Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital)

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky are the authors of best-selling books Sprint and Make Time. They have helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including those at YouTube, Gusto, One Medical Group, and Slack. Jake and John are co-founders of the venture capital firm Character, where they support startups with capital and sprints. Previously, they were operating partners at Google Ventures and, before that, design leaders at Google, where John worked on Google Ads and YouTube and Jake helped build Gmail and co-founded Google Meet. In our conversation, we discuss:• “Busy bandwagon” and “infinity pools”• Creating one “highlight” each day• Their four-part framework for productivity• How to use the calendar to design your day• How creating friction can help you avoid distractions• Tips on creating a distraction-free phone• Strategies for managing email and distractions• The importance of reflecting on the day and making time for meaningful work• Design sprints—Brought to you by:• Sidebar—Accelerate your career by surrounding yourself with extraordinary peers• Whimsical—The iterative product workspace• WorkOS—The modern API for auth and user identity—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-time-for-what-matters-jake—Where to find Jake Knapp:• X: https://twitter.com/jakek• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-knapp/• Website: https://jakeknapp.com/—Where to find John Zeratsky:• X: https://twitter.com/jazer• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnzeratsky/• Website: https://johnzeratsky.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) About Jake and John(04:10) Recording the audiobook for Make Time(06:06) What people often get wrong when trying to become more productive(11:24) The busy bandwagon and infinity pools(15:22) Real talk: Jake and John’s productivity levels(20:10) The four-part framework for getting more done: Highlight, Laser, Energize, Reflect(25:15) Step 1: Highlight(28:08) Designing your day with a calendar(30:52) The Groundhog Day mentality(35:10) Tactical advice for implementing the highlight method(39:30) An example of a failed highlight(48:08) Step 2: Laser(51:12) Creating intentional friction to avoid distractions(57:28) Curating a distraction-free phone(01:07:58) Resetting expectations and slowing your inbox(01:14:51) Systems over willpower(01:18:14) Managing email distractions(01:18:49) Step 3: Energize(01:22:05) Step 4: Reflect(01:26:30) Introduction to Sprint—Referenced:• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-audiobook/dp/B019R2DQIY• Make Time blog: https://maketime.blog/• Make Time blog on X: https://twitter.com/maketimeblog• Character: https://www.character.vc/• Google Ventures: https://www.gv.com/• Character Labs: https://www.character.vc/labs• Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus | Nir Eyal (author of Indistractable and Hooked): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/strategies-for-becoming-less-distracted-and-improving-focus-nir-eyal-author-of-indistractable-and/• Groundhog Day on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Groundhog-Day-Bill-Murray/dp/B000SP1SH6• Reclaim.ai: https://reclaim.ai/• Feed Blocker for LinkedIn: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/feed-blocker-for-linkedin/eikaafmldiioljlilngpogcepiedpenf• The Lord of the Rings: https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0544003411• MagSafe charger: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MHXH3AM-A-MagSafe-Charger/dp/B08L5NP6NG/• Nanit app: https://www.nanit.com/pages/nanit-app• Arianna Huffington’s Phone Bed Charging Station: https://www.amazon.com/Arianna-Huffingtons-Charging-Station-Walnut/dp/B0799ZG1LY• Cell Phone Lock Box with Timer: https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Android-Self-Discipline-Achieve-Addiction/dp/B0CG8V4YG3?th=1• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich: https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307465357• The Economist: https://www.economist.com/• Odysseus: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Odysseus• Mailman: https://www.mailmanhq.com/• Future: https://www.future.co/• Notion: https://www.notion.so/• Miro: https://miro.com/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

So it's not really about productivity. It's not about time management. It's really just about, look, in any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention and we use it well. And it's not going to happen every day. But if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not.

The notion of what the highlight is, imagine it's the end of the day. If someone asks you, what was the highlight of your day, what would you say? That's the anchor of everything. That's the core. That's the foundation. Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that.

And you still feel really good about your days. You still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy. Today, I've got two guests, Jake Knapp and John Zerotsky. Jake and John are authors of two incredible books, Sprint and Make Time. With Sprint, they've helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including teams at YouTube, Slack, Gusto, and One Medical. Previously, John and Jake worked at Google Ventures, and before that at Google, where John was a leader on Google Ads and YouTube,

and Jake helped build Gmail and co-founded Google Meet. Today, they run a venture capital firm called Character, and they actually just opened up applications for their accelerator program called Character Labs, which you can learn more about at character.bc slash labs. In our conversation, we focus on their more recent book, Make Time, which a guest of this podcast, Ben Williams, recommended in the lightning round, and I absolutely loved, and wanted to make sure more people learned about it and the advice within it,

especially product leaders and founders who are constantly looking for ways to be more productive. I want to get you right to the meat of the conversation, so let me just say that we get into a ton of very practical pieces of advice for how you can be more productive in your day. And if you listen to this episode, I guarantee you'll find at least three things that you'll want to start doing differently starting tomorrow. With that, I bring you Jake Knapp and John Zerotsky after a short word from our sponsors. Let me tell you about a product called Sidebar. The best way to level up your career is to surround yourself with extraordinary peers.

This gives you more than a leg up. It gives you a leap forward. This worked really well for me in my career, and this is the sidebar ethos. When you have a trusted group of peers, you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This was a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build it. build distrusted group of peers. Sidebar is a private, highly vetted leadership program where senior leaders are matched with peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives,

and raw feedback. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your career journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're already committed to growth. Sidebar is the missing piece to catalyze your career. 93% of members say Sidebar helped them achieve a significant positive change in their career. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Join thousands of top senior leaders who have taken the first step to career growth from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta by visiting sidebar.com slash Lenny.

That's sidebar.com slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Wimzical, the is a is. iterative product workspace. Wimzical helps product managers build clarity and shared understanding faster with tools designed for solving product challenges. With Wimzical, you can easily explore new concepts using drag-and-drop wireframe and diagram components,

create rich product briefs that show and sell your thinking, and keep your team aligned with one source of truth for all of your build requirements. Wimzical also has a library of easy-to-use templates from product leaders like myself, including a project proposal one pager and a go-to-market worksheet. Give them a try and see how fast and easy it is to build clarity with Wimzical. Sign up at Wimzical.com slash Leni for 20% off a Wimzical pro plan. That's Wimzical.com slash Lenny. Jake and John, thank you so much for being here

and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. I was so stoked to be here. I was just re-listening to the audiobook of Make Time to prep for this conversation. And I feel like I kind of know you guys from listening to your voice for so long in the car. And so it's a little surreal to be talking to you guys. That was really fun to record. And while we were doing it, we kept saying to each other, it was like we were recording like the world's longest podcast. That's what I felt like. Yeah. I actually on that, I was going to ask you, how long did it take to, how long does it take to record an audiobook? I've always been curious. How much time is that? Well, it takes twice as long as it should have because my stomach kept growling.

And the microphone would pick it up. And so John would do, you know, like a perfect take. And we're both sitting in the little, you know, room together. And the engineer was in the other room and he'd be like, you got to do it again. You got to do it again. The guy's stomach keeps crawling. I think it took two days, right? Yeah, I think it was two days.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think actually they thought it would take two days. So I don't think my stomach slowed us down too much. That is not as long as I thought. I thought it was like a month of recording and such a painful experience. It sounds like not so bad. No, it was, honestly, it was really fun.

I mean, it's weird, but it's just like, I don't know, you can get into this very intense zone where you're singularly focused, right? There's nothing else that you need to do or should do. So it's just like read, drink tea, read, break for lunch, read, drink tea. It's just like, you know, it's this really satisfying. That sounds like a great, a great few days. Yeah, I think it was really fun doing it together too. I think it would have been harder to do.

I mean, obviously people do it, and I think they like doing it on their own. But like, we've been working together for so long. It was just like, it's always more enjoyable when we get to do something together. So that made it cool. Amazing. Sounds like, I want to do an audiobook now. That sounds like a lot of fun. So to kind of start diving into our conversation, so you guys wrote this very seminal book called Sprint, which we're going to talk about.

We also wrote this other book that I have right here called Make Time. that to me was even more powerful, and I think it might be even more powerful on people's lives than Sprint. And I think it's one of the most interesting and most fun productivity books out there. I have a, my wife actually grabbed the book from my desk the past week as I've been prepping for this and just started highlighting it. Like, you can see all these highlights in here. She just goes to, I want to be more productive. Also, a guest on the podcast introduced me to the book. At the end of the podcast, I'll ask you this too, but I ask people what book do they recommend most other people. And he mentioned this book. And so that's how I uncovered it.

So it all comes a cool circle. So I thought we'd start with make time and then get to sprint in the second half of the conversation. First question is just what do most people get wrong when they're trying to become more productive? To kind of set the answer up, I'll give you like a kind of a super brief history of make time. And we've, for over a decade, John and I have been kind of like, in quotes, like designing time as part of our work with startups, helping them find or expand product market fit. So we develop the design sprint at Google Ventures, which the Sprint Book is about. And now we run this venture fund of our own called Character.

And we run these highly structured sprints with companies. And when we're doing that, we get to control how everything happens. Like we get to change the defaults of the way the workday happens, of what happens sort of hour to hour minute to minute, how people are using technology, how people are interacting with each other. All those things are sort of under our control because we're trying to achieve these big goals in a really short period of time, everybody focused. So as this stuff was going on, John and I started applying some of the lessons,

the things that we found were working really well in those structured sprints. We started experimenting with applying those in our own day-to-day lives. And we found that some of those things were super effective. and they were a bit counter to the way we'd sort of heard or learned about productivity. And there's like all kinds of habit books and productivity hacks out there. And I think John and I have probably tried most of them, if not all of them. But it seems like 99% of the people who follow those things are still feeling overwhelmed. They're still stressed out all the time anyway.

