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Thank you and enjoy the show. What's going on, Michael. How are things? How things have been? I'm honestly, really busy. It's kind of lame when when people say that, but, uh, yeah, that's how it's sometimes It's true, right? Yes. Well, no,

I I can definitely relate. I mean, there's tons of things going on here, too. With industry. Been working on this e book. We're rolling out soon for product collective and got some personal travel coming up. So yeah, I can relate. Yeah. So I guess we're both busy guys right now. Well, what if I were to tell you that I had a way to invent time and help you give ours back in your day so you can accomplish all the things that were coming up on your end? You're saying you can make time? That is exactly what I'm saying. Well,

I should clear for not me. I can't personally make time. But John's a rat's Keith can Now. John was one of the co authors of Sprint, which you might remember He helped Cork attack the whole design sprint framework at G ve. But more recently, he wrote this book. I'm with Jake Nap. Same guy. He wrote the book Sprint with the book is called Make Time and it's all about helping people become more productive. Okay, I take it you got the chat with John recently for the benefit of Rocket ship listeners, I sure did, and from the sounds of it should benefit the both of us to welcome to rocket ship. Rocket ship at them is produced in partnership with product Collective Way are your hosts Michael Sokka, and I'm like Belle Sito.

So you say John Zurawski can make time. Okay? It might not be like humanly possible toe actually make time, but with everything that John has learned about being productive, all the stuff about creating the whole design sprint process, working closely with the GV portfolio companies, he's seen what's worked best to help people actually get more time in their day back and ultimately be more productive, helping them focus on whatever it is that they want to focus on. Whether it's work, family, maybe some self care time.

I wrote this book with Jake Knapp, who I wrote Sprint With, and Jake and I worked together Google Ventures for about six years, where we developed the design sprint process together and ran more than 150 sprints with all sorts of different companies. And one of the reasons that we wanted to write this book is that we struggled with this stuff. I mean we still struggle with this stuff, you know, we are not. We have no superhuman powers of willpower or discipline or inability to resist all the distractions and all the things that keep us from doing what we really want to dio. I think you know those of view who work in technology, particularly working in large tech companies. You know that in many ways, that's kind of the epicenter of this fast paced, back to back meeting is always connected, always online type workplace culture, and it's not unique to tech. But I think in many ways,

because of the way that we embrace new technologies and new AFS and new tools, it's it's worse in tech companies. So we we felt those things working at Google and working at at YouTube, and we saw those problems would go in and work with companies who ventures portfolio. And so yeah, the book is is largely like a memoir of our experience, getting through those challenges and finding ways to make a little tweaks, little changes in how we plan our days so that we actually have time for the things that are important to us.

Rocketship listeners probably remember that we did an entire miniseries on the design sprint process that serious focused on A J and Smart and their work with the team at zero. But John Zaretsky and Jake Nap really originated the concept, and they wrote the book Sprint to highlight it. But they go from a book that helps people prototype ideas to a book about product activity, which, yes, it's something that benefits product people. But it's not specifically about product people. Did John talk about why the transition? You know why I didn't feel natural to him yet? He did. And you know, for me, I will say I was kind of surprised when I heard about make time originally, so I just would have thought their next book would have been about, I don't know, like design sprints 2.0,

you know, some sort of other helpful process for tech companies toe building, launch products. But when John explains it, it actually makes a lot more sense.

Sprint is obviously about the five day design sprint process, but I think one of the reasons that people have have enjoyed it so much, you know, maybe one of the reasons that you enjoyed it is that it? It gives people of formula or a recipe for wiping away the defaults of how work usually happens. So when you're in the office you've got, you know, things happen a certain way. All the meetings air 30 or 60 minutes long, you've got meetings kind of back to back. You've got e mail coming in. You're expected to stay on top of that e mail, instant messaging, whatever is going on. And with the design, sprint teams can can wipe all that away. And they can put in place a new set of defaults for a week where they can work together on a project that's really important to them,

