How To Get Sh*t Done Without Being Busy
All right, Shawn, 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 friends 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 could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Let's 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 are gonna do the most important or interesting thing to you right now. Not what you thought might be the most important thing. 2 weeks ago when somebody put something on your calendar? Because 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 2 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 clicked delete, delete, delete, delete. I just deleted everything. And I just said, well, I'm going to live an unscheduled life. Meaning if you want to call me, like 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 just 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 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 owl. And a sprint is roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours. You might schedule 3 hours because you're gonna putz around a little bit. You don't immediately just kind of get into the thing, but in reality, you're probably only gonna be productive for about 90 minutes and then you, you take a break. 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 wanna 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 calendar 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 90-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 to switch. I just need to switch of some kind or I'll walk. So going for a walk. So I basically have 3 venues I go to. Each has its 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 the Eames lounge chair. So 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, in this 90 minutes, and I kind of say it upfront, what I'm going to do is X, what I'm going to work on is X. But again, the calendar has tons of open space outside of those, let's say those 2 or 3 sprints on 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, you're a lot, 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 just ask 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 5 emails I got? Oh, I got to do that now. And that becomes this long checklist and all to-dos are not created equal. So I proactively try to 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 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 gotta actually do important shit that people are telling me to do.
Well, I think there's two ways to look at it. So the first is, are you, 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 you're a manager of projects, then more likely your schedule is going to tend towards that. However, I was a product manager. That was my job title. I had meetings I had to be in. I had one-on-ones. I had standup meetings. I had all that stuff that was like, you can't just be like, hey guys, I'm going to create some open space. Like, that wasn't going to 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 4 out of the 5 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 experimented. This is, 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 figure out, okay, it might not be able to be something I could just go full on 100% today, but 9 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 team that this is how I'm going to organize things. And I'm going to do only— I'm going to do all my meetings only on Mondays, and I'm going to leave the other 4 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 2 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, of course, 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'll tell you a 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, that's good.
Cool.
Show me your calendar. Where are your workouts? Where's your meal plan? Where, where is it? What, 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 going to do that when like 89% 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 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 2 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 3 most important, 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 going to need to put in new effort to get a new result. What are the top 3 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 during the day so I could just get it out the day, uh, get it out the way. So 7 AM exercising. Uh, the second one is trying to wrap up by 6. By 6 o'clock, and so making sure I get everything done by 6 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 3 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 at the tip of the tongue, if it's not at the front of your mind, it's pretty unlikely you're prioritizing it and doing it and 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, uh, misogi, and I was like, I'm obsessed with this idea of having like a really hard challenge. And the reason being is for like the last, so I had a kid 5 months ago and basically 3 months leading up to the kid and then the 5 months after you, I use, you, 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 kind of 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 like to do them quarterly. Because if I do 'em annually, then I found myself sleepwalking at month 6.
Yeah, you gotta shake yourself out of it. By default, you will go into autopilot. It's easier to be in 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 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—
wait, let me, 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 2 weeks and I'll be like, Sean, I need a reply on this. We have to make a decision.
It was important to you, not to me.
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 texts and you'll do so many of them. And I'll have put my phone down for 30 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 going to read all this, either good for you or I'm sorry it happened. Like, it's like, like, I'm like, There's so much information and there'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 can't read all this. Do you have your texts on and your Twitter DMs on and Slack and email on to where you're actually looking at it throughout the day?
Texts, I do get notifications for, not everything else though. So, so I, yeah, I definitely keep the notifications off for most things, 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 going to be either distracted or sidetracked by other people's priorities. One of the great quotes is about the news and I think Naval said this, he goes, the news's job is to make, you know, someone else's problem your problem. Like that's what they're trying to do. They're, 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 wanna give you a few quick hitters of like little phrases that have, 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 fall in that category.
I think that 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 to try to do something, right? And so I focus on effect, whereas I think most people focus on efficiency. I focus on figuring out what is the thing that, what is the lever even worth pulling? And I don't care if I'm that efficient with it. I might be inefficient. I might spend 3 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 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. That helps you because then you don't feel like you need to keep working more and more and more hours because 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. You know, it's really lame and I don't ever want to admit this, but I'm going to. Fucking Sahil Bloom inspired me to work out in the morning.
Did you see what he posted the other day?
He is, he's on YouTube now and I love Sahil, he's a dear friend of mine and I'm, but I'm always going to make fun of him because he's a pretty boy and he kind of like has He has everything. He's kind of like done good.