So even though we're not productivity gurus, this hasn't been like this thing we were doing forever. It's not our full-time job. but we thought like we want to share this framework. So make time, the book and the blog that preceded it was just kind of this side project to share what we learned. And yeah, it seems like it's resonated with a bunch of people. Like there's this, you know, kind of steady stream of interest in looking at these things a different way. I love it. I love that it emerged out of the sprint concept.

I know you talked about them book, but I forgot that. And these are all very related. I also love that a lot of the best stuff comes from people actually. doing the thing like this came from, I just have discovered all these little things and I'm just going to share it. Not just like, I need to write a productivity book. Yeah, I think like Jake said, we both had always sort of been dissatisfied with the state of the productivity art, you know, and we had big things we wanted to do. I mean, when you work in any kind of job, I mean, we've both spent our early careers as designers. And the job is really all about like doing big

projects. It's all about like being able to focus, being able to spend time on the things that matter. And that's to say nothing of like what we want outside of work, you know, like things that we want to learn how to do personally, you know, people we want to spend time with, you know, and everybody, it's interesting. Like, we've found that when we talk to people about make time, they always know, like they always know what they want to make time for, right? Like, the problem is not like, what should my goal be or what should, you know, how should I figure out what to do with my life. It's like, you know, they usually know, but it's very hard to actually make time for those things. And I think the problem is that most productivity advice focuses on getting better and

faster about doing the things that are already in front of you. So the messages that are in your inbox, the meetings that are on your calendar, a lot of focus on efficiency, like crank through that stuff. Our perspective is basically that those are the defaults, you know, just like our, software that we use, apps that we use have defaults, those are the defaults of life, of like the companies that we work in, the culture that we live in. And so the solution is actually to change those defaults and to really flip this way of thinking on its head. So it's not about how do I go faster? How do I get more efficient? It's about how do I put the thing that is the most important first in my day or in my life and then build everything else around that and accept that you're

going to need to do a bunch of those little things. You're going to need to answer those messages and go to those meetings. But really start with the idea of what's most important to you. What do you actually want to make time for? Along these same lines, we're going to talk about this kind of four-part strategy that you recommend. But a couple things before we get into there. One is along the lines you just talked about is this insight that you had of just like, Willpower is never going to be enough to get you to make time for the things you want to do. And you had these two concepts of a busy bandwagon at infinity pools. So maybe just talk about those two briefly.

The idea of the busy bandwagon is just this expectation that, you know, everybody's busy. And in the United States, there's kind of this thing that I think when you, you know, if you travel abroad and like talk to people for a while, then you come back, you'll notice, which is like if you ask someone, hey, like, how's it going? What are you up to? And I'm like, oh, man, I'm busy. It's like kind of the default answer. I'm busy. Things are busy.

And it means usually, I mean, we mean like a variety of things. But usually it's good. Like, oh, it's busy. So business is booming or it's busy. I'm overwhelmed or like whatever. But like busy, it's kind of the expectation that like everybody's busy. And we are. I mean, we are busy.

But like, we call it the busy bandwagon because it feels like it should be busy. And is this inner feeling caused by what we see or perceive other people are doing, that drives a lot of the stress. And I don't mean to sound like I'm like above it all and have like figured it all out. It still drives my stress. It's this inner feeling that like other people haven't figured out. Other people are expecting fast reactions for me, all this. That's the busy bandwagon, this sort of feeling that I should be busy, that everyone else is busy. And what that does inside of us is really the core of what we have to we have to change and figure out this, this, you know, sort of getting out of a reaction mode.

The other thing that happens to us are the infinity pools. And John, do you want to describe what infinity pools are in our context? Yeah, we came up with this name because we were trying to think of like endlessly replenishing, you know, fount of content, right? So like, you know, basically if you can pull to refresh or if it streams, like, it's an infinity pool. So this is like pure entertainment stuff. is stuff that people say like, oh, I spend, you know, I spend so much time on Instagram, but it's also like stuff that's important and necessary and productive. Like email is a huge infinity pool and it's probably like the single hardest thing for the two of us to like sort of control and avoid getting sucked into. And, you know, like anybody listening to this is going to, I think, understand how powerful those, those pools are and how effective.

designed and engineered those products are to, you know, to be really compelling and to be friction-free and to just make it easy for us to dive back into that pool. And so when you put these two things together, the busy bandwagon and the infinity pool, you kind of have this like, it's like a flywheel, but bad. You know, it's like this, you feel like you really need to be busy. You really need to be on top of everything. And then you've got this whole collection of apps and services and products there that are sort of ready to pounce on that. They're ready to take advantage of that set of defaults, that cultural and internal set of defaults that you have about what you should be doing. And for a lot of people, it just sort of spins out of control.

So our view is like if you can name those two things, if you can understand those two things, then you can start to deliberately change some of the defaults around them so that you can put your most important projects, people work first. like we talked about. I'm guilty of both these things. I feel like the reason I do some of these chats, this one in particular is I, it's like consulting,

like one-on-one coaching almost. It's going to help me stick to some of the things you teach. And I've already actually momented a number of the things you recommend, but this is reinforcing it. And then obviously also helping all the listeners get better at these things.

Yeah. Before we get into it, one last question is just like, real talk, how is your guys' productivity? Like, you wrote this book. It sounds amazing. There's 87, I think, pieces of advice. How is it going for you guys? I want to, as we go through, I want to hear

like what you're actually using, but just broadly, like, how's your productivity? At the top of the interview, when you asked, what do people, what do most people get wrong about, you know, when they think about this productivity, time management, whatever? And I'll frame my answer in those terms. So most people, I think they try to get better and faster at doing like what's right in front of them. You know, we don't change the default. faults in our environment so we can focus and spend time on these different more important things. And if you think of that sort of, what do I want to do? What's my goal? What do I want to spend time on that John referred to as like Project A? Generally, the things we want to do, these Project A things,

they're big, they're not easy to start. They're slow to create dopamine hits. They're non-urgent. Like, boss is not asking for them if you have a boss. And generally, the tasks and activities that stand in our way that keep us from doing Project A. They're small, they're medium size. It's obvious how to start them. They create dopamine right away. They're supposedly urgent email meetings, TikTok, Instagram, news, what's on your OKRs, all these things are like, and I know what's on your OKRs may not sound like it's a peer of those others, but in a way like it really can be. So these big things, they're like at odds with these little things to get in the way that the busy bandwagon expects us to do, these things that have

infinity pools built in. And so for me, right now, it's a constant battle between the Jake and the busy bandwagon and my inner feeling of like, how can I live up to people's expectations of me and respond in the way that I should and react in the way that I should. And then how can I do the Project A stuff, the big, important stuff? A lot has changed in my life since we wrote the book. The summary is every few months, I need a few new experiments. I have found in what has been some trying times that the tactics and the framework that we use, because it's kind of simple and it sort of fits with these experiences that I've had for many years doing sprints, that it works and that if I can go back to that, if I can create space for it,

if I can think about this as, you know, it's a series of experiments. if I can look at myself with curiosity and say, why are things not working out? And then try to experiment my way out of it that I'm able to. But yeah, so at any given point in time, you know, I'd probably give myself a B to, you know, B minus. And sometimes it's a C and sometimes it's a D.

And sometimes it's an A. And I'm really, you know, plugging away. But it's, it's an ongoing, it's totally an ongoing challenge. So I'm not going to sit here and say like, yeah, I just do, just just follow. me with a drone for, you know, 48 hours and you'll think that's exactly how you should do things. But part of our philosophy, I think that part of the way I look at it is it can be a mess. And yet if you can create the space for those Project A moments for like your highlights,

that can sort of shape everything else in turn. Like if you just have those moments, things can sometimes be a mess outside of that. And you still feel really good about your days. You still feel really good about the way you're spending. your energy. Yeah, and having a framework for it gives you a path back. You know, if you're just stuck and you're looking, you're sort of grasping for hacks, you know, you're sort of like, oh, I read this really, you know, this blog post about this thing, I'll try it. That might have some short-term effect, but ultimately you're probably not going to stick to it. You're probably

going to fall back into that place of overwhelm and disappointment and burnout. But we find that if you have a system that you can use the system and you can return to it and continue to build on and experiment that you can make more sustainable progress on these things. I think a really important takeaway from these two stories you got just shared is you don't have to do all of these things. You don't even have to do most of them. If you just do like one or two, if you find one or two things that can make you a little bit more productive every day, that makes a huge dent. And so I think it's okay to feel like, oh, I try this stuff. It didn't work. I think as long as you take a couple things away today, that might be useful to you,

and then just try them again in the future if they end up not working out. Like you delete an app and then you reinstall it, I think that's okay. So I think that's an important takeaway from this is don't feel like you're failing if you're not doing all of things that we're talking about today. But let's get into it. There's this kind of four-part framework for how to help yourself be more productive. Basically, if you could just give an overview and then let's just talk about each of these steps one by one. So the four parts are great a highlight, laser, energize, and reflect. So I'll turn over to you guys just broadly and then let's go through each of these one by one. It all starts with this notion of a highlight. And the highlight is, I hate to say this,

it's the most powerful best part, I think, of the whole process. And I hate to say that John came up with it. It wasn't even knew. But I have to admit, it's really good. And I think for, as folks have read the book and shared it, that's the thing we hear back for people. This is the one thing. If you could just do one thing from this book and try this out, it's a big deal. The notion of the highlight is, start your day out and you imagine it's the end of the day. You're looking back on the day. If someone asked you, what was the highlight of your day? What would you say? What do you want to say at the end of today was the highlight of today? And you start there, just like, okay, what would I like to say the highlight of the day was?

