Recently I’ve been experimenting a lot with timing: changing not so much what I do, not really adjusting my habits, but simply being more mindful of when I do these things. And I found that even doing the exact same thing can have an immensely different impact on my life just because of when I do it.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] I was thinking today about the power of timing, and somehow this connected back for me with Cassiopeia because when she takes MoMA and she helps her to get to master aura without being caught by the gray man. Part of how she does it is she can look 30 minutes ahead in time into the future.
[00:00:20] SE: And so she has the perfect timing of knowing when to turn left, when to turn right when to stop, when to move slow, when to move a little faster, to make sure that the gray man always miss mobile by just a split second. And so they don’t catch her. They don’t see her. And so timing, I felt like, Ooh, this is kind of interesting that not just does she know and can look half an hour into the future, but the way she uses that knowledge is by having impeccable timing, just knowing when to be where, right. T
[00:00:48] Which goes back to the idea of, I was thinking about this today of like how important timing is in life in general, obviously, right. If you do the right thing and the wrong time might as well do [00:01:00] the wrong thing, like it’s going to have the exact same result and you go out and you try to throw seeds in the winter when it’s all.
[00:01:07] Might as well do nothing because nothing will grow the next summer there. So I don’t think that we are as attuned to the power of timing because we are so focused on the question of what to do and how to do it. Then we don’t often have asked the question of when things need to be done when the right time is to do things they can be huge differences by doing the exact same things in a completely different sequence and order, nobody would be surprised that if you started your day with a nice bottle of wine, your next task of finishing your taxes might be very difficult. The complete, and maybe you, the rest of your morning will suffer for it.
[00:01:54] But if after a day of doing your taxes in the morning, going [00:02:00] for a run, having three business calls, closing a deal, going out to the park with your children, you know, saving an old cat from a tree. And then at the end of the day, you sit down and you drink a bottle of wine. That seems like a really great way to end the day.
[00:02:16] Nobody would doubt or question that at all. Now that’s a dramatic example, but here’s, I came to think of it. I came to think of it because only yesterday did I switch my order back to doing yoga in the early morning and not in the afternoon. And the moment I did. dominoes fell one after the other.
[00:02:37] And I thought, wow, what a difference? The yoga itself is nice either way, but when I do it towards the end of my day, what is happening typically is that the hour of yoga practice is more of a release of the accumulation of tension of the day. When I do it early in the morning before my day really starts, what it does is [00:03:00] because I have not accumulate as much tension.
[00:03:02] It’s much more of an energizing exercise and it influences everything. I do all the calls, the writing, all the to do’s benefit tremendously from the yoga. I accumulate less tension during my. So I don’t need yoga at the end to release all the incredible tension. I do it in the morning, which fills me up with more energy.
[00:03:26] And it benefits my entire day. Versus when I do it at night, it benefits me, but it, the entire morning I was kind of cranky and still tense and everything. So all the other activities that I did would not, weren’t able to benefit from that activity. And that’s just one example. I started also recently to record the story for my kids as one of the first things I do in the morning and that as well, although it’s such a small thing, it’s a 20 minute exercise.
[00:03:59] Like it [00:04:00] takes me 20 minutes to record a story. But the difference between recording the story before I really jumped into my stressful day or done any work. Getting that done. Like I’ve, I’ve taken some, some important time for my children and do something unique and special for them and, and think of them and love them.
[00:04:23] As I, as I tell these ridiculous stories, the major difference between doing it that way and how I’ve been many times doing it, especially when I’m in a different time zone where I know I have to get the story done by 2:00 PM because that’s their sleeping time in Germany. It’s an 8:00 PM in Germany when I’m in Austin. And so it’s, it’s not scheduled, it’s loosely in my mind at some point between waking up and two-ish should have done it. But now I jump into my day and then I have a call and then have another call and then I have to do this. And then at some point I look and I go, fuck, it’s one. I had to record the story and then [00:05:00] I have to write to somebody, Hey, uh, let’s start the call 10 minutes later.
[00:05:03] And then I have all this. Of when I recorded or slash and the entire time I’m not recording the recordings, always on my shoulders, on my mind, I carry it through the morning because I know I’ll have to do it at some point, but I don’t know when, so I have to, every moment decide if I’m doing it now and not do it.
[00:05:28] Am I doing it now? Not am I doing it now or not? That’s an incredible burden for something that could be such a small blessing. And so that as well, it’s such a small thing. I instantly experienced such a noticeably lift in my morning, my first half of the day, because I don’t have the stress of when will I find the spot to do this.
[00:05:50] And also after I’ve had a couple of business calls, sandwiching a. Bedtime story that is inspired by two random words [00:06:00] for 15 minutes. Now, between two business calls, it’s, that’s not easy. Like I, you know how many times I suffered a million deaths because I really didn’t know what story to tell. I didn’t feel at all, like telling a story right now.
[00:06:13] It just is not the setting, not the same setting as when I’m in person and I put them to bed and it’s nighttime and I’m kind of in the mood. So doing it early, both made the recording more pleasurable and it made my morning slider. I do it at the right time before everything is, is going on. So I’ve been looking at my, some of the activities that I’ve been doing consistently during my day.
[00:06:39] And also some of the habits that I’ve started to cultivate and, and established and realized that there’s a few of these items that a close examination. It makes no sense. When I use when I’m doing them.
[00:06:54] So now I’m experimenting with restructuring, not just looking at what are [00:07:00] the five or 10 things I want to get done today, or want to do today.
[00:07:03] Good, bad, or different. It doesn’t matter if it’s a meditation or if it’s doing the taxes or sending emails or whatever, there’s a certain amount of activities personal as well. Any way we spend our time, like personal stuff. How I have lunch when I have lunch, what do I do when I do lunch? Thinking about the things that I’m doing today, and then not just asking myself, like, Okay.
