot of startups, and it just these
Speaker 2: perspectives would always be useful in every case. So those
Speaker 2: I feel comfortable if you're talking about a business question,
Speaker 2: thinking about the customer, thinking about pragmatism, thinking about money,
Speaker 2: you're running a business, and thinking about growth, you're not
Speaker 2: going to go wrong thinking about those perspectives. But for
Speaker 2: the others, and again this is going to get a
Speaker 2: little nerdy, but what we do is have every possible approach.
Speaker 2: We list as many as we can, and then we
Speaker 2: choose the top few. So you know, if we're working
Speaker 2: with a startup, we have one person who's the decider,
Speaker 2: the CEO, and they'll they'll choose Okay, we'll vote, everybody votes,
Speaker 2: and then the CEO will say these are the top,
Speaker 2: say five approaches I want to consider, and then we'll
Speaker 2: divide up and we'll say, okay, somebody needs to take
Speaker 2: a sheet of paper and write a sentence or two
Speaker 2: about why this is a good idea and maybe draw
Speaker 2: a doodle of it, you know, right, Okay, for this approach,
Speaker 2: here's what I think is good about it, and here's
Speaker 2: just a back of the napkin sketch of what I
Speaker 2: have in mind how it would look. We all then
Speaker 2: look at those approaches and we'll take a note underneath
Speaker 2: with sticky notes what's the criteria this is good at.
Speaker 2: What does this do well at? Often founders will put
Speaker 2: on a sticky note this this is exciting to build.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about building this. And that's often a really
Speaker 2: important consideration because there's a lot that goes into that.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of maybe intuition about something, and often
Speaker 2: after you've gone through the more rational logical progression of
Speaker 2: the standard ways of looking at it, you find that, well,
Speaker 2: excitement is really important. Often there's might be something like
Speaker 2: we can find a partner who will do this with us,
Speaker 2: you know, a company partner who can help us distribute this,
Speaker 2: so things that might be particular to the kind of
Speaker 2: business that a startup is in. But I always trust
Speaker 2: that the team themselves are going to have good insights
Speaker 2: into what makes a good lens. And once we've gotten
Speaker 2: warmed up by doing those classic ones, that's kind of
Speaker 2: the key. You warm up a bit, then you're kind
Speaker 2: of in the right mode and it's easy to make
Speaker 2: one or two or three.
Speaker 1: More So, once you've got your criteria, let's just take excitement.
Speaker 1: I like that one. How do you figure out what's
Speaker 1: your X and Y access? Because I think of excitement,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, that's just one access. How then do
Speaker 1: you tease that apart into the two things that you
Speaker 1: need to plot your options on.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends, like I would ask.
Speaker 1: I turn it around a consultant shake, yeah.
Speaker 2: Totally right. If we were working together and you were saying, gosh,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about doing a new book and I have
Speaker 2: a few different ideas, and you know, I want to
Speaker 2: sort of think about excitement, well, I might say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: what are the components of excitement for you? For founders,
Speaker 2: it's often this is fun to build or I have conviction,
Speaker 2: I have a feeling, or like an intuition about this.
Speaker 2: It's going to kind of vary from first to person often.
Speaker 2: I think the lens that best captures this is like
Speaker 2: the conviction lens, and the components are excitement and like
Speaker 2: matches the mission. That's a really common extra lens for founders.
Speaker 1: Something else that you I know are very thoughtful about
Speaker 1: making decisions on meetings. And when we were discussing this
Speaker 1: podcast strove email, you're talking about how you're trying to
Speaker 1: reduce the number of meetings that you're going to and
Speaker 1: you used a term called the medicine in the meeting.
Speaker 1: Can you talk me through how your rethinking meetings?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so I have a son who has a
Speaker 2: medical condition. He's got these headaches that have been going
Speaker 2: on almost NonStop for several years, and we've been trying
Speaker 2: to find ways to help with it and try all
Speaker 2: these different migraine treatments and mostly they didn't help that much.