And we think, you know, you might think about what's, what's urgent. Sometimes the highlight is this thing that really has to happen today. Today is the day. There's a big meeting or there's this thing I absolutely have to get done for work for tomorrow. That could be your highlight. And getting that done well, having good attention to that will be very satisfying. But a lot of times the highlight comes from joy or, you know, satisfaction, projects that wouldn't otherwise get attention.

And it also doesn't have to just be something at work. It could be people in your life that you want to spend time with, a hobby that you want to spend time on. You know, if you want to get better at Mario Kart, having a good session of Mario Kart, whatever might be the highlight of your day. The notion is just in the morning to think,

what is it? And what is that highlight going to be? And then, you know, try to find a block that's 60 to 90 minutes. That's just usually like the rough time we think it takes to really get in the zone on something. do a really excellent job, be totally focused on it.

So that highlight is that that's the anchor of everything. That's the core, that's the foundation. And you start that way. You're now trying to shape your time around that highlight and making sure that you have your peak energy, your peak attention when the time for that highlight comes around. So laser is about the tactics you might need to actually focus on that thing. So in highlight, we have a set of tactics for how to create and think about and frame that highlight.

Laser, we have a set of tactics for how do you pay attention when that time comes. And then for Energize, it's about having the right amount of energy to do the thing to pay attention. You know, my highlight for today is trying to be coherent in this podcast. So this morning, I need to think about what's the best way for me to have peak energy when a podcast starts. That's my highlight too, actually. Okay. Record a great podcast episode. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Yeah. And if you're not watching on video, Lenny had a sticky note.

And that's that he wrote down. So that's actually like literally what the best way to do this is write it down on a sticky note. Put it somewhere where you can see it. And so you've got highlight, laser during the time of the highlight. Energize. Make sure you have the energy you need when the time comes. And these are just tactics about sleep and food and exercise and, you know, just things that help with your mental energy, not crazy stuff. And then the final thing is reflect. And this. This is where we think about this as like the scientific method. Like, did it work? Did what I tried today work out? And if not, just being curious about it, what didn't? And adjusting and trying to think, okay, maybe there's another tactic I can try. So the book is like, what are there like, 87 tactics in the book?

There's a lot of different approaches, but the expectation is not you're going to use all of them. And the expectation is not that all of them will work for each person. I use different tactics than John does. Some of his don't work for me and vice versa. But that idea of, you know, centering on a thing. focusing on it, having tactics for that, having tactics for energy, and then having some tactics to reflect and reframe and be curious,

that taken together we find to just like can reframe the way it feels. It's not really about productivity. It's not about time management. It's really just about, look, in any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention and we use it well.

And it's not going to happen every day, but if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not. I think that last point is so important and why the highlight works so well for me is usually there's, like, you don't get anything amazingly done in a day often. And like usually you're just distracted by these things

and you're doing all the easy stuff. You talked about this idea of Project A, like here's the thing I really want to get done, but the dopamine hit us so far in the future and so hard. And so if you, like the reason I think the highlight is so powerful is you get one thing done you're proud of. That is a great day. And it may sound a,

crazy that that's true, but it's so true. Yeah, yeah, totally. So I want to talk more in depth about each of these four things and maybe spend most time on the highlight and a laser, because I think that's where most of the impact comes from. So with the highlight, do you have any advice? You shared a couple examples of how to come up with like, here's the thing to pick for the day. There's a few questions that you recommend, and I think you share a couple of them. And then are there any examples of highlights from your guys' past couple weeks? That would be good for people to hear an example. And then also there's this calendar component,

which maybe fits into the laser, but I guess that feels like a really important element of this. So if you just talk about that. For me, and again, this is where the framework is intentionally flexible. Different people have different highlights. But for me, I am, I'm very project-oriented. I'm very work-oriented.

And for me, most days, you know, a really good day comes from having, you know, made progress in something that is really important to me, you know. So my highlights are usually kind of focused work, creative work related. And this has become even more important since we started our own VC firm three years ago. And before that, I was sort of, I guess more or less like a writer, full-time writing and speaking at events and doing some consulting. Before that, I was a partner at Google Ventures at GV, and before that I was a product designer. So, like, I've been through different modes and contexts in my career, but, you know, if you

know any VCs, if you're listening to this and you know any VCs, like, they're probably like the busiest, like, most frazzled people that you know who are, like, constantly on email, like, constantly in Zoom calls and meetings and on airplanes all the time. And so the natural environment of that work is the busy bandwagon. And it's to have a lot of infinity pools that you need to care about. And so in that context, in order for us to make progress on projects, in order for us to move the ball on like a launch related to this program character labs that we run with with pre-seed founders that's coming up, or we're writing a new book, and that's a big, a big project, or working with one of our portfolio companies and running a sprint with them,

or writing a newsletter that goes out to our LPs, those things are all really important. And I feel like they give us, like, a unique edge as a VC firm. You know, if we accept the premise I said before that most VCs are just sort of, you know, frantically running around, like, if we can do these, if we can take these bigger swings, at things, then theoretically they should really help us be successful. So most of the time, it's all a very long way of saying that most of the time my highlights are like, what do I want to accomplish at work? Like what is, you know, the thing that I want to get done today? And so what I do then is I structure my calendar around making time for that. There's a tactic in the book called

Design Your Day that is really about kind of drawing out your day and using your calendar as a canvas where you can design how you want to spend your time rather than using your calendar as like a thing that that is done to you, right? A thing that like tells you what you have to do, sort of reclaim control over that. And so I, you know, most days the first half of the day, you know, before lunch is my focus time. And I protect that very, very intensely and then use that time to work on whatever my highlight is. We had a previous guest on Niraiel also talking about productivity and he had actually the same advice of just using your calendar as your to-do list, basically, because that's where

your time's going to go, what your calendar is telling you to do. So I think there's like a pattern here that I think people need to pay attention to. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and we, I mean, we take it even further and we have sort of a calendar template that we use as a team. So we have certain times of the week. And it's not exactly the same for all of us on the team, but there are certain times of the week where it's like, yeah, this is when we do these kinds of things. This is when we have these kinds of meetings. And not to say that those are all like standing meetings, although we have some of those as well, but these are kind of like the content buckets in the, in the template that we can fill with a specific type of activity. But then other parts of the

template are sort of reserved for focus work, reserved for individual, you know, solo time to to work on things that we need to get done. So, yeah, I think the calendar is, like, at an individual level and, and especially at a team level is this really powerful tool that most people just kind of like, not only do they not use it as, as like a tool, they just sort of hate it. They're sort of like, oh, my calendar. It's like, it's a mess, you know, like, when I make it, like, if I could live without a calendar, like, that would be, that would be the dream.

But I think if you can use some of these tactics or use other approaches to, to, to, to, reclaim it and use it like proactively as a tool for yourself. It can it can really help you, going to structure your time around the things you care about. Yeah. The way I've been starting to use my calendar is this way, exactly is I try to like, here is prepare for, like, work on next week's newsletter post for a hour

and a half, then prep for the podcast coming up in a few weeks. So it's like very specific and broken up along those lines. Like I don't know, often, I often don't do these things as I planned. and one of your principles is something around Groundhog Day, like, it's okay to repeat it if you didn't do it. Like, if your highlight, you didn't do, just like repeat it again and again until you do it, right?

I think that what's so cool about this notion of Groundhog Day, and if you've seen the movie, well, if you haven't seen the movie, see the movie. What a great movie. But if you've seen the movie, you know, it's like he, not to give it away, but like he gets better and better at doing the day. And, you know, that's like, that's kind of this, this core philosophy that we take on it. I think a lot of the time when in the past I have thought about how can I be effective

with my time, how can I be productive? It's a, you know, beating myself up. It's like it's not, it doesn't, it's not a good feeling to be in that headspace of like, I'm screwing up. Like, what can I fix? You know? And this notion that it's like, you're going to have another chance. They're going to have another chance.

It's okay. Just try again. Just be curious about what happened. is a big deal. And starting with a calendar, using the calendar as a framework for saying like, here's what actually happens. Here's what I think is going to happen.

That's what you're saying when you do this design your day tactic. And like I did this exercise earlier this week. I was switching to a new calendar thing and trying to some new features with, we invest in this company called Reclaim. And they- I'm an investor in Reclaim also. Oh, oh, well. How about that?

Not that. It's great. Yeah, a little, little, little. It sounds like we, it sounds like that was a, you know, like we knew that. But we actually didn't know that. I didn't know that. We did not know that. How about that?

So anyway, I was just looking at my calendar and I did. I was like, you know what? I'm going to do what John does. I'm going to schedule when I wake up. I'm going to schedule when I exercise. When I eat breakfast. I'm going to schedule when I, you know, take a shower, like everything and block it all out. When I walk and feed the dogs, like everything is going to be on there.

so that then I, you know, I can have this idea. And when, you know, the day starts, I kind of know, oh, yeah, there's slots for all those things. And then I've found this week that, like, what I thought happened, how long I thought those things take, it was not how long they take. And so this, you know, set that thing to repeat every day and look at it.

And then I'm like, oh, okay, interesting. That's not what happened. Okay, so I can adjust it. I can adjust the template and be a bit more kind to myself about this part. Be a bit more kind to myself about that. part. Gosh, that the morning time wasn't a good focus time for me. Oh, well, see if I can, there way I can make that block happen in the afternoon. You know, it's just helpful, just a helpful way to kind of track stuff and see it. Just especially, I think a lot of people are,

our visual learners, you know, or, you know, like we can benefit from seeing things. It's not everybody, but a lot of us are in that camp. And when you put it on the calendar, you can see it. And that helps a lot. And also keep someone else from booking that time. double in. It's not to be undervalued. Keep someone else for booking that time. Right. Yeah.

