Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital)

25:17So I want to talk more in depth about each of these four things and maybe spend most time on the highlight and laser because I think that's where most of the impact comes from So with the highlight you have any advice you shared a couple examples of how to come up with like here 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 is I don't know past couple weeks That would be good for people to hear an example and then And also there's this calendar component, which maybe fits into the laser, but I guess that feels like a really important element of this.

25:49So 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'm very project oriented. I'm very work oriented. And for me, most days, a really good day comes from having made progress in something that is really important to me. So my highlights are usually kind of focus 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 out of Vance and doing some consulting.

26:43And before that, I was a partner at Google Ventures, at GV. And before that, I was a product designer. So I've been through different modes and contexts in my career. But if you know any VCs, listening to this and you know any VCs, they're probably the the busiest, like most frazzled people that you know, who are constantly on email, constantly in Zoom calls and meetings and 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 pre -seed founders that's coming up or we're writing a new book and you know that's 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.

27:47Those things are all really important and I feel like they give us a unique edge as a VC firm. If we accept that with the premise I said before that most VCs are just sort of frantically running around, like 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? What is 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 is done to you, right?

28:43a thing that 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, near I all, also talking about productivity. And he had actually the same advice of just using your calendar as your to -do list, basically, because that's where time's going to go, what your calendar's telling you to do. So I think there's a pattern here that I think people need to pay attention to.

29:21Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and 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 template that we can fill with a specific type of activity, but then other parts of the template are sort of reserved for focus work, reserved for individual solo time to work on things that we need to get done.

30:03So yeah, I think the calendar is like at an individual level and especially at a team level is this really powerful tool that most people just kind of like, not only did they not use it as like a tool, they just sort of hate it. They're sort of like, ugh, my calendar, it's a mess, you know, like, wanna make it like, if I could live without a calendar, like that would be the dream, but I think if you can use some of these tactics or use other approaches to reclaim it and use it like proactively as a tool for yourself, It can really help you structure your time around the things you care about. Yeah, the way I've been starting to use my calendars this way exactly is I tried it like here.

30:45Prepare for work on next week's newsletter post for an 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, something around Groundhog Day, like it's okay to repeat it if you didn't do it. Like if you're 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 see the movie, well if you haven't seen the movie, see the movie.

31:14That's what a great movie by the way. If you, if you have, 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 beating myself up. It's not a good feeling to be in that headspace of like, I'm screwing up, like what can I fix? And this notion that it's like, you're going to have another chance. You're going to have another chance.

31:55It's okay, just trying again, just be curious about what happened is a big deal. And starting with the 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 do some new features with we invested in this company called Reclaim. And they invested in Reclaim also. Oh, well. Well, how about that? I'm not planning to do that. I'm not planning to do that. It sounds like we knew that, but we actually didn't know that.

32:39We did that, I was just discovered. Anyway, I was just like in my calendar and 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 take a shower, like everything, and block it all out, when I walk and feed the dogs, like everything's 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, yeah, there's slots for all those things. And then I found this week that like, what I thought happened, how long I thought those things take, was not how long they take.

33:12And so this, you know, just set that thing to repeat every day and look at it. And then I'm like, 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, but more kind to myself about that part. Gosh, that morning time wasn't a good focused time for me. I'll see if I can cause a way I can make that block happen in the afternoon. It's just helpful, just a helpful way to track staff and see it. Especially, I think a lot of people are our visual learners, or 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.

33:53And that helps a lot. And I'll just like keep someone else from booking that time. Double win. Or it's not to be undervalued. Yeah. Keep someone else from booking that time. Right. Yeah. And they look and they see, oh, okay. Lenny's already got stuff going on figured out. I, I, 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, I don't think we've mentioned yet, is that we strongly believe in people's intuition about how they should spend their time if they have the chance.

34:29What really is important. And that is true. We're talking about running this VC fund or 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. Also believe it's true that if you have a boss and a boss is boss is boss that you have great inside 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 bosses radar, your bosses bosses bosses radar, you have great intuition and we want to create space for you to do that thing because you're going to feel better about it, you're going to be more satisfied and also good things are going to happen.

35:10We'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 I had to actually implement this just a couple things that I'll summarize. One is you had these to pick the highlight. You had a 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. Okay. Yeah.

