Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital)

Jake Knapp (00:00:00):
It's not really about productivity, it's not about time management. It's really just about, look, at any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention and we use it well. And it's not going to happen every day, but if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not. The notion with the highlight is imagine it's the end of the day if someone asks you, "What was the highlight of your day," what would you say? That's the anchor of everything. That's the core, that's the foundation. Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that, and you still feel really good about your days. You still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy.

Lenny (00:00:37):
Today, I've got two guests, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. Jake and John are authors of two incredible books, Sprint and Make Time. With Sprint, they've helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including teams at YouTube, Slack, Gusto and One Medical. Previously, John and Jake worked at Google Ventures, and before that, at Google, where John was a leader on Google Ads and YouTube. And Jake helped build Gmail and co-founded Google Meet. Today, they run a venture capital firm called Character, and they actually just opened up applications for their accelerator program called Character Labs, which you can learn more about at character.vc/labs.

(00:01:16):
In our conversation, we focus on their more recent book, Make Time, which a guest of this podcast, Ben Williams, recommended in the lightning round, and I absolutely loved and wanted to make sure more people learned about it and the advice within it, especially product leaders and founders who are constantly looking for ways to be more productive. I want to get you right to the meat of the conversation. So, let me just say that we get into a ton of very practical pieces of advice for how you can be more productive in your day, and if you listen to this episode, I guarantee you'll find at least three things that you'll want to start doing differently starting tomorrow. With that, I bring you Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky after a short word from our sponsors.

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(00:04:13):
Jake and John, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Jake Knapp (00:04:17):
Thanks for having us. We're so stoked to be here.

Lenny (00:04:20):
I was just re-listening to the audiobook of Make Time to prep for this conversation. And I feel like I kind of know you guys from listening to your voice for so long in the car, and it's a little surreal to be talking to you guys.

John Zeratsky (00:04:31):
That was really fun to record. And while we were doing it, we kept saying to each other, it was like we were recording the world's longest podcast.

Jake Knapp (00:04:39):
That's what it felt like.

Lenny (00:04:41):
Actually, on that, how long does it take to record audiobook? I've always been curious. How much time does that-

Jake Knapp (00:04:45):
Well, it takes twice as long as it should have because my stomach kept growling and the microphone would pick it up. And so, John would do a perfect take and we're both sitting in the little room together and the engineer was in the other room and he'd be like, "You got to do it again. You got to do it again. The guy's stomach keeps growling."

John Zeratsky (00:05:07):
I think it took two days, right?

Jake Knapp (00:05:09):
Yeah, I think it was two days. Yeah, and I think actually they thought it would take two days, so I don't think my stomach slowed us down too much.

Lenny (00:05:16):
That is not as long as I thought. I thought it was a month of recording and such a painful experience. Sounds like not so bad.

John Zeratsky (00:05:21):
No, honestly, it was really fun. I mean it's weird, but it's just like, I don't know, you can get into this very intense zone where you're singularly focused, right? There's nothing else that you need to do or should do, so it's just like read, drink tea, read, break for lunch, read, drink tea. It's just like this really satisfying flow.

Lenny (00:05:45):
That sounds like a great few days.

Jake Knapp (00:05:47):
Yeah, I think it was really fun doing it together too. I think it would've been harder to do... I mean obviously people do it and I think they like doing it on their own, but we've been working together for so long, it's always more enjoyable when we get to do something together. So, that made it cool.

Lenny (00:06:02):
Amazing. I want to do an audiobook now. That sounds like a lot of fun. So, to start diving into our conversation, so you guys wrote this very seminal book called Sprint, which we're going to talk about. But you also wrote this other book that I have right here called Make Time, that to me was even more powerful and I think it might be even more powerful in people's lives than Sprint. And I think it's one of the most interesting and most fun productivity books out there. My wife actually grabbed the book from my desk the past week as I've been prepping for this, and just started highlighting it. You could see all these highlights in here. She just goes-

John Zeratsky (00:06:36):
Awesome.

Jake Knapp (00:06:37):
Oh, that's so cool.

Lenny (00:06:38):
[inaudible 00:06:38] I want to be more productive. Also, a guest on the podcast introduced me to the book. At the end of the podcast, I'll ask you this too, but I ask people, what book do they recommend most to other people? And he mentioned this book, and so that's how I uncovered it. So, it all comes full circle.