Speaker 2: And not long ago we had an appointment with a
Speaker 2: new doctor. He turned twenty one and so he had
Speaker 2: to go see a neurologist for adults instead of for children.
Speaker 2: And he found this doctor who is a nurse practitioner
Speaker 2: and has been seeing migraine patients for decades and is
Speaker 2: very enthusiastic about the treatment of migraines. And the appointment
Speaker 2: with her, she said, you're a new patient. I'd like
Speaker 2: you to come in at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: and so we said okay, And when we got in there,
Speaker 2: she said, okay, we're going to be here for at
Speaker 2: least a couple of hours because I want to know
Speaker 2: everything about what's going on with you. And this is
Speaker 2: a person who is just inherently super curious about this
Speaker 2: top you know, the topic that she treats. She's inherently
Speaker 2: extremely curious about migraines. She's fascinated with them and doesn't
Speaker 2: want to take anything for granted about what's been done before.
Speaker 2: So she wanted the entire backstory everything, and spent a
Speaker 2: good couple of hours going through all of this, and
Speaker 2: then before we left, we ended up spending a third
Speaker 2: hour during which she tried some things. The point of
Speaker 2: all this is that in this meeting, usually you see
Speaker 2: the doctor, and we've had a series of excellent doctors
Speaker 2: for him, but you see them and it's half an
Speaker 2: hour and you're gone, you know, And that's the usual,
Speaker 2: And in this meeting, it's a meeting, you know, it's
Speaker 2: an appointment, but it is a kind of meeting. We're
Speaker 2: there for three hours and she's trying to uncover everything
Speaker 2: in the background that might be going on, and then saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: this gives me an idea of a couple of experiments.
Speaker 2: Now instead of just telling you about them and having
Speaker 2: you go off and do them on your own. Some
Speaker 2: of them you have to, but some of them we
Speaker 2: can do right now. Let's start doing this. And I
Speaker 2: left that appointment both encouraged and optimistic that maybe there
Speaker 2: was some new hope for my son with these other approaches,
Speaker 2: but also thinking I should apply this to the work
Speaker 2: that I do, because, like the nurse who helped us,
Speaker 2: I'm deeply curious. I love my work, and I'm deeply
Speaker 2: curious about the people who we work with and the
Speaker 2: problems that they have, and I want to solve them.
Speaker 2: Why do I meet with them for a half an
Speaker 2: hour or an hour, It's just the default on the calendar.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really make sense. It's better if I could
Speaker 2: meet with them for two hours, you know, or three hours.
Speaker 2: And in a way I already do that because we
Speaker 2: work in sprints. Whenever possible, and my general policy is
Speaker 2: to not have meetings if I can avoid them, except
Speaker 2: then go all in and be working together for like
Speaker 2: two days or five days. But I thought there's something
Speaker 2: in between. Sometimes we can just jump right in and
Speaker 2: do something, and that's been a new source of experiments
Speaker 2: to say, can I meet with people for a shorter
Speaker 2: amount of time or not at all, you know, fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes or not at all, But then also offer, okay,
Speaker 2: there's you know when we talk, let's also have these
Speaker 2: sessions where it's two or three hours and we dive
Speaker 2: right into it. So that's the medicine, delivering the medicine
Speaker 2: right in the meeting instead of just talking about what
Speaker 2: might happen in the future, doing it together.
Speaker 1: I love everything that you've just described about how you
Speaker 1: think about meetings, and my brain is working over time, going,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I think about my diary, and I
Speaker 1: mean one of the things we talk to our clients
Speaker 1: about and Inventium is not defaulting to thirty or sixty
Speaker 1: minute meetings. But I'm now thinking how do I make decisions?
Speaker 1: And I'm probably thinking more so in the context of
Speaker 1: sales or business development meetings, which I typically will have
Speaker 1: for thirty to sixty minutes, depending on how complex I
Speaker 1: think the brief will be. But also if I'm going
Speaker 1: out in person, I will generally default to a longer time,
Speaker 1: but never two hours. But in my mind, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe some of those I should be going really deep.
