0:00
It's not really about productivity, it's not about time management.
Search this video
0:00
It's really just about, look, at any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention and we use it well.
0:11
And it's not going to happen every day, but if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not.
0:16
The notion with the highlight is imagine it's the end of the day if someone asks you, "What was the highlight of your day," what would you say?
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That's the anchor of everything.
0:24
That's the core, that's the foundation.
0:24
Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that, and you still feel really good about your days.
0:29
You still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy.
0:32
Today, I've got two guests, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.
0:40
Jake and John are authors of two incredible books, Sprint and Make Time.
0:46
With Sprint, they've helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including teams at YouTube, Slack, Gusto and One Medical.
0:50
Previously, John and Jake worked at Google Ventures, and before that, at Google, where John was a leader on Google Ads and YouTube.
0:59
And Jake helped build Gmail and co-founded Google Meet.
0:59
Today, they run a venture capital firm called Character, and they actually just opened up applications for their accelerator program called Character Labs, which you can learn more about at character. vc/labs.
1:16
In our conversation, we focus on their more recent book, Make Time, which a guest of this podcast, Ben Williams, recommended in the lightning round, and I absolutely loved and wanted to make sure more people learned about it and the advice within it, especially product leaders and founders who are constantly looking for ways to be more productive.
1:31
I want to get you right to the meat of the conversation.
1:35
So, let me just say that we get into a ton of very practical pieces of advice for how you can be more productive in your day, and if you listen to this episode, I guarantee you'll find at least three things that you'll want to start doing differently starting tomorrow.
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4:07
Jake and John, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us.
4:18
We're so stoked to be here.
4:19
I was just re-listening to the audiobook of Make Time to prep for this conversation.
4:19
And I feel like I kind of know you guys from listening to your voice for so long in the car, and it's a little surreal to be talking to you guys.
4:28
That was really fun to record.
4:28
And while we were doing it, we kept saying to each other, it was like we were recording the world's longest podcast.
4:37
That's what it felt like.
4:41
Actually, on that, how long does it take to record audiobook?
4:41
I've always been curious.
4:44
How much time does that- Well, it takes twice as long as it should have because my stomach kept growling and the microphone would pick it up.
4:47
And so, John would do a perfect take and we're both sitting in the little room together and the engineer was in the other room and he'd be like, "You got to do it again. You got to do it again.
5:05
The guy's stomach keeps growling."
5:05
I think it took two days, right?
5:09
Yeah, I think it was two days.
5:09
Yeah, and I think actually they thought it would take two days, so I don't think my stomach slowed us down too much.
5:13
That is not as long as I thought.
5:13
I thought it was a month of recording and such a painful experience. Sounds like not so bad.
5:21
No, honestly, it was really fun.
5:21
I mean it's weird, but it's just like, I don't know, you can get into this very intense zone where you're singularly focused, right?
5:32
There's nothing else that you need to do or should do, so it's just like read, drink tea, read, break for lunch, read, drink tea.
5:36
It's just like this really satisfying flow.
5:42
That sounds like a great few days.
5:47
Yeah, I think it was really fun doing it together too.
5:47
I think it would've been harder to do...
5:50
I mean obviously people do it and I think they like doing it on their own, but we've been working together for so long, it's always more enjoyable when we get to do something together. So, that made it cool. Amazing.
5:59
I want to do an audiobook now.
5:59
That sounds like a lot of fun.
6:04
So, to start diving into our conversation, so you guys wrote this very seminal book called Sprint, which we're going to talk about.
6:10
But you also wrote this other book that I have right here called Make Time, that to me was even more powerful and I think it might be even more powerful in people's lives than Sprint.
6:21
And I think it's one of the most interesting and most fun productivity books out there.
6:26
My wife actually grabbed the book from my desk the past week as I've been prepping for this, and just started highlighting it.
6:32
You could see all these highlights in here. She just goes- Awesome. Oh, that's so cool.
6:37
[inaudible 00:06:38] I want to be more productive.
6:38
Also, a guest on the podcast introduced me to the book.
6:38
At the end of the podcast, I'll ask you this too, but I ask people, what book do they recommend most to other people?
6:45
And he mentioned this book, and so that's how I uncovered it.
6:45
So, it all comes full circle. That's so cool.
6:50
So, I thought we'd start with Make Time and then get to Sprint in the second half of the conversation.
6:51
First question is just what do most people get wrong when they're trying to become more productive?
7:01
To set the answer up, I'll give you a super brief history of Make Time.
7:01
And for over a decade, John and I have been, in quotes, designing time as part of our work with startups, helping them find or expand product market fit.
7:17
So, we developed a design sprint at Google Ventures, which the Sprint book is about.
7:23
And now, we run this venture fund of our own called Character.
7:29
And we run these highly-structured sprints with companies.
7:29
And when we're doing that, we get to control how everything happens.
7:33
We get to change the defaults of the way the workday happens, of what happens sort of hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, how people are using technology, how people are interacting with each other.
7:43
All those things are sort of under our control because we're trying to achieve these big goals in a really short period of time. Everybody focused.
7:53
So, as this stuff was going on, John and I started applying some of the lessons, the things that we found were working really well in those structured sprints.
7:59
We started experimenting with applying those in our own day-to-day lives, and we found that some of those things were super effective and they were a bit counter to the way we'd sort of heard or learned about productivity.
8:10
And there's all kinds of habit books and productivity hacks out there.
