116: Caught in Internet Infinity Pools? Make Time By Setting a Daily Highlight and 5-Day Sprints

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

I am thrilled today to be here with John Zyratsky, co author of a new book called make how to Focus on what Matters Most Every Day. John wrote this book with his co author Jake Knapp, and they are also the authors of the New York Times bestseller Sprint, which Sprint and Make Time are both very parallel and cohesive with Pivot, so I just can't wait to get into this conversation. And they're also the creators of Time Dorks, a popular newsletter about experiments in time management. John, who I have here today, he and I are cut from the same corporate cloth. He worked at Google for 10 years, including divisions of YouTube and Google Ventures. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Time, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and many more publications. And he was a designer at tech companies for a total of 15 years. And now in the last year, he's gone on his own into the wild. So, John, without further ado, welcome to the show and congrats on your most recent Pivot.

Thank you. I'm so excited to have the chance to talk with you today.

Me too. I feel like our books are like long lost siblings from the west and East Coast.

Yeah, totally.

Although so much of Pivot was kind of baked in the Google oven and so I really felt simpatico with a lot of what you shared. And so Sprint and Make Time.

For Jake and for me, working in the tech industry was kind of this amazing proving ground for so many of the things we write about because it's so intense. There's such an expectation of being constantly available and online. There's so many meetings and we're kind of behind the scenes of how some of the most distracting products are made. So we felt really lucky that we had the chance to start working on these ideas while we were in that environment.

One thing you say about Make Time is that it is not a productivity book. That it's really about making sure that the way we spend our time is important to us. But it's not about cramming in and doing more with less. I want to get everybody on the same page. I love this. Two common pitfalls, the busy bandwagon and infinity pools. Can you please explain what both are?

Yeah. So the busy bandwagon is the culture of being constantly connected and checking your email and your instant messaging and responding all the time, being in back to back meetings and sort of this expectation that if you're not filling every moment and you're not being as productive as possible, you're going to fall behind. That that is what is expected of us today. But that can be very tiring. That's exhausting. That level of.

Attention and distraction requires a lot of energy. So the infinity pools are kind of there as this so called reward. That's when you're ready to take a break. What do you do when you need a break from the computer? You pull out your smartphone and you check Twitter, Instagram, or whatever sort of mindless thing you like to look at. But those two forces, the busy bandwagon and the infinity pools, are really pieces of the same sort of problem, if you will, the same mechanism. They have the result of making us feel like we're not in control of our time. They make us wonder what happened to the time, where did it go? And they make it really difficult for us to create the time, the space for the things that we want to do. So those are. We sort of decided to personify those challenges by giving them names, but they're kind of these defaults, these just accepted normal behaviors that exist in our world today.

I thought it was so powerful how you share the story from 2008 in the book, where one day you were walking to work in Chicago and you realized that you couldn't remember the last two months, that it felt like a blur.

Yeah, totally.

Well, it has stuck with me for 10 years. So obviously it really.

Had an effect on me. Yeah, that was, you know, part of the reason that we say that make time is not about productivity is that we went down that road. At that time in 2008, I was super productive. You know, I read getting things done multiple times and I had like, you know, I cleared my inbox every day and I had like these crazy filing systems set up and I was always carrying like a stack of paper so I could take notes on things. And what I found is that it just sort of created a blur. And so this coincided with the winter in Chicago. So it's easy to kind of feel down and feel like there aren't a lot of bright spots in your life. And that's kind of how I felt, which was really in contrast to the objective reality of my life, which was that I had a really good job and I had really good friends and I was living with my girlfriend who's now my wife, who was fantastic and we were in love.

But still, yeah, I kind of had this feeling that time was just slipping by and it wasn't really marked by any sort of waypoints or anything that I could hold onto. And that was what led me to this revelation about giving each day a focal point. And in make Time, we call that a highlight. But it's something that I've been doing really for the last 10 years, is thinking about for each day. What do I want the highlight of that day to be? Is it something that I really want to get done that's going to bring me a lot of satisfaction? Is it something that I need to get done? Or is it something that is just really fun, that I know I'm going to enjoy and I'm going to be glad that I did it? And that simple act of setting a daily highlight which came out of that, you know, that winter in Chicago where I lost those couple months, that's, that's a really important part of what, what Make Time is about.

