#450: How to Make Time For What Really Matters Every Day [RE-BROADCAST]
Episode Stats
Summary
If you feel like your life is just a blur of busyness and yet you don t seem to get much done, or remember much about how you spend your time, this episode is for you. If you ve ever felt like you re missing out on important stuff, and you re not getting much done - this episode has a lot of insights to help you get more stuff, more important stuff done, and a life full of memorable moments.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Brett here. We're taking a quick break. We'll be back with a new episode on Wednesday.
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But in the meantime, here's a rebroadcast of podcast number 450, How to Make Time for What
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Really Matters Every Day with author John Zeratsky. It's one of our most popular episodes in 2018.
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If you feel like your life is just sort of a busy blur and you feel like you're not getting much
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done, this episode has a lot of insights to help you. First, get more stuff, more important stuff
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done. But second, more importantly, make it feel like your life is full of memorable moments.
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Hope you enjoy this episode. See you on Wednesday with a new episode.
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Your days seem
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like a continuous blur of busyness and yet you don't seem to get much done nor remember much
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about how you spend your time. I was a former employee of Google. My guest today worked on
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the very apps and technology that can often suck away our time. Today, he's dedicated to
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figuring out how to push back against these forces to help people take control of their
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time and attention. His name is John Zeratsky and he's the co-author of the book Make Time,
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How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. Today on the show, John shares how the experience of
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feeling like he was missing months of his life led to him spending years experimenting with
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habits and routines looking for the best ways to optimize energy, focus, and time. He then shares
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the simple four-step daily framework that he developed from this research and walks us through
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that system. John talks about choosing one highlight each day to ensure your most important
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work gets done and that your life is full of memorable moments. He also shares how to reduce
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the time you spend in waiting what he calls infinity pools, why energy management is just as important
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as time management, and how reflection is essential in figuring out what you're doing is actually
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working. Lots of valuable direction in this show for you to get your life on track and find
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more hours and meaning of the day. After it's over, check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash make time. John Zeratsky, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot for having me. So
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you co-authored a book, Make Time, How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. This is interesting
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because your co-author, Jake, and you, you both worked at Google, correct? Yeah, that's right.
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All right. So you guys, and you also spent time designing the apps that people spend a lot of
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time on, right? Gmail, YouTube, the things that people are like, oh, I need to, I need to like get
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a handle on this stuff. But then you hear you guys come out the book saying, here's how to manage your
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time and not be distracted by these things we help, help create. I mean, what was the impetus behind
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the book? Like, did you guys have a problem with this stuff too? Yeah, definitely. So
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as you pointed out, working in technology, working on these products was such an interesting
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spot for us to be because on the one hand, you were working on, on apps that people find very
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distracting that people struggle with. And so we're kind of on the inside and we know how these things
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are made. And that, that gives us ideas for how people might make some adjustments, make some changes
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to affect that relationship. But the other thing that was pretty interesting was technology in many
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ways is kind of the ground zero or the epicenter for a lot of what's, what's crazy about our work
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cultures and about our, the defaults that we all operate under. So, you know, big tech companies,
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lots of meetings, lots of email, there's instant messaging, there's an expectation that you're going to
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be online, you're going to be plugged in, you're going to be responsive. So we definitely, we both
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struggled working in that environment to feel like we were, you know, using our energy and our time
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while at work, but also having something left over for ourselves. Yeah. I mean, you make the point,
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like these apps, like they, they help, they definitely help our lives, right? They improve our lives.
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But if you let, you have to learn how to manage it and take control of instead of them controlling you,
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let's talk about, you had this moment, this epiphany, right? You were, you were working
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and you felt like you were just like missing out, like on months of your life, right? Like
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you didn't realize that like three months had passed and you'd like, you couldn't remember like
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what happened during those three months. Tell us about that. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe to put that in
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context, we can go back to 2005 when I graduated from college and I was lucky enough to get a job at a
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tech startup in Chicago called FeedBurner. And I'd been in school and I had started a little web
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design business. So, you know, I had sort of developed some habits and some ways of making
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sure I was, I was productive. I was getting things done, but I was dropped into this company in this
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team that was very high performing. It was kind of the classic ideal of a tech startup. You know,
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it was, it was hard work, hustle, long hours, you know, people were, were super smart,
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super talented and I wanted to thrive in that environment. I wanted to make the most of that
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opportunity. So I got really obsessed with productivity. And when I say productivity,
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I mean it in kind of the, the sense of trying to be as optimized and efficient and, and, you know,
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leave no scrap of time unused. So I, I became obsessed with the book, getting things done.
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And that was sort of like my Bible and I had the filing system and the to-do lists. And I had the
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stack of note cards that I carried with me at all times. And, and to a certain extent that worked,
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but I, but I always felt like there had to be a better way. I felt like being productive was good,
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but it often just kind of made me feel like a machine, you know, just sort of like cranking
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through these endless lists of tasks I needed to do. In 2007, Feedburner was bought by Google.
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And so then I was, I was working at Google and life was, was really good. Like I, you know,
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you had this great job. I had a great girlfriend who's now my wife. We had just moved into a new
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place in Chicago. But like you said, I, I woke up one day with kind of this feeling that time was
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just slipping away from me. And I started to try to figure out what was going on. And I realized that
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I didn't have anything of substance going on day to day that I could sort of hold on to.
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I was in this productivity mindset of just cranking through, going to the meetings,
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answering the emails, getting things done. But it was all kind of at this consistent level of these,
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you know, small tasks. And it just led to this feeling that time was, was slipping away.