And they look and they see, oh, okay, Lenny's already got stuff going on and figured out. I'd, okay, like I better, I better be cautious before I ask for something.

And that default to be helpful to other people and say yes, when they put something on a free spot on your calendar, defeats a lot of our, our inner purposes. And one core idea that I don't think we've mentioned yet is that we strongly believe in people's intuition about, about how they should spend their time if they have the chance. What really is important.

And that is true. You know, we're talking about, you know, running this VC fund or like writing books, which are obviously very like, well, we're in charge of those things. But like this is also true. We've been employees and big organizations. I also believe it's true that the, if you have a boss and a boss's boss's boss, that you have great insight about what if you had a window of time would be the highest leverage thing for you to do.

and it might not show up on your OKRs, it might not be on your boss's radar, your bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, you have great intuition and we want to create space for you to do that thing because you're going to feel better about it, you're going to be more satisfied, and also good things are going to happen.

We're spending a lot of time on this highlight, but I think it's because it's so powerful, it's such a simple idea, but so effective. So just to kind of give people tactical advice for how to actually implement this, just a couple things that I'll summarize. One is you had these, to pick the highlight,

couple questions I have here for how to help you pick one up for the day. So you either ask which highlight will bring me the most satisfaction or when I reflect on today will bring me the most joy. Maybe that's the same question. But I slightly different. Slightly different. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And satisfaction can be like, I know this thing has to get done. Yeah, okay. Got it done. You know, joy could be like, man, that was great. You know, and those are like, they're in the same family, but they're their cousins. Great point, great point. Yeah, and I mentioned like a lot of my highlights personally are are very much in the like urgency or satisfaction camp. They're like these big chunky like projects. I got it done. I finish that deck. I finish writing that thing. But I also try to stay attuned to when I need something else in my day, you know, when I need like I need some joy. I need some some fun, some play. I need to like prioritize, you know, going for a run or going for a one. or like cooking a big dinner. And so like I trust my gut on those things. And I say like,

okay, I like what's most important to me today is not to be productive, but to do something else. And and sometimes, you know, the, that's the best highlight for me. For other people, maybe that's their highlight every single day, right? Like maybe they work as a, I don't know, I've talked to a lot of people who work in healthcare settings about this. Like they're, you know, a nurse or a doctor and it's like when they're at work they're at work right like they're not bouncing around between meetings and emails and in zooms like they're they're on their feet like there's no time to do anything else so like their highlight is probably like something they need to do at the end of the day to like unwind or like take care of themselves so you have these kind of these three

different sort of strategies that we talk about urgency satisfaction and joy as being three different places you can look for the right highlight for you each day but ultimately I think it comes down to like just trusting your gut and sort of asking yourself you said like what do I want to look back on and have said like yeah I'm glad I made time for that awesome so that yeah so you touched on the third so it's basically what would give you the most satisfaction so at the in the morning you essentially asked the or even the night before I think one of you I forget because when I was listening to audio book I don't know who's talking but one of you is like I like to do it the day before is that right yeah that's me okay okay that's John talking okay so the questions you ask either the

or in the morning are what would give me the most satisfaction today, or the next day, what would give me the most joy, or what's the most pressing thing that I need to get done? So you do that. And then the advice is either write it on a post-it. I actually bought these tiny little post-a-cuit by accident. I was trying to buy regular post-its.

And they're actually really great for this specific use case. It's perfect. Write your highlights, stick it on the monitor. So that's one way of doing it. The other, stick it in your calendar where you have like focus time. In theory, it's like every day. Here's my focus time. once when you know where you have the most energy. Is that the general advice?

Generally, although I think that that's probably more important for a certain kind of highlight. You know, like, you know, I have focused time most mornings to be like really specific and nerdy about it, like Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I have focused time. Tuesday and Friday mornings, I have meetings. But like, you know, on a Thursday night, like my highlight might actually be to have friends over and cook dinner. And like, you know, that's not my, that's not the same as focus time, but it's this like pressure release valve where I'm like, that's the thing that I want to make sure, like, I want to make sure I wrap up like email at five so that like have time to like get everything ready. But it's not necessarily sort of that peak, you know, energy moment

in the, in the way that we might think about, you know, being productive or or getting things done or sort of getting into that flow state. Awesome. So there's a lot of ways to do it. So maybe you just take away, if you're listening to this, is just think about what could be your highlight for today or tomorrow. Yeah. And I would say go one step further and make sure to write it down. Like don't just think about it because there's something really special that happens when you write things down, like even if it's on a sticky, like even if it's in your

notebook, your journal, like even if it's a note on your phone, like take that step as well. Even if you don't see it again, it just writing it down. is a big deal. Yeah. That's a really important point. I can give you a concrete example of a highlight and a failed highlight from yesterday, actually. And so most days, these days, my highlight is around making progress on the book, John alluded to working on the book. And so that's obviously, it's a huge project.

I heard it said that, you know, if you are writing books, it's like having homework forever. Like, you always feel like there's always more to do. And so that's mostly been my highlight. But yesterday I wanted to prepare for this podcast. I knew that was going to be satisfying to be, to feel like I was ready. We don't think about talking about make time all the time, you know,

like we said sort of like a side project for us. So I wanted to be ready and somewhat coherent. And I also, so it was, you know, I knew I'd be satisfied, but I also knew it was urgent. Like we're going to be doing the recording today.

So I, that was my highlight. Write that down. Get ready for podcasts. And I had two focus. Focus blocks. One of the morning, one of the afternoon should be easy. Focus block, number one, kind of just didn't do a good job. I was distracted. I was in my email. I was, you know, doing everything that I would say you shouldn't do. I was doing feeling down on

myself, I'm a loser. I didn't get anything done. Okay. Second focus block. Oh, man, now pressure's on. I really, I got to do it. And so I finally get into the zone, you know, and my wife thinks I have like a pretty serious case of undiagnosed. ADHD. So a lot of it is just like, if I really do have a deadline, then I really will, like, click in. So now I had a deadline. I'm doing it and I'm making notes and getting there. But I feel like there's still a ways to go. And my son, my 12 year old son, like burst into the room and was, oh, God, you're invading me, like right when I'm at peak focus. And he's like, hey, I'm going to do one more trip outside to sled in the snow. Do you want to come? And I'm like,

you know, first reaction, no, absolutely not. I can get this thing done. It's my highlight. This is the one thing I need to do today. I can do at max level of quality. If I can just stay in this precious zone of focus. But then I was like, wait a second, what's really going to be the highlight of my day? What's really going to be the highlight?

The thing that I might actually remember in the future, we rarely get snow here. I live on this island in Washington State. We don't, you know, we maybe get like significant snowfall once every two years. We've only lived here for a few years. he's 12. He loves snow more than anything in the world. He loves snow. But he grew up in California. So he hasn't had many days. He's 12. He's like on the cusp of being like a teenager. There's not maybe any more days in his life that he's going to want me to get on the sled with him and wrap my arms around him and go down the hill. I was like, I got to get out there. So, okay, pause this. Ran outside. We did it. And like, man, it was magical. And like, I didn't know we were going to get one more in. because the snow was supposed to be melting already. We went down the hill. We went down the hill.

We went that got dark. We had to stop. But it was like so magic. And I remember like the very last end of the sled run. And it's like the last one. And, you know, he's like, man, he's like, that was a great last sled run. So glad we did it. And I was like, you know, so glad we did it.

It's great. Come back inside, you know, 15 minutes. I try to hustle and get this done. And so I was like, you know, maybe it was like 80%. or 75% to where I wanted to be on this, I couldn't check off that highlight as being the most important thing. But because of the framing of like it might be wrong, like what am I going to remember all this stuff?

Like it just felt natural to me to switch modes and say, oh my God, that actually is a highlight. That's this thing that's going to be really, really precious. That's where the joy and the satisfaction are most for today. I'm still because I had written down the other thing, I still did it instead of churning on email the entire day. But like I screwed up twice, but like it still turned out pretty good. So anyway, that's that's kind of what it can look like at its best.

And a lot of times it doesn't make that much sense. And a lot of times I miss the special moments where I miss the key work moment or the key, you know, time when I could have gotten the most done. But I just feel better about it, which is a lot of what this is about. I just feel like better about it because, you know, feel more intentional. Well, thank you for sharing the real talk. I think you made the right choice. I feel bad for having you have to decide between your kid and this podcast.

You didn't have me to do it. No, no, no. I just wanted to. It's selfish for me to want to be prepared. I just want to look good. You know, I just want to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Well,

it's working out. It all worked out. That's a great story. It reminds me in your book at some point. I forget who was of you that had to, you had this like, here's my priorities in my life right now. And it was like family writing, make time,

something else. And then you're like, okay, actually make time is more important right now than my family. because you just have to get this done and I wonder if this is a counter. Well, yeah, that's, I mean, I think that part of what's

people have found useful about many times is that John and I come at this from different perspectives and I have kids, I have a 12-year-old and a 20-year-old sons and like dealing with being a dad is a big part of how I try to figure out how to make sense of what to do. And, and John doesn't have kids

and so like he has he has it easy you know he said no he doesn't but but but that's just a different it's a different frame of mind and I think sometimes I read something that people without kids wrote and I think like well yeah sure like I'm sure that's wonderful for you but what about XYZ and although I'm sure a lot of people who have like more kids or when they have young kids would you know but you know like that's a that's a real part of it and when you have whether it's your family, your significant other, like anything that's going on in your life that's not part of your work, there are times when you, on a day or in a moment, you do have to shift those priorities. And it can help to just be this idea of like stack ranking things and being clear about

it can help you just come to terms with it. I'm making that decision right now. It makes sense to make right now. Or at least I can see that I did it. And if it seems like I screwed it up, I flip it back. I know where it happened. A lot of this is just like if you were, designing a product or writing code or whatever, like you can see, that's where the bug happened. I just try to fix that line. Yeah. I love how real you're getting.