I loved this concept. Like just like you, I also started with getting things done or for the time geeks GTD back in the day.

Yeah, exactly.

And I also used to teach the email course at Google. I know that Jake created that one and he worked on Gmail and you worked on YouTube again to epic infinity pools, as you said. But this idea of if somebody asks you what was the highlight of your day, what would you want to say? That you always hear it asked, what's your top priority? Or you know, the Stephen Covey look, what's in quadrant one. But to just ask, what do I want to be the highlight of my day today? And you shared the three different categories. Either it could be based on urgency, satisfaction or joy. And to be intentional about picking that every day and how much freedom and focus that creates. And I know that ties in with the kind of three step framework here of highlight laser reflect, but it all starts with that highlight piece.

Yeah, that's true. I think so much of the talk and the writing around time, time management, it focuses on the distraction side of things. It focuses on all the time that we're losing, that feeling that everybody has that, like, you know, you go to look at something on your phone and then 30 minutes later you're like, wait a second, what just happened? And that stuff is obviously really important. You mentioned the steps in Make Time, and yeah, the second step is laser, as in laser focus. And, you know, we think that by making changes to the sort of the configuration or the setup of your technology, you can take willpower out of the equation and really make it more difficult to access these things that are so distracting, which kind of slows down that loop, that addictive loop that exists with these apps. But I don't think that that's enough. I don't think maybe if you're starting from kind of a really low place, a really bad place where you know that you're clearly addicted, you're clearly losing hours a day to infinity pools or to these elements of the busy bandwag that are sucking up your time.

I think it's not enough unless you have something on the positive side, too, if you have some motivation, something that you're driving toward. And so that's why the first step is not about eliminating distraction. The first step in Make Time is really about deciding proactively what you want to make time for. And that's the highlight.

It's so important what you're sharing, because one thing you both say in the book is that we often don't realize how much of our time we spend by default. Who's emailing us, who's putting time on our calendar, even this notion that you have to keep up with the daily news in order to be a good citizen of the planet. And I don't know why I did this. I actually. I do know why, because Internet news makes me anxious. And I actually get. I can't stay focused on reading the news when I'm on the computer. So for. I've been a New York Times subscriber now for 15 years. The inky paper version that gets all over your hands. But I only get the weekend edition. I only get it Saturday and Sunday. So I do not read any news except for when it's delivered via newspaper on the weekend. And every now and then, there will be something happening where I truly have no idea that it's going on. But usually people will say something. And in this case, the thing I'm going for is a sense of calm of just not. Because the news is designed to lure us in and be stressful and provoke anxiety.

Yeah. In that way, it's a very successful product. It's been very, very well tuned to keep us tuned in.

Day after day and really hour after hour and minute after minute, if you. If you choose to pay that close of attention. I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately because there's so many bad things going on right now, certainly in the world. But in our country, there's a lot of the decisions that our government is making in Washington, D.C. i think, are they're upsetting. I personally feel, and I think a lot of people feel like they're not in line with the values of America, the things that we really care about. And so this already very distressing thing, the news that we feel this obligation toward and that makes us anxious now it has this extra layer of responsibility, like, oh, if I want to be an engaged citizen and I want to do something about what I see as our country going in the wrong direction, I need to read the news. I need to spend more time reading the news, not less time. And so I think that it's a particularly challenging time in terms of our relationship with the news, but it's actually more important than ever to not be following the minute by minute, hour by hour, breaking news. Because if you're spending all your time reading the news, when do you have the time or the energy to do something about it, to make that bad news into good news?

I think that the problem has maybe gotten worse with news, but on the other hand, there's now sort of a clear motivation for what the purpose of it is, for why we're reading the news in the first place.