35:42And the satisfaction could be like, I know this thing has to get done. Yeah. Okay. Got it done. You know, a good point. You know, a joy could be like, man, that was great. You know, and those are like, they're in the same family, but they're cousins. Great point, great point. Yeah, and I mentioned like a lot of my highlights. Personally, are very much in the like urgency or satisfaction camp. They're like these big chunky like projects. I got it done. I finished that deck. I finished 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 fun, some play, I need to like prioritize, you know, going for a run or going for a walk or like, cooking a big dinner.

36:28And 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 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, they're a, 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.

37:02Like 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.

37:33Awesome. So yeah, so you touched on the third. So it's basically, what would give you the most satisfaction? So 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 audiobook, 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 not me. Okay, okay. That's John talking. Okay. So the questions you ask either the night before, or in the morning are, what would give me the most satisfaction today? What would the next day? What would give me the most joy? Or what's the most pressing thing that I need to get done?

38:03So you do that. And then the advice is either write it on a post it. I actually bought these tiny little post -its by accident. I was trying to buy regular post -its. They're actually really great for this specific use case. Perfect. So, you're right. You're highlighting, stick it on the monitor. So, that's one way of doing it. The other is sticking in your calendar where you have like focus time every... In theory, it's like every day here's my focus time. When you know where you have the most energy, is that the general advice? Generally, although I think that that's It's probably more important for a certain kind of highlight.

38:36I have focused time most mornings to be really specific and nerdy about it. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I have focused time. Tuesday and Friday mornings, I have meetings. But on a Thursday night, 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 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.

39:22So there's a lot of ways to do it. So maybe you just take away if you're listening to this, 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, and like, take that step as well. Even if you don't see it again, it just righted down is a big deal. Yeah, that's a really important part.

39:56I can give you a concrete example of a failed highlight from yesterday, actually. And so most days, my highlight is around making progress on the book, John alluded to working on the book. And so that's obviously a huge project. that heard it said that, you know, if you are writing books, it's like having homework forever. Like you always feel like I was 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.

40:36So I wanted to be ready and somewhat coherent. And I also, so I knew I'd be satisfied, And Balsany was urgent, like we're going to be doing that recording today. So I, that was my highlight, right, right that down. Get ready for podcasts. And I had two focus blocks. One in the morning, one in the afternoon should be easy. Focus block number one, kind of just didn't do a good job. I was distracted. I was, 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, oh, I'm going to lose her. I didn't get anything done. Okay. second focus block.

41:11Whew, man, now the pressure's on. I really, I gotta 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 if a lot of it is just like, if I really do have a deadline, then I really will like click in. So now I have 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, oh gosh, invading me like right when I'm at peak focus. and he's like, hey, I'm gonna do one more trip outside to sled in the snow. Do you want to come?

41:47And 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 it 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 gonna 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, we know, we maybe get like significant snowfall in one, seven, two years. We've only lived here for a few years.

42:20He'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, but he's gonna want me to get on the sled with him and wrap my arms around him and go down the hill. I was like, I gotta 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 gonna 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.

42:55But it was like so magic. And 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, so glad we did it, it's great. Come back inside, you know, 15 minutes, like try to hustle and get this done. And so I was like, you know, if I 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 gonna remember? All this stuff. It just felt natural to me to switch modes and say, oh my God, that actually is a highlight.

43:39That's this thing that's really, really precious. That's where the joy and the satisfaction are most for today. And 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 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 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.

44:13I 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 kids and it's not casting. No, 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'll work 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 have 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.

44:48You just have to get this done and I wonder if this is a counter. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, I mean, I think the part of what's people have found useful about make time is that John and I come at this from different perspectives and I have have kids 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 and and John doesn't have kids and And so like he has, he has it easy, you know, he said, no, he doesn't, 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.

45:29And 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, anything that's going on in your life, that's not part of your work. There are times when you, on a day, or in a moment, you have to shift those priorities, and it can help to just be this idea of stack ranking things and being clear about it can help you just come to terms with it.

46:02I'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, flip it back, I know where it happened. And 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 was just trying to fix that line. Yeah. I love how real you're getting and I also reminds me of, we just had a kid, he said I'm insults, so I'm going through a lot of questions. Oh, congratulations. That's busy times, seven months old, these busy times. Yeah, that's great.