And I also reminds me of a, we just had a kid. He's seven months old. So I'm going through a lot of school. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. That's busy times. Seven months old is busy times. Yeah.

That's great. People always told me, told us when we had kids with their babies. They're always like, oh, just you wait. I just feel like this is like a thing that people want to tell other parents, like, just you wait until this happened. And then one person said, you know what, generally speaking, it gets easier and easier and easier. Like every month, every week, generally speaking, it's like gets easier. And I think that is true. So just keep that in mind if you ever feeling like it's overwhelming. No, I think that is true. I've experienced that.

Also gets more amazing. That's what I find too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point, your customers will start asking for enterprise features, like SAML authentication and SCIM provisioning. That's where WorkOS comes in, making it fast and painless to add enterprise features to your app. Their APIs are easy to understand so that you can ship quickly and get back to building other features, and hundreds of other companies are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Versel, Webflow, and Loom. WorkOS also recently launched AuthKit, a complete authentication and user management service. It's essentially a modern alternative to OTH Zero, but with better pricing and more

flexible APIs, OTHKitt's design is stunning out of the box, and you can also fully customize it to fit your app's brand. It's an effortless experience from your first user all the way to your largest enterprise customer. Best of all, OTHKIT is free for any developer up to one million users. Check it out at workos.os.com to learn more. That's workos.os.com. I want to talk about the next bucket that you call laser. You could also think of it as just like how to focus better. And this is where like most of the very tactical tips for how to avoid getting distracted are. So what I think might be helpful here is let's just do like a rapid fire through is your favorite tactical tips to help people stay focused.

And the more the ones that you actually do and find most helpful, I think it's like six years later now since you publish the book, the better. So let's let's go through some stuff here. Yeah, the basic principle with laser is that your willpower is never going to win. Like, will, and there's like, there's great research on this. Like, but for now, just trust me. Like, you're not going to, you're not going to white knuckle your way through like, not looking at Twitter when you're trying to work. So it's all about, like, making it hard, like creating barriers to getting distracted.

So a few things for me. Like, I'm not on Instagram and I'm not on Facebook. Like, I was on both of those things. and I left both of them. Like I disabled my accounts. I am on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I don't have either of those apps installed on my phone. I stay logged out of those sites on my computer,

except for when I want to use them for some specific purpose. LinkedIn, I kind of need to use, like, all the time because I'm a VC and I have to look people up and stuff. So I found this Chrome plugin, or Chrome extension, I guess is the right word, that disables the feed in LinkedIn. So when I go to LinkedIn.com, it's like this, search bar at the top, but there's no feed, which is amazing because I can use LinkedIn as like the phone book and then, you know, not get distracted. So those are, those are like some of the

very, very concrete specific things that I do. All again, with the goal of putting a speed bump between me and that thing so that if I go, and I don't do this much anymore, but like I used to like, literally my hands on the keyboard would just be like TWI, like Twitter.com and like, And then you see that login screen instead of like, you know, my juicy feed. And I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Okay, I did that on purpose. Like, great. Like, I broke that, that, like, feedback loop a little bit.

I did a similar thing with Twitter slash X, where I deleted the app and I just used the mobile website. I think this point of logging out is really powerful. I think people haven't heard that idea as much because it's not like you can't log in really easily. Just click a couple things in your back. But to your point, it reminds you, like, okay, I see. I really shouldn't have done this.

Well, I also signed up for two-factor authentication for everything, not because I care about somebody hacking my account, but because it's another speed bump. Like, it's because that way, even if you've, like, even if your browser remembers your password or like, I use one password. So even if it like, you know, the browser extension is going to like fill it in for me, there's still another step. So it's like, it's sort of like reverse engineering in my own distractibility. That feature that everyone's always talking about that Apple built of like the code being

automatically there in the keyboard. Like, that's counter to this friction that you've created. Yeah, yeah. That's true. So it's interesting as I had this. And then I just like, God damn it, I really just want to be on Twitter. And so I just reinstalled it again recently. And I don't know how to, I need to like fight that again.

Well, you know, I go through cycles like that too. And I go through that a lot with email. So, Jake, you sort of have email on your phone. Is that right? Oh, that would be on the floor checking email right now. Yeah, and so I was qualified on the floor. I used to do that. Like Jake,

Jake inspired me like a long time ago to like remove email from my phone. And so like for years and years, that's been my default. But I more recently I've like had more reasons to install it, mostly related to travel. I'm like on the go and I just like want to stay on top of things. And like something that Jake and I have talked about a lot is like you kind of go through these different cycles of like,

hey, I need this thing or I want this thing. And then like part of the, the reflect step, like part of paying attention and reflecting on how it's going is to recognize. Like, oh, wow, I've actually been spending a lot of time like on email on my phone or a lot of time on Twitter. Like, maybe I'll just uninstall it for a while. You know, maybe I'll just like reset, you know, and do that for a while. And then there will be some other thing that happens that causes you to reinstall it. And like, that's totally fine because you're being deliberate about it and you're paying attention rather than saying like, it has to always be this way forever. And it's set in

stone. That's a great tip of just like coming back to it, not feeling like you're defeated. It's like, all right, let's try this again. Yeah, I think a big part of it is if you can experience the feeling of not having it on your phone. It's like, like, I'm old enough to have lived in a world building products where there were no smartphones. And like, we got a lot done back then. Like it still things happened. I mean, God's sake, like they designed the first iPhone without being able to use iPhones while they did it. Like, you can do a lot. So this, you know, this idea that we have to have it or it's, everything's going to fall apart, it's just not true for 99.999% of everyone.

It's interesting to see what it feels like if you delete all of the infinity pools off of your phone. And this is something I did out of rage at myself in 2012. And I was, it was another situation where I was like, I was with my kids, we're much younger at the time. and I was, you know, spending time with them or playing wooden trains. And with a sudden, my son's like, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. And I'm like, God, what? And I didn't even realize it, but I was on my phone.

I don't even remember what I was doing email or something, but I think I told him like, he's like, what's on your phone? You know, because to him, he was like, we're doing something really fun. So if you're on your phone, it must be something really cool. Maybe it would be a cool thing to share. Because this is great. so it must be another great thing. He wasn't trying to, you know, shame me or anything.

And I was like all defensive. I'm like, well, I need to do this for work, which was, I think, my internal monologue of why I was doing this thing that actually was just a really low friction dopamine hit. And then I thought like, God, this is not what I wanted. This is not why I worked so hard today. So I would get done with my work so I could be home in time to do this before my kids go to bed. And I was like, screw this.

So I just started deleting things. on my phone and I deleted email and I deleted Facebook and I deleted just everything that had an infinity pool. Everything that had an infinite amount of content. News is like this. You know, it's like anything streaming, right? And like when we wrote this book and when like came out in 2018 and we I think we said like it's going to, we thought it was going to get worse and it has. But like, you know, at that point in time, there was really like Netflix and now there's all these streaming services. At that point in time, there was Instagram and Facebook, but now there's TikTok, like the best part of every video available instantly right here.

Like this stuff, it only gets harder to resist. When you clear all that stuff off of your phone, it's painful, right? The idea of like deleting all this stuff. And each time the phone's going to ask you, this is going to delete all the data and settings. Are you sure you want to do that? You know, like it doesn't want you to. And when you do that, though, just what does that feel like?

And it's, you know, usually a feeling of discomfort, but also relief that like, I don't have to check this. this thing, I don't have to check it. I don't have to. And if you've ever felt like your phone was like in the Lord of the Rings, like how Bilbo, I guess, yeah, Lord of the Rings, they like, they want to put their hand in their pocket and touch the ring. And they're like, or like put the ring on without even knowing it.

Like Frodo's like, I don't even realize I did it. That's what this thing is like. And when you take those off, just that feeling of relief is to me so powerful that having done this for a decade now. And yeah, there's exceptions. Like, I'm traveling. God, I have to check my email for extra reason. And I install it and I check it.

And then it automatically, like, because I'm aware of it, I'll just feel this static. There's this notion of attention residue. And I think the researcher who coined this term is Sophie Leroy from the University of Washington. Anyway, you can look that up. I think I learned about that from Cal Newport. But this idea says it makes a lot of sense that you pay attention to some things and they just stick in your head and they create the static.

Those apps just create the static. The idea of email being on my phone and accessible at any time creates a discomfort, a disquiet that, like, now that I've seen it and felt what it's like to not have it, I could not imagine experiencing it. You do give some things up. You're not going to be as responsive. John and I don't have as many Twitter followers as we have if we use Twitter, right? Like there are these things that like you look at other people and I just saw a post on LinkedIn because I haven't used John's plug in yet.

But like I looked on this post and it was like a colleague that I used to have and she was saying like, yeah, I posted a few tweets last year and a couple of them went viral and I gained 30,000 followers. And I was like, man, all I have is 30,000 followers. And I that's that was from, you know, years and years ago. And like, I thought I was a pretty big deal with 30. Oh, geez, I should. Maybe I should. And I was like, oh, God, like, don't do it. because I know when I'm doing it, then I'll be thinking about it all the time.

And the attention residue will, like, spoil my life. So, yeah, anyway, sorry, that's just like a rant. But, like, I just, you should try it. The distraction-free phone thing is just worth trying. Take off, if you can, take off everything. If not, just try taking off the thing that's your kryptonite. What's the thing that, you know, is the hardest for you to resist, sucks your attention the most, makes you feel not good.

Take it off for, try it for a day or try it for two hours, just to feel that feeling And then once you felt the feeling, you'll always know, like, I could release that. And I think that's powerful. And I think when you delete it, it's important to know. It's not actually, nothing's being deleted when you're deleting the app. Like, you can reinstall it. You log it, it's all the same. It's all the same.

