Focused - 99: Working From Home, with Dave Caolo

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

Dave Caolo joins us to talk about games & productivity, how his bullet journal helps him stay focused, and working from home without going crazy.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hello, David. Hello, Mike. Welcome to Episode 99. Yeah, thanks. You too. Yeah, it's hard to believe we've got a great show today. But before we get started, this is Episode 99, which means our next episode is Episode 100. And we've got a couple of special things planned

for that episode. One of which is questions and thoughts about focus from the listeners and maybe a little story about your journey or questions you have. If you do have such question, please send it into us. We're going to have a thread in the forums for this over at talk.macpowerusers.com in the focus forum, but you can also just email it to us at the contact email at the relay.fm website. Yep. If you go to the focus page, you can just click the button for the contact form. That'll go to David and myself and want to say thank you to the people who have submitted something already and everybody else who is thinking about submitting questions or stories or whatever, please do that soon because we want to compile all of those and work them into the episode 100 outline before we record it. All right, let's get started. All right. Welcome to the show,

Dave Calo. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. It's the month of Dave's, the month of Dave's. Yeah, I'm happy to keep your current tradition of Dave's going. Yeah, we're going to have to really work on that for the next episode, Mike. Yep. For sure. Maybe David Lee Roth. Oh, yeah, why not? Maybe he's very focused.

I'm not sure, though. I'm not certain of that. Yeah, I wouldn't bet the house. Yeah. though i'm not certain of that yeah i wouldn't bet the house yeah well the uh dave calo dave did i pronounce your name right calo calo calo it's got sort of americanized over the generations yeah because it's got a and then oh so every time i have you on a show i screw up your last name dave calo is here and uh dave dave and i have known each other for a very long time. But the reason he's unfocused is this is a focused guy.

You've been writing in the Mac space, but you're doing a whole bunch of other stuff now. And you also have a podcast about working from home, which we want to talk about today. And just welcome to the show, Dave. Thanks. It's great to be hanging out with you guys again. Like you said, Dave, I've known you for a long time and I've had the pleasure of meeting you in person. Mike, we and I have known each other for a long time, but I don't think we've ever met in person. No, we have not. I've done some projects with you in the past and I've been a guest on the Homework podcast, which you recently rebooted. We're going to talk about that in a

little bit, but we have not met in person. I was hoping to get out to New England and show up at the Reboot Game Labs sometime, but that's probably not happening in the current state of things. But you've kind of made some shifts with that too. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. And you're doing some cool stuff online with that. I have this memory of Dave and I sitting on the second floor at Macworld one year at one of those little tables with our laptops next to each other trading OmniFocus tips. And I'm like, this is my kind of nerd. That's what I remember. Yeah. I remember I had a pestering question that was something about mail and OmniFocus not behaving the way I wanted to together.

And you just said, oh, look, this, this, this, this, this. And it worked. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's great. I had to fly all the way to California to get that answer, but it was so worth it. It's all a tick. It's all a tick. Dave, I want to talk to you about focus. Before I do, one pitch for our fellow relay host, CGP Grape, went out a great video. We're going to put it in the show notes, the Spaceship U. Did you get a chance to take a look at that, Mike? I did. I love this video. I've shared it with a bunch of people. And I think this perfectly encapsulates the perspective people should have during the whole COVID-19 coronavirus fiasco that

we find ourselves in the middle of. Just real briefly, to steal the punchline, it is to do what you can, take care of yourself, and be better than you were before. You know, come back in a better position. And there's certain things that you have to do to make that happen. And I just love the analogy of the spaceship that CGP Grey used in that video. I think it's something that everybody can relate to. Yeah, we definitely sometimes feel like we're blasted out to space right now. And it was just so on point with the stuff we talk about on the Focus podcast. Make room to do your different things, keep your things separate. And when you work on one thing, just work on that thing. I thought it was really good. Speaking of working

on just one thing at a time, Dave, I want to talk about all the stuff you're doing. Before we kind of get into the nitty-gritty, just for the listeners, you've got the Homework podcast, which has, I think, the longest hiatus of any podcast I've ever listened to. Yeah, we went four years in between episode 219 and 220. Yeah. Well, hey, you know, suddenly you felt a need, right? That need just sort of crept up on me, and I said, I think it's time to finally get 220 in the can. Yeah, so this is a podcast not just about people who work for themselves, but just people who work at home.

And that seems to be a lot of us these days. So I highly recommend that one. And recently rebooted, very good. I highly recommend that one. And recently rebooted, very good. And then you've also got another one, which I think is kind of appropriate for the time, the Reboot Game Lab.

Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, that's a little side gig I've got going on. It was maybe two years ago that a friend of mine and I were having a conversation. This is one of the guys I typically play games with. I'm talking about tabletop games, not necessarily video games. I've been getting together with the same group of guys for, oh my gosh, about 10 years now. Once or twice a week, we just get together and play games. We were talking one night and said, boy, I've always dreamed about having a board game cafe.

And he said, boy, I have too. So we just said, let's try to do this insane thing. And we decided to give it a shot. We found a business accelerator out here on Cape Cod, applied and were accepted and did the 12-week course. And then there's another four, six months worth of support. And it was great. We knew games, we didn't know business.

And this course was tremendously helpful for the feeling that we didn't know business, and this course was tremendously helpful for the fill in what we didn't know. We sort of grew our audience. We learned quickly that the cafe just isn't in the cards because the startup cost was way too high. So we started doing just in-person game clubs. That was going very, very well.

And then all of this happened, and I had to sort of pivot on a dime to switch to an online model which has been working as well so yeah that's my that's my side gig that uh that occupies a good amount of my time it just seems like um online tabletop gaming makes so much sense I mean I'm not talking about just the middle of the pandemic I mean we were talking before we start recording there's a I want to play an online game or I want to play a tabletop game, but there's just not enough nerds close enough to me to make it happen. And honestly, getting me past the front door takes such a threshold that, you know, even though I want to do this, I'm not sure I would do it if the guys, like there's a guy a block away that said, if you just come to my house, we'll do it. So you may have something there, Dave. I think so. Right now, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of us, you know, a lot of us, all of us are home all the time. And we're, you know, pretty much looking at the same people, which is great.