Speaker 1: So how then do you decide? Where do you maybe
Speaker 1: curtail things and go fifteen minutes, and where do you
Speaker 1: go like the whole two hours or longer.
Speaker 2: I haven't totally figured this out. This is a new
Speaker 2: idea to me, and what I have been trying to
Speaker 2: do is think about every time when I'm scheduling a meeting,
Speaker 2: I try to remember, and it's hard because the default
Speaker 2: is very strong. The thirty minutes to an hour default
Speaker 2: is very strong. So I'm meeting someone for the first time,
Speaker 2: that's maybe actually a good time for the longer meeting,
Speaker 2: but it's really socially awkward to say, let's meet for
Speaker 2: two hours, like that's a lot. That's like, wow, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of Jake, I don't know, I've never met
Speaker 2: you before. I'm not sure I want to get on
Speaker 2: board for that two hour call. So what I have
Speaker 2: been trying to do is have the half hour call
Speaker 2: or the you know, be maybe like to be ready
Speaker 2: to offer the two hour call. And the context I'm
Speaker 2: talking about is meeting a new founder usually, so you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm meeting someone new, have the first call be
Speaker 2: sort of like, hey, I'm kind of normal. I won't
Speaker 2: try to you know, thirty minutes is fine. And then
Speaker 2: and then as we're talking, like, maybe, oh, there's there's
Speaker 2: something here I could help you with right away, Like
Speaker 2: let's find a two hour block to do it. It's
Speaker 2: a little easier with people who I already know, so
Speaker 2: founders in whom we have already invested. Then I can
Speaker 2: say this is a two hour thing. We can solve
Speaker 2: this on a call rather than doing a whole sprint
Speaker 2: or rather than me saying here's my advice to you,
Speaker 2: let's work on it together. And I have found it's
Speaker 2: very fun. So I just like having it as a
Speaker 2: tool in the tool belt, like an option to go to.
Speaker 2: And I haven't figured out a master plan for how
Speaker 2: it works for everything. I don't have that yet, but
Speaker 2: I just I just like it, and it feels so
Speaker 2: good when that meeting happens and it's longer and we
Speaker 2: work together in the meeting, and an hour is always
Speaker 2: a rush to get something meaningful done.
Speaker 1: So yeah, something else I like about that is particularly
Speaker 1: and I think because for me, it's just really clear
Speaker 1: in the sales process of where a two hour deep
Speaker 1: dive slash you know, consulting while I'm also trying to
Speaker 1: understand the problem meeting could influence. Is just that escalation
Speaker 1: of commitment because I'm spending so much time with this
Speaker 1: new person, and I'm probably doing so because I'm really
Speaker 1: keen to start a working relationship with their organization. And
Speaker 1: I think just the gesture of offering two hours of
Speaker 1: your time is so unique when you know meetings can
Speaker 1: be just so transactional.
Speaker 2: I think absolutely, I always struggle in the shorter meetings.
Speaker 2: So I do this investing work. Me and my co
Speaker 2: author John Zaratski, I think you've spoken to in the past,
Speaker 2: and another friend of ours named Eli ble Goldman. We
Speaker 2: run this venture fund called Character Capital. We invest in
Speaker 2: early stage startups and I won't speak for them, but
Speaker 2: for me, I do this investing work simply because I
Speaker 2: love to work with people at the beginning of a
Speaker 2: big project, when they're just starting out, and it's really
Speaker 2: fun with startups It's especially fun with startups because they're
Speaker 2: starting from scratch and they have to figure out a
Speaker 2: way to make it work. It's a survival thing for
Speaker 2: their company, and all of that is just a wonderful
Speaker 2: context for me to get to help them out and
Speaker 2: to learn about how to make projects work the best,
Speaker 2: and then hopefully share things like the book Click that
Speaker 2: have ideas about what I learned. I just love doing it.