[00:07:24] I’ll make a big list, 10 items, and I’ll just attack them randomly.
[00:07:29] However they pop up, but ask myself what would be an ideal timing for these things, right? Again, nobody would, nobody would argue that reading, if you let’s say you set the goal that you want to read an hour a day, great literature. Probably most people would agree that reading an hour of great literature in between your five sales calls is probably a weird way of going about it, right?
[00:07:58] Like you, this [00:08:00] high-intensity closing very directional cold call, cold call cold, and then you’re going to stop and pick up on a car Nina and like retail store for 60 minutes. And then put the book aside and then go back into killer mode and like cold, cold, cold, cold. It’s unlikely that that’s going to happen.
[00:08:15] Right. It’s very, very unlikely that that’s going to happen. So of course it makes a lot more sense to read a book like that. Maybe towards the end of your day, again, as a reward, as something to, as a modality, that’s much more calm as something to, you know, take off the day of your mind and travel into these different worlds and stories. Not necessarily in the middle of your day, between important or stressful meetings. So. Looking at the activities that you do ask yourself, what are the things that I should be doing in the morning to have them done? So I don’t carry them with me, the cognitive stress and burden of thinking about these items the entire day and tainting everything else I do, [00:09:00] or because slash, and because they will energize me so much that they, everything else that happens in my day is, is elevated by me having done this one thing before.
[00:09:12] Right. Again, I think that a lot of people would benefit from doing their sports activity in the morning versus doing it at the very end. I mean, that’s, it’s even crazy to go to the gym at 8:00 PM and do a really hard workout and basically come home at nine. And now your nervous system is like firing on all cylinders and it’s open. Right. And now you want to go to sleep at 10 and you wonder why you can’t sleep. And you have to take melatonin and do a meditation apps and whatever, you know, built by the perfect pillow or whatever the fuck you have to go through to like counteract all that like bad timing versus wake up in the morning and doing a hard workout in the morning and then taking a cold shower.
[00:09:51] And then you start your day and you feel like a million bucks. You feel energized. You feel strong, you have power. Now again, depends always on the workout. Some workouts, some people go to such [00:10:00] extreme workouts that if you do that in the morning, you’re done for the day. You can’t be productive for the rest of your day.
[00:10:05] Cause you’re like pushing too hard. Maybe that’s the kind of work that you should be doing on Friday afternoon and then have the weekend to recover. But maybe not every day or every night, right? Like thinking about the, when is the right time to do it and why. And how will all the other activities be influenced by it?
[00:10:25] It’s another thing when it comes to timing, transitions, we never, or very rarely think about transitions and the post effect of an activity. Every activity has an echo, has a, a staying power. There’s a little bit, it’s a cologne. You, you spray it on you. And for a while, it’s still gonna smell like that.
[00:10:45] Cologne. If you have a very hard, very negative, aggressive negotiation going on, and you’re on a zoom call and negotiating with a customer and it’s super high stakes, and it’s very negative and it’s very combative [00:11:00] and you hang up after like a 60, 70 minute call like that, you can think of it as a CA the calendar calendar event has ended.
[00:11:08] Rameen. So this is perf everything about this has gone in my system. I’m clean slate, and I do the next activity. No, no, no, no, no, no. You’re exhausted. You’re depressed. You’re stressed. Congratulations. What’s your next call or what’s your next activity? Oh, I’m picking up my children from school now. Right.
[00:11:28] I’m going to, you know, play with my child. Well, congratulations, children, boys, and girls. It’s gonna be not that great of an experience because you carry so much tension after that. Right. So where, and how do you schedule tricky things in your week, in your day? And what do you schedule afterwards? What do you do to cleanse yourself of that?
[00:11:50] If there was something super stressful, negative that needs to be. Uh, a pattern break, right? Like a shower after the gym. You don’t wanna smell like [00:12:00] that. Uh, Y you know, going into, you know, any kind of job that interacts with customers, similarly, after a very tough or very stressful negative negotiation, you want to have some time to reset, to do something else, to get you out of that mood, to get your mind fresh again.
[00:12:17] And boom, you can go back to another activity. People don’t think about that transitions, right? They don’t think about the sequence of things. So they schedule very, very stressful things. And then they schedule things that should be very creative. And then in those creative sessions, they’re like I’ve had five difficult customer calls, and then I had a scheduled break, creative brainstorming on how we can innovate around this idea. Good luck. You know, that’s not going to be your greatest call. Like it’s just not the right time. Considering your day and the activities of your day to schedule creative magic, like sandwiched in between all these difficult, other more mundane activities, right? So being [00:13:00] mindful of the timing of your day and your activities, what are some great activities?
[00:13:05] Some things you do that are awesome, but if you really step back and look at it, maybe there wasn’t, that will be a better time to do them. Or maybe you should experiment. I’ve always done my reading in the evening or the morning, or maybe try it at a different time and see how it affects the quality of your day.
[00:13:20] Does it make anything better or worse? Is it easier or harder playing with timing, but also playing with the idea that your time at the season of the day, right? The morning, the, the, the, the, you know, the morning, the afternoon, the evening, the night, right? Like if you think about this as seasons, it’s obvious that there’s good times for throwing seeds.
[00:13:47] And there’s good times to harvest your results. And there’s a good time to actually rest and contemplate. You know, you don’t start you don’t in the middle of the day and rest and contemplate. And at the very [00:14:00] end of the day, you go out and you try to work the fields, right. It’s just not, this is not a good, it’s a, not a good way to allocate your energy and the rhythm of a day.
[00:14:10] And so, but I have been surprised how I’ve been playing with a few little items and how big of an impact it has. And not just for that item, not just for that hour or that activity, but for everything else, I’m less stressed on my calls because I have already recorded the story. I am more energized, you know, when I do my writing, when I’ve already done the yoga, right?