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Right. And then, I mean, I think I've, we've all experienced that. And I, the way I kind of
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described it, the way I've experienced it is that I remember as a kid, I had these memories from like
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being a kid where I just like, like these moments, right. That they were really mundane, but for
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whatever reason they stuck with me. And then as an adult, I found like I got fewer of those,
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right. Because you do this, you do the same thing day in and day out and everything just sort of
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bleeds together. Yeah. I mean, I think that our days, you know, living as, as professionals in
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the 21st century, I think that our days tend to be made up of, of mostly small kind of inconsequential
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tasks, you know, things that happen. And the process of forming memories, it, it happens
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automatically. You know, it just sort of, some things might stick out, some things might not.
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But when, when, when nothing is sort of that big of a deal, I think it's difficult to create those
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memories that, that make you feel like you're, you're living in time instead of just like, you
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know, seeing time move by. I, I read around that time when I was struggling, this was like 2008. I,
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I read a book called Wrapped by Winifred Gallagher. It was a really incredible book that has stuck with
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me for a long time. And she makes the argument that your experience of life is not necessarily
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what happens to you. It's what you pay attention to. And that was a big turning point for me. I
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realized that if I started to intentionally build my days around the things that I wanted to remember,
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then I could choose to pay attention to those. And that would, that would have the effect of sort of
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slowing down the passage of time. Very much like, you know, being a kid and, and just having those,
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those, those summers that went on and on and those amazing memories from, from those days.
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Yeah. So, okay. The solution to this was this thing you called highlights. So what is a highlight?
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Yeah. So a highlight is the one activity or thing that you want to prioritize and protect in your day.
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So the idea is that it's not the only thing you'll do, you know, and it's not like,
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you know, I, I don't think I'm unrealistic, you know, I don't want to encourage people to like,
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you know, have this expectation that they can completely clear their calendar, clear their day.
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But by choosing a highlight, you can kind of build your day around it. You can make sure that no matter
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what else happens, you made time for that one thing. And, and you can, you can feel like that time
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was well spent. So I mean, what's an example of that? I mean, is this like, are the highlights
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like work related or are they like something that just makes your life meaningful that you want to
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do? Yeah. For me, they're, they're all of the above. They, they tend to be more work related stuff
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for me. You know, like I often spend time on my highlight first thing in the morning, right after
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I wake up, I went through this, this process of becoming a morning person about five, six years ago.
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So I love to wake up, make some coffee and work on my highlight, which is usually
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writing something or doing some kind of design work or something that's related to work.
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But in the book, we talk about a few different kind of approaches for coming up with your highlight.
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And what I described is, I think, kind of an example of, of satisfaction, you know, looking at
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what task or activity is going to be really satisfying. It's not necessarily the most urgent thing,
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but it's the thing that it's, it's going to be a good chunk of work that you, you want to do and
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you feel good about doing it. But sometimes my highlight is something that needs to get done,
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you know, something that's, that's urgent. And that's another strategy. And, and a lot of times,
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you know, like on Saturday, my wife and I are, we just moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we're taking
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a food tour. That's sort of a, a tour of Milwaukee for Milwaukeeans. And so I know that on Saturday,
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like, that's going to be my highlight, like, that's going to be the thing. It's, it's not something
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I have to get done. It's not something productive, but it's something that I want to do. And I'm going
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to kind of build my day around really enjoying and savoring that.
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So if you, so as long as you accomplish your highlight, like that day was a win, even if you
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That's, I mean, that's, that's my take. You know, I think there's always, there's always bad stuff that
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can happen to us, but my experience, and I think experience that's backed up by some research and,
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and by experience of experiences of other people, people who have, who have read about this stuff,
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as we've been writing about it before the book, you know, just on, on the web, it seems to be
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the case that when you build your days around one thing that you want to make time for time moves
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more slowly and you feel better about the way you spent that time.
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So let's talk about how you establish these highlights. Cause like, I think people have
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heard the idea of, you know, stop, you know, people establish goals for themselves, but usually goals
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are often abstract and too far away in the future. It's like, well, save for retirement or like,
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I'm going to go on a vacation. Totally. So how does a highlight differ from a goal in that regard?
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Yeah. I mean, a highlight is really short term. It's, it's something that you want to do that day.
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It's very much a daily process. And I think Jake and I kind of have this, this hypothesis that most
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advice about time management and self-help kind of stuff is, is way too intimidating.
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You know, it was really big. It's like, it's like, you know, what do you want your life to be?
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You know, where do you want to be in five years? You know, it's, it's really grand. And I think when
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you're, when you're feeling busy and you're feeling distracted and you're feeling like you're,
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you're on autopilot and like the days are sort of flying by, trying to break from that and all
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of a sudden shift into thinking about these grand plans, I think is, is pretty tough. It's pretty
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unrealistic. So our belief is that if you can start small, you can start by identifying what you want to
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do that day, the thing you want to make time for, and then starting to, to reclaim a little bit of
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the time that you might otherwise lose to, to your smartphone, social media, meetings, email,
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whatever, a lot of these default behaviors. If you can start to reclaim a little bit of that time,
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it can build from there. You'll have a little bit more space, a little bit more time to think
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about what's important to you. You'll recognize the things that you enjoy doing, the things that
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are motivating to you, that create that clarity and sense of purpose around your time. And those
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might build into something really grand and big. They might build into, you know, some trip or a
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career change or retirement, but they might not. They might just be something that makes your existing
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life a little bit better, a little bit slower, a little bit, you know, more joyful.
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Well, one example you give in the book of a highlight was you and your wife built this boat
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and wanted to go sailing. So that's like a huge goal. So like, did you just, did you just break
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it down? Like, you know, you decided Saturday is going to be boat day. I'm going to make at least
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two hours for boat days. Is that how that worked?
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Kind of. Yeah. And just to make sure that I'm not getting any undue credit, we did not build a boat.