Jake Knapp (00:06:49):
That's so cool.

Lenny (00:06:50):
So, I thought we'd start with Make Time and then get to Sprint in the second half of the conversation. First question is just what do most people get wrong when they're trying to become more productive?

Jake Knapp (00:07:01):
To set the answer up, I'll give you a super brief history of Make Time. And for over a decade, John and I have been, in quotes, designing time as part of our work with startups, helping them find or expand product market fit. So, we developed a design sprint at Google Ventures, which the Sprint book is about. And now, we run this venture fund of our own called Character. And we run these highly-structured sprints with companies. And when we're doing that, we get to control how everything happens. We get to change the defaults of the way the workday happens, of what happens sort of hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, how people are using technology, how people are interacting with each other. All those things are sort of under our control because we're trying to achieve these big goals in a really short period of time. Everybody focused.

(00:07:53):
So, as this stuff was going on, John and I started applying some of the lessons, the things that we found were working really well in those structured sprints. We started experimenting with applying those in our own day-to-day lives, and we found that some of those things were super effective and they were a bit counter to the way we'd sort of heard or learned about productivity. And there's all kinds of habit books and productivity hacks out there. And I think John and I have probably tried most of them, if not all of them. But it seems like 99% of the people who follow those things are still feeling overwhelmed, they're still stressed out all the time anyway.

(00:08:33):
So, even though we are not productivity gurus, this hasn't been like this thing we were doing forever, it's not our full-time job, but we thought we want to share this framework. So, Make Time, the book and the blog that proceeded it was just kind this side project to share what we learned. And yeah, it seems like it is resonated with a bunch of people. There's this kind of steady stream of interest in looking at these things a different way.

Lenny (00:09:00):
I love it. I love that it emerged out of the sprint concept. I know you talked about the book, but I forgot that and these are all very related. I also love that a lot of the best stuff comes from people actually doing the thing. This came from, "I just have discovered all these little things and I'm just going to share it." Not just like, "I need to write a productivity book."

John Zeratsky (00:09:16):
Yeah, I think, like Jake said, we both had always sort of been dissatisfied with the state of the productivity art, and we had big things we wanted to do. I mean, when you work in any kind of job, I mean we've both spent our early careers as designers and the job is really all about doing big projects. It's all about being able to focus, being able to spend time on the things that matter. And that's to say nothing of what we want outside of work, things that we want to learn how to do personally, people we want to spend time with. And it's interesting, we've found that when we talk to people about Make Time, they always know. They always know what they want to make time for. The problem is not like what should my goal be or how should I figure out what to do with my life? They usually know, but it's very hard to actually make time for those things.

(00:10:16):
And I think the problem is that most productivity advice focuses on getting better and faster about doing the things that are already in front of you. So, the messages that are in your inbox, the meetings that are on your calendar, a lot of focus on efficiency, like crank through that stuff. Our perspective is basically that those are the defaults. Just like our software that we use, apps that we use have defaults, those are the defaults of life, of the companies that we work in, the culture that we live in. And so, the solution is actually to change those defaults and to really flip this way of thinking on its head. So, it's not about how do I go faster? How do I get more efficient? It's about how do I put the thing that is the most important first in my day or in my life, and then build everything else around that and accept that you're going to need to do a bunch of those little things. You're going to need to answer those messages and go to those meetings, but really, start with the idea of what's most important to you? What do you actually want to make time for?

Lenny (00:11:25):
Along these same lines, we're going to talk about this kind of four-part strategy that you recommend, but a couple of things before we get into there. One is along the lines you just talked about is this insight that you had of just like willpower is never going to be enough to get you to make time for the things you want to do. And you had these two concepts of busy bandwagon and infinity pools, so maybe just talk about those two briefly.