And if you are in a situation where, you know, you want to see others, it's pretty much impossible right now where not only are we online playing games together, but we can see each other and we can joke and laugh and have a good time and play a game together. And yeah, I think it's filling at least a need that I've identified that a lot of people are experiencing. Good for you. And your dad, your husband. I am a dad. All that stuff. You're a busy guy. I follow you enough on social media to know that there's not a lot of downtime in the Kalo house. There's not a whole heck of a lot. No, we don't have an abundance of

downtime. So Dave, what does the word focus mean to you? Yeah, it's funny. I try to think, I guess my working definition of focus is to have a clear understanding or definition of what you happen to be doing. You know, do what you're doing. So earlier you talked about, you know, doing the one thing that you're working on. That's something that I work on all the time. But for me, I guess focus is having a clear definition of what you're doing and just do that thing for X amount of time. How do you maintain that focus with doing everything online? Obviously, there's the ability to be contacted

by a bunch of different people, a bunch of different ways. And it's, I imagine, harder to control that portal now than it was a few months ago when you had specific places maybe that you could associate with specific tasks. How do you manage the transitions and maintaining your focus on the thing

that you want to be doing at any given point? Yeah, it's really difficult. And that's always been especially difficult for me, I'll have to admit. There's a few things I do. One of the best pieces of focus advice I ever got came from Dave, and it was turn off your email notifications. You don't want that thing dinging all day because it's like a toddler tugging on your pant leg saying, pay attention to me, look at me.

I really don't have anything on my Mac that dings. I've silenced notification center and sort of keep it that way. My phone will, but when I'm at my desk, my phone is on another desk, so it doesn't bother me. It's just my mind and attention tend to wander. Like for me, it's best to identify what I need to be working on ahead of time. And this is really the biggest thing for me. I never want to sit down at my desk and think, okay, what should I do? Because my mind will say, okay, here's a list of three dozen things you should be working on right now. So what's helped me the most with that is something I learned from Sean Blanc. I believe he called it the note.

I'm sure your readers know about this, but when I wrap up my work for the day, and we can talk about setting office hours when you're working from home, I physically write down on a little 3x5 index card the three or four absolute must-do tasks that have to happen tomorrow or the next day. So then when I do sit at my desk in the morning, I know precisely what I should be working on. And I don't have to struggle with the question of, okay, where should my focus be? What should I be doing right now? Because I provided myself the answer last night. I like to think of it as doing future Dave a favor.

Yeah, I like that. And I can tell you, because I just had a conversation with Sean, Yeah, I like that. And I can tell you, because I just had a conversation with Sean, that he still does that. Maybe it shifted a little bit, where now, instead of a couple of tasks to be done tomorrow, he writes down his writing prompt. And when he sits down to write at 6am, he already knows what he's going to write about. And I remember when he told me that, that I thought, that is just genius. Because that's the thing that everybody who wants to get up early and right before their kids get up and all the distractions come, you know, that they have that vision. That's what they want to do.

But then they get up early, they're motivated, they sit down, they stare at that blank cursor and they're like, now what? So you completely eliminate that just by spending a couple minutes at the end of the day. And it's funny because at the end of the day, that stuff comes to you. It's clear what you need to do then. But then at the beginning of the day, that's the kind of thing that you can sit and think about that for an hour and still feel like you don't know where to start. Yeah, let me ramp up into that mode. Whereas at the end of the day, you're still in it. You think, okay, let me take five minutes to jot down what has to happen tomorrow while I'm still in this mode.

Jot it down and then I can sort of close the door and walk away. I'm a strong believer in kind of thinking of yourself as wearing your manager hat versus your worker hat and really keeping those separate. Like the manager is the one who at the end of the day plans what you're going to do the next day, but the worker is the one that comes in and just follows orders. Because the worker me, even though manager me made a good plan, if I let worker me decide what I'm going to do in the morning, he's a jerk, man. He doesn't do it right at all. Yeah, that guy needs oversight.

He does, desperately. So it's just a little fiction in my brain, but it works. It's like, oh, wait a second, The manager made this up. I need to do this. And I think there's really something to be said for doing it at the end of the day. I know every time we talk about this on the show, I hear from some audience members that say, no, I prefer to do that in the morning. But man, it doesn't work for me that way. If I wait until the morning to pick, I'm going to make bad decisions if I make decisions

at all. Exactly. That's the thing that's amazing to me. It's like the manager works longer and gets up later. So the worker is sitting there at 6 a.m. ready to write, and the manager hasn't decided what the path forward is, and the worker can't figure it out for themselves. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely true. So you've got that practice.

You write something down the night before. Do you write it down on a fancy notepad or put it on your computer? Where do you document your obligation? Well, I really do this particular practice as basic as possible. Many, many years ago, I adopted the practice of just having a stack of three by five index cards on my desk. practice of just having a stack of three by five index cards on my desk. And when something comes in, it could be an email or a thought or a conversation or at the end of a phone call. And at the end of whatever that is, there's something that requires action from me. I'll just grab a card and my pencil and jot down, throw it into my little inbox. And at the end of the day, I sort of process that. So I always have these index cards here. So at the end of the day, I'll just grab one of the

cards, I'll put down my three or four tasks, and I just literally lay it on the keyboard. So it's the first thing I see in the morning. It's pretty low-tech, but it works. No, that's great. It's the equivalent of sticking the box you have to take with you in front of the door. Yeah, right. I can't not see it. You cannot type without hitting this piece of the door. Yeah, right. I can't not see it. You cannot type without hitting this piece of paper with this task on it. Right. Okay, so I have a question

about that. This is later on in the outline, but I'm curious. You know, you have your note on your keyboard, and I also know you've gotten into bullet journaling. I'm exploring some stuff with the bullet journal right now, and from my understanding of the bullet journal method, if you're really full on hashtag BuJo, that's really where everything lives. So how do you strike that balance then between what's on the note card and what's in the bullet journal?