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Yeah. We, we bought an old boat and then we ended up selling that one and getting a different boat. And,
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and yeah, we, we ultimately ended up spending about eight months on the boat. We sailed from San
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Francisco all the way down the coast of North America to Panama, boats in Panama right now,
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and we'll be spending another probably six months on the boat this winter. But yeah, what you said
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about, you know, sort of on the weekend days using that same approach of having a highlight and saying,
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you know, what's the thing that, that we want to focus on now that's going to move us toward this
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goal. That's exactly what we did. I think that, I think that we were, so I, I've kind of a,
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maybe unconventional way of thinking about goals. And it said, I feel like goals are risky.
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I think that you touched on how there's sort of these, these abstract amorphous things.
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And I think that they, they create sort of a, a feeling that we're not good enough yet
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because we haven't reached our goal. And if only we reach our goal, then we'll, we'll be satisfied.
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Then we'll, we'll be happy with ourselves, which, which I don't think is a great, a great way to live
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day to day. I also think that they blind us to what's happening in the present. If we become so fixed
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on a goal that we're working toward, we might not notice when our priorities change. We might not
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follow something that comes, that appears that we enjoy doing in the meantime. So for, for my wife
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and me, we, I wouldn't say that we made this sailing plan. It's called cruising in the sailing
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world. That's the idea of, of traveling by sailboat. I wouldn't say that we made cruising a goal until
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very late in the game, until, until we got to the point where like there was, there was a finite set
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of things that we needed to do to prepare the boat, to prepare ourselves, to be ready to actually leave
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at a certain time. And then, you know, we got into, you know, making spreadsheets and to-do lists and all
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the sort of typical stuff you do when you're managing a big project. But, but earlier on, for me, it was
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really about trying to find the, the skills or the behaviors that I wanted to develop so that I would
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be in a position to go cruising, to pursue this goal and use my highlights and use my time to develop
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those skills and those behaviors. And so you guys, I mean, as you said, there's different ways to pick
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your highlight of the day. One could be, you know, the sense of urgency, like this has to get done,
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right? In order for me to move forward at work, whatever. So that's one way to pick a highlight.
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Right. And the other one is just like, also like joy and satisfaction. Like the one thing you think.
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Yeah. That's tricky too, because sometimes we think something will give us satisfaction and joy,
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but we do it and it doesn't. But I mean, I think that's one of the nice things about highlights
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instead of like, you know, one of the problems with goals, as you said, you kind of get fixated on it.
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You get goal lock and you keep pursuing it because like, you feel like you should, but like with the,
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I feel like the highlight concept, it's a little more, it's flexible. So it's like, well,
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yeah, that didn't, that didn't really bring me satisfaction. All right, move on to something
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else. Yeah, totally. I mean, flexibility and really like forgiveness, you know, it's sort of,
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those are some of the key philosophies behind this book. You know, Jake and I being obsessed with
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this idea of redesigning time of how we spend our time. We've read tons of books and blog posts and,
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you know, we've read all the things about, you know, the 18 things you should do before 8am and
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all that kind of advice that you see. And I just feel like so much of it is so intense and so
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unforgiving. And so we think that making these changes to how you're spending your time is better
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approached from a standpoint of flexibility and forgiveness to be able to say, you know,
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I don't know what I want to be doing in five years. And I know I'm not going to completely
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remake my life overnight. And I'm not going to adopt this exact set of steps that is,
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is, you know, kind of being presented as a framework. But if I can start small and every
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day I can try to make time for something that is important, we know that people can, can build and
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those changes can compound. And, you know, Jake and I both found that those led us to places,
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you know, with the, the sailing stuff and with writing that approach led us to places in our,
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in our lives that we didn't necessarily plan. Those weren't necessarily goals. They weren't
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things that we saw coming. I mean, another sort of mindset shift that you, that I thought was really
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useful. Let's take this task of getting a boat ready to go sailing around the world. You know,
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as you said, there's like all these things you have to do to get ready. And the tendency, you know,
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the self, you know, the productivity books to say like, you need to, you know, set a deadline for
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each of these little tasks. Right. But then like, I've done that before. And what ends up happening
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is like all of my tasks are overdue. I've got that. Like right now I use Todoist and I'm like,
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all right, this week, this task is going to be done by this stuff. And then like, it was due two days
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ago. And it's like in red saying, I need, it's, I need to get this done. You, you guys said,
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instead of doing that, like having these sort of like sign tasks for certain days, like have,
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instead of like a task, like have, have a, a might, or instead of having a to-do list, have a,
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a might do list. Right. So it's like you go in like, so today is boat day. I'm going to spend two
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hours. Here's a list of tasks that I could possibly do. And why do you think that's so powerful
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and like moving forward on those things that are really meaningful to you?
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Yeah. And that's very much how I, how I plan my days, you know, ongoing. I think that what's
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powerful about the might do list is that it separates the decision about what you should do
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or what you could do from the act of doing it. I think that if you sit down in front of a to-do list
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that is neatly organized and categorized and everything's got a priority and a deadline and
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all these different things, there's, there's a chance, a good chance that you're not going to
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end up spending time on the most important things. You might, you might knock off the easy things or
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the things that are maybe the, they appear the most urgent because you put a date on them and
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they're overdue, but maybe they're not actually the most important things that you should be doing.
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Whereas I think if you, if you have a list, a might do list, what I call it. And before you sit down
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to start working on that stuff, you, you review that and you think about what's important to do
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in that time. And then you schedule it. I think that you have a much better chance of actually
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spending your time on the things that are important. So I, I don't even use a to-do list at all. I just
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have a note in Google keep. So it's on my computer and on my phone. It's just my, like one big might
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do list. And it has a couple of headings in it, but there's no like priority. There's no dates that
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the calendar is really where I sort of handle, you know, the question of when am I going to do things?