That's an important point. They make it sound like, oh, my God, this is a big deal. It's not. Like this. Yeah, just have to remember your password or Google author or whatever using. This metaphor of the Lord of the Rings and the ring is so good for how it feels to to just like, I'm just going to check it on. What's the problem?

Just going to check it again. Let's check it. That's so good. And then in Lord of the Rings, the way they resist the ring is they hide it. They put it somewhere else. They give it to Frodo to take it, right? That's like the same solution is just like I can't get access to it. It's over there.

Right, right. Yeah, you got to be like Gandalf. Like, you know, even if that ring would do great things for you, you got to give it to Frodo for a while, you know, maybe show up at the end with an eagle. Just too, yeah, yeah, the eagle scoop them up. Yeah. Oh, man. So the key tips here are find the actual. apps that are sucking your attention, could be Twitter, could be LinkedIn, could be your email,

and delete them, and or log out of them. What else? There's a few tactics that Jake and I both use that are related to like TV, like watching TV and like a really simple one, which is also like kind of a luxury one, but I think there are ways to do it that are like pretty universal. It's just like not having a TV in your main like living space. Like again, not having the default be like, I'm home, the TV is on. Like, what are we watching? And so, like, you know, for, for me and, and my wife, that's, that's always been, like, the TV is just, like, in a different room.

And, like, Jake, you guys, do you use a, like, a projector, like, where you, like, if you want to watch something, you have to, like, get it out, set it up and, like, make a decision to watch something? Yeah. So it's like, it's like a bit of a project. And it's like, it doesn't take that long, but you definitely are not just, like, click. Like, it's, it's, uh, and you don't see it when it's not. when it's not set up. So we have like a projection screen that's all kind of folded up and,

you know, in the corner. And the projector's like in a cabinet. So you got to get it out and get a chair and put it on there. And like if you're motivated enough, you know, you can do it. But it's, it takes a few minutes. You need like an old timey camera that you have to like wind with like Yeah, right. So I have to sit there. Here's another one that. Yeah, yeah. Another one that's really helpful for me that actually is sort of a of a bridge is like the laser section and the energized section because it relates to sleep is like I don't keep my phone in my in the bedroom like the phone doesn't come in the bedroom. And not only that like I the place where it charges like the mag safe like little like charging

place for it is like downstairs. It's like on a different floor. It's in the kitchen. So it's like when I put that there at like the end of the night and like I go like upstairs, like I might still be awake for like an hour. Like I might you know might read. I might like get ready for bed. like all those things, but like the phone is a way, make sure that I, that the last thing I do

each day is not like on my phone. That's super helpful to me. And that's, I think there's a bunch of ways, whether it's in a drawer or in a cabinet, like there's a bunch of ways you can implement that, that tactic that I think can make a big difference. My wife and I have been talking about that actually, but the issue is our, to watch our kid with the Nanit app, hey, we need our phone. I know that you can get like other devices that aren't on the phone, but we just like the Nanit. and so we've kind of stuck with that. Yeah, one tactic that's related to that that a lot of people have told us they've had success with, and not specifically with the NANET app, but with some people have said like,

oh, I can't uninstall those apps because like, you know, like Twitter or, you know, LinkedIn, whatever, because I do like social media for my work. My literally my job is like I do marketing and the company, like I have to be on social media. So what some people will do is they'll have a separate device. So they just have like, you know, it's almost like the old. days of like your personal phone and your work phone, like they'll just have like a work device, like a work iPad that they like only like those apps are only there. And like when they're working, they're on it, when they're not working, they put it away. So you could like have another

device that's like the nanit device and like that's all it does. And like it's in a nice little stand by the bed. That can create some separation as well. That's a great idea. I think there's a company. I think it was Ariane Huffington made a thing where it's like a little bed for your phone where you put it somewhere in the living room and you put it to. bed and you charge it there and it's outside your room. Yeah, there's a company, I can't think of the name right now, but I can look it up and send it to you. There's a company that makes like a cool like box that like not only like you put your phone in it charges, but it like has some sort of like way of like it interacts with the

phone. Like it puts it into do not disturb or like there's some there's some like cool like integration that it does. So yeah, those things are like a little bit gimmicky, but if it helps you create like that default, it, I think it's worth it. here's a trick my wife wanted to share with you guys as she was reading the book she's like tell them about this thing that we've been doing which is with tic talk she doesn't install the app and she basically relies on me to send her ticot videos i like to her account that she then checks on my phone your pro no yeah yeah i'm holding the ticot my precious the and so the trick there there's kind of two wins one is she only sees like the best stuff

Like she respects my taste of videos to watch. And then two is I'm always like, give me my phone back. And so there's like a limited time where she can watch them. And that keeps you from getting addicted to TikTok. Yeah. My wife and I have a similar dynamic, but in reverse and with news. Like I spend like very little time like reading the news. And I don't have any news apps on my phone.

But my wife's like pretty into the news. Like, you know, she like has like a healthcare background and she studied journalism and school, so she loves, you know, particularly, like, those two topics in the intersection of those two. And so, like, she gives me, like, a news digest, you know, she'll just, like, when we're chatting at the end of the day or, like, you know, when we're doing something together, she'll just, like, you know, it's not structured. Like, it's not, you know, it's not like some official thing, but she just kind of, like, shares, like, what she was reading about that day. And it's like, it's nice, you know, it gives us somebody to talk about. It's like, it helps sort of, like,

I think it suits both of our, like, our styles and our preferences. Like, it's good for her. It's good for me. So it's fun to think about how you can implement some of these ideas, like in a relationship as well. How do I subscribe to this feed of your wife sharing the news every day? This sounds like a great podcast we all need. Really, really good stuff or really important stuff will find us. You know, it's like I think this, there is part of the, part of the busy bandwagon or part

of the Infinity Pools thing is this feeling inside that I'm responsible for staying up to date with the most important news in the world or the most important news in my inbox or my company, my team, work. And I'm responsible also for getting the very best of entertainment that's out at this moment. That's the most topical and the funniest or the most interesting, whatever, at this moment. And, you know, it's okay to let go of that and put, you know, just the good stuff, it'll, it'll come to you. People will share it with you or, you know, you'll hear about it.

If it's a really big news story, you'll hear about it eventually. If it's going to affect you, actually, you'll hear about it. And with most news and most like entertainment, like, we don't play a role. It's hard to admit, but like we don't actually play a role in what happens. And so the idea that we're responsible for being on it all the time is just, you know, that's a job that we can quit or at least take a sabbatical from. So Tim Ferriss talked about this in the four-hour work week is way back in the day is just like, I wait for people to tell me what I need to know,

exactly what John just shared before this. And I kind of find this with, so first of all, you find that when you delete Twitter, LinkedIn, like you go a week without it, and it's like nothing is any different. Like,

you still know everything you need to know, your job, everything's going great. You missed a bunch of stuff that had no impact in your life. And so I think doing that exercise helps you realize that. Like,

I don't need to be on Twitter all the time. And not to get political, but with like news about Trump, there's always these headlines. Trump, look what he did in this lawsuit today. It's over. I just feel like there's so many posts about all these things Trump is doing every day. And none of them, nothing happens.

Like, they're all like, it's just the same thing just keeps going. Like, if something actually happened there, I would, like, I would hear it from a lot of people. The New York Times would send me a big push, you know? So it's like, I don't need to know all these things he's doing every day. Well, it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. That is true. Yeah. Trump is always going to be in the news.

Yeah. And it's always going to like, you know, like that's the constant. That's like the third constant death taxes and Trump will be in the news. I am a related tactic that is that I've been doing for a long time is my main source of news is the Economist magazine, which is like far far too highbrow for like what I need. But like the main feature of it is that it's weekly. Like, because at the end of the week, like, what the zillion stories about like, you know, Trump or whatever, like, if, if there was something of consequence, like, it gets distilled into this, like, really good summary, like, really, really good. like the economist is some of the best journalists in the world. They're just absolutely fantastic. And so not only does it have this like really nice cadence of once a week, if something matters,

like it's going to get rolled up there. It's going to get summarized. And so that's, that's one of my most durable habits, you know, that related to these tactics is like reading the news once a week, reading the economist. Just like it fits my brain. It kind of fits my, my sort of life rhythm really well. Yeah, it's the opposite of Twitter, basically. So, yeah, let's hear a couple more tactics, and then let's touch on the other two parts of this framework. Well, first, a pairing, and then one more.

The pairing is reset expectations and slow your inbox. So these are two tactics related to, mostly to the email and messaging, but so resetting expectations is just about having, you know, maybe a conversation with people you work with, but it can be as simple as a signature in your email. And so one great example of this is a signature that says, I'm checking email two times a day as an experiment to improve my focus. Or I'm checking email once or twice a day,

you decide how spicy you want to get with this option because I'm working on an important project. and just a simple line that people will see passively as you send emails that will reset their expectations of how quickly you'll respond. And, you know, if you like, you can say, I'm checking email once a day because I'm working on a big project. You can text me if it's urgent. Feel free to text me if it's certain. You can invite people to do so. But that very act of just like putting it in there, you can also do it as an out-of-office auto-responder.

So just like, hey, like instead of I'm actually out of the office, like, hey, I'm going to be slower, slow to respond to email because I'm working on an important project. That because is really important. And we talk in the book about this. It's going to a funny study about the power of because and this case where people would sort of make a bogus excuses. But they'd say because, like to cut a line. It's an old study. They're making photocopies. But they would cut the line and say, I need to cut the line because I need to make copies.