He's like, I love my family and I'm grateful. And we're like, bro, don't say that. That's— yeah, but yeah, don't say that thing, man. That's not cool.
And he's got abs and he's cool and whatever.
And you don't get to be handsome and happy, Sahil. It's not— that's not how life works.
Yeah, you can't have it all. However, his YouTube videos are so good, dude. He's the real deal. He gets up at 4 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'm trying to work out in the morning.
Not going to lie. His YouTube vlogs did that for me too, but it was actually one thing that pushed me over the edge. He tweeted something out that goes, he goes, I don't know any losers that work out first thing in the morning. It's so true.
It's so good.
Is there any loser who just wakes up and works out at 7 AM? I've never met him.
He said that on our podcast. It was on our pod that he said that. And 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 me 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 3 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 working?
I know it sucks.
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 30-minute Zoom calls and 30-minute Zoom calls become the default because it's like the, uh, it's like the atomic unit. That's like an acceptable, it's like an acceptable ask and it's an acceptable request to accept. Is, okay, I'll do a 30-minute Zoom call. But it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. It's like a death by a thousand 30-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 where it's just a one-off text. We're not even like texting all day. It's just, I'll text them one voice note or a random link or one, you know, three-word text about something that they did. And that's it. So I have a lot of text, quick, casual relationships. And he's 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 morning workout. Then I have this podcast. That's the only thing I had on my calendar today. Done with the workout by 8:45 and podcast at 9 AM. Now for the rest of the day, my calendar is clear.
Wait, dude, you only need 15 minutes between a workout and the— this is why Ari, he's late all the time, by the way. You only need 15 minutes. I cannot think. I need an hour of like 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 sometimes I'll work out so hard I want to throw up. I'm like, dude, I can't, like, I need to like decompress for a second.
Well, okay. I'm not that intense with that. I'm not like dead. I'm not like absolutely dead at the end of my workouts, but 15 minutes is more than enough to cool down for me.
Do you shower?
I don't shower between the work on the pod. No. Can you smell me?
I'm not like a clean freak, so I'm cool with that. I just get so uncomfortable. I'm just uncomfortable.
I'll shower after this. Anyways, the other thing I was going to 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 come to, like, I'm going to drive down to where you are and let's spend half a day together. I want to go for a walk. Let's talk. I was like, you're fascinating to me. And I want to make time to just go deep. Let's go hang and let's look. What do you like to do? You like squash? Let's play squash. I don't know anything about squash.
You want to go on a date?
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 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 30-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, in that. So I try to do that in about, uh, 1 or 2 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 acquaintanced 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 agreed 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 ignoring stuff, which could be a huge pain in the ass sometimes, but I actually think that it is more productive.
Look, I agree with you. There is a trade-off to everything. The trade-off of the unscheduled life is 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 going to 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 was a founder in my portfolio who emailed me and was like, hey, I'm in town. Um, want to get a coffee? And by the way, like, I would happily get a coffee with this guy. I like this guy, but I didn't even like think about it because that week, crazy, 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 or 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 that's a very you thing. That's a very you thing.
And there's collateral damage with that. He got pissed. He was like, dude, uh, or 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, would love to grab coffee. And he's like, not going to lie, bit of a turnoff that, you know, you know, our investor didn't want to get coffee. And I was like, I don't know. I mean, I agree that might be a turnoff for you, but you know, that might be a turnoff for you. 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. 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 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 struggle with this where people message me and 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 got to figure out what I'm going to reply with tomorrow. How am I going to get out of this?
Dude, it's— you know, 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 clearly has good intentions and blah, blah, blah. And you sort of salvage it. That's the only like saving grace.
No, dude. COVID was awesome. Getting, and then I got married. That was awesome. Having a kid, winning stuff. Yeah. Having a kid, freaking awesome.
Kids are like needles 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 25 years old and I had a job where I was the low man on the totem pole. I was a product manager. It can be done in any position. It's If it's important to you, go read The 4-Hour Workweek. If you don't believe me, it's like 4-Hour Workweek was around this principle 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. 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. And the third thing, which is, yes, it's a privilege to be able to do that. However, 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 24, 25, that it was important to me. I'm now 35 and it's manifested itself. It's self-actualized now.
So it took a decade. It probably took 8 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. I did. We, I think we answered, I think you answered the shit out of that question.
All right.
All right. Is that it? Is that the pod?
That's it. That's the pod.