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But, but I, I think that that very human process of, of reviewing and intuitively deciding here's
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what's important now is essential. And I think it's something that to-do lists don't necessarily help
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us do. Yeah. One thing I've noticed whenever I'm working on a larger task and I create to-do
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lists, like as I get started working on the project, like I realized that what I thought
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was urgent is no longer urgent, or I need to solve this other problem first before I get to this. So
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it's like, I don't know. I think the idea of a might do list gives them flexibility to when you
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actually get started, you can make adaptations. Yeah. Well, and, and it's, it's kind of a,
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it's kind of a trick, right? It's like part of it is just in the framing, you know, this idea that
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instead of a to-do list, it's, it's a might do list, you know, it's, it's, I think in that spirit
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of, of forgiveness and flexibility that we talked about a few minutes ago. And there's maybe, maybe
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that's not the most life-changing shift in thinking, but I do think that there's something
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valuable about it. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:22:23.120
And now back to the show. So we're going to be flexible with, you know, what we do with this
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highlight, whatever we pick at it, whatever we pick it to be. And here's the question. Can you,
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can your highlight change from day to day? Or is this something where you'd like you, you sit down
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on Sunday and here's like another typical productivity tip. You got to plan your week on
00:22:42.740
Sunday night and, you know, decide what you're going to do each day of the week. Or is this concept
00:22:48.560
a little more flexible? It's like, well, you know, today is going to be boat day or
00:22:53.060
today. It's going to be writing memo day or whatever. Yeah. How does that work?
00:22:57.800
Yeah. So make time is really a daily framework. So we think that the day is kind of the sweet
00:23:05.600
spot. That's the right size that we are capable of both thinking about in a productive way,
00:23:12.160
but then actually acting on, you know, when you create that plan for the week or, or, you
00:23:16.540
know, the, the one year plan or the five year plan for yourself, it's too difficult to,
00:23:21.200
to predict, to know what's, what's really going to happen, how you're going to feel,
00:23:25.000
what else is going to happen to you. And so the day kind of feels like a sweet spot.
00:23:32.500
So setting highlight is a daily activity. The other steps in the make time framework,
00:23:39.880
laser, energize and, and reflect, which we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about. Those are all
00:23:44.960
daily activities. And yeah, the highlight can totally be, can be something different every day.
00:23:50.280
You know, you can kind of jump between one day, there might be something urgent you need to take
00:23:54.060
care of. And then once you've got that off your plate, the next day, you feel like you can do
00:23:57.360
something really satisfying. The end of the week rolls around and you, and you choose a joyful
00:24:02.440
highlight, something that is just going to be really fun for you. The, the kind of the twist on
00:24:07.420
that or the exception is when, when we're working on a big project, we often find it valuable to think
00:24:14.520
of sort of a, a personal sprint. So essentially choosing the same highlight every day for a week
00:24:22.300
or for longer or highlights that are thematically related. So if you're, if you're working on,
00:24:28.860
you know, creating something new, and this was the case when we were, when we were writing make time,
00:24:34.080
you know, pretty much every day with the, with a few exceptions, my highlight was about make time.
00:24:40.600
It was about writing, you know, writing a draft of the next chapter or reviewing something that
00:24:46.260
Jake had written or working on outlining a certain section, but having a sort of similar or the same
00:24:54.460
highlight day after day, I think really allows us to, to get into the groove, to get into flow
00:24:59.080
in a way that's difficult to do just, you know, within one day, but that's kind of an advanced move.
00:25:05.240
That's not, you know, that's not really like sort of the, the basic way that, that the highlight works.
00:25:10.700
Right. When you actually, you guys coauthored a book called Sprint as well, where you kind of,
00:25:14.720
where you talk about the system you all used at Google to, you know, get these big projects
00:25:22.660
Yeah. So, so that book is about the five day design sprint process where a team goes from idea
00:25:29.700
or challenge to a prototype that they can test with customers in five days. And, and running those
00:25:37.740
sprints was, was really interesting for us because it was almost like a, a time management laboratory
00:25:44.020
where we got to bring all these people in and work with them and see how, see how people reacted
00:25:50.860
to changes in the defaults of how we spend our time and make tweaks and try to improve things and,
00:25:58.100
and see how it went. And one of the things that was, was really interesting is just the gains that
00:26:04.220
you get from focusing on the same thing for a week, instead of trying to move projects forward by,
00:26:11.920
you know, little bit and little bit when you can, excuse me, when you can sort of load all of that
00:26:19.860
knowledge and expertise about what you're working on into your, your working memory, you know, as a,
00:26:26.380
into your brain. It's not like you make, you know, five times as much progress. Cause it's five days
00:26:32.180
you make, you make way more, you make so much more progress because you don't have to, you don't have
00:26:37.240
the switching costs. You don't have to reload your working memory every time you try to pick up that
00:26:40.940
project again. Gotcha. So I was thinking as I was listening to you, like taking this to, I can see
00:26:45.500
how I work in your work life, right? There's a big project. You just spend five days and every day
00:26:51.020
that your highlight is going to be working on this project and moving it forward. I was thinking in your
00:26:54.680
personal life, right? Like one of the things that people try to do, they try to do bits and pieces,
00:27:00.600
like getting their house organized or their garage organized. Yeah. So they like, you know,
00:27:04.400
they spend like basically an hour every Saturday. That's all they got. But like, maybe you just set
00:27:09.720
aside, okay, this week, every night for just an hour, our highlight is clean out and organize the garage.
00:27:16.680
Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that like that way of, that way of thinking about a project
00:27:25.480
can be, you know, almost freeing and, and really, really motivating because when you have the clarity
00:27:33.460
that that's what you have decided to do and that's what's important, you no longer feel like you're
00:27:37.980
trying to squeeze it in, in between other stuff or, or kind of making that decision in real time.