And just saying because, like, dramatically boosted the percentage of the time that the person would let them cut the line. We're suckers for explanations, all of us. So if you say because people will feel better and you can feel better about saying it. But this idea that you're just going to, like, have, you know, put up a placard, basically, that says, like, hey, I'm slow to respond because I'm working on a project and maybe give people an escalation path or don't. That's a huge deal. And it seems like it would be a huge deal because it changes others' expectations. And that is true. But the real power of it is in changing like my own, our own expectations about what we are going to do and what we are expected to do.

Most of the stress comes internally from our feeling that if we don't get back to people right away, we're not enough. We're not measuring up. We feel some kind of shame or guilt about not doing it and not being fast and not being responsive. And so doing this statement is just kind of about renegotiating with ourselves. The other one is to slow down your inbox. This is a simple one. If you start to do that, if you start to just check your email once or twice a day or even less frequently, or even if you check it a little bit more frequently, but you aren't

responding to emails, you don't hold yourself accountable to this idea of an empty inbox, then the whole loop slows down. You know, if you respond to emails really fast, you respond to messages really fast, So people will respond back to you and then there's more to respond to. And if you slow down that, you know, that little hamster wheel, it slows down. And so that's powerful too. So those two around email I think can be really helpful. They help me with this, my default feeling about email and messaging and everything is I should be as responsive as possible.

And I have to constantly kind of renegotiate that with myself. And those are ways I do it. This other one that's pretty extreme that I only just tried for the first time. It's in the book, but I hadn't actually tried that. But this was a reader of our blog told us about this. Her name is Krissa. I think she allowed us to use her first name, but not her last name. So Krissa, if you're listening, shout out to you.

This turned out to be a great tactic. But it's to cancel the internet. And she had canceled the internet at home, which is wild. But what I did was I have, I have an office, like a very small office in this small town here where I live. And I canceled the internet there so that I could, when I went there, all I can do are tasks that you can't do with the internet, which is a lot. I mean, you can use a lot of apps in like offline mode and it's a great place for me to write. It's a great place for me to do

focused work, design something, presentation, but any kind of focused thinking, reading, writing can happen there. And now the whole feeling of stepping into that room where I cannot access the internet is insane. To create this kind of a thing at home, you can do things like put a timer on your on your internet you can actually like buy one of those like vacation timers plug it into the wall plug your router into that and it can actually like switch your internet off at a certain hour or hours there's also you know software that'll let you do this selectively but the big notion of just like having there be a time when you are off and it's like a fairly significant pain to get back on again it's more than just clicking wifi on wifi off i find for me

that's not enough of a speed bump is pretty powerful just that's that way you're describing the feeling of walking into an office that has no internet. I totally feel that. Just imagine just like I have no internet here. I'm like gonna, I can do so many things. Yeah. It might be a coffee shop where you don't find out what the Wi-Fi password is, you know? And like there's there's just this amazing, amazing feeling. Maybe it's just you go to a park where there's no Wi-Fi. Just like whatever might be, finding a place where you can't, you just can't get that stuff, leave your phone at home. if you can't bear to delete all the apps. It's so great.

It's so great. And it's, then you're not fighting the battle. A lot of this stuff, there's like a visualization, I think of where I've got the highlight in front of me. It's right there, this thing I can see that I want to do.

But it's like five feet away or 10 feet away. And right next to me, just kind of like vibrating or all of the like, you didn't imagine all the app logos. It's just like kind of vibrating right. around my head. They're right there. And touching any one of them, it's like they're little pieces of candy. Like they're all going to feel good. There's this like really good meal like five to ten

feet away is this great sandwich. But like these little pieces of candy are like right in my face. And it's going to be hard to resist just pop in a, you know, like a little like sour patch kid or laffy taffy in my mouth. But if I can push them away, if I can just push them far enough away so that there is far away or farther away than the sandwich, I'm going to eat the sandwich. And like if that's what you do basically with, these barriers to these distractions, then you can get into laser mode, and it's easy. You want to. Once that, you know, there's space, you'll want to do the thing that's most important.

It's just, it's hard because the candy is right in our face. Such a good metaphor. You also have this metaphor of Odysseus sailing past the sirens. If folks know that story where there's a sirens, I don't know, cliff thing where he's I know. Well, in eighth grade, I played Odysseus in school play. So I tell you all about it. What a character to play.

Yeah. And like in that story, he, like, he wanted to experience the sirens who nobody could resist, but he forced his sailors to tie him to the ship and not allow him to do anything, even though he's like, let me go. I need to, I need to go there because everyone crashed into the sirens. Anyway, I'm doing a bad job explaining the story. But I think it just comes back to the same point again and again that you can't rely on your willpower to not pull, go towards these vibrating candies all around you, that you need to set up these systems.

I think there's this like this notion that we will use willpower maybe comes from the fact that some people can. Like maybe some people are just using willpower or they're on Twitter, they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're doing all these things. And like, they're also functioning just fine. And like, or at least on this, what we see from the outside is just fine. But maybe internally too. fine. It just seems that everybody I actually talk to, and certainly my personal experience, is all that stuff makes me feel bad and

actually undercuts my ability to do the things that are meaningful. The meaningful contributions I can make through my work or through my life, whatever, like they're all undermined and undercut by the bad feelings and the distraction that come from all of social media,

all of the news, and almost all of my email. And so, like, if that's true, like, for anybody, if it's even remotely true for us, we have to just radically rethink what we're doing. This thing, I think we basically are steered toward becoming reaction machines,

you know, and this notion of, I'm going to have an empty inbox, I'm going to do every task, I'm going to be a fast responder, I'm going to be in every meeting, I'm going to do that because I want to help other people, and that's the way it works. And I think this desire to be helpful is a big driver of it.

I think we want to alleviate our strengths, stress and other people's stress, and that seems like the right way to do it. It's candy. Some of the stuff is candy and easy. We also see this modeled by people in power. It's like CEOs and bosses. It works for them because they're applying their influence through being constantly reactive and being in meetings all the time. That's just how they do what they do. That's how they apply their influence. But even for them, I think it has limits as a way to apply influence. at the bare minimum for the rest of us and for those of us who

again I think is the vast vast majority for whom all of these things create problems and we're not able to easily willpower and self-esteem manage all this stuff if we're a reaction machine we're not doing meaningful work no project days and we're not really alive as humans

we're just chatbots and so it's worth experimenting if you don't want to live your life out as a chatbot I think the point you made there around the feeling is also, is just a really important point that even if you feel really productive enough and you're getting things done is if you're feeling bad, it's still an important thing to focus on this idea of, are you spending time on the things you want to spend time on?

You also reminded me of this app I'll mention briefly that I think you guys will love. I don't know if you've heard of this. It's called mailmanhq.com. It shuts off your Gmail for periods of time. So you could say only allow my email through. Yeah. at these times of day. And so instead of cutting out of your name or whatever,

it's just like you can batch your release of email. That's beautiful. Mailmanhq. Mailmanhcuh.com. Okay. I'm writing that down right now. Yeah. I go on and off it because sometimes like I just want an email. But it makes a big difference.

It's wild. I just like not even knowing your email makes a big difference. Yeah. Okay. Let's touch on the last two parts of this framework, energize and reflect. And then let's spend a little time on Sprint for people to get a sense of what this method is all about for folks that haven't read the book.

Yeah. So to like replay kind of the system, you know, overall, like, highlight is about the thing you want to make time for, like, today, the most important thing today. Laser is about creating barriers to distraction so that you have as much of your energy is, or as much of your attention as possible to focus on your highlight on that one thing. energize is sort of like a, it's like a booster to laser. It's sort of like, the big idea is that, you know, our brains and bodies are connected and like our ability to like pay attention and to focus and to like, you know, do do those things that we care about only works when we are, when we're well, you know, and we have slept, we have eaten well, we have exercised, we have, you know, talk to other people the right amount, you know, not too much, not too little.

And so we put this as part of the make time framework because we think it's, you know, we don't think you should like go crazy, like, you know, try like a million sort of like, you know, biohacker like type of, you know, things. But we do think it's worth applying this same philosophy of like pay attention to what's working, what's not, like have a system, like try some new things, pay attention to those things, like, you know, run these experiments. We think it's worth doing that for your health, for your health, for your energy as well because it really does make a difference.

Maybe share one or two tips there real quick for people to energize, to create a little more energy during their day. In the year since we wrote the book and as my life has just continued to change and I've gotten a little bit older, I've realized that that sleep is probably the single most important thing. So, you know, I mentioned earlier not having my phone in bedroom, like, you know, no TV in the bedroom. Hopefully that goes without saying.

but just like, you know, being able to really construct an environment that allows me to, to sleep. I started wearing an eye mask recently. So like, yeah, it really helps me like fall asleep and stay asleep. And then the other thing is like I, you know, exercise is, you know, a big source of energy for me. But I realized that like I was, I was making excuses about like, you know, why I didn't need to or shouldn't like exercise in any given day. So even though this is this is not what we recommended in the book, specifically, I, um, I ended up like, like, signing out with a personal trainer so that I have like accountability. I have like a schedule.

I have somebody who's like thinking about like what I, what I need. That's, that's not just me. Um, and like those two things have kind of been the, the pillars of, of how I build energy over the last few years. I use this app called Future. I'm a investor. Just quick disclaimer, but, uh, it's a basically. basically a personal trainer through an app that's like a real person that helps you

design a workout for you and then they give you the workout on the app and you just follow the instructions and that's the thing that got me working out three times a week. Nice. Yeah. That's awesome. Killing it. Okay. And then With When Reflect, maybe just briefly talk about the importance there and then one thing people could do to reflect on how things are going. Reflect is just simply the act of looking back on the day and treating the day like it wasn't a, you know, a marble, a gravestone of your successes or failures. It's just an experiment that you ran at what happened in the experiment.