[00:14:38] So there there’s certain things that when I do them before. That activity is better. And these other, the following Domino’s of my hours, that follow activities that are part of my date benefit from it. Um, it’s a timing is much more powerful. We always just think [00:15:00] time. We don’t think enough time mean, right.
[00:15:03] What, how, what is the rhythm of my day? What is the rhythm of my week? What are the rhythms of my months? And what’s the rhythm of my year. It seems like big questions, but instead of just thinking, what are the 37 to do items and how many of those can I do today and what are my goals for this month and how can I do them today instead of just thinking what you want to do and how ask yourself when right.
[00:15:31] And that goes back to another thing I was contemplating yesterday, actually
[00:15:36] how the first Tuesday dinner had Y. You would go through why commented to have dinners always on Tuesday, you would get, usually they would have chili or something like that. Something simple out of big bowls that everybody could like, you know, self-serve themselves, you would sit down and eat your free dinner and they would have some [00:16:00] important founder or investor or smart person talk.
[00:16:05] And then they’d be Q and a. I remember the very first dinner that we went through YC in winter 2011. It was the three founders of Heroku that gave a talk. And at that 200 11, Heroku was the biggest exit that Y commented ever had. It was, I don’t remember the exact number. It was like 200 million sold to Salesforce.
[00:16:31] And I had never heard about these guys. I thought it was cool that they sold their company for a couple of hundred. But I, I didn’t, they were from LA or something. And I don’t know, I didn’t, I wasn’t like hyper excited about hearing them speak when they started, they started with a basic philosophy of how they make all decisions.
[00:16:53] And when I heard that it blew my mind, it literally exploded my worldview because they had, they were so [00:17:00] nonchalant about it. They’re like, well, it’s very simple the way we think about things, if it’s not easy, it’s wrong. And so you should stop doing it. If something is a problem is very, very, very difficult for you to solve.
[00:17:12] It typically means that it’s either the wrong time that you’re attempting to solve it, or you’re the wrong person to attempt to solve it. What is the wrong problem altogether to even attempt to solve? So we have learned to always attack what’s. Easiest and most energizing and the things that are very draining, a very, very difficult, and we can get forward.
[00:17:35] We realize that these problems we need to stop on and put aside, I can’t tell, like I, didn’t not just one world fell apart for me, 10 worlds, some 10 different planet worlds simultaneously we’re collapsing because that went against everything I’d ever thought. Everything I’d ever believed, everything I’d ever learned.
[00:17:58] I was like, what are these [00:18:00] people talking about? Are they crazy? You just do the easy thing. Are they nuts when something is difficult? You stop. Are they fucking kidding
[00:18:08] RA: I remember even the first, maybe five times where you taught me about this. Right. And I’ll say interesting, but no,
[00:18:19] SE: Nice. Nice. What a nice anecdote, but no. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I had just experienced six years of doing the most difficult thing I could do every day and not getting anywhere and then completely and utterly failing at my idea and my startup, my first startup in the, in the valley that I think I was ready at open for all other ideas than my own.
[00:18:49] Right. I was just like, my ideas clearly suck. So I should, I should be open to new ideas. That was one thing. The other thing is [00:19:00] that it’s, it shocked me so much to my core that it stayed with me. And then I did start seeing at first small and then bigger examples for how right there were that there was something to this right now.
[00:19:14] Again, anything you will say on this planet, anything you’ll say there’s counter example. All right. Anything, which is the beauty and the Bacal of our experience is that this is the way to do it. And then there’s also the exact opposite way of to do it. Right. But I like this way of doing it because there’s a lot of wisdom in it because it is true that when the time is right and when you’re the right person and when this is the right problem, even when a problem is challenging, it’s never quite that difficult.
[00:19:57] It feels like you’re, you could be [00:20:00] day and night working on something. That’s very, very, very tough, a very tough problem to solve. But every second of it, you actually is experiences pleasurable. You actually fully engage at no point. Are you doubting? There’s no suffering. There’s no doubt. You’re just like so engaged in this difficult problem.
[00:20:18] It’s kind of. It’s solving a very difficult puzzle. There’s no pain and you’re not trying to solve it. And months and months pass by. And you’re still just at three pieces looking at a thousand pieces of puzzle. And don’t, that’s obviously not productive, right? That’s not accomplishing much. So you could do something that is difficult, but it doesn’t feel like it’s suffering or it’s an uphill battle.
[00:20:48] It’s not working.
[00:20:50] RA: uh, and it’s not just about getting the solution or finding the answer, but it’s also about engaging with that thing and figuring it out.
[00:20:57] SE: enjoying
[00:20:58] the journey. Yeah. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] RA: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:01] SE: What did you want to say? I remember.
[00:21:03] RA: I remember like reading, like, uh, Richard. Right. His, autobiography. And then how he talked about like these complex problems that he was working with, but he did it with so much joy and he was to him. This was, you could tell it was play. He was fucking playing. Right. Super complex things. Nobel prize level physics.
[00:21:24] Right. But to him it was play. Not, not easy play, but
[00:21:28] play right.
[00:21:28] SE: Yeah. Yeah, That that’s so different. But when, when it’s tense and you’re like, ah, why is this, ah, ha why is this not working? I try it this way and that way, and fuck it has to, but it doesn’t, but why it’s all the, it’s always true that you should be stepping away from it or you should reevaluate.
[00:21:51] Am I the right person? Is this the right. time? Is this really the right problem? And I’ve after I’ve heard them. This [00:22:00] is 11 years ago, 10 years ago, SUNY 11 in a month. It’s 11, it’s 11. Um, for, for over a decade now I have seeing this principle again and again and again at play and work and work out, and I’ve become a bigger and bigger believer and I’ve applied it so many times, so many times where that was something that was impossibly difficult for us to solve.
