How To Get Sh*t Done Without Being Busy

All right, Sean, you tweeted something that has made me incredibly envious of you. You said the joy of living an unscheduled life, and it kind of pissed me off because I want that. And I know that you got a lot of messages. One of our friend emailed you and said something like, dude, how on earth do you have this unscheduled life? And so I actually have the same question. I want to spend this episode actually asking you all about it. Tell me everything about this unscheduled life. I need to know how you can get so much done. By having nothing on your calendar. I feel like I can rule the world a no way

be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on the road, let's travel. Do a definition. So what is What do I mean when I say the unscheduled life? The unscheduled life, all it means is this. Today Or right now even, next hour, you were gonna do

The most important or interesting thing Treat you right now. Not What you thought might be the most important thing. Two weeks ago when somebody put something on your calendar.

'Cause that's how I used to live, right? I used to wake up. And look at what's on my calendar. And it's like Wait, wait, wait. Why is the calendar in charge? And where did this even come from? Oh, this is a meeting I agreed to two weeks ago. Or this is a recurring one on one with this person.

But it's not necessarily the thing that I actually think I should be investing my time and my energy into. It's not where my brain is. It's not what I have inspiration on. It's not the most important thing. So what I did was I just went to my calendar. And I just click delete, delete, delete, delete. I just deleted everything.

And I decided, Well, I'm gonna live an unscheduled life, meaning If you wanna call me, like the the text message I tweeted out yesterday. Somebody was like, dude, this is awesome. We were having a good text chat. And he's like, This is awesome. I would love to jam on this sometime, maybe next week. And I said, I'm free, call me right now. Because I'm in the moment. We're inspired by this right now. We're both agreeing that this is really interesting and we should explore if there's something here.

Well Why would we wait a week and let that you know, inspiration is perishable. It's like an avocado, it turns brown. What were you doing when they started texting you? I was at that moment I was Well, I was texting them, but uh but I in general I didn't have like a thing I had to do. I have

What I call blocks of time. So if you've ever read the Paul Graham post maker versus manager schedule, it's a kind of must read. For anybody who wants to build shit, anybody who's a creator of any kind, whether you're a content creator, you're you're an engineer, you're a product creator. Um You're a writer, whatever you do. Maker versus manager schedule is very important.

I'm able to live the unscheduled life because I'm not a manager anymore. I am not operational anymore. But that didn't happen by accident. I I made it so that I wouldn't be that way. And basically, if you look at a manager schedule versus a maker schedule, a manager schedule is what you described. It's a zebra calendar. Every 30 minutes, there's something. That thing is usually put on there by your assistant or by an employee or a partner or somebody else a sales call that gets booked on your calendar. And you just hop from thing to thing to thing and you're constantly switching and you're constantly doing And for me that was exhausting.

I didn't like it. And I didn't I felt busier than ever and less productive than ever. And I had to like shake it up. I read that blog post and I decided to make a change. And the maker schedule basically just says break your day into a couple of parts.

So you might have a morning sprint. An afternoon sprint or a nighttime sprint if you're like a creative night out. And a sprint is roughly Ninety minutes to two hours. You might schedule three hours because you're

puts around a little bit. You don't immediately just kind of get into the thing, but in reality, you're probably only going to be productive for about ninety minutes and then you You take a break. Um And you just work on the thing where you the thing that is the most interesting thing that's top of mind for you or the most important thing that you feel like you really want to throw your entire creative being into.

So that's what I do. And what that leaves is a bunch of free time. So when this guy was like, Hey, you know, we're talking and it's like this is interesting. I have a bunch of open space on the calorie that I can fill with whatever's the most interesting thing. In the moment. It's kind of like a Zen way of being present.

When you're doing that nine minute ninety minute sprint. What part of your home are you sitting in and who's around you? I have a place. I go to my special place. For me, that's my office. I also have just like this bedroom that I can go into if I'm like If I've been in the office, let's say

I just need a switch. I just need a switch of some kind, or I'll walk. So going for a walk. So I basically have three venues I go to, each has his own purpose. This office here. is like creativity. I got the whiteboard, I got the camera, I got my big monitor if I need to do something. That's a presentation or visual in some way.