8:17
And I think John and I have probably tried most of them, if not all of them.
8:21
But it seems like 99% of the people who follow those things are still feeling overwhelmed, they're still stressed out all the time anyway.
8:33
So, even though we are not productivity gurus, this hasn't been like this thing we were doing forever, it's not our full-time job, but we thought we want to share this framework.
8:37
So, Make Time, the book and the blog that proceeded it was just kind this side project to share what we learned.
8:47
And yeah, it seems like it is resonated with a bunch of people.
8:47
There's this kind of steady stream of interest in looking at these things a different way. I love it.
9:00
I love that it emerged out of the sprint concept.
9:00
I know you talked about the book, but I forgot that and these are all very related.
9:03
I also love that a lot of the best stuff comes from people actually doing the thing.
9:08
This came from, "I just have discovered all these little things and I'm just going to share it."
9:12
Not just like, "I need to write a productivity book."
9:16
Yeah, I think, like Jake said, we both had always sort of been dissatisfied with the state of the productivity art, and we had big things we wanted to do.
9:24
I mean, when you work in any kind of job, I mean we've both spent our early careers as designers and the job is really all about doing big projects.
9:38
It's all about being able to focus, being able to spend time on the things that matter.
9:43
And that's to say nothing of what we want outside of work, things that we want to learn how to do personally, people we want to spend time with.
9:49
And it's interesting, we've found that when we talk to people about Make Time, they always know.
9:56
They always know what they want to make time for.
10:00
The problem is not like what should my goal be or how should I figure out what to do with my life?
10:07
They usually know, but it's very hard to actually make time for those things.
10:16
And I think the problem is that most productivity advice focuses on getting better and faster about doing the things that are already in front of you.
10:27
So, the messages that are in your inbox, the meetings that are on your calendar, a lot of focus on efficiency, like crank through that stuff.
10:37
Our perspective is basically that those are the defaults.
10:37
Just like our software that we use, apps that we use have defaults, those are the defaults of life, of the companies that we work in, the culture that we live in.
10:51
And so, the solution is actually to change those defaults and to really flip this way of thinking on its head.
10:57
So, it's not about how do I go faster?
10:57
How do I get more efficient?
11:01
It's about how do I put the thing that is the most important first in my day or in my life, and then build everything else around that and accept that you're going to need to do a bunch of those little things.
11:13
You're going to need to answer those messages and go to those meetings, but really, start with the idea of what's most important to you?
11:17
What do you actually want to make time for?
11:23
Along these same lines, we're going to talk about this kind of four-part strategy that you recommend, but a couple of things before we get into there.
11:30
One is along the lines you just talked about is this insight that you had of just like willpower is never going to be enough to get you to make time for the things you want to do.
11:39
And you had these two concepts of busy bandwagon and infinity pools, so maybe just talk about those two briefly.
11:44
The idea of the busy bandwagon is just this expectation that everybody's busy.
11:50
And in the United States, there's kind of this thing that I think if you travel abroad and talk to people for a while, then you come back, you'll notice, which is like if you ask someone, "Hey, how's it going? What are you up to?"
12:04
And they'll be like, "Oh man, I'm busy."
12:08
It's kind of the default answer. "I'm busy. Things are busy."
12:08
And it means, usually, it could mean a variety of things, but usually it's good.
12:12
Like, "Oh, it's busy, so business is booming," or, "It's busy, I'm overwhelmed," or whatever.
12:16
But busy, it's kind of the expectations that everybody's busy.
12:21
And we are, I mean we are busy, but we call it the busy bandwagon because it feels like you should be busy.
12:26
And it's this inner feeling caused by what we see or perceive other people are doing that drives a lot of the stress.
12:33
And I don't mean to sound like I'm above it all and have figured it all out.
12:39
It still drives my stress, this inner feeling that other people haven't figured out, other people are expecting fast reactions from me, all this.
12:51
That's the busy bandwagon, this sort of feeling that I should be busy, that everyone else is busy.
12:56
And what that does inside of us is really the core of what we have to change and figure out, this getting out of a reaction mode.
13:03
The other thing that happens to us are the infinity pools.
13:10
And John, do you want to describe what infinity pools are in our context?
13:13
Yeah, we came up with this name because we were trying to think of endlessly replenishing fount of content.
13:23
So, basically if you can pull to refresh or if it streams, it's an infinity pool.
13:23
So, this is pure entertainment stuff.
13:32
This is stuff that people say like, "Oh, I spend so much time on Instagram," but it's also stuff that's important and necessary and productive.
13:38
Email is a huge infinity pool and it's probably the single hardest thing for the two of us to control and avoid getting sucked into.
13:52
And anybody listening to this is going to, I think, understand how powerful those pools are and how effectively designed and engineered those products are to be really compelling and to be friction-free and to just make it easy for us to dive back into that pool.
14:15
And so, when you put these two things together, the busy bandwagon and the infinity pool, you kind of have this, it's like a flywheel, but bad.
14:19
You feel like you really need to be busy, you really need to be on top of everything.
14:27
And then, you've got this whole collection of apps and services and products there that are ready to pounce on that, they're ready to take advantage of that set of defaults, that cultural and internal set of defaults that you have about what you should be doing.
14:44
And for a lot of people, it just sort of spins out of control.
14:44
So, our view is if you can name those two things, if you can understand those two things, then you can start to deliberately change some of the defaults around them, so that you can put your most important projects, people, work first, like we talked about.