Well, and I love just sharing this question of how can you, being engaged and still take action on what you believe in without just getting sucked into the infinity pool nature of it? Because that's where I think it tips into really creating a lot of stress beyond the fact that what's actually happening is quite stressful.

Yeah, well, and what you landed on with the weekly news is what I do personally as well. I read the Economist every weekend, which is a magazine, but it's in the same kind of idea as, you know, a New York Times Weekly or something that summarizes all the really important stuff that happened.

But I think there's a lot of people who enjoy reading the news daily. Even the daily paper is a really nice format. And I think everybody needs to find the rhythm.

That works for them and create a new default for themselves. Because if you're not proactive and thoughtful about these things, and I think if you don't realize that you can do something about it, that you can change the default, then you'll just continue to take the path of least resistance and do what's easy and automatic, which is to be constantly reading the news and constantly checking and trying to keep up on these things.

Hmm. There's. There's something you shared in the book in speaking of going toward positive and motivating things and things that do bring us joy, that one of the pieces of advice is go all in. And there's a quote that you share from. You call him an honest to goodness modern day monk, Brother David Steindl Rost. I don't know if I pronounce his name. And his quote is, you know, the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. And I know for you a big part of that is sailing. But explain how this idea of wholeheartedness relates to serving as an antidote for time stress and time craters. Things that suck us in kind of almost somewhat against our will.

Yeah, this is one of those things that in some ways goes against our human intuition.

You know, when we're right before we're about to step onto, you know, a stage or in front of a group to give a talk, or if we're facing down a big challenge or project, or if there's something about our life that we want to change, we feel stressed, you know, we feel anxious. We notice that our heart is beating a little bit faster and we interpret that as a bad thing. We take that signal to mean, oh, this is bad and I need to avoid this. But I don't think it is a bad thing. It's our body's way of telling us that it's getting geared up, it's getting ready to go, the adrenaline is flowing, our blood is moving, our energy is high. And so we can channel that energy if we take a moment to stop and think about it. There's a piece of advice that I read a long time ago that has helped me a lot, which is before you. If you're giving a talk, a presentation, and you feel that nervousness, that nervous energy, tell yourself, oh, it's not because I'm. I'm not worried things are going to go wrong. I know that I'm prepared. I know that I can do this. It's because I'm excited. It's because I'm ready and refocus that energy into being in that moment to going all in. And a lot of the concerns that you might have about your energy, about it being scary, kind of fall by the wayside. And so the idea with the go all in tactic is that if you're kind of working around the edges and you're reducing your distractions and you're saying no to obligations and you're trying to carve out a little bit of time every day, but it still doesn't feel right. Maybe there's actually a bigger change that needs to happen. Maybe you need to find something that you really can pour your energy into.

How has that shifted for you in terms of your day to day work now that you're on your own after having worked in such an intense environment as Google for 10 years?

Yeah, it's definitely still a work in progress.

Jake and I developed a lot of the ideas that are in make time. When we did work at Google, when we were working, it's a big corporation, there's a lot of emails, a lot of meetings, there's a lot going on.

I laughed at the calendar, like how people can see and add meetings to your calendar. I always had just jam packed days. So I laughed about the section on DNS, do not schedule. I feel like every Googler learns that, right?

Yeah, yeah. And that's a tough tactic.

About blocking your calendar. So that, and this is something that I learned from my boss at Google. And I think you're right. It's like after, I don't know how many years you need to be there, but when you work at Google or maybe imagine other companies too, after you're there for a certain period of time, you think, okay, there's never going to be an open space on this calendar. And so if I want there to be space for something, I need to fill it for myself. I need to schedule time for myself. And yeah, that's a really important tactic for me and for a lot of other people. But to the question about how sort of this feeling of going all in or this tactic of going all in kind of fits into my life now, I think it's part of what motivated me to.

Leave Google.

Was that I wanted to restructure my life.