[00:22:34] And nine months later we realized this was a dumb thing to try to solve, because it now solved itself through this tertiary thing that’s going on in the world. Like this kind of technology is not used anymore. So spending months of trying to solve this thing would have been a total waste. It kind of solved itself, or this is such a difficult thing.
[00:22:56] None of us can crack grok it. No, none of us can figure it out. [00:23:00] And then one and a half years later, we hired somebody and we’re like, oh, that person just did. They just, they just knew how to do it. They didn’t even ask anybody. It was easy. They did it immediately. It’s like, well, thank God we start working on this and thank, oh, we hired this person.
[00:23:14] Like when the right person comes in, things that are impossibly difficult for people that don’t know how to do something, become perfectly easy peasy, little to-do items for somebody that has done it, a thousand times just comes in and does it. And some problems, there was a, an issue that for, I don’t know, like 4, 4, 7 years, every year, Anthony was telling me we got up, we got to tackle this issue.
[00:23:45] We got to talk to the people involved. We’ve gotta renegotiate this important thing. This eventually is going to be, become a big problem. And for seven years, every year I told him, I don’t think this is the right time. We don’t have anything. We don’t have any negotiation [00:24:00] power. We don’t have any angle business storyline here.
[00:24:03] If we. Start this conversation and we have nothing good to say. I already know the outcome and it’s all going to be good for us. So let’s wait till we have an angle right now. We don’t and every year, and to be honest, at some point I started thinking, I wonder if one day and he’s going to shoot me because it turned off and it was a bad idea to wait.
[00:24:25] But I believed in my principal, like, I believe that I don’t think we should start a negotiation when we have zero leverage. We don’t want the other party to do what we think they want to do. And right now they’re not thinking about negotiating with us. So why should we wake them up to a negotiation that we’re going to lose?
[00:24:40] Like, I’d rather wait until I have a, an angle that I have a chance of winning. And then after seven years something happened, Anthony and I talked and I went, I think this could be the angle. And he said, Yeah.
[00:24:56] fuck. This could be the angle. And then we tried it and it [00:25:00] worked and nobody was more surprised than us, like.
[00:25:03] Holy shit. This actually worked, it worked with one person, but multiple people involved multiple parties. And then we use the one party agreeing to this to make the others. And everybody agreed. And it was magic. I’ve told this, I can’t speak about this publicly, but I’ve told this negotiation to a number of very, very, very experienced investors and founders.
[00:25:25] Everybody almost fell off their chair when they heard what we accomplished like this unheard of. Unheard of. And it was just a matter of timing. Nothing had changed. We were, we were playing with the worst hand in history and the parties against that had perfect tense and they voluntarily lost. Right. So, but it was a question of the patients and timing.
[00:25:50] Um, but I’ve seen this so many times again and again. Like when you bang your head against the wall, when something is painfully difficult, there’s zero [00:26:00] joy in playing it. You’re not engaged in the journey. You just want to get to the end result and you can’t, it’s so difficult. You have to step away.
[00:26:09] Something is wrong. You’re the wrong guy or gal. It’s the wrong time. It’s the absolute wrong fucking thing to be trying to solve anyways right now. Um, and this requires a great deal of awareness, good amount of humbleness, some trust in the universe and time and yourself and
[00:26:28] RA: to let go, because sometimes it’s really like you’re committed, you’re invested, you already have invested a lot of time, effort, energy, maybe into this thing. Right. And then realizing not devil’s the wrong thing that it’s not easy to cut that tire. Right.
[00:26:43] SE: The other thing is, when you do something that’s very difficult, you become committed to it. Having to be difficult. You don’t like the idea of actually you were just stupid or did it completely wrong. That is very threatening to [00:27:00] people. So when I do something, that’s when I try to like fix the car tire or something and I’m like, oh, this, you can’t turn this open.
[00:27:08] It’s really, really tough. I don’t want somebody to come and just touch it to the right it’s done. Right. I want whoever is going to do it to be a super human level muscular where I go, okay. I mean, you know, fucking four had to come and do it. I don’t want some little kid
[00:27:28] RA: Amber had these special
[00:27:29] SE: Yeah. I don’t want some kid coming.
[00:27:31] It’s actually easy. You’re using the tool upside down. This is the right way. And it’s done. Right. I know. I don’t want that fucking shit. That seems embarrassing, but that is. What you should want, you should want to believe that everything painful and difficult for you could be easy peasy for you. If you just knew, if you knew how, when, you know, when something that you do, [00:28:00] that’s painful, difficult is actually easy.
[00:28:02] If you just do it right. That should delight us. That should excite us. That should make us believe in the power that is within us. That life is not as difficult. Things are not as challenging. You don’t need as much strength you, the world is not as resistant. All it is is you’re doing it the wrong way and you can learn and you can do it the right way at the right time, you know, with the right people.
[00:28:31] And then most things in life could become quite easily. That’s a beautiful belief, but that requires that you, you know, submit to the idea that on the path there, you will have to look stupid once in a while. It’s just, it’s part of that deal. You’re going to have, you’re going to be able to do the most difficult things [00:29:00] easily, but for you to get there to that beautiful place, you’ll have to stumble a couple of times and admit that you look like an idiot. You’ll have to quit in the middle and go, I’m not the right person for this. Or I think this is the wrong time. You’ll have to accept. Nah, I should not keep going. Just because I’ve invested so much energy into this. I should actually quit right now. And that’s a, it needs a little bit of a, you know, a humbling that is not always tastes. When we eat it up and have to swallow it, but it is so healthy that it makes us so incredibly blessed in the future and strong and more, more happy and successful. So many things that are so, so difficult became so, so simple. If you just know how and when to do them, but timing is really such a powerful LA again, it can be the headwinds or it can be [00:30:00] the, the, the massive pushback resistance that you’re fighting against.