The bullet journal really has become my constant companion. I'm about to completely fill up my my constant companion i'm about to completely fill up my first one i'm almost at the end so all my projects and everything live in here and i don't i mean i can go deep on the method but i probably don't want me to but you can have you know a collection which is basically a project and then your to-dos your i forget what it's called the daily task manager or whatever, where it's what you're going to do for the day. So I'll just quickly review that at the end of the day

and then I see what needs to be done and then I'll just jot down on my little card and then when the next day comes, the first thing I always do is put the date, the day, and then I start writing down what needs to be done on the page. But still, I've noticed this behavior in myself. If I open my journal, I do have the white bookmark is the current day, but I still just like to flip a little bit.

And then I notice, okay, you're flipping and not working. So just to combat that, I have those initial tasks on the card outside. And I'll grab it. Okay, great. Yes, I need to do that. The Haley Project is the first thing I need to work on. And I'll grab it. Okay, great. Yes, I need to do that. The Haley Project is the first thing I need to work on. And I'll grab the book, go to the Haley Project, and begin. So it's just a defensive practice against myself.

Because I know I'll start flipping through it. And that helps. I like that. So when you're capturing things, your daily log, I think, is... Yeah, the daily log. That's is what our writer Carol phrases it. Okay, so you have your page for today. You're capturing everything in your daily log. And then at the end of the day, as you're determining, I'm going to bump this forward.

The things that are tomorrow just go in the note card. And then stuff that's more long-term, I assume that ends up in a monthly log or a collection or something down the road. But then the card is what you see. That's your trigger. You work off of that in the morning and then that's disposable and you throw it away when you're done. Yep, that goes in the recycle bin and off it goes. I like that. Do you have any kind of ritual? Like if you complete the task, do you tear up the card into very tiny pieces? Well, there's one thing.

As far as the markup in the bullet journal is concerned, it's recommended that a little dot means a task, a dash means information that doesn't require action, and so on. And so the book recommends you put a little X through the dot, but for me that is not nearly as satisfying as drawing a line through the entire text. So I do that, which is much more fun. I'd have to say, though, I feel like bullet journaling,

people make the same mistake with bullet journaling that they do with getting things done, is they treat it like a dogma. And I really think to get the most out of bullet journaling, the bullet journal method, we're talking about the Ryder Carroll's book, which is an excellent book, by the way, or David Allen's Getting Things Done, you treat it as a starting point instead of an ending point. And then you can kind of make it work for you. I really think that's the key to all of this. Yes, that's absolutely true. I mean, I know lots of people who swear by both, but I don't think i know anyone who does either pure everyone

has their own little adaptation or twist or different approach and the system that you should adopt is the system that's going to work this is a system that's going to allow you to be focused and productive and if tweaking your bullet journal to be a b or c or adopting this aspect of GTD and sort of ignoring or adapting this aspect, if that's going to work, then please, that's what you should be doing. So have you done anything else that other than the note card, that's kind of like a deviation from the method that has really helped it click for you? Yeah. I remember, like remember David, you mentioned David Allen's getting things done.

One of the things he says is to have as few, I forget the actual phrase is, but as the fewest number of inboxes you can get away with. Now my bullet journal is a big A4 size journal, so I can't carry this around all day. It's a gigantic thing. So I do

have a little pocket notebook that I keep with me. And I'll just jot in stuff in there. I mean, this couldn't be more basic. I don't follow any, I just write inbox and underline it and just scribble in anything that happens. And at the end of the day, I'll transfer that as well. There's a lot of transferring, but I'm a kind of person who enjoys writing with pen and paper, so I don't mind. I know there are a lot of people who are cringing, why is he writing it down three times? I hear you. I get it. I just happen to like it. And I also find that I retain information better if I write it down sometimes once or twice. And so I guess I've adopted this routine of excessive writing. Like I don't, most people wouldn't write things down three times.

I'm not talking about I'm writing five paragraphs down three times. It might be one or two sentences. But for me, it helps really reinforce that I need to remember this thing or what that information was. So I guess that's an adaptation I've adopted that based out of my own observations of my own needs, how things work best for me. That's kind of the point of the system, though, is that every time that you have to rewrite things, it forces you to make a decision about whether this thing is worth keeping. So I think

the fact that you're doing that on a more consistent basis is not a bad thing. It just forces you to slow down and really think about the things that you are actually trying to accomplish. Is that kind of the effect that you've noticed it having? Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm more aware of, like you said, what I need to accomplish. And I think I'm better at recalling information when my journal isn't here or not available to me immediately. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. Do you have a website? me immediately. You could stumble across the problem by dumb luck, but that's not any good. You need a system to alert you when things go wrong. You need something to tell you that everything is running smoothly on your site, and even more importantly, when it's not so you can fix it. You need Pingdom.

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started. All they need is a URL that you want to monitor, and they will take care of the rest. So go to pingdom.com slash relayfm right now for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. And then when you sign up, use the code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, at checkout to get a huge 30% off your first invoice. That's pingdom.com slash relayfm and use the code FOCUSED at checkout to get 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of FOCUSED and all of RelayFM. I did an experiment. I'm always doing little experiments and time tracking.

One of them was looking at how much time I was spending goofing off with a daily journal and how much I was spending goofing off with OmniFocus because I do both it's it I have duplications well I have a digital task system that has everything and then the stuff that I write down in the journal is really kind of my very short list for the day every day and it is a trivial amount of time I mean it is like less than 30 minutes a day doing all of that on both ends of the day. It's just not that much time. I blow copious amounts of times on far dumber things than writing down and tracking. And that was my big takeaway from that. If you're listening to this and you think, I don't have time for all this, you'd be surprised how little time it takes

and how much more you get done. So on that topic, how much time do you think it takes you to capture all the things and transfer all the things and write out your note card? Is it pretty consistent with what David was just sharing, like 30 minutes a day?