To be able to pour my energy into a smaller number of big things that were really important to me. And while I was at Google, I spent most of my time there at Google Ventures, which is a venture capital firm, which is my role there. I was a design partner, which meant that I worked with the companies we invested in. And so I was, I actually had it pretty good in terms of, you know, being, you know, in terms of the email load and the meeting load, it wasn't too bad. But I was doing a lot of writing and I was doing a lot of design work as part of my role there. And I could just, I could feel how great it was when I had two hours, three hours, four hours, half a day, a whole day where I wasn't jumping from meeting to meeting. I wasn't trying to stay on top of my inbox. And so I started finding ways to create that kind of space in my schedule while I was still at Google Ventures. And a lot of the tactics in Make Time, particularly in the highlight section, are about that idea. Scheduling your highlight, blocking your calendar.

And so what I'm doing now, which is working on my own as a writer and a speaker.

And doing. For the last eight months, my wife and I have been traveling on our sailboat. We sailed from San Francisco to Panama.

Those things are sort of an extreme experiment and exercise in redesigning my days so that I can afford to go all in on the things that really matter to me.

Such a great example too about wholeheartedness that because you love sailing so much and you love your wife and you even love your work, but literally on a sailboat and congrats on sailing to Panama. That's so exciting. But that will motivate you to think differently about your time. It will motivate you so much that you think of strategies you've never thought of before. Whereas sometimes I know how easy it is when we're in our day to day work environment and we're not necessarily pulled towards something wholeheartedly. We just tend to feel more stuck. At least I can speak for myself. And one thing I find so interesting, you mentioned Google Ventures and that you and Jake.

Yeah, sorry, I'll cut that. You mentioned Google Ventures and that you and Jake ran 150 design sprints based on the Sprint methodology and framework of a five day Sprint, which I just love this concept because even in Pivot, I talk about piloting small experiments. Start small, one tiny next step. And that's just so parallel and works so well with the idea of Sprint. So I'd love if you could just give listeners a short little cliffsnotes about what that five day sprint entails and what you've learned now that you're doing this on your own with companies as a consultant, but what you've learned after doing this process hundreds of times.

Yeah. So this, the design Sprint process is a way for a team to Go from a problem or a challenge to a prototype that's tested with customers in five days. This is kind of in contrast to the typical way that teams approach big problems, which is that they spend a lot of time doing research and analysis and having lots of meetings and evaluating what they're going to do because they want to get it right. If it's something big, like launching a new product or a new marketing campaign, they don't want to mess it up, Particularly a startup who has a limited amount of time and money to do whatever they're trying to do.

And so with the Sprint process, what we do is we give people a way to get to the, you know, to travel into the future and to build a prototype that they can test with customers and do it in a week instead of doing it over the course of months. There's. There's one step, one big step every day. Monday is making a map of the problem. Tuesday is sketching potential solutions. Wednesday is narrowing down that range of solutions and choosing the ones you want to prototype. Thursday is building the prototype, and Friday is testing the prototype. Um, and it. It really, it. I think it's successful on a few levels. One is just that it's, you know, it does. It does give teams the ability to see what's going to happen and to fail in a very safe way. You know, if they're going to. If their idea is not going to work out. It's only five customers in that test on Friday who are going to see it instead of, like the whole market. But it's also a pretty dramatic example of resetting the defaults in your corporate culture, of going from that those days where everybody is just trying to carve out a little bit of time to keep this project moving forward, or people are. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, where you sort of get to the end of a workday and then you're like, okay, now I can finally get down to work. Now. The email inbox is cleared, the meetings are done, and now I have time, which keeps people at an arm's length from the parts of their work that are really challenging and rewarding and important. So a design Sprint is, among other things, it's a way for teams to say, you know what? For one week, let's take the team, let's take the people who need to be working together, and let's give them a new set of defaults. Let's give them an opportunity to really focus on this thing that is so important.