[00:30:05] Right. It’s like, do you want to have nature? Do you want to sail against the wind? Good luck. I don’t care how hard you try, how strong you are. Unbreakable your Willis a is ain’t going to go well, like you’re not going to go places, the places you want to, at least it’s not going to, you’re not going to sail against the wind in that direction and succeed in some great way.
[00:30:30] It’s not going to happen, buddy. No matter who you are, it doesn’t fucking matter. But other people, you just have to have the willpower. No, no, actually, no, you also have to do the right thing. You know, go try to fucking plant plant trees in snow in the winter. It’s show me your willpower. Like it’s no, it doesn’t matter.
[00:30:48] Well, I plant a hundred seeds for every seed, a normal person plants who gives a fuck. You’re doing it. The wrong time, buddy. He says, is this willpower and strength [00:31:00] and hard work ethic will only get you to waste more time and energy and money. It’s only going to destroy more things. If applied inaccurately your willpower will be very distressed. This is not going to help. Um, so here’s where more, um, you know, we’re, we’re non Western traditions have been a bit wise in at least propagating the idea of, you know, be like, like Bruce Lee used to say, be like water, my friend, you know, like be water, what is actually much more powerful than stone? Uh, you know, then that fire, like th the fluidity, the flexibility is what makes you truly powerful.
[00:31:47] That adaptability as a human is really the only thing that you can have in order to thrive and survive in our ever-changing world. It’s not, you know, massive strength [00:32:00] necessarily that gets you through everything. It can help. Sometimes root force can work. Sometimes it can work. Um, but only, you know, when the time is right.
[00:32:09] So timing, uh, Such a little thing in the background of our lives timing. Hmm. How is my timing on things? Is this the right season for what I’m attempting in my life? Is this the right time, the right hour of the day to be tackling this, to do what if I flipped it with the other to do? How would that same day change?
[00:32:37] How would that influence what I do and how I do things? What do I do post doing these things? That’s what we touched on earlier, right? The kind of this residue after you do certain activities, but oftentimes there’s also, you know, um, a, it needs to process what just happened or to [00:33:00] do the unnecessary homework.
[00:33:02] That’s contextual. So again, if I hang up a call. Uh, with a customer just to make this example simple. And we had the 60 minute negotiation and I now have to send you a second proposal to you as a customer. What is the better timing for me to do the proposal right off of the call and send it out 15 minutes later, or to wait till the very end of the day.
[00:33:27] It’s 7:00 PM. Once all my calls and all my emails done, and then attempt to write the proposal, right? How, how high is the chance that that 15 minute proposal will be a 45 minute exercise with procrastination. And I have to remember and reading through the call notes and what did he say? And completely different context, right?
[00:33:48] Right. After dinner, you put your kids to sleep and now you want to write a fucking proposal. Like if you could have just made yourself. That space created that space had the awareness, whenever these kinds of [00:34:00] calls, oftentimes after the conversation I have some work to do, I have some things to do, let me schedule that so I can get it done when the ideas are fresh.
[00:34:08] When I remember when I’m motivated so that I can close that check again, because otherwise I have to carry the fucking negotiation proposal with me throughout the day, mentally and cognitively, although I’m not working on it, I’m always working on it to some degree, not forgetting to add this thing in the proposal.
[00:34:25] Two hours later, you’re on a call with somebody as you’re like, oh Yeah,
[00:34:27] Let me also think about adding this to the proposal. You’re constantly, some CPU in your brain is constantly working on this thing instead of just getting it done and boom, free CPU, free mind space, the good feeling, uh, you know, the good chemicals of having something accomplished and done.
[00:34:46] Ah, done. Whew. I got it done. How nice.
[00:34:50] RA: the huge difference between that, right? Like you get something done or, you know, you have distinct to do for later, even like,
[00:34:58] SE: this is why [00:35:00] so often, um, even in calls, I’ll make the, I’ll try and attempt to challenge all the participants to get the homework done during the call. Right? So when I go through a document and I have some feedback and the person’s listening to me, I go, Hey, how about you right along with me so that you have, you know, we have already edited this document as we speak, you don’t make notes.
[00:35:31] And then when we hang up, you have the, to do item to later edit the. And people always go, oh yeah. Oh yeah. That’s a good idea. And I just think, yeah, you’re welcome. I just saved you a ton of stress for the rest of the day. Now it might slow down our conversation a couple of minutes, right? It slows it down the pace a little bit.
[00:35:49] But the beautiful thing is that the moment we end this conversation that all the, to do’s are done. I already know you got it done. I saw it getting done. And so I’m not going to have to wait for you [00:36:00] to send it to me. I’m not going to have to prove re to see did you really edit all the way, the things, the way I wanted them, we just got it done.
[00:36:06] We didn’t just talk about doing it. So if you can engage in, especially in a world like this, where you have meetings and calls, when the meetings and calls can end and there’s no to-do item because you did it on the call. How powerful, beautiful is that? I remember a time I was insane. A bunch of customer calls, a bunch of recruiting calls, a bunch of strategic partnership calls.
[00:36:29] And then after six, seven hours of calls, add a huge list of fucking shit to do with this person, this email, do this. I could not do this today. Like I literally could not do this today. I couldn’t handle this today. I’d quit after like four days like this, I would quit. I would go like, I can’t handle this job.
[00:36:45] This is too stressful. Like I’ve just completely left this kind of work insanity behind me. But I used to live in that, like that was normal. Just I would do shit ton of calls and then we’d have a shit ton of homework in the evening [00:37:00] to process. And post-mortem all the calls and meetings I had this insanity.
[00:37:05] So yeah, I am motivated and inspired to work on the timing of my days and to play around with it a little bit and, and just see. How does the quality of my day changed the feel of the day, the rhythm of my day, if I move this item and this, and I just reversed them. If I try to do these things I do during the evening, in the morning or afterwards, or in between when I give more space or less space or skip steps.