46:34People always told me, told us when we had kids with our 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 happens 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're ever feeling like it's overwhelming. I think that is true I've experienced that also gets more amazing. That's what I'm pointing to yeah, yeah, yeah This episode is brought to you by work OS if you're building a SaaS app at some point Your customers will start asking for enterprise features, like Sample Authentication and Schim Provisioning.

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47:52It's an effortless experience from your first user all the way to your largest enterprise customer. Best of all, AuthKit is free for any developer up to 1 million users. check it out at work .os .com to learn more. That's work .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 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 published the book, the better.

48:35So let's go through some stuff here. Yeah, the basic principle with laser is that your willpower is never gonna win. Like, there's great research on this, but for now just trust me, you're not gonna whitenuckle 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 an 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.

49:15I 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 like 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 the search bar at the top, but there's no feed, which is amazing because I can use LinkedIn as like a phone book and then you know, not get distracted. So 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 my my hands on the keyboard would just be like TWI like Twitter .com and like and then you see that log in screen instead of like, you know my juicy feed and I'm like, oh yeah, right?

50:12Okay, I did that on purpose like great like I broke that that like, I'm not going to be a big fan of that. feedback loop a little bit. I did similar thing with Twitter, slash X, where I deleted the app and then just use 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, because that way even if your browser remembers your password or I use one password, even if it, the browser extension is going to fill it in for me, there's still another step.

50:57So it's reverse engineering my own distractability. That feature that everyone's always talking about, that Apple built of the code being automatically there in the keyboard, that's counter to this friction that you've created. Yeah, that's true. So it's interesting as I had this and then I just like at the end then I really just want to be up to it. And so I just re -installed 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 start on have email on your phone. Is that right?

51:31No, that would that would be on the floor checking email. Yeah, it's I was called if I did, I'm a floor. Can I use to do that? Like 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. If I'm like on the go and I just like wanna stay on top of things. And like something that Jake and I have talked about a lot is like you kinda go through these different cycles of like yeah, I need this thing or I want this thing. and then part of the reflect staff, part of paying attention and reflecting on how it's going is to recognize.

52:10Oh, wow, I've actually been spending a lot of time on email on my phone or a lot of time on Twitter. Maybe I'll just uninstall it for a while. Maybe I'll just reset and do that for a while. Then there will be some other thing that happens that causes you to reinstall it. That's totally fine because you're being delivered about it and you're paying attention and 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.

52:46It was like, it was 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's still things happened. And 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 gonna fall apart. It's just not true for 99 .9999 % 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.

53:26and I was in another situation where I was like, I was with my kids, well much younger at the time. And I was, you know, spending time with them or playing wooden trains. And with some of my sons like, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. And I'm like, God, what? And I didn't realize it, but I was on my phone. Yeah, I don't even remember when I was doing an 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 he would be a cool thing to share like 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, why need to do this for work?

54:08Which was I think my internal monologue of why I was doing this thing that actually He's just a really low friction dopamine hit and And then I thought like What did god? This is not what I wanted this is not why I work so hard today so I'd 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 this to everything that had an infinity pool. Everything that had an infinite amount of content. News is like this. You know, like say anything streaming, right?

54:43And like when we wrote this book and when like came out in 2018 and we I think we said, like it's good, 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, right? 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 the stuff, it's 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 in each time, the phone's going to ask you, this is going to delete all the data and settings.

55:15Are 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 usually a feeling of discomfort, but also relief. But 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 like, or like, or 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.

55:51And when you take those off, there's that feeling of relief is to me so powerful that having done this for a decade now. And the other'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 in an automatic, like, because I'm aware of it, I'll just feel this static. This, there's this notion of attention residue. do. And I think the researcher who coined this term is so feely Roy from the University of Washington. Anyway, you can look that up. I think I learned about that from Cal New Port. 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.

56:28Those perhaps 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 gonna 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 plugin 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, John, posted a few tweets last year and a couple of them went viral and I gained 30 ,000 followers and I was like, I mean, all I have is 30 ,000 followers.

57:12And that was from years and years ago, and I thought I was a pretty big deal with her. 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. 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 is the hardest for you to resist, sucks your attention to the most?

57:45It makes you feel not good. Take it off 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 then 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 in. 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 whatever using.