00:27:43.780
Like, Oh, you know, I could watch TV, but I really should clean the garage. Like when you've,
00:27:48.120
when you've sort of made a plan and said, you know, this is going to be, this is going to be
00:27:51.580
my highlight is to, is to, and after we finish dinner, we're going to go and we're going to
00:27:55.880
work in the garage for an hour. I think it allows you to, to, to look forward to that and to,
00:28:00.740
to enjoy it more, even if it's something that's, you know, not really all that fun.
00:28:05.320
So we're pretty flexible with, you know, the to-do list, my do list. But the one thing you
00:28:10.940
don't want to be flexible with on the highlight is like you set aside time for it and like
00:28:15.720
you basically protect that with your life. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, so when
00:28:21.880
people are getting started with this, we kind of think that 60 to 90 minutes is a good chunk
00:28:28.980
of time to spend on a highlight. It's something that most people can realistically create by
00:28:35.600
adjusting their schedule and by reclaiming time from distracting and addicting apps and devices.
00:28:44.920
But it's also, it's long enough that you can really, you can sink your teeth into it. You can
00:28:50.600
kind of get in the groove, you can get into flow, you can, you can feel like it was, it was worthwhile.
00:28:56.600
It was something meaningful. All right. So let's talk about, so we set aside, we've picked our
00:29:01.820
highlight, we set aside time for it. We're going to protect it with our life, say no to
00:29:05.580
things. Right. And I think, you know, that's the hard part for people stuff comes up and
00:29:09.740
you think, well, it's my highlight. I'm working on the garage. I could probably do that. Just
00:29:14.240
say, say I got, I already got plans and people won't say anything. Let's talk about the, those
00:29:20.240
things that distract us, right. That can sort of, if we spend too much time on it, it can seep
00:29:26.660
into our, our highlight time. So you call these, you know, let's talk about you guys
00:29:31.100
worked at Google. You call these things like email, YouTube, even web browsers. You call
00:29:39.820
Yeah. So an infinity pool is any app or service or product that has an infinite and replenishing
00:29:49.280
source of content inside of it. If you can pull to refresh or if it streams,
00:29:56.080
streams nonstop, you know, you know, like the, the Netflix example of, of starting the next
00:30:00.920
episode right after the previous one ends, that's an infinity pool. And we kind of came
00:30:05.940
up with that term because, you know, there, there's always more water in the pool. You
00:30:09.940
know, you can always jump back in. It's the level is never going to go down. It's never
00:30:14.300
going to go away. It's never going to be, be empty. And, and these are really challenging.
00:30:19.320
You know, these are infinity pools are a new invention in the history of humankind until
00:30:26.080
just like 10 years ago, most things in our world were finite and infinity pools. They
00:30:33.580
really, they pull on several of the threads that make up the fabric of who we are as humans,
00:30:43.060
as you know, of how we evolved. For example, we evolved to really care about people and stories
00:30:49.720
and gossip. So social media, you know, Instagram showing photos of what other people are doing and,
00:30:55.500
and, and what, what their lives are like. That's very appealing to us. We are naturally susceptible
00:31:01.500
to distraction because if you think about a pre-industrial, pre-agricultural world,
00:31:08.340
if there's a flash in the corner of your eye, you should probably check and look what it is.
00:31:13.740
You know, it might be a tree falling, or it might be a, a large animal. It might be, you know,
00:31:18.980
something you need to be aware of. Whereas today, most of the distractions are not actually important.
00:31:24.680
And, and we also evolved to value what psychologists call variable rewards or random rewards. And sort of
00:31:33.420
the classic example of this is a slot machine where you pull the handle and it's really easy and low
00:31:39.640
cost to pull the handle. And most times nothing happens or nothing good happens, but on occasion,
00:31:45.700
something amazing happens. There's always the chance that something really great is going to happen when
00:31:49.900
you pull that handle. And if you think about it, that's exactly what these infinity pool apps are like.
00:31:55.820
And we, we sort of evolved to, to value those things as well, because imagine you're, you're hunting,
00:32:02.460
you're gathering, you're trying to find food that you need to survive. And, you know, some days you
00:32:08.620
might go out and come back empty-handed, but every once in a while, something great happens. Every once
00:32:13.940
in a while, you, you know, you make a big kill or you come across, uh, you know, a bush with that's,
00:32:20.920
that's full of berries or, you know, you find some ripe fruit or something like that.
00:32:24.060
And so really deep in our DNA, we've got this, this appreciation for, and this love of these variable
00:32:32.160
And I mean, the other thing about infinity pools, if we're the whole goal of make time is to have more of these
00:32:38.320
moments in our life or that we remember, I think with infinity pools, like if I look back and I think I've
00:32:44.620
been using the internet for, I don't know, however long, 15, I don't know. I can't even, that's the thing.
00:32:48.980
Like it's all slipped by me. It's all amorphous, but like, I can't remember like a moment, like being on the
00:32:53.980
internet and being like, I, I remember when I read this Reddit thread and it was awesome. I remember
00:32:59.240
when I scrolled through Instagram, I saw this cool, like that never happens. Yeah. Right.
00:33:06.700
Yeah, that's totally true. And so I think like the combination of these, these innate human
00:33:13.040
characteristics with the, just the sheer convenience, you know, just the fact that these
00:33:17.320
things are, are in our pockets or in our, our handbags or right in front of us is just kind of
00:33:22.960
this perfect storm. It's just this, this really powerful cocktail that tends to, to suck time
00:33:31.540
away from us in a way that we don't even notice is happening. And those behaviors, one of the things
00:33:37.720
we talk about a lot in the book is this idea of, of defaults, how these behaviors are not necessarily
00:33:44.160
things we decided to do. It's not like there's some, you know, grandmaster plan for the, the best
00:33:51.220
way to, to spend your time every day. But because these infinity pool apps have become the defaults
00:33:59.000
in our world, many of us just kind of find ourselves mindlessly checking them, or we, we pick up our
00:34:06.400
phone for a quick check of something and we end up doing something else. And so what Jake and I have done
00:34:13.100
and what we encourage people to do is to think about ways that they can change those defaults.