14:59
I'm guilty of both these things.
14:59
I feel like the reason I do some of these chats, this one in particular is it's like one-on-one coaching almost.
15:11
This is going to help me stick to some of the things you teach.
15:11
And I've already actually implemented a number of the things you recommend, but this is reinforcing it.
15:15
And then, obviously, also helping all the listeners get better at these things.
15:19
Before we get into it, one last question is just like real talk, how how's your guys' productivity?
15:24
You wrote this book, it sounds amazing.
15:29
There's 87 I think pieces of advice.
15:29
How is it going for you guys?
15:29
As we go through, I want to hear what you're actually using, but just broadly, how's your productivity?
15:40
At the top of the interview, Lenny, you asked, "What do most people get wrong when they think about this productivity, time management, whatever?"
15:48
And I'll frame my answer in those terms.
15:54
So, most people, I think they try to get better and faster at doing what's right in front of them.
15:59
We don't change the defaults in our environment, so we can focus and spend time on these different more important things.
16:04
And if you think of that sort of what do I want to do? What's my goal?
16:11
What do I want to spend time on that John referred to as project A, generally the things we want to do, these project A things, they're big, they're not easy to start, they're slow to create, dopamine hits, they're non-urgent.
16:23
Like boss is not asking for them if you have a boss.
16:28
And generally, the tasks and activities that stand in our way that keep us from doing project A, they're small, they're medium size, it's obvious how to start them, they create dopamine right away, they're supposedly urgent, email meetings, TikTok, Instagram, news, what's on your OKRs, all these things.
16:45
And I know what's on your OKRs may not sound like it's a peer of those others, but in a way it really can be.
16:49
So, these big things, they're at odds with these little things that get in the way that the busy bandwagon expects us to do, these things that have infinity pools built in.
16:59
And so for me, right now, it's a constant battle between the Jake and the busy bandwagon and my inner feeling of how can I live up to people's expectations of me and respond in the way that I should and react in the way that I should?
17:18
And then, how can I do the project A stuff, the big important stuff?
17:18
A lot has changed in my life since we wrote the book.
17:24
The summary is every few months I need a few new experiments.
17:31
I have found in what has been some trying times that the tactics and the framework that we use...
17:39
Because it's kind of simple and it sort of fits with these experiences that I've had for many years doing sprints, that it works.
17:43
And that if I can go back to that, that if I can create space for it, if I can think about this as it's a series of experiments, if I can look at myself with curiosity and say, "Why are things not working out?"
17:56
And then try to experiment my way out of it that I'm able to.
18:03
But yeah, so at any given point in time, I probably give myself a B to B-, and sometimes it's a C and sometimes it's a D, and sometimes it's an A, and I'm really plugging away, but it's totally an ongoing challenge.
18:17
So, I'm not going to sit here and say, yeah, just follow me with a drone for 48 hours and you'll think that's exactly how you should do things.
18:30
But part of our philosophy, I think that part of the way I look at it is it can be a mess.
18:36
And yet, if you can create the space for those project A moments, for your highlights, that can shape everything else, if you just have those moments.
18:45
Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that and you still feel really good about your days, you still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy.
18:53
And having a framework for it gives you a path back.
18:59
If you're just stuck and you're looking...
18:59
You're sort of grasping for hacks.
18:59
You're sort of like, "Oh, I read this blog post about this thing, I'll try it."
19:05
That might have some short-term effect, but ultimately, you're probably not going to stick to it.
19:10
You're probably going to fall back into that place of overwhelm and disappointment and burnout.
19:14
But we find that if you have a system, that you can use the system and you can return to it and continue to build on and experiment, that you can make more sustainable progress on these things.
19:33
I think a really important takeaway from these two stories you guys just shared is you don't have to do all of these things.
19:36
You don't even have to do most of them.
19:36
If you just do one or two, if you find one or two things that can make you a little bit more productive every day, that makes a huge dent.
19:46
And so, I think it's okay to feel like, "Oh, I tried this stuff. It didn't work."
19:50
I think as long as you take a couple of things away today that might be useful to you, and then just try them again in the future.
19:56
If they end up not working out.
19:56
Like you delete an app and then you reinstall it, I think that's okay.
20:00
So, I think that's an important takeaway from this is don't feel like you're failing if you're not doing all of the things that we're talking about today. But let's get into it.
20:10
There's this kind of four-part framework for how to help yourself be more productive.
20:15
Basically, if you could just give an overview and then we'll just talk about each of these steps one by one.
20:19
So, the four parts are create a highlight, laser, energize, and reflect.
20:23
So, I'll turn it over to you guys just broadly, and then let's go through each of these one by one.
20:28
It all starts with this notion of a highlight.
20:28
And highlight is, I hate to say this, it's the most powerful best part, I think of the whole process.
20:39
And I hate to say that because John came up with it. It wasn't even me.
20:39
But I have to admit, it's really good.
20:43
And I think as folks have read the book and shared it, that's the thing we hear back from people.
20:48
If you could just do one thing from this book and try this out, it's a big deal.
20:53
The notion what the highlight is, start your day out and you imagine it's the end of the day, you're looking back on the day.
21:00
If someone asked you, "What was the highlight of your day," what would you say?
21:05
What do you want to say at the end of today was the highlight of today?
21:05
And you start there, just like, "Okay, what would I like to say the highlight of the day was?"
21:12
And you might think about what's urgent.
21:18
Sometimes the highlight is this thing that really has to happen today.