Speaker 2: In a meeting with a prospective company, you know, with
Speaker 2: a founder in whom we might invest, there is not
Speaker 2: enough time to get in and really get into that
Speaker 2: stuff and show this is how it is when we
Speaker 2: work together and do the part that I love the most.
Speaker 2: And so it is this kind of sales conversation. You know,
Speaker 2: they're selling me and I'm selling them on we're a
Speaker 2: great partner to invest in you, and they're selling me
Speaker 2: on we're a great company, you should invest in us.
Speaker 2: And it's too short of a time. Everybody's just pitching
Speaker 2: each other. And so yeah, it's lovely. It is lovely
Speaker 2: to get to do that because if I feel like
Speaker 2: a lot of the pretense falls away and we get
Speaker 2: to do more of what we genuinely want to be doing.
Speaker 2: Which is not to just put on a show and
Speaker 2: show slides, but it's to be together and work together
Speaker 2: in a more human way that's actually quite We.
Speaker 1: Will be back with Jake soon, and when we return,
Speaker 1: Jake reveals why saying no to commitments you're not passionate
Speaker 1: about is crucial for success. Plus, he shares a surprisingly
Speaker 1: simple decision that can instantly tame your chaotic email inbox
Speaker 1: and reclaim your productivity. If you're looking for more tips
Speaker 1: to improve the way you work, can Live. I write
Speaker 1: a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered that
Speaker 1: have helped me personally. You can sign up for that
Speaker 1: at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about another thing that you have been thinking about,
Speaker 1: which you've termed leave money on the table. I don't
Speaker 1: want to paraphrase. Can you tell me what you've been
Speaker 1: thinking about there, and maybe some experiments that you've been doing.
Speaker 2: I was just recently hanging out with my friend Jonathan Courtney,
Speaker 2: and he was talking about how when people say you're
Speaker 2: leaving money on the table by not doing this thing,
Speaker 2: to him, that is a message that he does not
Speaker 2: want to do that thing. He says, there's something about
Speaker 2: the framing of you're leaving money on the table that
Speaker 2: is a signal to me that, oh, I'm doing something
Speaker 2: that may not make sense by conventional evaluation, but I
Speaker 2: must really not want to do it, and so I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep doing that behavior. People tell him he's
Speaker 2: leaving money on the table to try to spur him
Speaker 2: to do this thing, and he's like, that's a signal
Speaker 2: to me that I've got it figured out. I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that thing. And I know that's a
Speaker 2: bit convoluted, But the thing that I took away from
Speaker 2: that was there are a lot of conventional wisdom frameworks
Speaker 2: about how you ought to behave things you ought to
Speaker 2: do in business because it's making the most of everything.
Speaker 2: And a simple one for me is being really active
Speaker 2: on social media, especially on LinkedIn, and it's it's a
Speaker 2: thing that you know, if you've started to develop followers,
Speaker 2: or if you're trying to write books, or you're trying
Speaker 2: to get something out there, an easy way to continue
Speaker 2: to engage with people is to continue to post on
Speaker 2: let's say, LinkedIn, and so by continuing to do that,
Speaker 2: it's going to help you out with all the other stuff.
Speaker 2: So if I don't do it, I'm leaving money on
Speaker 2: the table. Right, it doesn't take that long to write
Speaker 2: a post, it doesn't take that long to respond to
Speaker 2: people's comments and be active on there. And by not
Speaker 2: doing it, I've got all these potential connections, these potential
Speaker 2: people who might see my stuff, and I'm just leaving
Speaker 2: that money sitting there and I'm walking away from the table.
Speaker 2: And I do post on LinkedIn occasionally, but I have
Speaker 2: found that when I'm more active on it just something
Speaker 2: about the way my brain works. It's very hard for
Speaker 2: me to do other stuff. It's very hard for me
Speaker 2: to do big stuff. So if I'm writing a book,
Speaker 2: posting on LinkedIn is devastating to me. I have to
Speaker 2: shift gears. It's very slow to like, what makes a
Speaker 2: good book chapter is not what makes a good LinkedIn post?