58:12There's a metaphor of the Lord of the Rings and the Ring is so good for how it feels to just, like I'm just going to check to it around. So it's the problem. Just going to check it again. Just check it. 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, like 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.

58:44That's two years. Yeah, yeah, the eagle scoop them up. Yeah. No, man. So the key tips here are find the apps that are sucking your attention. Could be Twitter, could be LinkedIn, could be your email and delete them and or log it out of them. What else? There's a few tactics that Jake and I both with views that are related to TV, like watching TV in 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?

59:23And so like, you know, for me and my wife, that's always been like the TV is just like in a different room. and like Jake, you guys, do you use a projector like if you wanna 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 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, and you don't see it when it's not set up. So we have like a projection screen that's all kind of folded up 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 and you'd like an old -timey camera.

1:00:07You have to like wind with like It's just sit there. Here's another one that

1:00:15Another one that's really helpful for me that actually is sort of a bridge is like the laser Section and the energized section because it relates to sleep is I got to keep my phone in the bedroom. The phone doesn't come in the bedroom. And not only that, the place where it charges, the Magsave, little charging place for it, is downstairs. It's like on a different floor. It's in the kitchen. So it's like, when I put that there at the end of the night and I go upstairs, I might still be awake for like an hour. I might read, I might get ready for bed, all those things. like, but like the phone is a way to make sure 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 could make a big difference.

1:01:06My wife and I have been talking about that actually, but the issue is our to watch our kid with a nan at app, we need our phone. I know that you can get like other devices that aren't on the phone, but we just like the nan at 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, not specifically with the Nanit app, but with some people have said like, oh, I can't uninstall those apps because like, you know, like Twitter, you know, LinkedIn whatever, because I do like social media for my work. My literally my job is like, I do marketing at a company like I have to be on social media.

1:01:42So 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 nan it device and like it nice all it does and like it's in a nice little stand by the bad that can create some separation as well That's a great idea. I think there's a company I think it was already on a Huffington made a thing where it's like a little bit for your phone where you put it somewhere in the living room and you put it to bed and you charge it there.

1:02:19And 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 a cool box that not only you put your phone in it charges, but it has some sort of way of like, it interacts with the phone. It puts it into do not disturb. Or there's some cool integration that it does. So yeah, those things are a little bit gimmicky, but if it helps you create that default, 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 TikTok.

1:02:54She doesn't install the app, and she basically relies on me to send her TikTok videos I like to her account that she then checks on my phone. You're a pro, no. Yeah, yeah, I'm holding the TikTok. My precious. 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 my phone back and go limit a time where she can watch them and that keeps her 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.

1:03:35And I don't have any news apps on my phone, but my wife's like pretty into the news like you know She has a healthcare background and she studied journalism and school, so she loves, particularly those two topics and the intersection of those two. She gives me a news digest. She'll just, when we're chatting at the end of the day, when we're doing something together, she'll just, it's not structured. It's not some official thing, but she just shares what she was reading about that day. It's nice. It gives us something 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 it's fun to think about how you can implement some of these ideas like in a relationship as well.

1:04:22How do I subscribe to this feed of your wife sharing the news every day? It sounds like a great podcast. Yeah, we all need really really good stuff If a really important stuff will find us, you know, it's like, I think there is 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 and the most important news in my inbox or my company or 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 this moment.

1:05:04And you know, it's okay to let go of that and put, you know, just the good stuff, 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. You know, if it's going to affect you, actually, you'll hear about it. And with most news and most, like, entertainment, we don't play a role. It's hard to admit, but we don't actually play her all 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.

1:05:38So Tim Ferriss talked about this and for the four hour week, is way back in the days, 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 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 miss the bunch of stuff that 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.

1:06:08And not to get political, but with like news about Trump, there's always these headlines. Trump, 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 right. 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. Like, well, it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is.

1:06:38That is true. Yeah. Trump is always going to be on the news. Yeah. And it's always going to like, you know, like that's the that's the that's the constant. That's like the third constant death taxes and Trump will be on the news. I am a related tactic that is that I've been doing for a long time is my my main source of news is the economist magazine which is like like far far too like high brow 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, it gets distilled into this really good summer.

1:07:22Like really, really good. The economists are some of the best journalists in the world. They're just absolutely fantastic. And so not only does it have this really nice cadence of once a week, if something matters, it's gonna get rolled up there, it's gonna get summarized. And so that's one of my most durable habits that related to these tactics is reading the news once a week, reading the economist just like it fits my brain, it kind of fits 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.