21:25
Today is the day there's a big meeting, or there's this thing I absolutely have to get done for work for tomorrow.
21:28
That could be your highlight and getting that done well, having good attention to that will be very satisfying.
21:34
But a lot of times the highlight comes from joy or satisfaction, projects that wouldn't otherwise get attention.
21:40
And it also doesn't have to just be something at work.
21:47
It could be people in your life that you want to spend time with, a hobby that you want to spend time on.
21:50
If you want to get better at Mario Kart, having a good session at Mario Kart, whatever might be the highlight of your day.
21:55
The notion is just in the morning to think, "What is it and what is that highlight going to be?"
21:58
And then, try to find a block that's 60 to 90 minutes.
22:06
That's just usually the rough time we think it takes to really get in the zone on something, do a really excellent job, be totally focused on it.
22:11
So, that highlight, that's the anchor of everything.
22:18
That's the core, that's the foundation.
22:18
And you start that way, you're now trying to shape your time around that highlight, and making sure that you have your peak energy, your peak attention when the time for that highlight comes around.
22:37
So, laser is about the tactics you might need to actually focus on that thing.
22:37
In highlight, we have a set of tactics for how to create and think about and frame that highlight.
22:43
Laser, we have a set of tactics for how do you pay attention when that time comes?
22:48
Then for energize, it's about having the right amount of energy to do the thing, to pay attention.
22:54
My highlight for today is trying to be coherent in this podcast, so this morning I need to think about what's the best way for me to have peak energy when a podcast starts.
23:05
That's my highlight too, actually.
23:05
I have [inaudible 00:23:10]. Oh, good. Right on. Okay.
23:11
Record a great podcast episode. Excellent, excellent. Okay. Yeah.
23:15
And if you're not watching on video, Lenny had a sticky note and he wrote it down.
23:15
So, that's actually literally the best way to do this is write it down on a sticky note, put it somewhere where you can see it.
23:23
And so, you've got highlight, laser during the time of the highlight, energize, make sure you have the energy you need when the time comes.
23:30
And these are just tactics around sleep and food and exercise, and just things that help with your mental energy, not crazy stuff.
23:39
And then the final thing is reflect, and this is where we think about this as the scientific method. Did it work?
23:43
Did what I tried today work out?
23:43
And if not, just being curious about it, what didn't?
23:48
And adjusting and trying to think, "Okay, maybe there's another tactic I can try." So, the book is like...
23:52
What are there like 87 tactics in the book?
23:56
There's a lot of different approaches, but the expectation is not you're going to use all of them.
23:59
And the expectation is not that- ...
23:59
expectation is not you're going to use all of them.
23:59
And the expectation is not that all of them will work for each person.
24:04
I use different tactics than John does, and some of his don't work for me, and vice versa.
24:08
But that idea of centering on a thing, focusing on it, having tactics for that, having tactics for energy, and then having some tactics to reflect and reframe and be curious.
24:22
That taken together, we find, just can reframe the way it feels.
24:22
It's not really about productivity.
24:28
It's not about time management.
24:28
It's really just about, look, in any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention, and we use it well.
24:35
And it's not going to happen every day, but if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not.
24:47
I think that last point is so important and why the highlight works so well for me is usually there's...
24:51
You don't get anything amazingly done in a day, often.
24:51
And usually, you're just distracted by all these things, and you're doing all the easy stuff.
24:56
You talked about this idea of Project A, like here's the thing I really want to get done, but the dopamine hit us so far in the future, and it's so hard.
25:02
And so, the reason I think the highlight is so powerful is, you get one thing done you're proud of, that is a great day.
25:08
And it may sound crazy that that's true, but it's so true. Yeah, totally.
25:17
So, I want to talk more in depth about each of these four things, and maybe spend the most time on the highlight and the laser because I think that's where most of the impact comes from.
25:25
So, with the highlight, do you have any advice?
25:25
You shared a couple examples of how to come up with like, "Here's the thing to pick for the day."
25:29
There's a few questions that you recommend, and I think you shared a couple of them.
25:34
And then, are there any examples of highlights from your guys', I don't know, past couple of weeks that would be good for people to hear an example?
25:38
And then, also, there's this calendar component, which maybe fits into the laser, but I guess that feels like a really important element of this.
25:46
So, if you just talk about that?
25:51
For me, and again, this is where the framework is intentionally flexible, different people have different highlights.
25:59
But for me, I am very project oriented. I'm very work oriented.
25:59
And for me, most days, a really good day comes from having made progress on something that is really important to me.
26:17
So, my highlights are usually focused work, creative work related.
26:17
And this has become even more important since we started our own VC firm three years ago.
26:25
And before that, I was sort of, I guess, more or less a writer, full-time writing, and speaking at events, and doing some consulting.
26:41
And before that, I was a partner at Google Ventures, at GV, and before that I was a product designer.
26:48
So, I've been through different modes and contexts in my career.
26:48
But if you know any VCs, if you're listening to this and you know any VCs, they're probably the busiest, most frazzled people that you know who are constantly on email, constantly in Zoom calls and meetings, and on airplanes all the time.
27:06
And so, the natural environment of that work is the busy bandwagon, and it's to have a lot of infinity pools that you need to care about.