So that's the design sprint process. A lot of what we wrote about in make time and the techniques that we use that Jake and I use in our day to day lives now to create space and energy for what matters to us, really were informed by the lessons that we learned from running all those design sprints. So the first one is just about that idea of having one big goal per day. And like I said in the design sprint, that's how the, the schedule is structured. But there's an amazing clarity and satisfaction that comes from just having that one goal per day. We also, in design sprints, we don't allow people to use devices at all. So from 10 to 5 while they're in the sprint, there's no smartphones, no laptops, no tablets, no power gloves or Ataris or anything like that. And people step out to take a phone call or people have to present something, and those are obviously okay. But it's amazing how much more focused and productive people are, and it's amazing how much more they enjoy their work when they're not being pulled in a million different directions.

Another lesson that's really surprising, that has become a big part of our philosophy of make time is, is how important it is to build energy.

How taking care of your body gives your brain energy to focus on the things you care about and to really be in the moment to make that sort of high quality time. And in the design sprints that we ran, it was a really interesting experience because we kind of had this little laboratory. You know, we had ideas, Jake and I had ideas about what, what worked for us and what would work for other people. But when we were running sprints, you know, sometimes week after week for years, 150 sprints together, we got to see how these ideas applied to lots of people, lots of different kinds of teams in different situations. And we could see that when we didn't take care of the humans, you know, when we didn't take care of people's energy, the work suffered dramatically. So I'll give you a simple example. Like if we were to, let's say we're sitting in the conference room or we're working on a sprint and we decided to get pizza delivered, right? So the pizza comes in, we stay where we're sitting, we eat the pizza, whatever, that's a normal thing to do. Lots of teams would make that decision.

You might argue that it saves time, right? We don't have to get up and leave, but by about 1:30 or 2:00 clock in the afternoon, the energy has completely left the room. Everybody's feeling a little bit of a food coma. They didn't get fresh air. They didn't get to stand up and walk around. They didn't get to have really meaningful face to face time because everybody was just kind of haphazardly around the table. Maybe they're catching up on their email, eating pizza, whatever. Compare that to when we go out for lunch, which takes more time, right? So from a standpoint of strict productivity, it's not an optimal choice. But when we go out to lunch, we get to walk around. We probably eat food that's, you know, if we make, if we make a good decision that we eat food that's a little bit healthier and less heavy than something like pizza. And then we get to sit at a table face to face and we get to talk. And there's so many elements in there that feed our energy. There's the food that we eat, moving our bodies, having face to face contact with other people. These are all things that give us energy. And those were all really clear in sprints. And then the fourth lesson that was really clear was just the power of experimentation. Because we did so many sprints, we got to experiment with the process. We got to tweak little things here and there. For example, with what I just said about the lunch, we got to notice that and say, hey, why did that, like, why did the energy plummet on Wednesday afternoon? We're like, oh, it's because we had burritos. That makes sense. And so then we could do things different the next day or the next week. And these four lessons kind of became the foundation for make Time. And we've since had the chance to test those out on lots and lots of people. We've had hundreds of thousands of people read our posts on time dorks and write back to us and give us feedback. And so we feel like we found this kind of essential set of principles and practices for making time and building energy that seem to work for a lot of people.

Speaking of testing, because that ties in directly to something I'm dying to ask you. You had 1700 test readers of your book. And they're all thanked at the back in the acknowledgments every single day, even in a smaller font for the other creators out there. I'm dying to know, how on earth did you have 1700 readers of the book? Or maybe it was of articles and then actually incorporate their feedback. Like, did you send them a survey? Or I would love to hear the mechanics for all of us. Creator, dorks who might want to do something similar. Because I'll just say that I know with Pivot, I was actually nervous to send it out to too many people because I didn't know how I would process all that feedback. Though no doubt it would have made a better book. And I knew that.

Yeah, I actually, I have to admit that I sort of came at it from where you're coming from. I was apprehensive about doing it because I wondered how valuable it would be. I wondered how we would incorporate the feedback. But Jake thought it was going to be a good use of our time and it totally was. So, yes, 1700 test readers, and that is actually of the book or parts of the book, not of articles. Lots more people have read the articles, but we sort of did it in waves. We had a few different groups of people. We had some really, some trusted friends and people that we've worked with who actually read the entire book and gave us really detailed notes on it.