Jake Knapp (00:11:47):
The idea of the busy bandwagon is just this expectation that everybody's busy. And in the United States, there's kind of this thing that I think if you travel abroad and talk to people for a while, then you come back, you'll notice, which is like if you ask someone, "Hey, how's it going? What are you up to?" And they'll be like, "Oh man, I'm busy." It's kind of the default answer. "I'm busy. Things are busy." And it means, usually, it could mean a variety of things, but usually it's good. Like, "Oh, it's busy, so business is booming," or, "It's busy, I'm overwhelmed," or whatever. But busy, it's kind of the expectations that everybody's busy. And we are, I mean we are busy, but we call it the busy bandwagon because it feels like you should be busy. And it's this inner feeling caused by what we see or perceive other people are doing that drives a lot of the stress. And I don't mean to sound like I'm above it all and have figured it all out. It still drives my stress, this inner feeling that other people haven't figured out, other people are expecting fast reactions from me, all this. That's the busy bandwagon, this sort of feeling that I should be busy, that everyone else is busy. And what that does inside of us is really the core of what we have to change and figure out, this getting out of a reaction mode. The other thing that happens to us are the infinity pools. And John, do you want to describe what infinity pools are in our context?

John Zeratsky (00:13:14):
Yeah, we came up with this name because we were trying to think of endlessly replenishing fount of content. So, basically if you can pull to refresh or if it streams, it's an infinity pool. So, this is pure entertainment stuff. This is stuff that people say like, "Oh, I spend so much time on Instagram," but it's also stuff that's important and necessary and productive. Email is a huge infinity pool and it's probably the single hardest thing for the two of us to control and avoid getting sucked into. And anybody listening to this is going to, I think, understand how powerful those pools are and how effectively designed and engineered those products are to be really compelling and to be friction-free and to just make it easy for us to dive back into that pool.

(00:14:15):
And so, when you put these two things together, the busy bandwagon and the infinity pool, you kind of have this, it's like a flywheel, but bad. You feel like you really need to be busy, you really need to be on top of everything. And then, you've got this whole collection of apps and services and products there that are ready to pounce on that, they're ready to take advantage of that set of defaults, that cultural and internal set of defaults that you have about what you should be doing. And for a lot of people, it just sort of spins out of control. So, our view is if you can name those two things, if you can understand those two things, then you can start to deliberately change some of the defaults around them, so that you can put your most important projects, people, work first, like we talked about.

Lenny (00:15:04):
I'm guilty of both these things. I feel like the reason I do some of these chats, this one in particular is it's like one-on-one coaching almost. This is going to help me stick to some of the things you teach. And I've already actually implemented a number of the things you recommend, but this is reinforcing it. And then, obviously, also helping all the listeners get better at these things. Before we get into it, one last question is just like real talk, how how's your guys' productivity? You wrote this book, it sounds amazing. There's 87 I think pieces of advice. How is it going for you guys? As we go through, I want to hear what you're actually using, but just broadly, how's your productivity?

Jake Knapp (00:15:40):
At the top of the interview, Lenny, you asked, "What do most people get wrong when they think about this productivity, time management, whatever?" And I'll frame my answer in those terms. So, most people, I think they try to get better and faster at doing what's right in front of them. We don't change the defaults in our environment, so we can focus and spend time on these different more important things. And if you think of that sort of what do I want to do? What's my goal? What do I want to spend time on that John referred to as project A, generally the things we want to do, these project A things, they're big, they're not easy to start, they're slow to create, dopamine hits, they're non-urgent. Like boss is not asking for them if you have a boss. And generally, the tasks and activities that stand in our way that keep us from doing project A, they're small, they're medium size, it's obvious how to start them, they create dopamine right away, they're supposedly urgent, email meetings, TikTok, Instagram, news, what's on your OKRs, all these things.

(00:16:47):
And I know what's on your OKRs may not sound like it's a peer of those others, but in a way it really can be. So, these big things, they're at odds with these little things that get in the way that the busy bandwagon expects us to do, these things that have infinity pools built in. And so for me, right now, it's a constant battle between the Jake and the busy bandwagon and my inner feeling of how can I live up to people's expectations of me and respond in the way that I should and react in the way that I should? And then, how can I do the project A stuff, the big important stuff? A lot has changed in my life since we wrote the book.