[00:37:38] Um, and really, I mean, this proceeded even that the last couple of weeks, I started thinking about time in general, like taking another look at my calendar. I’m pretty in control of my time. I’m not as my calendar. Usually doesn’t look as crazy as it used to it as lots of CEO’s calendar looked like I’m pretty [00:38:00] strict on how much I allow on my calendar.
[00:38:02] And I make sure that I have plenty time because time is really the most important thing in my life. The thing through which everything important exists in my life. even with all that still every six months or so, I take a good look at my calendar and I always discover things that, you know, have eaten their way into my calendar that need to be kicked out weeds things that I’m like, what is this?
[00:38:31] Now here he is this to go, right? And so I’m cleaning up my calendar and I’m, and again, things that just seem normal. It’s like this call is a weekly call. And then you’re like, well, honestly, this should just be an email. This doesn’t have to be a call. Like we’ve done it now long enough. I see the quality of what we’re doing.
[00:38:54] Doesn’t have to be a call. That’s an email from noun. This other check-in call is weekly. It can be [00:39:00] bi-weekly, it’s going to be better if it’s every 14 days more material to accumulate to talk about and boom, boom, boom. All of a sudden you saved. Two hours, three hours in a week. That doesn’t seem that crazy.
[00:39:11] But three hours, you know, when you, when it’s like 30 minutes here, 40 minutes there, it accumulates, you know, and really anyone and everyone has more time than they believe. We, the difference between people having a ton of time and people have very little time, oftentimes is just how wasteful you are, how much you believe you’re not in control of your time.
[00:39:38] So you believe you have no power of doing anything about your time. People, which is crazy, but people feel very powerless around at that time. It’s uh, it’s well, you know, what’s going on right now in your calendar, you should have more time for the big, important items, but I don’t because I have all these meetings and then it’s like,
[00:39:58] why did you have all these meetings?
[00:39:59] Well, [00:40:00] because people put it on my calendar. Why do you have. But I, I cannot not accept. Why? Like, is there a law, are you going to be shot? Who says that you have to accept well, uh, and then, it starts kind of things start collapsing because now it’s all built on beliefs. They never tested anything. I guess I’m not, I’m not the seal.
[00:40:22] So like, what if you just go into this one? Oh, what is this? I look at somebody’s calendar and it’s like a meeting. This is a whatever, a meeting from the marketing team, but you actually, you know, the head of sales or something. Why are you in that meeting? Well, they invited me so I can hear what their plans are.
[00:40:42] Can they just send you a summary in an email? Do you really have to be in a 60 minute call with our entire marketing team? I was at the pro I’m sure it’s going to be a times interesting, but it’s not essential. And if you reject that beautiful invitation. [00:41:00] Who’s coming at you who’s. Ooh. What other is a marketing team that a fight you’re the director of sales or you’re the head of your successful?
[00:41:07] You’re the head of product like who’s gonna, who is gonna, they just hit, they shit just said what you might come in and you could say I’d love to, but I can’t. Can you send me a summary if it’s something relating to my team or something exception. Yes. But this like casual invitation, why don’t you also join our marketing meetings every week for three hours?
[00:41:27] You know how many Avila’s thrown around in the world?
[00:41:29] RA: and then there’s the, oh, these people are having a meeting and they’re coming up with like ideas. So they’re making decisions and then I should be part of this. I don’t want to be excluded from this. That’s another
[00:41:40] SE: oh my God.
[00:41:41] RA: that also sneaks
[00:41:42] SE: Yeah. But you know, um, the most beautiful thing is that. All this is in your head, right.
[00:41:51] I mean, now if you have nothing good to do with your time, it’s, if it’s between, I’m going to be, you know, [00:42:00] watching YouTube videos and read Reddit threats, or I’m going to be joining three mindless different brainstorming sessions throughout the company where I got random invites.
[00:42:09] Sure. I don’t know. Probably those rains on me. I’ve got to be more productive. Work-wise for you. Maybe, maybe, I don’t know what YouTube videos you watch, but maybe this is better, but if you actually, I in control of your time and thoughtful and mindful of your time, it’s very hard to believe that just be joining any and all meetings will be any good to anyone.
[00:42:34] You’re not really helping anybody, but even more importantly, you’re not really accomplishing anything. And more importantly, to my point, you need to remember and understand that. Nobody can force you to join anything. I mean, it’s different. Maybe you’re like if you’re a marketing team member and the director of marketing or VP of marketing is like, we’re having a meeting. I understand that you might be, you know, that that might [00:43:00] be mandated. You joined the meeting because you’re a part of that team, but there shouldn’t be seven of these things a week. Right. And if they are, and you find them on productive, nobody’s stopping you from changing the company you work for, or the team or the PR like if somebody is wasting your time, anyone, or any institution, unless it’s the government, the government waste everybody’s time.
[00:43:26] And there’s very little we can do about it usually. But any other institution or organization or person that’s wasting a lot of your time, you don’t have to allow it. It’s your time. People forget that. They just think because somebody requests it, they have to say, yes, There’s no universal law that you have to, there’s no.
[00:43:47] law that you have to work for a company where you feel like everyday you waste your life in meetings that produce nothing.
[00:43:53] And you can’t say no. If that’s nobody says that you have to stay there, go somewhere else. It’s your life. It’s your [00:44:00] time. It’s the most precious thing you have go and give it to people that use it carefully, that valued. And when you’re in a company where people value your time and value their own time, when you say no to what they want from you, nobody will ever raise an eyebrow.
[00:44:15] Like no. How many times I’ll ask, you know, people in a leadership position on my co-founders like an Anthony, Hey, I need your time this week to discuss this and this. And he just goes, no, I don’t have time this week. Send it in an email. And I’m the fucking CEO. This is my fucking co-founder. You know what I do when he says that I go, oh, fuck it.