27:17
to care about. And so, in that context, in order for us to make progress on projects, in order for us to move the ball on a launch related to this program, Character Labs, that we run with pre-seed founders that's coming up, or we're writing a new book, and that's a big
27:39
project, or working with one of our portfolio companies and running a sprint with them, or writing a newsletter that goes out to our LPs, those things are all really important, and I feel like they give us a unique edge as a VC firm. If we accept the premise I said before, that most
27:49
If we accept the premise I said before, that most VCs are just sort of frantically running around, if we can take these bigger swings at things, then theoretically, they should really help us be successful.
28:04
So, most of the time, it's all a very long way of saying that most of the time my highlights are like, "What do I want to accomplish at work?
28:13
What is the thing that I want to get done today?"
28:18
And so, what I do then is, I structure my calendar around making time for that.
28:18
There's a tactic in the book called Design Your Day that is really about kind of drawing out your day, and using your calendar as a canvas where you can design how you want to spend your time rather than using your calendar as a thing that is done to you, a thing that tells you what you have to do.
28:44
Reclaim control over that.
28:44
And so, most days, the first half of the day before lunch is my focus time, and I protect that very, very intensely, and then use that time to work on whatever my highlight is.
29:02
We had a previous guest on, Neer Eyal, also talking about productivity, and he had actually the same advice of just using your calendar as your to-do list, basically, because that's where time's going to go, what your calendar's telling you to do.
29:18
So, I think there's a pattern here that I think people need to pay attention to. Yeah, definitely.
29:21
Yeah, and I mean, we take it even further, and we have sort of a calendar template that we use as a team.
29:29
So, we have certain times of the week.
29:29
And it's not exactly the same for all of us on the team, but there are certain times of the week where it's like, yeah, this is when we do these kinds of things.
29:38
This is when we have these kinds of meetings.
29:42
And not to say that those are all standing meetings, although we have some of those as well, but these are kind of the content buckets in the template that we can fill with a specific type of activity, but then other parts of the template are sort of reserved for focus work, reserved for individual, solo time to work on things that we need to get done. So, yeah.
30:03
I think the calendar is, at an individual level and especially at a team level, is this really powerful tool that most people just kind of...
30:09
Not only do they not use it as a tool, they just sort of hate it.
30:16
They're sort of like, "Ugh, my calendar, it's a mess.
30:16
If I could live without a calendar, that would be the dream."
30:22
But I think if you can use some of these tactics or use other approaches to reclaim it, and use it proactively as a tool for yourself, it can really help you structure your time around the things that you care about. Yeah.
30:41
The way I've been starting to use my calendar is this way, exactly, is I try to prepare for work on next week's newsletter post for like an hour and a half, then prep for the podcast coming up in a few weeks.
30:49
So, it's very specific and broken up.
30:55
Along those lines, I often don't do these things as I planned.
30:55
And one of your principles, something around Groundhog Day, it's okay to repeat it if you didn't do it.
31:00
If you highlight you didn't do, just repeat it again and again until you do it. Right?
31:09
I think that what's so cool about this notion of Groundhog Day.
31:09
And if you've seen the movie...
31:12
Well, if you haven't seen the movie, see the movie. What a great movie. It was a good movie.
31:15
If you've seen the movie, you know it's like, not to give it away, but he gets better and better at doing the day, and that's kind of this core philosophy that we take on.
31:27
I think a lot of the time, when in the past I have thought about, "How can I be effective with my time?
31:33
How can I be productive?" It's beating myself up.
31:38
It's not a good feeling to be in that head space of like, "I'm screwing up. What can I fix?"
31:46
And this notion that it's like, you're going to have another chance, you're going to have another chance.
31:52
"It's okay, just try again, just be curious about what happened," is a big deal.
31:56
And starting with the calendar, using the calendar as a framework for saying, "Hey, here's what actually happened.
32:01
Here's what I think is going to happen."
32:07
That's what you're saying when you do this Design your Day tactic.
32:12
And I did this exercise earlier this week.
32:12
I was switching to a new calendar thing, and trying some new features with...
32:18
We invest in this company called Reclaim, and they do this stuff- I'm an investor in Reclaim also. Oh, well. How about that?
32:28
Not planned, this promotion.
32:28
Yeah, little [inaudible 00:32:36] there.
32:34
It sounds like we knew that, but we actually didn't know that.
32:34
I didn't know that you- We did not know that. How about that?
32:41
That was just discovered.
32:41
So anyway, I was just looking at my calendar, and I was like, you know what?
32:44
I'm going to do what John does.
32:44
When I wake up, I'm going to schedule when I exercise, when I eat breakfast.
32:48
I'm going to schedule when I take a shower, everything, and block it all out.
32:53
When I walk and feed the dogs, everything's going to be on there, so that then I can have this idea, and when the day starts, I know there's slots for all those things.
32:58
And then I've found this week that what I thought happened, how long I thought those things take, was not how long they take.
33:10
And so, set that thing to repeat every day and look at it, and then I'm like, "Oh, okay, interesting.
33:18
That's not what happened."
33:18
Okay, so I can adjust it.
33:18
I can adjust the template and be a bit more kind to myself about this part, be a bit more kind to myself about that part.
33:27
Gosh, the morning time wasn't a good focus time for me. I'll see if I can...
33:27
Is there a way I can make that block happen in the afternoon?
33:33
It's just a helpful way to track stuff and see it.
33:41
Especially, I think a lot of people are visual learners.
33:41
We can benefit from seeing things.
33:41
It's not everybody, but a lot of us are in that camp.
33:49
And when you put it on the calendar, you can see it, and that helps a lot.