Or is it significantly more, but it's worth it? Oh, I don't think it's significantly more. At this point, it's just second nature for me to grab a pen and jot something down. I guess my biggest problem is making sure it's neat enough that I can understand it tomorrow. But I don't think I'm spending an inordinate amount of time capturing what I need to capture and then processing that. So are you saying that your bullet journal pages are not the

fancy ones we'll find on Pinterest? No, they are not. I do not have the slightest lick of artistic ability. I just sort of have text on a page. Now, I'm sure that some of your listeners are aware that there are many Instagram pages and so on dedicated to gorgeous looking bullet journals, people who really treat them as a piece of art. I'm not going to poo-poo that because if you get pleasure out of it and you enjoy it and you're able to be productive in that way, then break a leg, have a great time.

I wish I could draw. I would if I could, but I can't. So mine is basically just text. So I guess that's what I'll say about that. I got to just kind of weigh in on that a little bit. I do think that a problem with that is that people see those and I think they stop at the entry point. You know, if you say, well, you know, the gang at Focus was talking about bullet journaling. Maybe I should try that. And they go on YouTube or they do a Google Images search for bullet journal pages. And the very first

things you see are literally works of art that take much more than 30 minutes a day to manage and draw. And I think for a lot of people that may be the gating issue. They don't even try because they're like, oh, well, I can't do it then. You know? Yeah, I can see what you're saying. And I hope that there aren't people who are dissuaded by that initial search, although I suspect you're right in that there probably are, and there are probably a great number. So I'll say to your listeners, don't worry about that. As long as it's working for you and you enjoy using it, then have a great time and adopt it. Yeah, I was definitely one of those people who got dissuaded by the stuff that I saw when I first started looking at the bullet journal, even Ryder Carroll's videos where it's just the basic stuff.

I was like, my stuff's not going to be that neat. I don't think I can do this. Yeah, well, mine definitely isn't. But it is fun. And a couple of things that have kind of made it stick for me are some of the custom stuff. Like I have a page where I'm tracking my habits for the month. And it's got a list of my habits and I make an X for each day that I follow through and do the habit. And he would call that a custom collection. But those types of things that really make the bullet journal more personal, those are the things that really have helped it to stick for me so far. This last time that I've kind of rethought how I'm using this. Do you have any custom collections like that that you rely on, or is it pretty much just the tasks and the things that you have to do? It's pretty much tasks, but I can tell you what really makes the bullet journal sing for me,

and that is the index. When you start a journal, and you can buy a fancy journal, you can use a 99-cent spiral bound from the drugstore, it really doesn't matter. But the most important element and the thing that really sealed the deal for me is the index. So when you get a journal, you're supposed to number each page in the bottom, or you can buy one that's pre-numbered if you want to save yourself some time. And as you enter things in the book, maybe a collection about Project X or your daily log for this day or whatever it might be, you note in the front of the book what page that starts on. And so it takes so much of the guesswork out of how many pages should I set aside for this project? How many pages should I allocate to this collection? Ooh, I guessed wrong. Now the pages aren't in order. There's pages in the middle. That whole thing is gone. So if I want to start a project for the Haley Project on page 123, then I want to spend four pages doodling unicorns.

And then I want to have a brainstorming session. Then I want to draw a mind map. And then I want to do another page of the Haley Project, it doesn't matter. Because in the front of the book, I'll write Haley Project starts on 110, and then I'll put a comma, and it picks back up on 123. And then when I flip to page 110, in the little bottom where it says 110, I'll put a 123 next to it. Then I'll flip to 123 and put a 110 next to it. So it makes reference and finding information so very quick. And it also gives you that freedom to not treat it like a precious thing where you have to save seven pages.

You can do whatever you want because it's so easy to find whatever you're after. For me, that's what really makes a bullet journal appealing. So I have to ask this question then, because you mentioned that it makes it easy to find the information that you're looking for. And I've been listening to the Rebooted Homework podcast, and you also talked about a use of Notion. So how does that fit in here because that's

kind of like an information database obviously you can kind of hack notion to make it anything that you want it could be your task manager but obviously it's not since you're using the bullet journal how are you using those side by side notion is really interesting for everyone anyone who hasn't checked it out it's a very malleable... Gosh, I don't even know if Project Mentor is accurate. It can be all sorts of things. It can be a wiki, it can be a repository for information,

it can be a collaborative workspace. So when Harry and I were first talking about rebooting homework, he said, hey, I'm into this app called Notion. Let's use it to organize the show. And I hadn't heard of it and said, okay, great'm into this app called Notion. Let's use it to organize the show. And I hadn't heard of it and said, okay, great, let's do it. So right now we use it for show outlines, show notes, and relevant information. And boy, I'm really liking it. I haven't brought it into my personal life yet. I'm just sort of have it compartmentalized as the homework solution.

But in playing with it, I see how appealing it can be. It's platform agnostic. You can run it in a browser. It works on your mobile device just as well. And of course, there are apps for just about anything you can think of. It's really, really nice. I haven't replaced how I do stuff personally with it,

but as far as a tool for organizing the show, it's been pretty great. If I had to describe it, I'd say it's like the world's friendliest wiki, where you can add your own tools to it. It's a clever app. Yeah, and you can link pages just like you could in a wiki and jump around real quick.

It's been fun to use. So if you have an idea for something like a show topic you want to do for homework, you're going to capture that, your daily log in the bullet journal, and then since it's a collaborative project and that's the project it's associated with, then Notion is where it would ultimately end up. Is that an accurate description of the workflow there? Yeah, that's pretty accurate because Harry and I sort of trade off who's editing for the week.

And if you're not editing, you're doing the show notes to sort of go back and forth. So we wanted a ubiquitous collaborative space for the show notes to live. And at first we thought of Google Docs, but then we said, eh, let's try to work Notion into this. So now that's what we do. We just have a notes page where there's one for each episode.

And whoever's turn it is to do show notes will just hop in there and do it. Sure. I do think it's important. And the reason I asked that question is I think it's a distinction worth making that you have a single point where everything starts for you. That's the inbox note in your little making that you have a single point where everything starts for you. That's the inbox note in your little notebook that you're carrying with you. The minute that you try to have all these different inboxes for the different ideas when you have them is the moment that you stop capturing the ideas as you have them.