a problem they've been trying to solve in the new book, Make Time is really an extension of that idea. So it's all about that idea of rethinking and resetting the defaults, about how we spend our time and how we think about our days, but for individuals and for every day, not just these special. Once in a while, things that we do like a design sprint. I think that that we find that when our days are times are sliced up And when we're being pulled in a lot of different directions, uh, it makes us feel like time is going by really quickly, which isn't a great feeling. Nobody likes to feel like time is flying by. We want to feel like we can hold on to it like there's things that are happening and things that we're doing that really feel good. But at the same time, when our days are sliced up like that,

we don't have the bandwidth to actually do the work that we're trying to. D'oh. So I remember having this feeling of like sometimes, you know, when I was working in a you know, an office job in tech companies adds feeling of getting to the end of the day and being done with my meetings and thinking, Okay, now I can get my work done, you know, now at the end of the workday, actually have the space and the time to focus on my work. And so one of the things that we hope people can do with make time and with the ideas in this book are to just start to rearrange their schedules a little bit to take back time from sort of that default mode of scheduling days, from the default ways that we interact with our phones and, you know, our our Web browsers and social media so that we have more space in our days that we have time for the things that matter, but also so that our perception of time slows

down. So this book, it's not just something that talks about these theoretical concept. It's prescriptive. It shares a process that people can actually go through in order to be more productive. Yeah, that's actually true. And it's broken up into four specific steps, and John highlights them

right here. The first step is proactively choosing a highlight. No matter what else happens, you can get to the end of day feeling like you made time for that one important thing. The second step is laser. It's all about beating distraction so that you can be laser focused on your highlight and really on everything else about reconfiguring technology, reconfiguring your environment so that it's more difficult to get distracted. It's not about willpower discipline. It's really about creating barriers to distraction. The third step is energized. It's all about recharging our brains. Using our bodies, so taking care of our bodies, it's difficult to make good use of our time. It's difficult to really just have a good day and feel like we're enjoying ourselves when we're tired when were worn down when we're, you know, feeling stressed out and frazzled. And then finally, the fourth step is to spend a couple of minutes every day thinking about what worked in terms of our time and our attention and our energy and what changes you might want to make for tomorrow.

I can see some of the similarities to this mindset, really being a product person, the idea of testing things, seeing how they work, experimenting and iterating the next day these air things that probably would come naturally to any product person. Yeah, for sure. But even still following these steps doing these things, it's probably not so easy, at least not at first. No, it absolutely takes time to practice and master this. In the beginning, there's probably gonna be some missteps for people, and John actually talks about some of these missteps and maybe other common ways that people sort of get off on the wrong foot. And one thing that came up specifically is about technology and how to think about it.

One thing that trips people up when they're trying thio reduced, distraction or take control of their time or make time for for things that are important is, um, the myth that smartphones are distracting because of notifications. I think that notifications can be pretty annoying, but I think that it's, uh I don't I think it's a sort of over statement that notifications are are the cause of distraction. The reason I believe that is you think about driving. You think about walking down the street and not well using your phone. But you think about doing something like that in an environment where you're being bombarded by noises, visual distractions and we as humans, we have the ability to know things out, to continue focusing on what we're doing. We're driving down the street, you've got cars all around, you got billboards, you've got something on the radio,

whatever you're doing. But we have the ability to block those things out and to focus on driving the car. And I think notifications are kind of like that. I think that that we we have the ability to to sort of ignore the sounds and the buzzing and on the the active attempts from our phone to steal our attention. What I think is much more dangerous and kind of insidious, because it's not where we initially start when we're trying to solve these problems, for ourselves is the sources of those notifications and those distractions. It's not the notification from Twitter telling you that there's some new tweets you wanna look at its twitter itself and don't get me wrong. I use Twitter and you know, I love Twitter. I used, you know, all of the, you know, this way. Call the infinity pool.