33:53
And also keeps someone else from booking that time. Double win.
33:56
Not to be undervalued, keeps someone else from booking that time. Right.
34:00
And they look, they see, oh, okay, Lenny's already got stuff going on.
34:05
I figured out, okay, I better be cautious before I ask for something.
34:05
And that default, to be helpful to other people, and say yes when they put something on a free spot on your calendar, defeats a lot of our inner purposes.
34:17
And one core idea I don't think we've mentioned yet is that we strongly believe in people's intuition about how they should spend their time if they have the chance.
34:28
What really is important. And that is true.
34:28
We're talking about running this VC fund, or writing books, which are obviously very like, well, we're in charge of those things.
34:39
But this is also true, we've been employees in big organizations, I also believe it's true that if you have a boss, and a boss's boss's boss, that you have great insight about what, if you had a window of time, would be the highest leverage thing for you to do.
34:52
And it might not show up on your OKRs, it might not be on your boss's radar, your boss's boss's boss's boss's radar.
34:59
You have great intuition, and we want to create space for you to do that thing because you're going to feel better about it, you're going to be more satisfied, and also good things are going to happen.
35:07
We're spending a lot of time on this highlight, but I think it's because it's so powerful.
35:11
It's such a simple idea, but so effective.
35:11
So, just to kind of give people tactical advice for how to actually implement this, just a couple things that I'll summarize.
35:21
One is, to pick the highlight, you had a couple of questions I have here, for how to help you pick one for the day.
35:25
So, you either ask which highlight will bring you the most satisfaction?
35:30
Or, when I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy?
35:36
Maybe that's the same question.
35:36
But I- Slightly different, slightly different. Slightly different. That's true. Okay, good.
35:42
Satisfaction could be like, "I know this thing has to get done, and I got it done." Good point.
35:46
Joy could be like, "Man, that was great."
35:49
And they're in the same family, but they're cousins.
35:55
Great point, great point. Yeah.
35:55
And I mentioned, a lot of my highlights, personally, are very much in the urgency or satisfaction camp.
35:58
They're these big chunky projects. I got it done. I finished that deck.
36:05
I finished writing that thing.
36:11
But I also try to stay attuned to when I need something else in my day, when I need... I need some joy.
36:16
I need some fun, some play.
36:16
I need to prioritize going for a run, or going for a walk, or cooking a big dinner.
36:24
And so, I trust my gut on those things, and I say, "Okay, what's most important to me today is not to be productive, but to do something else."
36:39
And sometimes that's the best highlight for me.
36:39
For other people, maybe that's their highlight every single day. Maybe they work as a...
36:45
I don't know, I've talked to a lot of people who work in healthcare settings about this.
36:51
They're a nurse or a doctor, and when they're at work, they're at work.
36:57
They're not bouncing around between meetings and emails and Zooms. They're on their feet.
37:01
There's no time to do anything else.
37:01
So, their highlight is probably something they need to do at the end of the day to unwind, or take care of themselves.
37:11
So, you have these three different strategies that we talk about, urgency, satisfaction, and joy, as being three different places you can look for the right highlight for you each day.
37:17
But ultimately, I think it comes down to just trusting your gut and sort of asking yourself, like you said, "What do I want to look back on and have said, yeah, I'm glad I made time for that"? Awesome.
37:33
So, you touched on the third.
37:33
So, it's basically, what would give you the most satisfaction?
37:36
So, in the morning, you essentially ask, or the night before.
37:36
I think one of you, I forget, because when I was listening to the audiobook, I don't know who's talking.
37:44
But one of you is like, "I like to do it the day before." Is that right? Yeah, that's me. Okay. Okay. That's John talking. Okay.
37:51
So, the questions you asked either the night before or in the morning are, "What would give me the most satisfaction today, or the next day?
37:58
What would give me the most joy?
37:58
Or what's the most pressing thing that I need to get done?"
38:03
So, you do that, and then the advice is either write it on a Post-It...
38:03
I actually bought these tiny little Post-Its by accident.
38:07
I was trying to buy regular Post-Its, and they're actually really great for this specific use case, so it's perfect.
38:12
Write your highlight, stick it on the monitor.
38:17
So, that's one way of doing it.
38:17
The other is stick it in your calendar, where you have focus time.
38:19
In theory, it's like every day, here's my focus time, where you have the most energy.
38:24
Is that the general advice?
38:24
Generally, although I think that that's probably more important for a certain kind of highlight.
38:30
I have focused time most mornings.
38:30
To be really specific and nerdy about it, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings I have focus time.
38:41
Tuesday and Friday mornings I have meetings.
38:47
But on a Thursday night, my highlight might actually be to have friends over and cook dinner.
38:55
And that's not the same as focus time, but it's this pressure release valve where I'm like, "That's the thing that I want to make sure..."
39:01
I want to make sure I wrap up email at 5 so that have time to get everything ready, but it's not necessarily that peak energy moment in the way that we might think about being productive or getting things done or getting into that flow state. Awesome.
39:22
So, there's a lot of ways to do it.
39:22
So, maybe you just take away, if you're listening to this, is just think about what could be your highlight for today or tomorrow? Yeah.
39:30
And I would say, go one step further and make sure to write it down.
39:30
Don't just think about it, because there's something really special that happens when you write things down, even if it's on a sticky.
39:41
Even if it's in your notebook, your journal, even if it's a note on your phone. Take that step as well.
39:46
Even if you don't see it again, just writing it down is a big deal.