I have the bedroom where I have a the Eames Lounge chair. So if I need if I'm doing reading. I'll go there and I set a timer. So like I will time box everything that I'm doing and I'll say great. And that's ninety minutes and I kind of say it up front, what I'm gonna do is X. What I'm gonna work on is X.

But again, the calendar has tons of open space outside of those, let's say those two or three sprints in the day, there's a bunch of other time. That can be family time, that could be exercise time, that could be take a call with somebody time, it could be Go out to lunch with somebody, it could be anything. And because you have that. Free time. Um

you're a you're able to actually get more stuff done even though your calendar looks less productive. Where are you so a lot of times people use and I do this too, I use my calendar as a to do list. So then where are you keeping your to dos? Or your ideas. I don't have a list. Um

I have Two things. I have The big thing, I call it my one big thing I'm doing today. And the question I ask myself in the morning is What's the one thing that if I the one outcome that I'm working on.

That if I just did that one thing, today would be A win. Part of my morning routine is I set that out. I I just asked that question. What is one thing that if I did, I wouldn't have to do anything else for this day to still be a win? Whereas what most people do is what are all the things I have to do today? Or

What's the last email last five emails I got? Oh, I gotta do that now. And that becomes this long checklist. And you know, all to do is not created equal. So I proactively figure out what's the one big thing. I set that out and then I do that thing and then anything else I do that day is gravy. What do you say to someone who who they're like, dude, I just like I have to do these things or I am not in I don't have the same job as you, Sean. Like I can't do I can't just

play around all day. I've got to actually do important shit that people are tell me to do. Well, I think there's two ways to look at it. So the first is Are you um Again, are you a manager? Are you an operator? Or are you

A creator builder. producer of some kind. If you're a manager of people Or your manager of projects. then more likely your schedule is gonna

Tend towards that. However, I was a product manager. That was my job title. I had s meetings I had to be in. I had one on ones. I had w stand up meetings. I had all that stuff that was like you can't just be like, Hey guys, I'm gonna create some open space. Like I wasn't gonna be an acceptable thing.

But Even then. I knew I wanted to move towards this. So the first thing is you decide. How do you want your life to be? And I decided I wanted my life to be this way. So what I did was

I first carved out a single day. I said, great. I can have as many meetings and I have a I can have a shitty calendar four out of the five days a week. But on Thursdays, that's my day. Thursdays I keep clear.

Thursdays are sacred. And I did it for one day. Then I was able to do Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then I was able to say, Okay, I'm so productive on the Tuesdays and Thursdays. This I I experimented. This is cr this is a good method for me. Now how do I get myself into a role where this could be my default work style?

And then you work towards that. You've set that agenda and you and you figure out, okay. It might not be able to be something I could just go full on hundred percent today. But nine months from now, I can work towards that and I could set it out and I could tell my boss and I could tell my my team that this is how I'm gonna organize things. And I'm gonna do only my I'm gonna do all my meetings only on Mondays and I'm gonna leave the other four days of the week clear for me to do whatever's the highest impact thing where I can roll up my sleeves and dive in. So somebody wants to let's say um

For one of your companies you're hiring someone or You have an important customer meeting that you have to go to and they say let's talk in two weeks. Do you say no to most things or do you do you book Far out.

All right. Look, if it's my company and it's revenue. I say yes. Right. If I'm if I'm the guy who does that, but I don't I don't put myself in that position. I'm not the sales guy in any of these companies anymore. Rarely, rarely are there meetings where it's like I need to be the guy who's there.

It's scheduled a month out and I say yes. But I do those. When it w of course. When it when the time comes you have to do it, you do it. It's just I don't default into that the way that most people do. I I'll tell you a little simple like thing. Have you ever heard the Charlie Munger thing where it says, Show me your incentives and I'll show you your outcome? Yeah, it's good. I have another version of that. Show me your Google Calendar and I'll show you your priorities.