Yeah, and that becomes a processing issue too, right? Because when you sit down at the end of the day to go through all your inbox, put things where they belong, and then get ready for the next day, if you have two places to look, if you have three, if you have four, if you have more than that, it becomes a real hassle. So use as many inboxes as are going to work, but not so much that you're just creating additional work for yourself. Yeah. So Dave, let's talk a little bit about homework.

You made the show years ago. I guess you were ahead of your time. It's out now, but you've been really talking and writing about working from home for a long time. What are some of the biggest problems that you hear people facing and what's the best way to solve them? Probably the number one issue we have is how do you separate home from work and work from home?

Because when your office, for lack of a better term, is somewhere in your house, it becomes so tempting to stroll by and say, oh, I'm just going to check email real quick. I'm just going to give that project a 10-minute look and a 10-minute look becomes a 40-minute look and your Saturday becomes a 40-minute look. And your Saturday becomes less of your personal Saturday. So I guess my biggest piece of information is establish a work location. If you have a room with a door, excellent. If you don't, find any corner of the house or any location that can be your work area.

And there's a couple things you should do at that point. Have a conversation with the other humans you live with and say, look, I'm working from home now, but when I'm working, I am at work. I'm going to behave in that way. So when you see me over in that spot, just pretend I'm at the office. If I come out for lunch, great, we can have a conversation with them. When I go back into work um i'm at work so this does a few things it um conveys to the other people you live with that you're sort of serious about the work you do and sort of generates that respect back and forth but it also sets um like um uh let me try to say like a mindset for yourself like if you always perform a certain behavior in a certain location just being in that location will prompt is a cue for the behavior like if you put your workout clothes on you feel like working out

if you sit down at the desk that you reserve for work time you're going to feel your brain's going to say oh we're in work mode now so i guess establishing a work location is probably the thing i get asked about the most and what I would recommend everyone does. Yeah, I literally just dealt with this today because of the pandemic. My studio has moved down to a more common area in the house because my kids are coming back home. And this morning I was working and my wife came and asked me very nicely two questions two different times and it really got to me it like really got me under my skin you know because I was right in the middle of working on something and she says where's the checkbook perfectly

rational question but I just wasn't used to someone coming and interrupting me while I was trying to focus on a client problem. And we talked about it and we have a system now. But I think getting yourself isolated is a great idea if you can. And if you can't, you really have to have that conversation. Yeah, you should. Your situation, I don't know all the specifics, but you have a job that you go to a different location for that you are now working from home. So how have you kind of set this up for yourself? Yeah, that's been bonkers. I have a day job that requires me, well, in the before times, I had a day job that required me to really drive from location to location all day. I spent most of the time in the car, visiting different sites and having conversations and going to the next site.

So you can see how weird it is to be trying to do that from home. So right now my day job has turned into incessant Zoom meetings and other virtual meetings like that. And it all happens at the same desk. So you're right, it has been this little mental change where, okay, I'm done with the day job. Now I'm going to sit down and work on a freebie game lab, or I'm going to work on the podcast. And this might sound silly, but I'll actually get up when my day job is done, walk around, maybe go in the yard, water the flowers for a few minutes, and then come back at the desk. And I'm sort of, that allows me to switch gears into the next thing

because I feel like I'm mentally closing the door on job A and that gives me a chance to sort of prepare myself to work on the next thing. But yeah, it is weird when my day job suddenly moved into my home or I've really always had that as being exterior and very much elsewhere. When I come home, I would just not think about it. But now I am, and I think that's where a lot of people are. You're suddenly, you know, you didn't choose to work from home life, you had

it sort of thrust upon you. So how do we deal with that? Yeah, I think those transitions are really important. And the thing that's kind of surprised me during this time, because I do have an office at home with a door that I can close. So I have a physical space that I can leave, but that's never been good enough for me. I still find myself, if I don't transition mentally, I'm still thinking about the project I was working on or the emails I'm supposed to reply to. And I can get so focused and consumed with that, that I don't see or hear anything else, which is obviously a problem. So there's a lot of ways that this transition can happen. But I think that's a great tip is to just go do something else.

Even if you come back to the same place to do something different, changing your state, that can help you mentally make the switch from one thing to the next. Something that has nothing to do with anything. That's why I'll water the flowers or pet the dog or whatever it is.

I think that's great advice. Also, I would recommend that if you're doing all of this on the same technology, if you're doing it at the same computer, look into ways to change the computer setup for different states. Like I use Keyboard Maestro on the Mac where I push a button and my computer reconfigures itself for Mac Sparky screencasting versus legal contract writing. And it changes everything. I mean, the background changes, the apps change change and it's just a different it's like sitting at a different computer and i find that very useful as well

in terms of getting my brain from one mode to the other that's a great idea um the the other tip i would offer is you know really control those notifications we talked about earlier in the show i feel like when you've got different states you once you get into one headspace, you don't want the other headspace invading. And it's very easy with computers and notifications to get drugged back into something. Yeah, and I've read it can take, what, like 5, 10, 15 minutes to get back on track if you're distracted. So think if you're working on gig A and then you see two notifications in a

row about gig B, well, try as you might, your mind is going to wander towards gig B. And perhaps it might be a struggle not to act upon it. And so you've got to resist that urge, plus you've got to get back to where you were. And if that happens once a day, it's okay. But if it happens 10 times a day, now you've lost a lot, this one is for you. Because I want to tell you all about my secret weapon for learning new things and getting ahead, and that's with Blinkist. It can be hard to find time to read. When you're super busy, it's hard to work on personal development. Blinkist takes the best key takeaways and need-to-know information from thousands of non-fiction books and condenses them into just 15 minutes for you to read or listen to. Successful people are known for reading

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And you'll save 25% off, but only when you sign up at blinkist.com slash focus our thanks again to blinkist for their support of the focus podcast and all of relay fm dave i'd like to continue on something you mentioned earlier and that is just that dividing line we've talked plenty already about you know finding space and finding the ideal way to get your work done when you're working from home. But what about not getting your work done when you work from home? Avoiding that trap of working 24-7. Yeah, that's the real trick, isn't it? I mean, I guess it's easier to be productive and get stuff done than to sort of say, okay, I'm going to stop now. Yeah, that's tricky. For me, it takes a lot of, well, initially it took a lot of real time. Well,