00:34:18.200
Right. So, I mean, some of you guys get pretty drastic, like someone was like, just remove your
00:34:22.500
email app from your phone, remove your web browser from your phone.
00:34:26.160
Yeah. Yeah. And the, they're all based on the same idea, which is that the best way
00:34:30.780
to avoid distraction is to make it more difficult to get distracted. So to remove those, or sorry,
00:34:38.280
to create barriers to distraction, designers like us, we've spent years and years trying to remove
00:34:44.280
the barriers, trying to make apps like email and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube as easy to get
00:34:50.900
into and as easy to use as possible. You don't have to sign in, you stay signed in. You don't have to
00:34:56.080
even think to open the app because there's a notification on your phone that reminds you about it.
00:35:00.100
And we believe that by creating barriers to distraction, you can take willpower out of
00:35:08.120
the equation. You can take self-control out of the equation. You don't need to constantly resist
00:35:13.040
the urge to check these things, but by removing apps from your phone, by signing out of websites that
00:35:22.040
are very distracting, even doing things like rearranging your living room so that the TV is not the focal
00:35:28.280
point can just make it a little bit more difficult to get sucked into these infinity pools. And they
00:35:34.160
have the result then of freeing up that time for other things, freeing, freeing up that time for
00:35:38.480
your highlight. Right. And I think one tactic, like people are like, man, how could I ever like get by
00:35:43.660
without email on my phone or a web browser? I mean, like with email, I actually, I don't have email
00:35:49.220
on my phone anymore either. And what kind of finally realized that got me to remove is like, I've never
00:35:54.960
answered email from my phone ever. Yeah. All you do is look at it and get stressed out about all the
00:36:00.320
things you're not answering. Right. So yeah, I guess just be thoughtful about the apps you have on
00:36:05.160
your phone. You guys also give suggestions. You have a website, right? What's the website? MakeTime?
00:36:10.300
Oh yeah. For the book, the website is called maketimebook.com. That's the domain.
00:36:14.880
But you also mean you offer, you know, app suggestions that you can block, you know, certain things on your
00:36:19.080
phone. And that's, that's all useful. So the idea is just figure out what your defaults are and then
00:36:23.560
rearrange those defaults to put obstruction between getting into these infinity pools.
00:36:28.020
Yeah. And, and as you, you touched on, like it can be, it can be pretty daunting or pretty extreme
00:36:34.100
to think about, wow, like no email on my phone. Like that's crazy. But we, we encourage people to
00:36:40.840
think about when it comes to infinity pool apps, we encourage people to think about what's the underlying
00:36:48.640
value or purpose for using that thing. Cause you know, we, we start using an app or service or a
00:36:55.500
tool for a reason, you know, there's, there's obviously something good about it. So for example,
00:37:00.120
you might, you might be thinking about Facebook and you might think, well, you know, I like using
00:37:04.640
Facebook because it allows me to keep in touch with my family and I can see pictures of my, you know,
00:37:10.240
my friend's kids or something like that. And, and kind of follow that thread through to the,
00:37:15.940
the conclusion of like, well, will I still be able to do that if I don't have it on my phone?
00:37:22.540
If I don't have it at my fingertips at every moment? And the answer in, in most cases is yes.
00:37:28.580
You know, I use Twitter for a lot of kind of work related stuff. That's how I kind of promote my work
00:37:35.760
and talk to readers and answer questions. But I don't need it on my phone. I don't need to be,
00:37:42.000
have access to it 24 seven to do that. I use Twitter on my computer. I use it for a limited
00:37:48.060
time each day. And when I'm done with it, I, I log out and I close the tab and I go on with my day.
00:37:54.780
Email kind of fits into that as well. There's actually some pretty interesting research that we
00:38:00.040
write about in the book where people who spend less time on email actually get better at email.
00:38:07.900
So, um, they're able to respond like the, the time that it takes per message to respond,
00:38:14.300
like gets shorter and shorter when people, you know, just do email at the end of the day or just
00:38:19.980
have like a certain chunk of time when they do email. So I think the, the kind of the perspective
00:38:26.240
that I'm talking through here is trying to be clear about why you use these things and then ask
00:38:32.260
yourself the question of whether it needs to be always on, you know, always at your fingertips.
00:38:37.080
All right. So this is one of these tactics you guys highlights about you, you all highlight about,
00:38:41.460
you know, this laser focus part of the, the make time process. You have your highlights
00:38:46.360
and then you're going to laser in on it where you're going to avoid distractions. So yeah,
00:38:50.560
avoid these infinity pools, but you also talk about, you know, avoiding, I mean, one of the,
00:38:55.860
you talk, I think that's a really point, interesting point you made in the book. Cause I've fallen
00:38:58.780
in this trap is avoiding getting caught up, like spending so much time on your productivity
00:39:04.320
system that you actually don't get actual things done. Right. So that's basically avoid the fancy
00:39:10.720
tools. Cause that, that can get really exciting. That's right. Yeah. And that's another one that
00:39:15.800
came directly out of my own experience, you know, just being, you know, nerding out on like
00:39:23.380
all the different to-do list apps and the, you know, the project management apps and that kind of stuff.
00:39:29.980
I think that, that these, you know, I call them fancy tools. They, they feel like work,
00:39:37.480
but they're not actually work. You know, if you, if you have an idea for an app that you are thinking
00:39:41.880
of building, you know, instead of, you know, just grabbing a piece of paper and start sketching what
00:39:47.840
the UI looks like, you know, you think, Oh, I need to have a fancy notebook and a really nice pen.