Right, because people will say all kinds of shit. Oh yeah, this year I really care about getting in shape. Cool. Show me your calendar. Where are your workouts? Where's your meal plan? Where where is it? Wha what are you doing? Where where's the thing? Or

Oh, my goal is to really, you know, get this project off the ground. Awesome. How are you gonna do that when like eighty-nine percent of your calendar is filled with other crap? It's like show me your calendar and I'll tell you what your priorities are. It's a very, very simple test. You should sh take you should literally take a screenshot of your Google Calendar to show it to somebody and say, If all you saw was my next two weeks. What would you say?

is this person's priorities. What is this person going to accomplish if this is what their schedule looks like? What type of outcomes will they get in their life? And so, you know, I think that's a really important thing to internalize because then you say, All right. What's the alternative?

The alternative is this. Sam, if I said to you What are the top three most important th like priorities in your life. And not like the health of my family or like, you know.

That that not like that. I'm talking about like shifts or changes you're trying to make. Like things where you're gonna need some to put in New effort to get a new result. What are the top three kind of uh of those shifts you're trying to make in your life this year? Uh. Working out early in the morning as opposed to during the day. So I could just get out the day, uh get out the way. So seven A. exercising.

Uh the second one Is trying to wrap up by six. by six o'clock and so making sure I get everything done by six o'clock so I can be present with family. And then the third thing would be uh focusing on content because if I grow my audience, I can continue growing my company.

Okay, wonderful. Most people will not have the level of clarity you have. Like part of the reason you have the success you have is because you have that level of clarity. If you ask most people, what are the top three priorities change you know, shifts in your life that you're trying to make? It's not at the tip of the tongue. And

If it's not The tip of the tongue. If it's not at the front of your mind. Pretty unlikely you're prioritizing it and doing it. You're acting on it. You're revisiting it daily. The effort you would need to make to make a change in your life. Change is not so easy that it'll happen without you thinking about it. And I think it's normal to go through funks. Like the reason we talked about in this last episode m uh Misoji.

And I was like, I'm obsessed with this idea of having like a really hard challenge. And the reason being is for like glass, so I had a kid five months ago. And Basically three months leading up to the kid and then the five months after

You I you y uh you go through a period, at least I did, and many people go through different periods where you're kind of sleepwalking through life. Where you're just kinda like doing The same thing every day. You're being a little bit less purposeful. You're being a little bit more reactive. And I think that a lot of people, including myself at times, I sleepwalk through life and I just do whatever. And so it's nice to have those priorities where you like reflect. I I like to do them quarterly because if I do them annually, then I I I found myself sleepwalking at month six. Yeah, you gotta you gotta shake yourself out of it. By default, you will go into autopilot. It's easier to be an autopilot.

It's easier to not ask the hard questions of yourself of what actually matters and what am I doing? And do my priorities does my calendar match my priorities? And what the hell are my priorities anyways? And you know, am I am I living up to my word? Am I doing what I said I was gonna do? It's very like That's the effort part. It is much easier to not do that. Um So you know if

But let me ask you a question. You All right, you're weird. Because I'll

text you something important and I won't hear back for like two weeks and I'll be like, Sean, I need a reply on this. We have to make a decision. Well, uh but we have a close enough partnership that if it's important to me, a lot of times it should be important to you. And I'm like, dude, we have to just determine like this tax thing or Uh whatever. Or like I have to change schedules. Let me tell me yes or no. Um And then other times we'll we'll just Bring up a random topic. Like, wouldn't it be funny if we did X, Y, and Z? And you'll type

Such long text, and you'll do so many of them. And I'll have put my phone down for thirty minutes and I'll go and look at it and I'm like Dude, like What's that funny thing where it's like uh either I'm not gonna read all this, either good for you or I'm sorry it happened. Like it's like I'm like It is so much information and it'll be a group chat sometimes with me, you and a third party like Ben.