We had by email, over meetings or.

In a survey.

By email and by leaving comments in the Google Doc. Okay, yeah.

And then we sort of did a mini version of that for another set of test readers where we gave them access to. I think it was maybe just the introduction or just maybe the first couple chapters of the book in a Google Doc with comments enabled so that people could leave comments. And then we did a final batch where we gave people access to that same chunk of content, those same couple of chapters. But then we asked them to fill out a survey. And I would say that the survey was definitely the way to go. There was. When you have that many people leaving comments in a Google Doc, there starts to be kind of a group think that goes on. So somebody might say, oh, this was confusing. And then somebody else might say, oh, me too. Oh yeah, me too. Definitely confusing here. And it's like, well, was it confusing or are you just piling on because somebody else said that it was? So we weren't entirely sure how to interpret some of those comments, but one question that we asked in the survey was, if you didn't read the whole thing, where did you stop and why? And that was really, really helpful. And I truly believe that that helped us to improve the introduction of the book dramatically. There were places, there was some consistent places where people were just. We were losing people. They were stopping in the introduction. And so we were able to make changes and then test again to improve the introduction. So did that answer your question?

Yes, two follow ups. Were you worried about anybody taking or copying or releasing the material early and any other critical questions you asked on the survey that you found helpful.

On the second question, I don't remember.

That'S the one question that definitely stands out, is about where you stopped and why.

On the first question. No, I don't think we were worried. I think, I mean, I think that.

I think there's different kinds of. Different kinds of content have value for different reasons. There's a certain type of reporting or disclosure or insight that I think is inherently valuable because it brings something to light that people don't know. And so it kind of doesn't matter where it comes from. If you read it and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe that happened. I think that as you probably know from your work, so much of what we do as writers now is wrapped up in the community of readers and wrapped up in this platform that we have. And I think if you just stuck a chapter of our book somewhere anonymously, I like to think that it's good that people would read it, people would enjoy it, maybe they'd share it. But. But I don't think it has the same power or resonance when it's separated from the creator because you don't have the personal story of the person who made it. You don't have the credibility that comes from the testing that happened. You don't have people who have kind of been with us on this journey as we've experimented with all these wacky techniques over the last several years and worked together as one group of people who are busy and distracted and trying to make time for the things that matter to us. So we weren't worried about that. One person did tweet a screenshot of the first page of it, which I think my heart skipped a beat, but it was obviously not a problem. It was cool, actually.

I'm generally with you too that by having some open information, I wouldn't put out the whole PDF of my book or anything. But if anything, the right people will enjoy it and want to learn more and go find your website and ideally buy the book and that better in general for ideas to spread. I know you guys did a five day design Sprint when Sprint came out and I also created a pivot sprint that we give you credit. We say this is based on the five day Sprint and credit you guys. And it reminded me too what you were saying about the five day format. And it's funny because I've kind of been in a laboratory of your two books this week without realizing it. I've been Teaching my five day heart of podcasting course. And I don't think I chose it five days based on Sprint per se, but my own sense of, okay, this will be really fun. And what ended up happening is that every day it's my highlight, I look forward to it. I give a little buffer before and after to finalize the materials for that day. And then at the end of the day, when I look back at what I accomplished, I actually feel like I accomplished something. And it's so different than the days where I'm just answering email or having meetings. And then the five day format, it's short enough not to lose steam. So I also do feel like, okay, this is really a sprint and by the end of the week it'll be wrapped up and I'll have created an entire course that I've jam packed with everything I could. But I give this advice to a lot of other creators, especially when they talk about creating courses and things. It's so easy to create material that's like eight weeks, ten weeks, or you spend five months behind the scenes creating something, when in fact this five day format, at least for me, is so freeing and similar to you, I ended up serving every single person in the course. And I said, what questions do you have for me on day one about this topic on day two, day three, day four, day five? So I'm actually revising each day based on 30 people's input.

Therefore, that's really cool.

Creating the course exactly based on who's in it and what they want. It just feels so much better than the more waterfall Y approach.