00:39:54.320
Or if you want to start writing something, you know, you have to go and download and install like a,
00:39:58.960
you know, a distraction free writing app or like a, you know, one of these like dedicated
00:40:04.440
screenplay writing apps. And, and, and those are just like sort of a form of procrastination.
00:40:09.640
You know, there are things that I think are, are easy to get into because they're kind of fun
00:40:14.100
and they, they're the, the path of least resistance. But when we really stop and think about it,
00:40:19.740
they're not actually what we want to be doing, what we want to be spending our time on.
00:40:23.460
All right. They, they, they distract you. All right. So there's pick your highlight.
00:40:26.860
You're going to laser and there's a whole bunch of tactics, you know,
00:40:30.420
and we've talked about some of them avoiding the energy, the infinity pools. The next part of the,
00:40:35.240
the make time process is energize. So this is like basically energy management. Why do you think
00:40:40.900
that's an important part of personal productivity? I think that focusing on building energy
00:40:47.960
is important because it helps us, helps us avoid distraction in the first place and, and kind of
00:40:54.600
make better decisions in those moments, you know, day to day about what we're going to do next.
00:41:00.960
So I've, I've definitely been in a situation where like, you know, I wake up and maybe I've stayed up
00:41:06.840
too late or maybe I was like, you know, I was watching TV too late or I, you know, I drank a little
00:41:12.060
bit too much or I had like a, you know, a huge meal or something like that. And I wake up and I feel
00:41:16.940
groggy or, or sluggish or, you know, not, not energized. And on those mornings, I'm way more
00:41:23.580
likely to, you know, jump into my email or, or open Twitter right away instead of spending time
00:41:29.500
on my highlight. And, you know, I think, I think if you've ever, you know, felt really sluggish after
00:41:34.240
a big lunch, or if you've ever, you know, felt kind of clearheaded and invigorated after,
00:41:39.120
after going for a run, you can kind of, you can kind of see this connection between the energy
00:41:45.980
that we create with our bodies and how that affects the decisions and the things that we do
00:41:51.160
with our brains. Right. So basically, you know, the advice is like, basically the stuff you've been
00:41:55.520
hearing your entire life and how to live a healthy life, get like, you know, get plenty of sleep,
00:41:59.700
you know, eat right, exercise, any other tactics that you found to be very, you know, pretty useful
00:42:05.720
energizing you. Yeah. The, the, the big categories, like you're saying, are kind of the, the stuff that
00:42:12.200
everybody already knows. So, so food, exercise, sleep. And then we also think that, that finding
00:42:19.680
quiet, you know, moments of quiet away from the noise of, of modern life and spending face-to-face
00:42:26.120
time with other people. We think that these are really important ways to build energy, but, but we also
00:42:31.780
know that like this kind of advice is like, it's everywhere and everybody already knows about it.
00:42:36.340
So, so we try to translate that into really concrete, specific tactics that people can try
00:42:42.020
and that it doesn't represent, you know, some dramatically new extreme diet or some like super
00:42:49.040
intense workout program, but kind of little things that, that you can fit into your day.
00:42:54.800
Right. And also, I'm, I'm, could like these things be a highlight for somebody?
00:42:59.800
It definitely could be. I mean, I think that there's a, you know, depending on what you're
00:43:05.220
into and what you like, you know, for example, cooking is, is I think a, a, an activity that can
00:43:10.880
be, it can be a highlight. It can be something that improves the, the healthfulness of the food
00:43:16.480
that you eat. And it can also be a way to, to give yourself energy by using your body, by moving your
00:43:24.240
body. I actually took a lot of inspiration from, from some of your writing, Brett, about,
00:43:29.040
like kind of the, the strenuous life, this idea of, of doing things, you know, of, of having a,
00:43:36.080
a DIY life instead of a remote control life, you know, when, you know, instead of ordering,
00:43:42.980
ordering delivery and, and, you know, using the laundry apps and the, you know, grocery delivery
00:43:47.860
and all, all these things, all these conveniences that are available, something like cooking kind
00:43:52.680
of hits a few of those principles at the same time.
00:43:56.180
Yeah. No. Yeah. I think that's an interesting point. We've, we, we did a series on Winston
00:43:59.780
Churchill. And one of the interesting things about this guy, he had, he had a weird schedule. Like
00:44:03.820
he stayed up late, he slept in, you know, he would dictate to his secretary while he's in his pajamas
00:44:09.160
in his bed or in his bathtub, you know, weird guy, you know, but he worked hard. Like when he was
00:44:13.900
working, he was working hard, but for a break, instead of just taking it easy, like he would go
00:44:20.580
like build a wall in his garden or go paint. Um, and that energized him to go back to whatever else
00:44:27.180
you had to do. Totally. Yeah. I feel that as well. Like, um, I, I get a lot of satisfaction
00:44:33.840
and, and frankly, a lot of energy out of doing things the hard way, you know, kind of choosing
00:44:38.680
the, the manual route, doing things to where there, there's a clear, there is a clear sort of
00:44:46.400
convenient way to, to do the thing, but choosing the harder way, you know, walking is, is a perfect
00:44:51.980
example. It obviously, it takes longer to walk most times, but it actually, I feel like it, it
00:44:59.280
actually creates time because I'm getting energy from that activity, but I, I also have additional
00:45:07.120
mental space that is happening while I'm walking, you know, same with, with cleaning or cooking or,
00:45:14.760
or, or, you know, carrying something home from the store, you know, it creates kind of this,
00:45:20.140
this meditative space, this, this opportunity to, to allow ideas to emerge, to start to kind of reflect
00:45:28.260
on, on what you're doing, how you're spending your time. So yeah, for me, those sort of, you know,
00:45:36.520
hands-on almost those intentionally inconvenient approaches to everyday activities are, are really
00:45:44.620
important. No. Yeah. I've, I've noticed that like whenever I do nothing, it always sounds appealing,
00:45:49.720
but then doing nothing can often just be like exhausting. I don't know why. So I've actually
00:45:56.440
do something on my, like a break, I come back to work more energized. It's, it's bizarre. I don't
00:46:01.520
know why it works that way. Yeah. I mean, like taking a break from work and, and, and checking,
00:46:06.440
you know, Twitter is kind of like the classic example of that. It's like, Oh, like this will be a cool
00:46:12.520
break. I'll, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll catch up on what's going on. And then you get done with it
00:46:16.720
and you're like, wait, that wasn't a break. Like I don't, I don't feel refreshed. I don't feel
00:46:20.820
renewed. Um, now I need it. Now I need a real break. Yeah. Right. Right. A real break. All right.