And you guys have already like had this massive brainstorm and made a decision. I'm like Oh, what the fuck? I don't I don't know I can't read all this. Um do you have your text on and your Twitter DMs on and Slack and email on to where you're actually looking at it? Throughout the day. Uh text I do get notifications for of not everything else though. Um

So So I yeah, I d I definitely keep the notifications off for most things. It's you know. Again, part of this philosophy is offense, not defense. How do I If something's important to me, I could throw my whole weight into it and I'm not gonna be either distracted or sidetracked by

other people's priorities. One of the great uh quotes is About the news and like I think Naval said this, he goes The news's job is to make Uh, you know, someone else's problem, your problem. Like that's what they're trying to do. They're to

You know, today in you know in Alameda there was a shoplifting at the grocery store and you're like, Oh my God It's like you don't live in Alameda, you weren't at the grocery store, it doesn't affect you, but the the job of the news is to sort of take this problem that's not yours and put it on your plate. And so I'm very conscious of that. I want to give you a few quick hitters of like

Little phrases. That are that are very helpful to me. In doing this. The first is Be effective, not efficient.

Most people who want to be productive, they think about efficiency. How do we get the most done in the least amount of time? Right. work per unit of time. I I fall in that category. I think the the problem is that it's easy to mistake motion with progress.

And just because you do something well or fast doesn't mean you Doesn't make that thing important. And so it is far more important to Just identify. What is the right thing for me to even spend my energy on?

And I might waste An hour. thinking about that thing before I even put my hands on the keyboard or try to do something, right? And so I focus on effect, whereas I think most people focus on efficiency. I focus at figuring out what is the thing that what is the leverage even worth pulling.

And I don't care if I'm that efficient with it. I might be inefficient. I might spend Three days on that thing. But as long as I picked the right thing, it was totally worth it. And I actually had to do less things overall. Because I didn't worry about getting the most amount of stuff. Done. Stuff is not my my goal.

Next thing you said something about working out the first thing in the morning. I think that's another great principle. The big thing is the first thing. most of us when we make a to do list, we sort of procrastinate the big thing and we'll use like small things to kind of get some momentum going before we actually like do the important thing. But what that means is like if you're honest about it, There are many days where you didn't actually spend enough time on the thing or you didn't even get around to it.

And so big thing first thing. It's just like a simple simple phrase you can repeat to yourself. All right, what's the big thing? That's my first thing today. Um that helps you because then You don't feel like you need to keep working more and more and more hours'cause you already got the Big thing done at the very beginning of your day. Yeah. Dude, it's so much better to do it in the morning.

Fucking Sahill Bloom inspired me to work out the possibility. He is he's on YouTube now and I love Sahill as a dear friend of mine. And I'm but I'm always gonna make fun of him because he's a pretty boy and he kinda like has he has everything. He's gotta like done. He's like I love my family and I'm grateful. And we're like, Bro, don't say that. That's yeah, but don't say that thing, man. That's not cool. And he's got abs and he's cool and whatever. You don't get to be handsome and happy, Sahil. It's not that's not a life worse. Yeah, you can't have it all. However, his YouTube videos are so good. Dude, he's the real deal. He gets up at four every morning.

And gets after it. And I watch these videos and I'm like I'm so soft. This is awesome. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm I I'm trying to work out in the morning. Not gonna lie, his YouTube vlogs did that for me too. But He tweeted something out that goes he goes

Uh huh. I don't know any losers that work out first thing in the morning. It's so it's so good. Is there any loser who just wakes up and works out at seven AM? I've never met him. He said that on our podcast. It was on our pod that he said that. And uh he said that. And like I'm sure there's some examples, but Dude, I felt so soft when he said that because I I'm not like that. Right.