Oh, definitely. Well, and you sort of mentioned in passing something else that we have found to be really true, which is that those days where you're just answering email or you're just in meetings, when most of your days like that, yeah, it kind of sucks. It doesn't feel good. But one of the tactics in the book that we both use, Jake and I both use a lot, is batch the little stuff. So inevitably you're going to have little stuff that piles up, emails you need to get back to, phone calls you need to return, and if you can kind of collect those all into a batch and then one day a week, or maybe one day every couple of weeks, have your highlight be to catch up to do that batch of little stuff. It's actually surprisingly rewarding. It takes these tasks, this email that can be such a drudgery when it's just sort of done a little bit at a time, and it can actually make it really rewarding. When you see your inbox go from 30 messages to zero messages or whatever. So that's something that I do a lot is have the daily highlight, but then let those little things pile up and then come back to those later and get the satisfaction out of being caught up.

I love it. I love it. I'm so glad you said that. And I certainly have adopted your advice about lowering people's expectations and replying to emails I now give myself. I try to get to everything once a week. Sometimes for me, it's once every two weeks. And I just have to accept that about myself, that that's the pace. I. I'm a snail. I'm a snail when it comes to email.

Yeah. And I, I think that's totally fine. I think, you know, if you can almost pretend that emails are just a regular mail, you know, you think about regular mail and the, the pace of regular mail, like it comes in, it sits on the desk, you do something about it, and that's totally fine. And so this little mindset shift of these fancy digital messages, these emails, they're really just letters and I don't need to jump on them the second they arrive.

Well, similar to you, I also treat text messages that way, which makes me. I know it's not the kind of like default mode for texting, but I treat them like emails now. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm not going to respond to every text the second they come in just because it's a text. And so I will sometimes wait a week. And I used to apologize, sorry for the delay. And now I just write back a week later. I pick up where we left off as if it's no big deal because this is how I can handle it. Otherwise the sum total of inboxes gets too overwhelming for me. And I know we're at times. So. John, I would love. I always like to leave listeners with one piece of homework, an experiment, if you will, to align with Sprint and pivot. What's one thing that they can do today or this week? Maybe there was one of your favorite tips that I missed or just something surprising or counterintuitive that people not might not expect.

Yeah. So I'm tempted to give you two things, but. But you said one thing, so I'll choose one thing. We have.

You want. They could choose.

We have talked a lot about the idea of the highlights, so I won't belabor that. But that idea of every day just choosing a thing that is really important to you, that you want to make Time for it's not the only thing you'll do. It doesn't mean you're going to say no to everything else, but it unlocks a surprising amount of happiness and satisfaction with the day. But the one thing that we haven't talked about a lot that I will suggest and encourage people to try as an experiment is to think about the thing that is the most distracting to you, the thing that steals the most of your time, and find a way to get rid of it. Not forever, but if it's Instagram on your phone, try deleting the app. If it's Twitter on your computer, try logging out and changing your password. If it's the news, try using an app like Freedom to block your access to those websites and just try it for a couple days or try it for a week. And I think that that experiment, when combined with the daily practice of setting a highlight, will have an amazing effect on your perception of time, your energy level and the feeling that you have time for the things that are important to you.

I love it. So well said, John. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with all of us. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

Yeah, well, ironically people can find me on Twitter. That's probably the single best place to.

Guarantee that you're logged in from your phone. But that's okay.

That's right. You might have to wait a day before I see your tweet. My username is Jazzer J A Z E R but if you want more information on the book, it's maketimebook.com sprint is@thesprintbook.com and then our newsletter is Time Dorks. So timedorks.com and thank you very much for having me Jenny. This was a really fun chat.

Sure. I'm so happy we could finally connect and get to talk about both books and listeners if you haven't already. Well, Sprint is a must own, especially if you feel aligned with the Pivot concepts and definitely check out their new book make how to Focus on what Matters Every Day. John, you're a superstar. Congrats again on your recent Pivot, your current Pivot and thanks so much for taking the time.

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.