39:52
Yeah, that's a really important point.
39:56
I can give you a concrete example of a highlight, and a failed highlight, from yesterday, actually.
40:03
And so, most days these days, my highlight is around making progress on the book.
40:03
John alluded to working on a book, and so obviously it's a huge project.
40:10
I heard it said that if you are writing books, it's like having homework forever.
40:17
You always feel like there's always more to do.
40:21
And so, that's mostly been my highlight.
40:21
But yesterday, I wanted to prepare for this podcast.
40:25
I knew that was going to be satisfying, to feel like I was ready.
40:25
We don't think about talking about Make Time all the time, like we said, it's sort of like a side project for us.
40:35
So, I wanted to be ready and somewhat coherent.
40:35
And I knew I'd be satisfied, but I also knew it was urgent.
40:41
We're going to be doing the recording today.
40:41
So, that was my highlight. Write that down. "Get ready for podcast."
40:47
And I had two focus blocks, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. It should be easy.
40:52
Focus block number one, kind of just didn't do a good job.
40:58
I was distracted, I was in my email, I was doing everything that I would say you shouldn't do, I was doing. Feeling down on myself. I've become a loser.
41:04
I didn't get anything done.
41:10
Okay, second focus block.
41:10
Man, now the pressure's on. I got to do it.
41:10
And so, I finally get into the zone.
41:16
And my wife thinks I have a pretty serious case of undiagnosed ADHD, so a lot of it is just, if I really do have a deadline, then I really will click in.
41:23
So, now I have a deadline.
41:23
I'm doing it, and I'm making notes, and getting there, but I feel like there's still a ways to go.
41:32
And my 12-year-old son bursts into the room, and it was, "Oh gosh, you're invading me right when I'm at peak focus."
41:36
And he is like, "Hey, I'm going to do one more trip outside to sled in the snow. Do you want to come?"
41:42
And I'm like, first reaction, "No, absolutely not.
41:51
I can get this thing done. It's my highlight.
41:51
This is the one thing I need to do today.
41:54
I can do it max level of quality if I can just stay in this precious zone of focus."
42:02
But then I was like, "Wait a second, what's really going to be the highlight of my day?
42:02
What's really going to be the highlight, the thing that I might actually remember in the future?" We rarely get snow here.
42:09
I live on this island in Washington state.
42:09
We maybe get significant snowfall once every two years.
42:16
We've only lived here for a few years. He's 12.
42:16
He loves snow more than anything in the world. He loves snow.
42:23
But he grew up in California, so he hasn't had many days, and he's 12.
42:28
He's on the cusp of being a teenager.
42:28
There's not, maybe, any more days in his life that he's going to want me to get on the sled with him and wrap my arms around him and go down the hill.
42:38
I was like, "I got to get out there." So, okay. Pause this, ran outside. We did it. And man, it was magical.
42:45
And I didn't know we were going to get one more in, because the snow was supposed to be melting already.
42:51
We went down the hill, we went down the hill, we went...
42:51
It got dark, we had to stop. But it was so magic.
42:54
And I remember the very last end of the sled run, and it's like the last one, and he's like, "Man," he's like, "That was a great last sled run. So glad we did it."
43:09
And I was like, "Yeah, so glad we did it. It's great."
43:09
Come back inside, 15 minutes.
43:09
I try to hustle and get this done.
43:16
So, I was like, maybe it was like 80% or 75% to where I wanted to be on this.
43:22
I couldn't check off that highlight as being the most important thing.
43:22
But because of the framing of, it might be wrong, what am I going to remember, all this stuff, it just felt natural to me to switch modes and say, "Oh my god, that actually is a highlight.
43:35
That's this thing that's going to be really, really precious.
43:40
That's where the joy and the satisfaction are most for today."
43:46
And still, because I had written down the other thing, I still did it instead of churning on email the entire day.
43:51
But I screwed up twice, but it still turned out pretty good.
43:51
So, anyway, that's kind of what it can look like at its best.
43:57
And a lot of times, it doesn't make that much sense, and a lot of times I miss the special moments, or I miss the key work moments, or the key time when I could have gotten the most done.
44:07
But I just feel better about it, which is a lot of what this is about.
44:12
I just feel better about it because I feel more intentional.
44:17
Well, thank you for sharing the real talk.
44:17
I think you made the right choice.
44:17
I feel bad for having you have to decide between your kid and this podcast.
44:24
You didn't have anything to do with it. No, no, no. I just wanted to...
44:24
It's selfish for me to want to be prepared.
44:27
I just want to look good.
44:27
I just want to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Well, it's working out. It all worked out. That's a great story.
44:34
It reminds me, in your book at some point, I forget who it was of you that had to...
44:39
You're like, "Here's my priorities in my life right now."
44:39
And it was like family, writing, Make Time, something else, and then you're like, "Okay, actually Make Time is more important right now than my family," because you just have to get this done, and I wonder if this is a counter. Well, yeah.
44:51
I mean, I think that part of what people have found useful about Make Time is that John and I come at this from different perspectives. And I have kids.
45:00
I have a twelve-year-old and a twenty-year-old, sons, and dealing with being a dad is a big part of how I try to figure out how to make sense of what to do.
45:12
And John doesn't have kids, and so he has it easy.
45:12
No, he doesn't, but that's just a different frame of mind.
45:23
And I think sometimes I read something that people without kids wrote, and I think, "Well yeah, sure.