So you know, but I did that. I looked at my calendar. I'm like, oh, the most important thing for this year is rewiring my habits to be the habits of a healthy person. Well, what are the habits of a healthy person? They wake up and they work out. That's a common habit. If I looked at my calendar, it's like Here's my workout sandwiched in between, you know, two things at three in the afternoon when it's most people's nap time. You know, it's like, Well, that's probably not the ideal time to do this. Why don't I just start waking up? Um I'll give you the last thing, last little last little tip of the unscheduled life.

What a lot of people do is They We're all looking for love, but we settle for connection. Meaning We all want awesome relationships with other people in our life. But we settle for thirty minute zoom calls.

And thirty minute zoom calls become the d default because it's like the uh It's like the the atomic unit that's like an acceptable It's like an acceptable ask and an it's an acceptable request to to accept is okay, I'll do a thirty minute zoom call. But it's like death by a thousand paper cuts, like a death by a thousand thirty minute zooms. It's like this is how most people are living with other people. So one shift I made, I got this from my buddy John Coogan.

is the barbell strategy. He's like, I have a lot of quick text messages with people. We're just a one off text. We're not even like texting all day. It's just I'll text on one voice note. Or a random link. Or one you know, th you know, three word text about something that they did. And that's it.

M a lot of text qu quick casual relationships as like and then I'll just go and spend the day with somebody. I'll like clear my calendar for all for the full day. And I'll go spend the day with them. Like for example, today My unscheduled life. I have this one podcast. That's the only thing. Oh, I have my w morning workout, then I have this podcast. That's the only thing

I had on my calendar today. Done with the workout by 845 and Podcast at nine a.m. Now for the rest of the day my calendar is clear. Wait, dude, you only need fifteen minutes between a workout and the This is why Ari he's late all the time, by the way. You only need fifteen minutes. I cannot think

I I need an hour of like a a grace period. I can't believe you do that. Do you really? What do you do for the hour? I just it like I'll well sometimes I'll work out so hard I wanna throw up. I'm like I dude I can't like I need to like decompress for a second. Well okay, I'm not that intense with it. I'm not like dead. I'm not like absolutely dead at the end of my workouts, but Uh fifteen minutes is more than enough to to cool down for me. Uh do you shower? I don't shower between the work but between the work on the pod now. Could you smell me? I'm not like a clean fresh. I'm cool with that. I just get so uncomfortable. I'm just uncomfortable. I'll shower after this. Anyways, the the other thing I was gonna say is

The rest of my day today, I met this guy, Luke, who was awesome. And I was like, Luke. Pick any afternoon that's free for you. I'd like to let's let's come to like I'm gonna drive down to where you are and let's spend half a day together. I wanna go for a walk. Let's talk. I was like, You're fascinating to me. And um I wanna make time to just go deep. Let's let's go hang and let's look what do you like do? You like squash? Let's play squash. I don't

I don't know anything about squash. You want to go on a date. You you want a date. Not a date. I want a half day. I want a full half day with you. If I could get the full day, I'd take the full day. But I just met this guy. And so I'm like, all right, he'll I it he'll do the half day. And so That's the barbell strategy. A bunch of lightweight text messages, but then Let's spend a full day, a weekend. Let me fly to you and let's hang out for the day and then I'll fly back. Like

Carve out time to go deep where You have a real experience with somebody and it Uh, you go deeper past the surface level, it's much better than the thirty minute zoom. And it sounds like something that's like a really expensive hang. But it's truly not once you eliminate all the 30 minute zooms that come in between, you know, what what you could do in that. So I try to do that in about uh one or two times a month.

And we'll wrap this part up, but you're you're kind of forgetting one thing and I think you're forgetting it because I think you are different than you're different than me. Uh, which is you're not bothered easily. And so For example I get I I turn off my Twitter DMs. I I

try not to get my phone number out anymore because I get overwhelmed. with inbound messages. Of just like people who I'm acquaintance with and they want to hang out. And I get so like burnt out of saying no. I feel I have immense guilt. Um You do something that I think you should fix, which is you agree to stuff and then forget that you agree to it. And so but but but that doesn't bother you. That really bothers me. So I just say no to everything. You're quite good at just ignore at ignoring stuff, which can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes, but I actually think that it is more productive.