[00:44:36] Okay. It’s not that important. If it’s really that important, then I go, it’s really, really important to which he goes, are you really, really sure motherfucker, to which often I go, nah, not a hundred percent. And only in very rare times when he would not want to get on a call because he’s so busy with other stuff.
[00:44:55] Did I, I mean, there’s almost never a time where I insist on any of this, [00:45:00] um, because there’s almost never a time that I, that, that I’m engaged in things that are hyper urgent, which is another thing you would think the more important, like the higher up you get and the more CEO your title is, the more urgent is everything that you do use.
[00:45:14] Everything is just in time, super important decisions. You have to, you know, move quick, every meeting, every call that you said, but only if you’re doing it wrong, like only, I mean, at least in my mind for the way that for the kind of company that I’m running. Most things you do should not be urgent, fires burning like that.
[00:45:33] That’s not a good sign. And that’s how your ship, if all you do as a captain is you’re running around like stopping leaks. That is not a sign of you doing a good job as a captain. Like there’s something fundamentally that you need to fix and it’s not running faster. Like that’s not going to be the solution is figuring out why the fucking boat is full of leaks and it’s continues to cure. Um, but Yeah.
[00:45:59] you’re, you’re [00:46:00] free to use your time, any way you want. And also you’re free to reschedule your day. People feel powerless because they’re when we’re mindless and thoughtless and not present, we are at the mercy of the world, but the moment we step into presence and thoughtfulness and mindfulness, we can actually shape the world. This seems so simple, but it’s so powerful people. So often we all often kind of fall into the. Going along with the tides and just, this is the way it is. And somebody asked me, so I say yes, and it knocked on the door. So I opened it. So now the guests, I just thinks just happened to me and it just go, this is the world.
[00:46:39] What can I just have to try to adapt it? But once you, you know, Zen into your cell phone moment, you open your eyes. You realize I have also good amount of power. I could say when I opened the door, Nope. I don’t have time now for visitor and close again, please come later. Right? You can [00:47:00] actually get on a boat and paddle the different direction or not get into that kind of a river.
[00:47:06] Uh, you know, if you don’t like the direction you have influence, you can say no to people’s requests for your time. You can say no to yourself as well, which you need to do a good one. For wasting your own time in mindless. Wait in little little ways. Oh, I just take a little break. I just go quickly on my phone on Reddit.
[00:47:25] When I want to relax between important activities. I don’t have anything against it, but really ask yourself how much time did you spend? Did you really just spend five minutes or did you fill out the complete 25 minutes between call a and call B with being on Reddit? Really? Like, and even if you just spent five minutes, ask us of how did you feel after those five minutes more energized, more inspired, more positive, really?
[00:47:55] Like I’ve stopped using Twitter. Like there’s still some like automated [00:48:00] tweets going on on my Twitter account that the team sets up. But I personally am not using Twitter for the last two weeks because I realized almost never, when I leave Twitter, do I feel good? Almost no. I, and I never spent a lot of time on Twitter.
[00:48:14] I’ll just spend like four minutes just scrolling and the things I read are always interesting. Like I follow interesting people, but it’s never positive. It’s always making fun of somebody bringing up some fact about something that’s fucked up. it’s, always, the undertone is always negativity. And so I scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
[00:48:35] And then I exit Twitter and I feel worse than when I entered it. And I’m like, do I really want, do I need this? Do I need this in my life? Do I need, when I start Twitter, I just go, do I need to feel worse than I am? Right. Or do I feel too good? Am I feeling too good right now? Because if I feel way too good, I should go on Twitter to bring it down a notch, but oftentimes I don’t feel way [00:49:00] too good.
[00:49:01] And I actually feel shitty when I want to go to Twitter. I actually feel tired or a little overwhelmed on shore. I’m like, ah, I dunno what I want to do. Well, let me check out Twitter. I don’t have to. And then I feel even worse, which makes it even worse to then decide what I should be doing next or whatever, attacking what I need to. So I just stopped using it. Um, so these little, little time thieves, there’s little things that we do where we go. I just, I just do this little thing. I just have this little guilty pleasure. I just check Reddit real quick. I just go on YouTube real quick. Well, I just check Instagram or I just, uh, whatever,
[00:49:37] RA: yeah,
[00:49:38] SE: ask yourself.
[00:49:39] RA: it’s kinda like having a, an insect bite, like a, whatever mosquito, right. And then it’s itching and we scratch it. And for the time where we scratch it, it kind of feels RK relief, but afterwards it’s worse. Right. We just scratch the thing open and say,
[00:49:53] SE: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:49:54] And then eventually we walk around and we are bloodied up everywhere and blisters and red [00:50:00] spots and everything is fucked up and we feel pain everywhere. Uh, but it was in a million, little satisfying scratches. That’s how we got there in a million little, lots. It’s just a tiny little scratch.
[00:50:12] Um, so yeah, you know, these little time fees, those little ways we throw away time and we find it momentarily pleasurable, but if we really step back, it might, it might really be that this would you consider. I’m just spending maybe, you know, three times a day, five minutes of Twitter. When you actually like analyze it after the week, you actually spent 13 minutes a day, five times a day on Twitter.
[00:50:38] And it’s not just the 30 minutes. Is that afterwards you usually go to Facebook or afterwards you usually go to Instagram or something else because you’re in this social media scrolling kind of mindset and flow and momentum. Just thinking about all the little things, how he is a good question. How do I feel at the end of the sector?
[00:50:59] Typically, [00:51:00] or today when I finished this activity, how did I feel? And if the answer is not, I felt energized. I felt refreshed. I felt excited. I felt grateful. I felt curious. I felt interested. I felt calm. I felt courageous so confident. I felt clear. And you know, if, if the answer is not at the end of this activity, I am in a, a more empowered state than I was before then, you know, that this activity in the time you spent with it is taxing.