APS All of these distracting acts that have endless amounts of content, I use them. So I'm not. I'm not saying that we shouldn't use them, but I'm saying that if we want to focus on skimming our attention, if we want to be less distracted, I think we need to get to the root of the issue, which is doing something like removing Twitter or Instagram from our phones, not spending time working around the edges, tweaking the notifications and, you know, rearranging the home screen. So it looks really calming and you know, there's a lot of things that you could do that feel like you're getting at the problem. But I think you're really not. So So, uh, I think that's that is one place where I see people kind of in my opinion, you get focused on the wrong the wrong avenues, go down the wrong road in terms of trying to solve this problem.

Whoa. Removing Instagram from my phone. He's not saying that you have to. I mean, I even know that John uses Instagram and actually follow him. He's a pretty good follow, but removing it all together, it might actually solve the problem rather than just creating some sort of folder that you think is helping you avoid it. But really, you're just jumping through extra hoops that ultimately get there right? Right? Well, I'm curious about a steak on technology. We've talked a lot about this recently on the show, and I know that you and I stay connected through slack. Some of these platforms, like Slack and others promise, you know, helping people stay more productive. But then there's a lot of studies that say Do a really

every new platform every new tool that a team adopts is like taking on that, and that debt requires a payment. Ah, in the case of you know, the tools that we're talking about it requires a payment every every day or every hour. You know, um and And I like that analogy because that is not good or bad. You know, there, there, you know, as individuals or as businesses. We have good reasons for using financial debt, you know, allows us to make investments and buy things and pay for things that we wouldn't otherwise. But that can also be really dangerous. If you take on too much of it without getting the benefits of it,

then you're stuck making the payments. Um and so you know, I think, Ah, when teams pile on too many of these new tools and new platforms that are meant to make us more productive, sometimes it can have the opposite approach. My take on it is that we should use as few different platforms as possible. If that means, you know, Onley using slack for internal communication and using email purely for external. Um, maybe that's a good approach. If it means using, um you know something that you're already using, like Google spreadsheets, toe manage projects instead of taking on a new,

really fancy, complicated project management app. You know, maybe that helps, Um, I think that were sold on the best case scenario, but but very much like taking on debt. The reality is a little bit more complicated.

More minutes. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. It's definitely interesting to think about everything. New platform. We sign up for us taking on debt. And, yes, sometimes debt has that negative connotation. But is it really bad unless you're taking on too much? So it's something to consider before you decide to take on yet another new platform? Yes, for sure, although sometimes that decision of taking another platform, it's not really your decision to make That's true. That's true, especially at larger companies. These platforms that sometimes just handed down and you might not have much of a choice. Yes, and if you are at one of these companies and you're the one making decisions about new platforms for people to use to help everybody be more productive, well, John has a message

for you. I also think it's interesting when you when you think about the role of leadership management in an organization, because the decisions that those people make have sort of an asymmetric effect on the way that everybody else uses their time. So a relatively simple, small decision by an executive sort of ripples out into creating huge effects on all the people that they work with. And so you know, particularly as we're talking about adding new new tools for communicating or for collaborating If an executive says, you know, Hey, I heard about this new thing, we should try it. That's a relatively small decision for them, but that's a big deal for the people that they work with. So I think if we can look at these decisions through that lens, not just of us as individuals, but as how our choices affect everybody that we work with. Um, it just forces us to slow down and be a little bit more thoughtful.

Okay, so what about ideas on how to get started? Did John talk about how people should, you know, organize their day? For instance, Yes. Although it's not really a one size fits all type answer

it is a personal thing for sure. Uh, different people have different times of day when they feel like they have the most energy. They feel like they can really concentrate on something that's important. Ah, for me and for really a lot of people. The morning is when we have the most energy it mind if you want right when we wake up, but just kind of statistically, you know, if you're looking at people in general, the morning people tend to have more energy than in the afternoon or in the evening. So I think it's, um if there are activities that require energy, whether it's making something or whether it's engaged, engaging in a some sort of learning activity that really challenges us, that really requires that we pay attention so that we can learn and grow. We should try to align those things when the with the part of the day when we have the most energy.