Taking note of it in that lens, you know, what did it look like? There's a template in our book that has some questions you can answer. But really, it's, you know, it's pretty simple. If you write down your highlight in the morning or the night before if you're drawn, and you stick it somewhere visible, then you just, at the end of the day, you just look at it. And I was just like,

okay, did that happen or did that not happen? You don't even, if you stick it somewhere visible, you won't even have to do anything. You'll just come across it and you'll know, like, did that happen or not. So that's the simplest part of it. It's writing it down,

sticking it will create a reflection loop for you. Another thing that I think is like quite powerful at the end of the day is to write down, keep a notebook by the side of the bed and write down one or two or three things that you were grateful for during the day. Just like a simple gratitude journal. And you'll start, this keeps you in this frame of mind of like what was cool today. What was what happened that was satisfying or joyful?

What brought me joy? And then, you know, if you start the day thinking about what you'd like to happen and then you look back and say what was great, your brain is just starting to look for those good things. Look for those big highlights. and that's a great way to live your life day to day saying like this is what I hope will happen oh this is what did happen now I'm more tuned into what it might happen tomorrow oh now I'm more tuned into what happened today and again and it's just a really nice loop so was there a connection

between what you hoped would happen did you manage to do your highlight if so what helped you do it what worked or didn't work what made it hard it might be an energy thing that suggests a tweak to when you drink coffee or you know if you take a walk or whatever it might be it might have been a focus thing. So maybe I'll try another barrier for this thing because that undercut me, whatever it is. It's just basically, in summary, curiosity about your day instead of self-judgment about your day. I think we've covered Make Time in tons of depth. If people want to practice these things, highly recommend getting the book. It's called Make Time. And it's really quick to read. And it's basically just a long list of things you can do. And we talked about a lot of them.

There's a lot more. And I think part of the premise of the book is try stuff. See what works. see what doesn't, keep reflecting, iterating some of these things. Like, even if you find two things that change how productive you are, that's a huge win. I highly recommend people get the book. That's great. And it's our best attempt to put together, like, how to guide for doing this stuff. We're not, for what it's worth, we're not really motivated to try to create like a self-improvement empire.

This is not our full-time jobs. We just hope it works for you and is useful. So if you don't want to buy the book, we get it. Go to maketime. blog and just like check out some of the experiments and, you know, things that are available there. Or just try one or two of the things that we talked about today. Try the highlight. If you're going to do one thing, just try right now writing down what you want your highlight to be either for today or if it's late in the day for tomorrow on a sticky note and put it somewhere that you'll see it tomorrow. Just that is a great step in the right direction. Try having a

conversation with your colleagues or putting a signature or an auto responder in your mail that says you're going to slow down or talking to them about slowing down. At character at our VC fund, we had a conversation and decided we're going to try to have our main communication happen in Notion so that if we're talking about something, it's in a form, it becomes a document and the expectation of how you react and respond there is going to be different than in a tool that's designed to get you responding as fast as possible. like an email inbox or Slack. So, you know, just have a conversation about that.

Take a couple apps off your phone. You don't have to buy the book or become, you know, totally bought into the system to do those things. But that's what we really want. We just want you to have more time for what matters for you. Amazing. So I've used up basically all our time talking about make time. I think we should have a follow-up episode just to talk about Sprint.

What I think we do is let's cut off the lightning round. And whatever stuff you guys would have shared there, we'll include in the show notes. I'll send you those questions asynchronously. But let's just talk about Sprint for a few minutes. Just to give people a sense of like, what is this framework? It's like extremely popular. It's a lot of really successful product.

And then we'll wrap up and kind of point people in the direction that you recommend. Cool. What is this framework of Sprint? When do people use this idea, this framework, this approach? And what are some examples of what has come out of somebody applying Sprints? The big idea with the design sprint is to go from a zero to a prototype. and a test of that prototype in just five days. And it's a recipe.

It's a scripted set of activities that we developed over a number of many years. First started with some projects I was doing at Google, and I run some experiments with the way I was working. I was a product designer on Gmail in the 2000s. And I also co-founded Google Meet. And in the sort of week where we really catalyzed what had been a project that was going nowhere, this 20% project or people who are familiar with Google, like a side project, was going nowhere for a year and a half.

It was really like on the rocks. And in one focused week working together, we decided me and these two other folks were going to clear everything off. I visited them in the Stockholm office where they were. We created a prototype, working prototype, instead of trying to come up with the perfect plan, the perfect PRD, the perfect pitch to executives. We're like, let's just build a prototype and put it in front of our colleagues and get them using it. And we did that.

and that was the thing that stuck. And so from there on, I was like, I need to recreate these kinds of moments for teams because that's powerful. So we run hundreds of these at Google Ventures with startups, tweaked and refined the process, wrote this book called Sprint. We run the Venture Fund today, John and I and our colleague Eli called Character.

We help teams find and expand product market fit with Sprint. It's a tool for doing that. And it uses a lot of these principles we talked about with MakeTime to change the defaults, but not just the defaults of the way an individual works, but the ways teams work, the way people make decisions, the way we evaluate what's a good idea, a good strategy, and worth pursuing based not on just a hunch or a guess, but based on something we can actually see with customer reactions. So all of that, kind of in a nutshell, is what a sprint is. This idea of getting unstuck and turning

maybe some abstract ideas or some concepts that you've been discussing, turning that into a concrete prototype, something that you can look at and you can click around and you can actually try. It works in a lot of different contexts. And we've heard amazing stories from people who read the book and have run sprints at companies that have 100,000 people and, you know, governments and all sorts of different organizations. But the stories that are in Sprint are about working with startups. And we think this is especially valuable for startups because, you know, typically you've you've raised a certain amount of money, which buys you a certain amount of runway. You have a certain amount of time to kind of prove that you have product market fit to prove that

the thing that you're making is the right thing for some customers. And so the faster you can do that, the more quickly you can find out if you're on the right track, the more quickly you can learn and you can course correct. And ultimately, you can get to a better place faster than if you spent, you know, months working on that prototype or that first version of the product before releasing it. I think what's awesome about it is as a product manager, the idea of containing a new idea experiment into like five days versus like this ongoing teams distracted on this idea, just like, cool, we're going to spend a week,

see where this goes. They're not going to spend months exploring. we're not going to talk about it in theory. Let's just try it. I think it's really powerful. And so for folks that may want to explore this until we do a follow-up episode, is it just by the book? Is there anything else you could point them to to think about this idea and implementing it?

Yeah, well, if you are thinking about or in the very early stages of starting a company, a great thing to do is to get in touch with us, character.vc, and actually we're just opening up applications to our labs program. So character.vc slash labs. Our labs program is an intensive program for startups. And we will run a sequence of sprints, including some new formats that are not in the book, but are excellent. And we've been, this would be our third time running through this. We found that it's especially, especially valuable for AI startups.

So it just turns out that a lot of the complex issues you have to figure out with turning something that may not initially be trustworthy, may require a big behavior shift to customers who aren't used to working in this way. And sometimes artificial intelligence can produce things that feel kind of alien to people. And so making this stuff actually useful, more than just a chatbot with little stars

that's in the corner that says, hey, would you like to ask the AI a question about this, but something that's really meaningful, doing this kind of repeated, and we'd run a sequence of sprints, doing it again and again. You work directly with John and I. that's, we find a really powerful way to get started.

Anyway, that's a big advertisement for Character Labs. But, but yeah, in general, check out the book. Also would say, if you're not quite ready to dip your toe in the whole book, you can go to The Sprintbook.com, and we have a ton of resources on there, including a new thing, which is a mural board, a mural template that I created that has step-by-step instructions for every single step, as well as 30-plus videos of me explaining each step. And actually, I think I'm wearing the same sweatshirt in those.

So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see more of me in this sweatshirt in that template. But that's free. That's free. And there's a bunch of resources on the website that are free as well. So anybody, everybody should be able to access this stuff. Amazing. And again, for folks that may want to check out the labs cohort, is there anything other than AI-oriented that would be ideal, like just how early stage,

any other markets that are ideal for the sprint process and the way you're approaching it? Yeah, it's a four-week sprint program for precede software startups. So we only invest in software startups at Character. And this program is really ideal for companies who kind of know, they know what they're doing, right? They're not just like, oh, I want to start a company. They have an idea of an opportunity that exists, a market that they're focused on. But they definitely haven't reached product market fit. They may not even have a product to, to, you know, test that hypothesis with. So it's very early stage. And we are, we're pretty flexible on kind of the sector, the industry that you're in. But what we find is that the more there's a, there's kind of a

big behavioral risk, the better this stuff works. So if you're just trying to make like a slightly better version of something that already exists and maybe it's going to be a little cheaper or a little faster, a little easier to use. You probably don't need this stuff. You know, you can probably just do it and probably going to work. But if you're, you know, like one of our portfolio companies, you know, they make AI that controls the industrial facilities. You know, they came from Google DeepMind and they did this for Google data centers before. Like that, where you have to convince, you know, plant operators who are like wearing hard hats and like, you dealing with huge equipment, like you have to convince them to trust AI.

Like that's a big behavior shift. That's a big behavioral risk. Or in healthcare, in education, places where it feels like the technology can really make a big difference for people, but it can be hard to get over that hurdle of trust and understanding. Those are the types of opportunities that we think we can really help with. Playing on hard mode, these sounds are extremely difficult. I love it. Yeah. So if you're thinking about starting a company or if you're in the process of starting company, check out character.bc slash labs. John, Jake, thank you so much for being here and for

making time for this podcast. Thank you for having us. This is great. Yeah, thanks for having us. Absolutely. It was a pleasure. It was really a pleasure, Lenny. The pleasure is mine. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenniespodcast.com. See you in the next episode.