I'll tell you, when I started working at home, it was probably 2009. And this is when my kids were very, very young. And so I dealt with, and perhaps some of your listeners did as well, that double-edged guilt, right? So if I'm dealing with the kids or playing with the kids, not dealing with them, that sounds cruel. If I was playing with the kids, I'd feel guilty, oh boy, I should be working. And if I was working, I think, oh, I'm being a neglectful father, I should go play with the kids. And so for me, what was the most effective way to combat that was routine. So I would say, okay, from this time to this time, I'm working. And from this time to this time, I'm not. And it took a while to find

a routine that's going to work and fit. You're going to have to do a little tweaks here and there. But once you get it down, it just becomes a part of your day. And so you would know, well, I'm in a work block. And as soon as I'm done, I have all this time free to hang out with the kids. And then later, the kids and I are having a great time, and it's okay because my work block was so productive. So for me, it's just the adherence to a routine, a proven routine, that helps combat that most effectively. Yeah, I'm just such a fan of time blocking. And, you know, it just makes such a difference because I think that's giving your brain permission to focus on one thing at a time when you know that, you know, the parenting block is still on the schedule.

Right. It's going to happen. So don't worry about it. It's all set. The other thing that I've noticed from my own time blocking practice is in addition to carving out the time for the things to happen on your day, if you are conservative with your time blocks, you also end up with some buffer time. Now, it took me a lot of trial and error to get to that point, but basically I just overestimate in one hour chunks how long things are going to take. And what that does is it gives me little pockets of 10, 15 minutes here and there, which lately has meant that if I have 15 minutes before my next thing, I can take the dog for a walk or the kids are around, which they

are now all the time. We can play ping pong or go shoot hoops or whatever. And I've been having a lot of fun just taking advantage of those little blocks of time to create the memories. And I want to call that out because I think that if you're not careful, you can easily miss those if you're just sticking to a schedule. Oh man, you're not kidding. I mean, childhood is a window that closes at 18, right? And then at that point, the person is still your child, but your relationship changes significantly. I mean, my kids are 15 and 17. That window is almost shut.

And I want to make as much as I can. And also, I love that you're building this buffer in. Not only does it give you these little pockets that you can sort of spend as a break, but if something goes over, it's not that big a deal. Like, ooh, that call took half an hour more than I thought it would. Good thing I built two extra blocks 15 minutes in. Yeah, well, I just think in general, one of the biggest mistakes you make with time blocking is underestimating how long things take. And then you're just changing one type of pressure,

unreasonable pressure for another. Rather than say, I'm going to do six things today, and they're all going to take an hour, except that, no, I'm going to get three things done, but I'm actually going to get them done. And you'd just be amazed how much better you feel at the end of the day. Because if you block for six things and you only get three things done, you feel terrible, even though that was the realistic plan. And that kind of gets back to the manager and the worker.

Yeah, it's amazing how significantly my mood can be affected by how productive a day was. If I feel I wasted a day or didn't get nearly done what I wanted, boy, I'm in a bad mood. And the opposite is true, too. If I really killed it, boy, I just feel great. And it's so arbitrary. I mean, so often we wake up and we give ourselves these unreasonable goals for the day, you know, and you're just not going to get all that work done. So you need to take a reality pill real early. And then in both circumstances, you know, whether you scheduled for three and you got three done, or whether you scheduled for six and you got three done, you got the exact same amount of work done. Right.

And how you feel about the work that you got done is completely determined by your plan for the day and how much you attempted to complete. That's the amazing thing to me. If you had three things on the list and you got all three things done, you feel great. If you had six things on the list and you got all three things done, you feel great. You had six things on the list and you got those three things done, then you feel terrible. And the actual work that you completed doesn't change at all. It's exactly the same. And it's not even just the judgment at the end of the day. It's the ongoing judgment throughout the day. Cause when you have the six things planned, you get to the end of the first hour and you're like, Oh brother, I behind you know and um that is something that is that is a second arrow yeah oh man this day is a wash that's just the worst so in addition to the

the the work and the productivity stuff uh you also have an interest in games uh we talked a little bit about your reboot game lab project i want to know more about the story there. But even before we get there, I guess, what role does fun and games have in your work life? And not just this is a business that I'm running, but do you use it kind of as a reset? Does it recharge your batteries? And so you try to do it so often. What sort of things do you do you do that sort of thing yeah it absolutely recharges my batteries without a doubt like i said i've been playing games probably twice a week with the same group of folks for

a decade or more and it's something i just look forward to so very, very much. It could be as relaxing or unwinding or escapist or petty and thoughtful as you want it to be. We play silly games that you can bang out in a minute. And we play these brain-burning Euro games that you have to concentrate for three hours or you're going to lose spectacularly. burning Euro games that you have to concentrate for three hours or you're going to lose spectacularly. And all of those things are really fun. I like solving puzzles, whether it be work or in life or in this aspect, a game. I think it really does amp up my concentration and really allows me to unwind at the end of the day. So how often do you play games and what sort of games do you typically play? Do you play board games with your family?

Do you do big group games? Do you just enjoy strategy puzzle type games that you can play by yourself? Yes. All of the above? This is really my main hobby, honestly. So we play, with my family, we'll play little fun, silly games, like party games, the kind of game where everyone's just sort of like laughing and having a good time.

With my friends, we'll play more games that take a lot of time. It's not a concentration of puzzle games. We play a lot of role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons and that type of thing. If you want a nice, fun escape into the land of make-believe, that's a great way to do it. Yeah, it's a big part of my life. It's something I truly love. It's something that my family has gotten into recently, and I heard this somewhere. I don't remember where I heard it originally.

I heard this somewhere. I don't remember where I heard it originally, but I heard somebody say that games really have an effect of bringing people together and building relationships. Because when you play games, everybody's playing by the same set of rules. And if you're playing with kids, they can learn a lot of lessons like how do you react when you don't win and stuff like that and uh i i have found that by playing games together it's uh it's been a a really fun thing that we've tried to build into our our daily routine now as we're we're home all the time we'll put the the little kids to to bed in and the older ones will will play a usually a board game the latest one has been king of tokyo the the dark edition which just came out as we yeah, that's a fun one. That came out as Big Chunky Dice. I love Big Chunky Dice. It does. It's a beautiful game.