Speaker 2: So now what makes a good LinkedIn post? And you
Speaker 2: can almost hear the gears s grinding in my head, like,
Speaker 2: oh LinkedIn, you know, trying to boot up the LinkedIn software.
Speaker 2: And then once I make the post, then I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: I want to respond to the people who write comments.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm like monitoring it and I'm like,
Speaker 2: stressed out about did people reply? Do they like me?
Speaker 2: You know? If they don't, then I'm stressed out about that.
Speaker 2: If they do, then I'm like, well, I have to
Speaker 2: keep going back and replying to more comments. So that's
Speaker 2: an example where I think this notion of if I
Speaker 2: feel that something is unnatural or hurting my main efforts,
Speaker 2: sometimes that's a signal that I just need to expand
Speaker 2: my comfort zone. I need to spend more time outside
Speaker 2: of my comfort zone so that my comfort zone gets bigger.
Speaker 2: I need to suck it up and go on LinkedIn. Right,
Speaker 2: that might be the answer, But sometimes the answer is
Speaker 2: I'm avoiding that thing because of a good reason, and
Speaker 2: conventional wisdom doesn't help me in this case. That's the
Speaker 2: whole idea with leaving money on the table is sometimes
Speaker 2: leaving money on the table is really smart because you're
Speaker 2: saving your time for what you perceive to be what
Speaker 2: I might perceive to be a bigger pot of money
Speaker 2: somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I love that thinking. I mean, because it sounds to
Speaker 1: me that that's almost become a trip wire for you
Speaker 1: in terms of deciding where to put your time, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that play out in the day to day like,
Speaker 1: you know, I love the LinkedIn example. How else like
Speaker 1: and where else have you caught yourself going oh, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving money on the table, and then that then triggers
Speaker 1: you to go down this decision making path.
Speaker 2: Almost I'm on the lookout for commitments that either came
Speaker 2: from me or from outside folks, it doesn't matter. But
Speaker 2: a commitment that I've signed up for with the expectation
Speaker 2: that it's going to return something, I want to reevaluate those.
Speaker 2: My co author John and I started a podcast recently
Speaker 2: and we said, hey, you know, let's do this podcast,
Speaker 2: and we should do it every week because that's kind
Speaker 2: of how you continue having people you know show up
Speaker 2: and listen to your podcast. You probably know this. And
Speaker 2: we recorded a few episodes. It was really fun, and
Speaker 2: then I had this leaving money on the table sort
Speaker 2: of trigger of like, well, if we don't keep doing
Speaker 2: it every week, we're leaving money on the table. And
Speaker 2: then I realized, but wait a second, I'm starting to
Speaker 2: feel like it's a better idea if we do this
Speaker 2: in seasons, because I don't have the continual well of
Speaker 2: new ideas to do it every week, and we're not
Speaker 2: going to put in the effort at least right now,
Speaker 2: to like find a guest every week. You know, that's
Speaker 2: a hassle. Like you every time you got to find
Speaker 2: a guest and you got to deal with their schedule,
Speaker 2: you got to deal with their everything, got to prepare
Speaker 2: for it. It's a lot. I mean, it's a full
Speaker 2: time job. So I've realized, like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to leave money on the table by not making
Speaker 2: it a weekly thing. We're going to have to take
Speaker 2: breaks from it. And I know that's not the optimal
Speaker 2: way to do it, but if it's going to happen,
Speaker 2: it has to be that way. If that means the
Speaker 2: podcast doesn't work at all for me, that's going to
Speaker 2: be okay. Because again, for my brain, which takes a
Speaker 2: lot of gear shifting to get into a different mode,
Speaker 2: even recording a podcast in the morning might make it
Speaker 2: harder for me to do other things the rest of
Speaker 2: the day. And so I really value doing these big
Speaker 2: things like spending a week with a company and a
Speaker 2: sprint or writing a book, and those big things take
Speaker 2: more intense focus that is easily fractured, and it means
Speaker 2: giving up on some things that I'd like to do.