00:46:26.860
So, uh, you know, just basically take care of yourself so you can be more productive when you're
00:46:31.000
working on the things that are important. So there's highlights, uh, laser energize, and then there's
00:46:36.260
this reflect. What does that reflection process look like? Yeah. So reflect might be the
00:46:42.240
most important part of, of the whole thing. And the idea is that you'll spend just a couple
00:46:47.780
minutes every day thinking back on, on how your day went. What was your highlight? Did you have
00:46:55.000
time for it? And which tactics did you use? Are there things from the book that you tried
00:47:02.160
and did they work well? And if they didn't work well, what do you want to try again tomorrow?
00:47:07.000
For me, this is something that like, I've been, I've been kind of thinking about this stuff
00:47:12.140
for so long. And I've been on this, this journey for so long that I, I do a lot of this reflection
00:47:17.280
kind of intuitively. I have space in my day where I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm walking or,
00:47:25.240
or, you know, not actively engaged in, in work. And I'm, I'm always thinking about, you know,
00:47:31.940
just how things are going, but I know that I'm a little bit weird in that, in that way. So
00:47:37.380
at the same time, there's a lot of advice out there. I think about journaling and about
00:47:43.380
stuff like that, that can, can feel pretty overwhelming. So we're trying to offer people
00:47:49.840
a very small, very bite-sized activity that they can do to basically answer a couple of questions
00:47:56.740
and put themselves in this experimental mindset, put themselves in this way of thinking that
00:48:03.680
doesn't have perfection as a goal, doesn't have the, the perfect application of this,
00:48:10.720
this 20 part system, but just has this spirit of like, just do a little, just get a little better
00:48:17.500
every day. Just do something a little different every day and see how it goes for you.
00:48:21.820
And here's the question, like, how do you keep this up day in and day out? Because that's the
00:48:24.940
problem with what I found with like productivity systems, right? Like, you know, get, getting things
00:48:29.480
done. For example, I did that too, back in whatever, 2007, 2006 came out. And it's like,
00:48:35.240
yeah, this is really cool. I went out and bought all the stuff and I did it for like two weeks. And
00:48:39.340
then it's like, no, uh, yeah, it's gonna, I got that collection of GTD stuff sitting there now.
00:48:46.780
So with this, like, how do you keep it up day in and day out?
00:48:49.500
Yeah. I mean, I think that as much as possible, it's helpful to, to try to make some of these
00:48:57.900
things automatic. So I know there's a lot of advice out there about, about creating habits
00:49:03.340
and, and I'm certainly not an expert on that, but I think to the extent that you can create
00:49:08.220
habits around these activities, that's, that's really helpful. I think even just, just shifting
00:49:13.880
a mindset can really reinforce certain behaviors. But at the same time, like I, I don't know that
00:49:23.540
there is necessarily an easy answer to that question. I think, I think part of it has to come
00:49:29.400
from an external sense of motivation, a sense that you want to change things or that you want to work
00:49:36.880
toward something better. And, and, and I think that that's one of the, one of the results of
00:49:44.620
this approach to making time that as you start to create a little bit of space every day, you start
00:49:51.620
to get a clearer view of, of where you're headed and what's important to you. For example, when my
00:49:58.200
wife and I were just starting to get into sailing and we were spending time learning about our boat and
00:50:03.240
fixing up our boat and taking short trips on the boat, you know, we didn't necessarily have some
00:50:09.660
grand plan that we were working toward, but the more time we spent on it and the more we use these
00:50:16.360
techniques to create space in our days, the stronger motivation we were able to build about
00:50:23.660
what we were working toward. And so, you know, I don't have a perfect formula for, for how to,
00:50:30.080
you know, change your behavior overnight, how to, how to make these changes stick.
00:50:35.240
But I do think that starting to, to slow things down and create a little bit of space every day
00:50:41.060
is the first step. Well, John, where can people go to learn more about the book? We already talked
00:50:45.360
about make time book, right? That's right. Yeah. Make time book.com. Great place to go just to follow
00:50:50.120
everything that Jake and I are doing and writing about is time dorks. Time dorks. So that's our
00:50:56.220
newsletter. It's all about experiments and time management. And then perhaps ironically, I would
00:51:01.000
suggest that people follow me on Twitter as well. My username is Jazzer, J-A-Z-E-R.
00:51:07.820
It's when they're taking their fake break. They can check you out. Exactly.
00:51:11.520
Well, Hey, John, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for coming on.
00:51:16.100
My guest there is John Zorasky. He's the coauthor of the book,
00:51:18.640
Make Time. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out
00:51:22.360
more information about the book at his website, maketimebook.com, all one word. You can find
00:51:26.820
links to tools and free resources there. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash make time,
00:51:32.720
where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic and to put it into
00:51:36.260
action. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more
00:51:52.200
manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.
00:51:56.360
And if you enjoy the show, you've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you give us a
00:51:59.460
review on iTunes or Stitcher. That helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.
00:52:03.620
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something
00:52:06.580
out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time,