What other sorts of games would you recommend for people who are just interested in getting into this sort of thing for the purpose of something fun that they can do with the people that are close to them. Well, if you want to play in-person games, there's all sorts of really fun ones. I'll just throw out a couple of quickies. There's, well, you mentioned King of Tokyo. That's a great one.

If you want to pretend to be a sci-fi monster destroying Tokyo. There's another great game that I love that's super quick to learn called Sushi Go, where it's sort of like a set-building game, like gin rummy. But instead of regular playing cards, you're building little sushi. So you're building this little dish, this little dish. The idea is you're at one of those conveyor belt restaurants, and you're grabbing sushi off the little conveyor belt and try to set up little sets. You can learn it in five seconds, and every time it's a little bit different, and it's, again, super fun.

Everyone's going to laugh and have a great time. If you want to play online, there's a lot of great solutions. The Jackbox games, which are available on Steam, and I think every other platform, are really funny, silly party games where you can play online. One person is holding a meeting, share their screen. Then your game piece becomes your phone. So anyone anywhere in the world can log on

and enter the little room code. And now you're playing like Pictionary together and everyone's drawing on their phone. It ends up on the screen. I've done this with my family, my extended family several times. And it's a really nice way to hang out and have fun and uh laugh together i i would add one more category of game that we play in my house that everybody really enjoys it's um they're cooperative games and um forbidden desert and forbidden island are the two that we play and

their survival is a cooperative survival game. Forbidden Desert, you crash in the desert, and each one of you has a different specialty area of knowledge. And then you actually succeed as a group or you all die. And it's really, it sounds weird, but it's really fun to have everybody banning together instead of trying to destroy each other all the time. Yes, that's exactly right. You're not trying

to beat each other, you're trying to beat the game. Those are two great games. Yeah, another one in that category is Pandemic, although that one hits a little bit too close to home these days. But it is a good game. What about, Dave, let's talk for folks that want to go

online and do some of the stuff you're doing with your online game service. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that suddenly have extra time on their hands and may be interested in some of the services you guys have. Yeah, so right now I'm doing online game clubs for kids and adults. So right now I'm running three Dungeons & Dragons groups for kids. I have what I call the Young Adventurers, who are the 7 to 10 set. The Noble Warriors are 11 to 13, and the Brave Knights are 14 years and up. We use a combination of Google Hangouts and Roll20. For those who don't know, Roll20 is a website that was specifically designed so people could play role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons

online. You get to see the little map and the little tokens and move things around and fight monsters and stuff, and it's really great. For the adults, we play strictly in Discord. So I have a Discord server, and I've made little rooms. We get together once a week and just play through the scenario. And it's, yeah, it's a whole lot of fun. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace.

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for the Focused podcast. Now, once again, that is squarespace.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, and the code focused to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So what's the story behind Reboot Game Lab? How did you get this idea to host an online games club?

Well, this business has changed quite a bit over the last two years. It was about two years ago that one of the guys I play games with, he and I were sitting around and said, boy, it would be fun to own a board game cafe. Now these things are popping up all over the place. I live outside of Boston and we see them here and there and boy, they're, they're a lot of fun. Much like at a bowling alley where you paid a bowl at a board game cafe, it's a cafe, but they're going to have a wall of games and you might pay a small fee to

sort of rent the table for a few hours and they'll bring a game over and teach you how to play and you can play. And it's, it's great. Oh, we want to do that. How do we do that? Well, I don't know. So we found ourselves a small business accelerator out here on the Cape called E4ALL, which you can find at e4all.org. And we applied for their accelerator

program, got accepted, and it was just tremendous. They taught us so much about business. That's information that we didn't have. After our graduation, if you will, we were looking into having this happen. And to make a long story short, the finances just didn't work out. Starting a cafe was much more pricey than we thought it would, especially out here on the Cape, where it's a very touristy destination. So that morphed into we were using different venues to run clubs like libraries or community centers, whoever would have us and let us sort of charge people to come and play. And that was going really, really well. We started with three kids playing D&D and eventually we had

30. And then all of this happened. And like seemingly overnight, I had to switch and make this an online organization and was able to do that because of Google Hangouts and Roll20 and just sort of shifting off. And that's the condensed version of how we got to where we are. How has that transition to an online games club been? Do you find that this is kind of the niche and you are filling the need now? Or has it been more difficult getting people to switch from playing games in person to doing them online? It's funny. It depends on which group you talk about. If you talk about the kids,

no problem. They just want to play the game and they don't care how it happens. With the adults, and I include myself in this, I think it's more fun to just be in person and to be across the table with the person and sharing chips or whatever. So the adults are a little less enthused about playing online. They still do it. But the kids are, yep, okay, let's do this. They love it. What was the hardest part about the transition as a business owner? Yeah, it was really big because, well, I mean, I worked hard to get all of the venues

up and running that I had. And there's a lot of meetings and conversations and arrangements and making schedules and to have within a couple of weeks, all of that out the window. And I had to redo and rethink everything. That was a lot of work. And how am I going to have this happen?

And it was auditioning pieces of software, solutions to make it work. Like at first I was having Roll20 host all of our audio and video. And those first sessions were just agony. It was connection errors and kids can't connect and kids are dropping and it's freezing and everyone was frustrated.

And after that first weekend, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm doomed. It's like, this is over. There's nothing I can do. So I decided to offload that aspect of the game to something else, which turned out to be Google Hangouts. And this worked much better. I think the hardest part was just scrambling to find a solution that would allow this to work, especially when I do six-week blocks for the kids. And especially when I've had a lot of parents who had already paid for the whole block and I still had four weeks to go. And I think, oh my gosh, do I have to refund all this money to these kids or what am I going to do? But luckily my parents were very understanding

and allowed me to have like a two-week grace period at which I was going to scramble and figure out how am I going to make this work. Yeah. And at the same time, you were rebooting the homework podcast. Yes. Probably there were a lot of questions and problems to be solved with that at the time, too. There were. to be solved with that at the time too. There were.