1:08:02Well, first up 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 messaging, but so resetting expectations is just about having 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.

1:09:00And 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 urgent. 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 out of responder. So just like, hey, like, instead of, I'm actually out of the office, like, hey, I'm gonna 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 gonna funny study about the power of becas, and this case where people would sort of make a bogus excuses, but they'd say becas, 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.

1:09:45Just saying because dramatically boosted the percentage of the time that person would let them cut the line or suckers for explanations all of us. If you say because, people will feel better and you can feel better about saying it. But this idea that you're just gonna have, put up a placard basically that says, hey, I'm sorry 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.

1:10:34We'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 just, 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. 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.

1:11:12And if you slow down that, you know, that little hamster wheel, it slows down. And so that's 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. There's another 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 it, but this was a reader of our blog told us about this. Her name is Chrisa. I think she allowed us to use her first name, but not our last name.

1:11:48So Chrisa, 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 an office, like a very small office in this small town here where I live. And I canceled the internet there so that 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 focus work, design something, presentation. but any kind of focused thinking, reading, writing can happen there.

1:12:26And 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 internet. You can actually buy one of those vacation timers, plug it into the wall, plug your router into that, and it can actually switch your internet off at certain hour or hours. There's also software that'll let you do this selectively. But the big notion of just 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 Wi -Fi on, Wi -Fi off.

1:13:02I find for me that's not enough of a speed bump. It's pretty powerful. Just the 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, you can do so many things. I could, yeah, I could, it might be a coffee shop where you don't find out what the wife I best where it is, you know, and like there's, there's just this amazing, amazing thing. Maybe it's just you go to a park where there's no wife. Just like whatever it might be, finding a place where you can't, you just can't do that stuff, leave your phone at home.

1:13:36If 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 ten feet away. And right next to me, just kind of like vibrating are all of the like, you know, there's like 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 there's little pieces of candy. Like they're all gonna feel good.

1:14:12There'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 on my face. And it's going to be hard to resist just popping a, you know, like a, like, sour patch kit or laughing 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. So once that, you know, there's space, you'll want to do the thing that's most important.

1:14:47It'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 just sailing. Well, in eighth grade, I played Odysseus in a school play. So I tell you all about it. Oh, man. What a character to play. Yeah, and like in that story he like he wanted to experience the so these 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 they're in crash 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 or to not go towards these vibrating candies all around you that you need to set up these systems.

1:15:40I think there's 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 they're also functioning just fine. And like, or at least on this, And what we see from the outside is just fine, but maybe internally too, it's 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.

1:16:21Like they're all undermined and undercut by the bad feelings and the distraction that come from all 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.

1:16:59And I think this desire to be helpful is a big driver of it. I think we want to alleviate our 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, right? 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. 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.

1:17:46If we're a reaction machine, we're not doing meaningful work. No project A's, 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, it's 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 things you want to spend time on? You also remind me of this app I'll mention briefly that I think you guys love.

1:18:18I 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 at these times of day. And so instead of finding out that you're never ever, it's just like you can batch your release of email. That's beautiful. MailmanHQ .com. MailmanHQ .com. Okay. I'm writing that down right now. Yeah. I go on and off it because sometimes I just want to email. But it makes it big different. It's wild. It's just like not even knowing your email makes a big difference. Yeah. OK, let's touch on the last two parts of this framework, energize and reflect.

1:18:56And 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 replay the system overall, highlight is about the thing you want to make time for today. The most important thing today, laser is about creating barriers to distractions so that you have as much of your energy as much of your attention as possible to focus on your highlight, not on that one thing. Energize is sort of like a booster to laser. It's sort of like the big idea is that our brains and bodies are connected and our ability to pay attention and to focus and to do those things that we care about.

1:19:42Only works when we are when we're well. We have slept, we have eaten well, we have exercised, we have talked to other people, the right amount, not too much, not too little. We put this as part of the make time framework because we think it's, we don't think you You should go crazy, try a million biohacker type of things, but we do think it's worth applying this same philosophy of pay attention to what's working, what's not. Have a system, try some new things, pay attention to those things, run these experiments. We think it's worth doing that for your health, for your energy as well, because it really does make a difference.