Look. I agree with you, there's a there is a trade off to everything. The trade off of the unscheduled life. Is that that that's not compatible with other people who live a highly scheduled life. The trade off of the unscheduled life is that you're not gonna reply to every message that somebody else sent you where they feel they are owed a response, but it was not

You didn't ask for that. You didn't ask them to Email you something. There's a founder in my portfolio. Who emailed me and was like, Hey, I'm in town, um Wanna get a coffee?

And by the way, I I would happily get a copy with this guy. I like this guy, but I didn't even like think about it because that week craze my sister in law had a baby, my father in law had to go to the ER. Like that week was like a little bit nuts for us, and I was basically just like Watching the kids are at a hospital most of the week. But even if I wasn't Uh I still didn't feel even if I wasn't, I still didn't feel like just because you asked me something Means I have to comply.

This is not a It's not my religion. That's not the way I roll. But but that but that's a very you thing. That's very you think. And there's collateral damage with that. He got pissed. He was like, dude Uh no, I emailed him back. I was like, sorry, I was Like busy this week. Uh sounds like you're not in San Francisco anymore. Next time you're here, we'd love to grab coffee.

He's like, Not gonna lie. bit of a turn off that, you know, you know Our investor didn't want to get coffee. And I was like Uh. I don't know, I mean I I agree that might be a turn off for you.

But you know, that uh that might be a turnoff. That's a fair that's a fair thing to say. But I don't live my life that way, where I have to do all the things you want me to do or anybody wants me to do. And there's a lot of requests of things people want me to do. There is a trade off. There's a selfishness to it. I personally also feel that it's selfish for other people to have to to put make their priority your priority. I don't do that. I agree. I agree. I agree. But it's not practical.

Maybe it is practical, but it's a challenge. I I struggle with this where people message me and I I I'll go to bed at night being like, fuck, this guy texted me and he texted me at 10, so I can act like I'm sleeping, but I gotta figure out what I'm gonna reply with tomorrow. How I'm gonna get out of this. Did it be the only thing that saves you? Charisma. The only thing that could save you is charisma because it's like you're a bad boyfriend. It's like, oh, he's such a jerk, but then when he's here,

When I do talk to him. He's totally present. He he he he clearly has good intentions and blah blah blah and you sort of salvage it. That's the only like s saving crazy. No, dude. Covid was awesome. Getting and then I got married. That was awesome. I've had a kidding stuff.

Yeah. Having a kid, freaking awesome. Kids are like for your schedule. It's amazing. Yeah. All right. So let me say one last thing. Here's the disclaimer. The out of touch. That works for you, it wouldn't work for me, disclaimer. I already said this, but I started doing this when I was twenty five years old and I had a job where I was the low man of the total ball. I was a product manager. It can be done in any position. It's If it's important to you. Go read the four hour work week.

If you don't believe me, it's like four work week was was around this principle. Um of owning your time and using your time the way you want and delegating and automating and being remote and being free. to live your life the way that you want. Um the second thing is there are trade offs. They're real.

Some people don't like me, some people think I'm a flake, some people think I don't I'm not responsive. That bothers some people. I have to live with that trade off because I really appreciate the benefits that it gives me. Um and the third thing. Which is Yes, it's a privilege to be able to do that.

However. If If it's a lifestyle you want, then you should just work towards it. Right. So you should say, what type of job, what type of career, what type of financial independence would I need? in order to live that life and then you can decide for yourself if that's important or not.

I decided for myself when I was twenty four, twenty five that it was important to me. I'm now thirty five. And it's manifested itself. It's it's self actualized now. So it took a decade. It probably took eight years. It was a shift. It was a transition over time. And like again, like Learning how to learning how to do anything takes some you know some time, but that's fine. I think that's great.

Did we I think we answered I I think you answered the shit out of that question. All right. Alright, is that it? Is that the pod? That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can root Well I know. It be what I want to

I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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