Speaker 2: Another thing that i'd like to do that I give
Speaker 2: up on. That's sort of leaving money on the table.
Speaker 2: Is being really responsive on email. I'd like to be
Speaker 2: a lot more responsive than I am, but it comes
Speaker 2: at a cost, and so I have to leave the money,
Speaker 2: so to speak, on the table, of being someone who
Speaker 2: people think of as being really responsive, which people like,
Speaker 2: and I value it in other people when they're responsive
Speaker 2: to me. I have to give that up, and it's
Speaker 2: a bit painful, but I think it's the right trade
Speaker 2: off because there's like a bigger, hopefully treasure chest that
Speaker 2: comes from the uninterrupted work.
Speaker 1: Because on the topic of email, actually, I've heard you
Speaker 1: talk about trying to slow your inbox, and I love that.
Speaker 1: I am a superhuman user. I am not sure if
Speaker 1: you are also a yeah, superhuman. So there we go,
Speaker 1: the fastest email software in the world, but you're trying
Speaker 1: to slow it down. How are you doing that, Jake?
Speaker 2: I slow down my inbox by trying to be comfortable
Speaker 2: with the discomfort of having emails sit in my inbox,
Speaker 2: and it is it is a discomfort. It feels good
Speaker 2: to go through and empty it out and respond to everyone.
Speaker 2: But the more I respond, the faster than people will
Speaker 2: right back. And so it is there's a feedback loop
Speaker 2: there where the more time I spend an email, the
Speaker 2: more time I'll spend an email. I can never really
Speaker 2: get on top of it. And when whever you're doing
Speaker 2: something that's important to you, the constant feedback loop of
Speaker 2: email or slack or whatever messaging it might be, it
Speaker 2: has a cost. The slowing down the email thing is
Speaker 2: largely a practice of looking in the inbox when I do.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing is not looking at it and
Speaker 2: trying to sprint on a focus thing throughout the day.
Speaker 2: Another thing is looking in the inbox, picking out the
Speaker 2: one or two things that I need to respond to
Speaker 2: you right away, and then leaving everything else sitting in
Speaker 2: there for a week. You know, it might be two weeks.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's embarrassing, but eventually when I get back saying
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry but or you know, thank you for
Speaker 2: your patience. But here's finally your response.
Speaker 1: Something I want to ask you about finally, Jake, is
Speaker 1: because of who you are, who you talk to, the
Speaker 1: companies that you invest in, and that you meet with
Speaker 1: her for two hours or well, I would love to know,
Speaker 1: like what a two or three pieces of software or
Speaker 1: tools or tech that but are really exciting you that
Speaker 1: you think me and maybe listeners should absolutely try out.
Speaker 2: There are three things that I'm the most interested in
Speaker 2: or have found the most useful lately. One of them
Speaker 2: is I'll admit this is a plug for a company
Speaker 2: that we've invested in, but it's really useful. It's a
Speaker 2: tool called Fathom, and it's a note taker for your
Speaker 2: Zoom calls or your Google Meet calls or whatever. And
Speaker 2: it's one of these, you know, one of these note
Speaker 2: taking bots that sort of sits in your call. But
Speaker 2: I just found it to be incredibly useful to have
Speaker 2: those text notes that I can link to afterwards and
Speaker 2: go right to the spot and replay the spot. I
Speaker 2: don't do that for calls i've had myself, but when
Speaker 2: our team on our team, when one person's been in
Speaker 2: a call and they say, hey, here's what happened. Can
Speaker 2: you give me your opinion, and I can go back
Speaker 2: and look and see what the conversation was, it's just
Speaker 2: a huge time saver. I really like that. So that's
Speaker 2: an interesting one because it does the note taking for you,
Speaker 2: and there's a pro and con to having notes taken
Speaker 2: for you. It's nice and I have to take notes,
Speaker 2: but if I don't take the notes myself, they don't
Speaker 2: really stick in my brain. So the other thing is
Speaker 2: a remarkable tablet, and I've had one for a long time.
