A Tool That Made Me 95% More Productive

What's up, everyone? I'm Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal, my personal startup diary made public for the world. First off, I would love to hear what you think about the show and how I can make it better. I've been doing this format for a little while, which combines monologues from me as well as short interviews with expert founders. So I'd love to know what you're thinking. Do you want more from me and less from guests? Do you want more from guests and less from me? Or are there other formats you'd like to see me try that you've either seen from other podcasters or haven't, but you would love to see what it looks like for me to do it? I would love to continue to refine the content for this show, especially as the audience has grown so much over the last few months and with the new year approaching. So just shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com and let me know what you think. Now, for today's episode, I am talking about a tool that I recently discovered that has made me 95% more productive. That is not an exaggeration, and you might find this tool to be a little bit crazy. So let's hop into it. I have found my crystal key for focus. I want to set the stage. Since freshman year of high school, I had this story of myself that I was a huge procrastinator and had an inability to focus for a long time. Also, it was kind of my reality, not just a story. That feeling of distraction continued throughout college, and I always justified it, especially in college, by saying that I would work twice as hard as everyone else to be a top performer. But as I've gotten older and I've become more acutely aware of the finiteness of time that we have on this earth, I've gotten less and less comfortable with the idea of compensating for procrastination with harder work. It feels wasteful. It feels like I'm not reaching my full potential. And it feels like I don't have the willpower to do what I say I want to do. Now, while I've learned to be more compassionate to myself and rewrite these limiting stories of distractibility and untapped potential, I have been in search of something that can take my focus to the next level. And I have tried everything, and I mean everything. I've tried the Freedom app on my computer. I've tried the Pomodoro method of 20 minutes of work, 5 minutes off. I've tried letting my wife set my phone passcode so only she could unlock it if I really needed it. None of these things worked. And if they did work, they were short-lived. But I have finally found the thing for me. I shit you not, my procrastination has been down 95% when I use this tool. I wanna share it with you, and I also wanna provide context on why I think it works. The tool is called Focusmate, and it is a virtual coworking site. I also wanna say I have zero affiliation to this company. I just want more people to have this holy shit moment that I had. Let me explain what using Focusmate is like. Step 1, I go to Focusmate's website and I pick a 30 to 75 minute block for deep work to happen. Second, Focusmate then pairs me with a buddy, someone from any part of the world who is working on anything that also wants to get deep work done during that time. Step 3, at the beginning of our session, we both show up on video, we say hi to each other, we share where we are in the world, and then we state our goals for the time block. We then leave our cameras on, but we mute our mics and we get to work. Step 4, I will typically start by closing out all the applications on my computer other than those that I need, and I will type out my goals for the session in the chat between Funny enough, I actually wrote this Founder's Journal episode that I'm recording right now during a Focusmate session. So at the beginning of that session, I typed in the chat my goals for the session, and those goals were scripting a Founder's Journal episode, scripting a second Founder's Journal episode for next week, and finishing a strategy doc to share with Abby for StoryYard. So that's step 4. Step 5, as I'm working through things during the 30 to 75 minute time block, I will type in the chat as I complete my tasks. And then step 6, finally, at the end of the block, we will go off mute and we will share how it went and what we accomplished. And then we'll say bye to each other. To some people, this may sound crazy. Some cringe at the idea of getting on a video call with a stranger. A few people I've told about it said it sounds like a PG version of Omegle or Chatroulette. Or my wife looked at me in astonishment the first time I told her about it because she cannot understand why I need another person to get me to focus. She is very different from me. She is wildly focused and she would actually find it more more distracting to do something like Focusmate than just being on her own in her office. But for me, it works exceptionally well, and the reason is because of this concept called body doubling, which has long been popularized in the ADHD community. Body doubling simply means that by having a friend or partner who works simultaneously, either in real life or virtually, your productivity will go up. What's interesting is body doubling hasn't actually been scientifically studied, But there is a ton of anecdotal evidence about it working, even though we're not exactly sure why it does work. Now, I do want to share a few of the theories because I think they're very interesting about why body doubling is an effective tactic, especially for people with ADHD. The first theory is a theory around dopamine. The hypothesis is that people with ADHD have reduced dopamine levels, especially in the brain regions that are vital for executive functions like attention, impulse control, and reward anticipation. And the idea is that body doubling may be helpful because Social interaction has been proven to increase our dopamine levels. So that's the first theory. The second theory is based on something called the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect is this idea that a person's behavior changes because they know someone else is watching. So the idea would be like factory workers being more productive because they know their manager is watching them versus when their manager's not watching them, they're less productive. Now, there's a lot of pushback on the theory, but I have anecdotally found it to be true for myself. So in the context of Focusmate, Hawthorne effect would say that I'm more productive working because I'm being watched by someone else while I work. Now, one more theory that I find interesting is this concept called mirror neurons. It is another area of research that the scientific community heavily debates, but it's fascinating to me. Very simply, mirror neurons are a class of neurons that cause us to respond to actions that we observe in others. The most common argument for why mirror neurons exist is human tendency to yawn when yawning is observed in someone else. So based on the theory of mirror neurons, I am more likely to work when I am observing someone else working. Now, I do find the science behind body doubling fascinating, but regardless of what's causing it all, what theories are correct, whether it's scientific or psychological, all I can say is the results have been crystal clear. I have found a productivity tool that is sustainable and effective. That I'm going to continue to use multiple times per day as long as it works. If you, like me, are easily distractible or prone to procrastination, which many creative entrepreneurs are, I would definitely encourage you to check out Focusmate, which again, I'm not affiliated to, and it's actually pretty cheap. I just paid for the annual plan. I think it's like $83, and there's a free plan where you get 3 sessions for free. But I would encourage you to try it, and I would encourage you to let me know what you think. As always, thank you so much for listening to Founders Journal, and I'll catch you next episode. Bye.