On the other hand, the things that don't require a ton of energy, like answering e mails and going to meetings and taking care of errands, stuff like that, we can push those to the end of the day, we can push those two times when we feel like we don't have energy When you know we're a little tired out. We're a little worn, worn down, and and maybe, uh, maybe if we weren't doing something, we would kind of sit there and zone out and stare in our phone for half an hour. But if you can instead answer a few emails, you can you can run an errand. You can, you know,

clean something up. You can just kind of take care of something that needs to happen. Anyway, um, that could be a really nice time to both Keep yourself from reinforcing that sort of addictive distraction loop, but also feel like you've made time for the things that are that are most important.

Any other specific ideas that John offered up? Well, there was something that came up in the conversation. You know, when you take a look at your calendar, you're likely to see all these blocks of time that other people have basically hijacked from you. You know, maybe they sent your meeting requests. You get invited tojoin this and that, um that could be from your team members. Your boss clients Yeah, yeah, I know it comes with the territory, but sometimes it can be draining. Yes, Well, what if you black the time yourself first so that they couldn't go on

his idea of blocking time on your calendar way actually, write about in the book. It's something that's that I learned from a manager of mine. When I was at Google, I was U ex designer, working on on advertising products on my manager. He had this this crazy calendar. He was back to back. He was running around your typical sort of corporate manager type stuff where is just always in meetings, but, uh but I noticed on his calendar because Google probably see other people's calendars. I noticed the scheduled time with himself every morning, Uh, and and so I asked him about it. It was like, Well, that's my time.

That's when I get up early. I go to the gym, I come into the office and I actually work on the projects that require my deep attention focus before the rest of the day sort of takes over before those defaults, and I asked him about that. I said, Well, you know, you've got this It's almost a target. You know, you've got this 34 hour block on your calendar. Everybody wants to be on your calendar what you do. And he says, I just told people I already have plans. You know? I just say, Look,

I'm busy During that time we find another 20 way right about that idea and that tactic book because it can work really well. That's an example of how well I have been talking to a few friends who work a TTE, a different tech companies who have basically agreed as a team that they're gonna have certain days when they don't have meetings or certain times of days when they don't have have meetings and then other days due on. And it seems that the pattern that I'm seeing is that it works really well. When it's a small team or a self a part of a team, it probably works less well as an entire company. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense for you, even if it's just 50 people, but especially if it's larger to say no way have no meaning. Wednesdays here, whatever, because I think that the more people you try to impose. Impose that policy on, the more likely you are to run up against one of the realities of the video psychotic features of what their job is and why they might actually need to have meetings on that day, depending what they're working. So I would say Do it as a small team.

Agree on three as a team on the specific days and times that you want a block. And then probably the most important of all is that you have support and buying from, uh, from your manager from your decision maker, because, like I mentioned earlier people who are in these decision making positions, the choices that they make affect the ways that all of us use our time. So if we have no meeting Wednesday, but the one time that the boss wants to have a recurring meeting is on Wednesday morning, there goes their coast, the policy, So there's a kind of the ingredients that I've seen. The short answer is, I think it's a great idea. Your answer is, I think you have to be a few ingredients to make it work.

Well, I've got to say I'm definitely intrigued by all this, and it may not be specific to just product people in entrepreneurs. But making time is definitely on the short list of pain points for these groups, that's for sure. Yes. And I can't wait to chat more with John all about this Pretty soon. Yeah. When? Well, remember, John is gonna be joining us at this year's industry in September, so he's actually kicking the conference off with the talk. And he's also doing a full day design sprint workshop the day before the conference starts. Oh, how How do we get involved in that? Well,

you can check it out. It's Ah, you could just go to industry conference dot com. There's a little link that will show you the workshops. And there's other workshops to from the people we've heard on the show like Bob Mesta and Rich Mironov. But yeah, should be pretty awesome. That sounds also I might even join that one. You should You totally should. Well, um, how are you doing with everything, anyway? Well, things are busy. Of course they are.

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