We thought, should we just start over and call this episode one? Or should we rebrand entirely? Should we get a new logo? Should we go solo? Should we approach network? And yeah, there was a whole lot of stuff to figure out there as well. Did you think about the fact

that you're doing both of these things in tandem when you were doing them? Or did it just seem like this is the right thing to do? I got to figure out a way to make this work. Well, I know I didn't want to let Bebo Game Lab go. Because I fell in love with this. It's like this side project has become my baby. So I really wanted to work to make it work. And when Harry contacted me about homework, it was funny because like I said, I had just been to make it work. And when Harry contacted me about homework,

it was funny because, like I said, I had just been thinking about it. And I thought, yeah, this might be a useful resource for people today. I want to do it. And it seemed nuts to take on two big projects at the same time. But I was at the point where I had online game club pretty much figured out. So I felt like, okay, I have the bandwidth and the space to take on this other project. Plus, you know, doing homework is something I had done for years and years.

So it was sort of just getting back on the bike. Like you said, there were some technicalities to figure out initially, but that didn't take too long. I think if the idea came at the same time, I probably would have passed on homework or I would have said, well, let's readdress this in a couple months. But the fact that I felt like I was getting on top of Game Lab, that I was able to say yes to the other thing. Because saying no to one thing is saying yes to another

thing. But I think I had room for two yeses. It just seems to me that so much uh productivity and focus was lost with the original pandemic response with people just trying to wrap their heads around working from home i mean i think i mean the three people on this call we've all been doing it for a long time and we've kind of got it figured out but you forget for how many people this was completely foreign and um and i think so much of this this lost time over the last couple months is just figuring out how do i do a zoom call or how do you know how do i get my email on my home computer

and that just i just can't understate how much time has been spent on stuff like that yeah harry and i were talking about the other day and it's like you went to bed one night and then the next morning you woke up in rural japan and and go yeah and i do think that like if if we have to do this again if there's a second wave or some other problem in the year's future, I think we will never be caught with our pants down as far as they were just in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, I think so too. Dave, what is your focus?

Where's your hang-up? What's your kryptonite, your focus kryptonite? I think my focus kryptonite is my monkey brain. It always wants to do what I'm not doing, you know? It just, it's like, I don't even know how to, it's like a kid with one of those paddle balls with the balls attached to the rubber band on a wooden paddle, you know? It always wants to just go and go and go

and look at a hundred different things. I think that's really my kryptonite is my own brain biology, my brain chemistry. I, you know, it's funny because we talk about it all the time on the show and, and I'll talk to listeners once, once in a while when I see them at an event or something,

they're like, man, you're so organized. I'm like, no, it's just the opposite. My brain is so distractible. That's the reason why I have to block schedule.

And the reason that I've come up with all these weird hacks is because I don't have a choice. Yes, that's exactly right. I have to do all this stuff. It's not I just have some strange affection for the productive, focused life. If I didn't do this stuff, I wouldn't be putting bread on the table. I have to do all these things. Are you still meditating? I know you used to.

Yeah, I still am. That's a part of the routine that I sort of adopted every day. I like to do it first thing in the morning. And it's really helpful. I notice if I don't. So yeah, it's something I still do. It's a pretty good test. Yeah.

Any other little hacks, tips, tricks, whatever you use to control your monkey brain? I adopted this from the Pomodoro method, which I don't really do anymore. But I did like this one aspect. I'm sure your listeners know. It alternates a work block and a break block, right? So the idea was you work for 25 minutes solid, then you get a

five-minute break, and then you start again. You do it three times, and on the third time, the break extends to 15 minutes. I really liked having those breaks sort of built in. So when my brain says, hey, check Twitter or look for a video on YouTube. I can say, well, I've got 20 minutes left in this block and then you can have five minutes. And that's really helped keep me on track. Oh, okay. Like I know it's coming. It's like we were saying earlier, David, with your work block and you think, oh, I wish I was with the kids. Well, I know that kid block is coming, so it's okay. So that can work on this really little macro level too, where I'm working and I want to go check Twitter

or look at Instagram, I can tell myself, well, we've got 20 minutes left in this work block and then you'll have permission to do that. And that's helped a lot. How do you implement that? Well, I used to be as strict as keeping a timer going, but now I guess I have an inner sense of how much time has passed and I'll know like, well, I'll usually eat lunch between 12 and 1230 and I'll know, well, I'll give

myself permission to goof off at that point. I'll look up at the clock and it's 1040. Okay, well, I can make it. So that kind of thing. I used to use a timer but not anymore. Well, Dave, thanks so much for coming on the show. Gang, I recommend you head over to homework, the homework podcast. We'll put it on the, um, um,

in the show notes so you can go find it. Um, and also we'll go ahead and put in a link in for Dave's, you know, a gaming business. So you can go check that out too. One of the nice things, Dave,

is that you can get gamers from all over the country now instead of just out on the Cape. So, uh, I may be joining your ranks at some over the country now instead of just out on the Cape. So I may be joining your ranks at some point. We're going to have to talk. Come on over, Dave. Come on in. The water's fine.

And thanks for everything you've done for the community over the years. And this podcast, I think, really scratches the itch well. If anybody's having trouble figuring out how to get their work done at home, this is the one for you. Well, thanks. That's nice to say. It's great to talk to you, too, as well. I haven't spoken to either of you in a while, and it's always a pleasure to do so. In addition to your podcast, is there anywhere else people should look for you, Dave? I do have a Twitter. It's at DavidCalo. That's C-A-O-L-O. I? I do have a Twitter. It's at David Calo. That's C-A-O-L-O.

I tweet over there quite a bit. I have a blog, and every now and then I'll post something, but it's really rare. But that's 52tiger.net. That's numeral 5-2, tiger.net. All right. We are the Focus Podcast.

You can find us over at relay.fm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors today that is our friends at pingdom squarespace and blinkist and we'll see you all in a couple weeks