45:28
I am sure that's wonderful for you, but what about X-Y-Z?"
45:34
And although, I'm sure a lot of people who have more kids, or when they have young kids, it would...
45:39
But that's a real part of it.
45:39
And whether it's your family, your significant other, anything that's going on in your life that's not part of your work, there are times when you, on a day, or in a moment, you have to shift those priorities.
45:51
And it can help to just be this idea of stack-ranking things, and being clear about it, can help you just come to terms with it.
46:02
"I'm making that decision right now.
46:02
It makes sense to make right now."
46:02
Or at least, I can see that I did it, and if it seems like I screwed it up, I'd flip it back.
46:07
I know where it happened.
46:13
A lot of this is just like if you were designing a product or writing code or whatever, you can see that's where the bug happened.
46:17
I'll just try to fix that line. Yeah.
46:22
I love how real you're getting, and it also reminds me of... We just had a kid.
46:22
He's seven months old, so I'm going through a lot. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. That's busy times.
46:30
Seven months old is busy times. Yeah, that's great.
46:34
People always told me, told us, when we had kids when they were babies.
46:34
They're always like, "Oh, just you wait."
46:40
I just feel like this is a thing that people want to tell other parents.
46:40
"Just you wait until this happens."
46:44
And then one person said, "You know what?
46:44
Generally speaking, it gets easier and easier and easier.
46:49
Every month, every week, generally speaking, it gets easier."
46:49
And I think that is true, so just keep that in mind if you're ever feeling like it's overwhelming.
46:58
No, I think that is true. I've experienced that.
46:58
It also gets more amazing.
46:58
That's what I'm finding, too. Yeah, yeah.
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48:09
I want to talk about the next bucket that, you call it laser, you could also think of it as just how to focus better, and this is where most of the very tactical tips for how to avoid getting distracted are.
48:18
So what I think might be helpful here is let's just do a rapid fire through as your favorite tactical tips to help people stay focused, and the ones that you actually do and find most helpful, I think it's like six years later now since you published the book, the better.
48:34
So let's go through some stuff here.
48:34
Yeah, the basic principle with laser is that willpower is never going to win, and there's great research on this, but for now just trust me, you're not going to white-knuckle your way through not looking at Twitter when you're trying to work.
48:54
So it's all about making it hard, creating barriers to getting distracted.
48:54
So a few things for me, I'm not on Instagram and I'm not on Facebook.
49:00
I was on both of those things and I left both of them, I disabled my accounts.
49:07
I am on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I don't have either of those apps installed on my phone.
49:13
I stay logged out of those sites on my computer, except for when I want to use them for some specific purpose.
49:19
LinkedIn I need to use all the time, because I'm a VC and I have to look people up and stuff, so I found this Chrome plugin, or Chrome extension, I guess is the right word, that disables the feed in LinkedIn.
49:30
So when I go to LinkedIn.
49:30
com, it's the search bar at the top but there's no feed, which is amazing because I can use LinkedIn as the phone book and then not get distracted.
49:41
So those are some of the very, very concrete specific things that I do, all, again, with the goal of putting a speed bump between me and that thing so that if I go, and I don't do this much anymore but I used to, literally my hands on the keyboard would just be like, T-W-I, like Twitter.
50:02
com, and then you see that log in screen instead of my juicy feed and I'm like, oh yeah, right, okay, I did that on purpose, great, I broke that feedback loop a little bit.
50:15
I did a similar thing with Twitter/X, where I deleted the app and I just used the mobile website.
50:20
I think this point of logging out is really powerful, I think people haven't heard that idea as much, because it's not like you can't log in really easily, you just click a couple things and you're back.
50:31
But to your point, it reminds you, okay, I see, I really shouldn't have done this.
50:37
Well, I also signed up for two-factor authentication for everything, not because I care about somebody hacking my account, but because it's another speed bump.
50:41
Because that way, even if your browser remembers your password, or I use one password, so even if the browser extension is going to fill it in for me, there's still another step, so it's sort of reverse engineering my own distractibility.
50:58
That feature that everyone's always talking about that Apple built of the code being automatically there in the keyboard, that's counter to this friction that you've created. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
51:12
Okay, so it's interesting is I had this, and then I just like, goddammit I really just want to be on Twitter.
51:16
And so I just re-installed it again recently, and I need to fight that again.
51:22
Well, I go through cycles like that too, and I go through that a lot with email.
51:22
Jake, you still don't have email on your phone, is that right?
51:29
No, I would be on the floor checking email right now on this call if I did, on the floor.
51:35
I used to do that, Jake inspired me a long time ago to remove email from my phone, and so for years and years that's been my default.
51:41
But more recently I've had more reasons to install it, mostly related to travel, if I'm on the go and I just want to stay on top of things.
51:52
And something that Jake and I have talked about a lot is you go through these different cycles of, hey, I need this thing, or I want this thing, and then part of the reflect step, part of paying attention and reflecting on how it's going is to recognize, oh wow, I've actually been spending a lot of time on email on my phone, or a lot of time on Twitter, maybe I'll just uninstall it for a while.
52:16
Maybe I'll just reset and do that for a while.
52:21
And then there'll be some other thing that happens that causes you to reinstall it, and that's totally fine, because you're being deliberate about it and you're paying attention, rather than saying it has to always be this way forever and it's set in stone.
52:35
That's a great tip of just coming back to it, not feeling like you're defeated, it's like, all right, let's try this again.