1:20:27Maybe 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, you know, my life has just continued to change and I've gotten a little bit old. I've realized 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 sleep. I started wearing an eye mask recently. So yeah, it really helps me fall asleep and stay asleep.

1:21:05And then the other thing is, I exercise is a big source of energy for me, but I realized that I was making excuses about why I didn't need to or shouldn't exercise any given day. So even though this is not what we recommended in the books, specifically, I ended up like like signing out with a personal trainer. So that I have accountability, I have like a schedule, I have somebody who's like thinking about like, what I need, that's not just me. And like those two things have kind of been the pillars of how I build energy over the last few years. I use this app called Future, I'm an investor, just a quick disclaimer, but it's basically a personal trainer through an app that's like a real person that helps you.

1:21:55Does that help you work out 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 within Reflect, maybe just briefly talk about the points 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, what happened in the experiment?

1:22:34Taking note of it in that lens, what did it look like? There's a template in our book that has some questions you can answer, but really it's pretty simple. If you write down your highlight in the morning or the night before, if you're John, and you stick it somewhere visible, then you just, into the day you look at it, and you know, I was just gonna say, 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 a down sticking it will create a reflection loop for you.

1:23:14Another thing that I think is like, quite powerful at the end of the day is to write down, I'm keep a, you know, 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. It's like a simple gratitude journal. And you'll start, this keeps you in the frame of mind of like what was cool today? What was, what was happened that was satisfying or joyful or 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.

1:23:46look 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, So if you take a walk or whatever, it might have been a focus thing.

1:24:18So 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.

1:24:51Like even if you find two things that change how productive you are, that's a huge win. Well, 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.

1:25:29Try 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 -responding your mail that says you're going to slow down or talking to them about slowing down. At Character at RVC 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.

1:26:16So just have a conversation about that. Take a couple apps off your phone. You don't have to buy the book or become 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. 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 will include in the show notes. I'll send you this questions asynchronously. Let's just talk about Sprint for a few minutes.

1:26:50Just to give people a sense of what is this framework, it's extremely popular, it lets a lot of really successful product and then we'll wrap up and can appoint 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 Sprint's? The big idea with a design Sprint is to go from a zero to a prototype and a test of that prototype in just five days. It's a recipe, it's a scripted set of activities that we developed over a number for many years, first started with some projects.

1:27:27I was doing at Google and I run some experiments with the way I was working. I was a product designer on Gmail in 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 of 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 executive.

1:28:08We'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 way 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.

1:29:03So all of that kind of a nutshell is what a spread 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. We've heard amazing stories from people who read the book and have run sprints at companies that have 100 ,000 people and 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 raised a certain amount of money, which buys you a certain amount of runway.

1:29:53You 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 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 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 to like five days versus like this ongoing teams distract one on this idea just like cool.

1:30:32We're gonna spend a week, see where this goes. You're not gonna spend months exploring, we're not gonna like talk about it in theory, Let's just try it. I think it's really powerful. 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 get in touch with us. Character .vc and actually we're just opening up applications to our labs program. So character .vc slash labs.

1:31:05Our 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 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.

1:31:45And so making this stuff actually useful, more than just a chatbot with little stars, it'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 run a sequence of sprints doing it again and again, and you work with directly with John and I, that's we find a really powerful way to get started. Anyway, that was a big advertisement for Jerk Alabs. 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 thesprintbook .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.

1:32:34And 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 the 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 should be able to access this stuff. Amazing. And again, for folks that may want to check out the labs cohort, is there anything else, anything other than AI I 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.

1:33:11So 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 in a market that they're focused on, but they definitely haven't reached product market fit. They may not even have a product to test that hypothesis with. So it's very early stage. We're pretty flexible on 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 the better this stuff works So so if you're just trying to make like a slightly better version of something that already exists And maybe it's gonna 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 gonna work But if you're you know like one of our portfolio companies, you know, they make AI that controls industrial facilities, they came from Google DeepMind and they did this for Google Data Centers before.

1:34:20Like that where you have to convince plant operators who are like wearing hard hats and like, dealing with huge equipment, you have to convince them to trust AI. 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 were extremely difficult. I love them. 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.

1:35:01John, 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. My pleasure. 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 a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast .com. See you in the next episode!