[00:51:39] It’s expensive. It’s very, very, very expensive. And so you’d want to make sure that you build up some crap. Right. Like if your account starts at zero in the morning, you wouldn’t want the first three things you do to be very, very expensive activities because you’ll be bankrupt before you can end your day. [00:52:00] So you would want to start with things that are very enriching. So that later in the day, when you have the, to do the taxing stuff, no problem. You have all this build up on your bank account. You can pay these bills and still being the green, still being the plus in the surplus, you want to be mindful of what are the activities that at the end really empowered me and no activity is small enough.
[00:52:22] How do you brush your teeth? Do you feel more excited about the day more energized? Is it equal? Nothing changes. It’s a draining because you’re brushing your teeth while sending emails and trying to, like, I don’t know, with your feet clean the dishes, like what, how exactly do you do these things? Um, when you pick up your phone, when you write notes or emails, when you open your laptop, when you breakfast, when. Like does your lunch stress yourself? And do you feel more tired at lunch than, you know, before it, I remember a time where every lunch I felt worse than before I had the lunch, but I was lacking the mindfulness to ask myself, am I [00:53:00] doing lunch? Right? Because I spent 15 minutes doing lunch. This is my lunch break, 15 minutes on which while I eat I’m reading email.
[00:53:10] So I really don’t have any break. And I’m stuffing these carbs into my mouth as if it’s a race to the Olympics. And then when I get back to the office, I’m like, oh my God, I feel like puking. And now I need to drink a double espresso just to counteract how terrible I feel. And now the next thing really, you know what the first thing is that I would want to do after these kinds of lunches is fuck around, is go to Facebook, go to Twitter, like watch a YouTube clip.
[00:53:39] I didn’t feel. Writing an important proposal in that state. I felt like doing, taking a nap quitting on life, but the next day with zero mindfulness and presence, I would repeat the same thing. I was not there and present to observe, [00:54:00] analyze step back and go, well, this isn’t going well for us. It seems like we’re doing lunch wrong.
[00:54:05] Is it at the wrong time? Is it the wrong kind of lunch? Are we eating in the wrong way? What do we do before lunch? What do we do after let’s think about let’s make this better because the way this is, this, it costs. We’re like, so in debt, by the end of lunch, how are we going to, how are we going to live the second half of the day in a positive state when we’re kind of this bad of a shape and it’s our breakfast, our lunch or dinner, it’s our breaks are shot.
[00:54:38] It’s a little checking, the phone, the first thing we do when we wake up, what’s the very first thing you do when you open your eyes. If you’re like almost everybody I know, and I’ve traveled with or live with in the last five years, you probably are looking at your phone. You’re probably opening up all kinds of apps, reading news tweets, [00:55:00] looking at pictures, stories, checking, email, slack.
[00:55:04] You’re probably in that camp right now. Think about it. Do you feel more energized, more excited, more clear, more focused when you put away the phone after you’ve done that for 20 minutes as your very first activity of the day, is that making you now know exactly what your day needs and have the passion, the energy for it?
[00:55:28] I doubt it, right. I doubt it’s to me. It’s one of the shittiest activities we do is the random looking at the phone for random things. And we start our day with the shittiest activity we can do. Right. There’s a lesson there and it seems so inconsequential because it’s, you know, it’s, I don’t have a meeting.
[00:55:50] It’s 8:00 AM. I can check out Twitter for 20 minutes. There’s no consequence everybody’s doing it. I have two hours to get ready for work or [00:56:00] whatever. Like, it seems easy peasy. Why can’t I throw away a little bit of time in the morning. It’s very pleasurable. Isn’t this? The luxury of having time. It is, but it’s the wrong time to do this.
[00:56:12] Like you can check social media. I have nothing against it, but. It being the very first thing your eyes look at your mind engages with is guaranteed. No matter who the fuck you are, even if you’re the fuck, even if you’re Jack Dorsey and you’re the CEO of Twitter, I guarantee you, and I guarantee you, he’s not doing this, right?
[00:56:33] Like he’s definitely not checking Twitter as the first thing in the morning. And he fucking owns that company. I guarantee you no matter who you are, it’s not a tax free activity. It instantly puts you in debt of the day that with your energy, with your focus, with your mind now, boom, you’re starting your day on the wrong foot.
[00:56:55] And maybe you’re great enough to get back [00:57:00] in the surplus, but it’s definitely not the best way to start the day out the right way. Anyways, that’s my rant on that. But just thinking through the time, even the tiniest little things, the tiny. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter if it’s the little breaks, the little pleasures, not saying you shouldn’t have any of it.
[00:57:18] And not saying that nobody should ever spent their time freely on nonproductive activities. I’m all about that. I’m all about that. Half of my day is nonproductive activities traditionally called nonproductive. Should I do a shit ton of this? Right? This very podcast is a nonproductive activity, you know, by the very definition, spend a lot of time on it, but it’s fun.
[00:57:42] It’s energizing. And it’s the right time. It’s not in the middle of my day. It’s not before important negotiations, not before leadership meeting, like it’s at the right time. At the end of my day, the very beginning of my day, everything time and place I do every day, fucking a million things that are like meditating, an hour of yoga, this, that, and the other, all kinds of things [00:58:00] that are not squeezing productivity out of every minute, but I’m squeezing incredible value out of all my time.
[00:58:08] And. Worked very hard to get to a point where I am very rich in time, as much as I can, but it’s a never ending battle. You snooze, you lose, you don’t pay attention for a couple of weeks. All of a sudden you’re much poorer in time. Right? All of a sudden the world is the weeds have come back and have taken over your calendar and your life and your days.
[00:58:29] Um, so you constantly have to reevaluate and fight back and be very, very conscious. Uh, but for now, for me, the biggest thing is really timing. Playing, playing with timing, experimenting with timing, trying things at a very different time and seeing how they shape the day. Um, and all, all the activities.