Speaker 2: I just got the newest one. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: I think the newest one is better than the older one.
Speaker 2: It's got like a backlit screen, and it's kind of heavier,
Speaker 2: it's bigger, it's nicer, certainly in some ways. But the
Speaker 2: old one is also great. And anyway, I have the
Speaker 2: old one at my desk and I have the new
Speaker 2: one kind of you know, and my bedside table. And
Speaker 2: I like taking notes on a device that I can't
Speaker 2: check email on, that I can't get distracted on. I
Speaker 2: just can write notes. There's always paper, you know, and
Speaker 2: I can easily print copies or email copies or whatever.
Speaker 2: But it's a very simple device that I love. And
Speaker 2: the third thing, which I'm still kind of developing how
Speaker 2: to use. I'm using right now, is we're on this
Speaker 2: call as a teleprompter. Teleprompter is you know, the it's
Speaker 2: a screen with a reflective mirror. You probably do have one, Amantha.
Speaker 1: I am looking at you through a teleprompter making great
Speaker 1: eye contact.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't really have the camera dialed in, so
Speaker 2: if people are watching on YouTube and I look like
Speaker 2: I'm in a grainy webcam, you can blame the teleprompter.
Speaker 2: I did have a better camera before. We'll get a
Speaker 2: better one. I'll look like Amantha in the future at
Speaker 2: some point in terms of resolution, Christmas and everything. But
Speaker 2: the thing that I found is so great about this
Speaker 2: that surprised me. I did it because, look, I selfishly,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to look better on camera. I wanted
Speaker 2: to be making eye contact, and I wanted people to
Speaker 2: watch and think, what a great guy, you know. But
Speaker 2: what I found about it that's surprising is how much
Speaker 2: more comfortable it is to have a conversation over video
Speaker 2: with a teleprompter. I didn't queue into this before, but
Speaker 2: normally when I'm on a video call, I'm constantly thinking
Speaker 2: about I should be making eye contact, and I'll make
Speaker 2: the effort to look at the webcam, but then I'm
Speaker 2: not looking at the person, and I feel like my
Speaker 2: brain is kind of straining to do that. Or I'm
Speaker 2: looking at the person and they're not quite making eye
Speaker 2: contact with me. I'm just not sure where to look
Speaker 2: and it's fatiguing. And I didn't really notice how fatiguing
Speaker 2: it was. I knew all zoom calls are fatiguing, but
Speaker 2: sin switching to the teleprompter for calls, I'm like, it's great.
Speaker 2: I feel so much more like I'm actually in the
Speaker 2: room with the person because where I'm looking is where
Speaker 2: they are. And it's been nice. So that's I'm in
Speaker 2: early days with this. But that's the third item.
Speaker 1: It's the best. I mean, it is quite novel, but
Speaker 1: also I think so important to be able to look
Speaker 1: someone in the eyes in a virtual meeting. I used
Speaker 1: to think, oh, well, I need this kind of setup
Speaker 1: because I do a lot of virtual keynotes and the podcast.
Speaker 1: But I think for everyone that is able to afford
Speaker 1: even a basic setup, it makes so much difference with
Speaker 1: just connecting with the other human on the end of
Speaker 1: your virtual call.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jake, I just I love chatting to you. Always
Speaker 1: just got such unique ways of thinking about things. I
Speaker 1: feel like I've made some notes through hacking. I must
Speaker 1: experiment with that. I must experiment with that. So I
Speaker 1: just want to say a massive thank you for coming
Speaker 1: back on how I work. I'm sure this might be
Speaker 1: the last time. But thank you. I've just thoroughly loved
Speaker 1: this chat.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me about that.
Speaker 1: I hope you loved this chat with Jake as much
Speaker 1: as I did. I know that I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: see if his strategy for meetings can actually work. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about Jake, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend checking out his latest book click and there are
Speaker 1: links to that in the show notes. If you like
Speaker 1: today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast
Speaker 1: app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I
Speaker 1: Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery People,
Speaker 1: part of the Cooler Nation