(00:17:28):
The summary is every few months I need a few new experiments. I have found in what has been some trying times that the tactics and the framework that we use... Because it's kind of simple and it sort of fits with these experiences that I've had for many years doing sprints, that it works. And that if I can go back to that, that if I can create space for it, if I can think about this as it's a series of experiments, if I can look at myself with curiosity and say, "Why are things not working out?" And then try to experiment my way out of it that I'm able to. But yeah, so at any given point in time, I probably give myself a B to B-, and sometimes it's a C and sometimes it's a D, and sometimes it's an A, and I'm really plugging away, but it's totally an ongoing challenge.

(00:18:22):
So, I'm not going to sit here and say, yeah, just follow me with a drone for 48 hours and you'll think that's exactly how you should do things. But part of our philosophy, I think that part of the way I look at it is it can be a mess. And yet, if you can create the space for those project A moments, for your highlights, that can shape everything else, if you just have those moments. Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that and you still feel really good about your days, you still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy.

John Zeratsky (00:18:56):
And having a framework for it gives you a path back. If you're just stuck and you're looking... You're sort of grasping for hacks. You're sort of like, "Oh, I read this blog post about this thing, I'll try it." That might have some short-term effect, but ultimately, you're probably not going to stick to it. You're probably going to fall back into that place of overwhelm and disappointment and burnout. But we find that if you have a system, that you can use the system and you can return to it and continue to build on and experiment, that you can make more sustainable progress on these things.

Lenny (00:19:33):
I think a really important takeaway from these two stories you guys just shared is you don't have to do all of these things. You don't even have to do most of them. If you just do one or two, if you find one or two things that can make you a little bit more productive every day, that makes a huge dent. And so, I think it's okay to feel like, "Oh, I tried this stuff. It didn't work." I think as long as you take a couple of things away today that might be useful to you, and then just try them again in the future. If they end up not working out. Like you delete an app and then you reinstall it, I think that's okay. So, I think that's an important takeaway from this is don't feel like you're failing if you're not doing all of the things that we're talking about today.

(00:20:10):
But let's get into it. There's this kind of four-part framework for how to help yourself be more productive. Basically, if you could just give an overview and then we'll just talk about each of these steps one by one. So, the four parts are create a highlight, laser, energize, and reflect. So, I'll turn it over to you guys just broadly, and then let's go through each of these one by one.

Jake Knapp (00:20:30):
It all starts with this notion of a highlight. And highlight is, I hate to say this, it's the most powerful best part, I think of the whole process. And I hate to say that because John came up with it. It wasn't even me. But I have to admit, it's really good. And I think as folks have read the book and shared it, that's the thing we hear back from people. If you could just do one thing from this book and try this out, it's a big deal.

(00:20:54):
The notion what the highlight is, start your day out and you imagine it's the end of the day, you're looking back on the day. If someone asked you, "What was the highlight of your day," what would you say? What do you want to say at the end of today was the highlight of today? And you start there, just like, "Okay, what would I like to say the highlight of the day was?" And you might think about what's urgent. Sometimes the highlight is this thing that really has to happen today. Today is the day there's a big meeting, or there's this thing I absolutely have to get done for work for tomorrow. That could be your highlight and getting that done well, having good attention to that will be very satisfying.

(00:21:37):
But a lot of times the highlight comes from joy or satisfaction, projects that wouldn't otherwise get attention. And it also doesn't have to just be something at work. It could be people in your life that you want to spend time with, a hobby that you want to spend time on. If you want to get better at Mario Kart, having a good session at Mario Kart, whatever might be the highlight of your day. The notion is just in the morning to think, "What is it and what is that highlight going to be?" And then, try to find a block that's 60 to 90 minutes. That's just usually the rough time we think it takes to really get in the zone on something, do a really excellent job, be totally focused on it. So, that highlight, that's the anchor of everything. That's the core, that's the foundation. And you start that way, you're now trying to shape your time around that highlight, and making sure that you have your peak energy, your peak attention when the time for that highlight comes around.

(00:22:37):
So, laser is about the tactics you might need to actually focus on that thing. In highlight, we have a set of tactics for how to create and think about and frame that highlight. Laser, we have a set of tactics for how do you pay attention when that time comes? Then for energize, it's about having the right amount of energy to do the thing, to pay attention. My highlight for today is trying to be coherent in this podcast, so this morning I need to think about what's the best way for me to have peak energy when a podcast starts.

Lenny (00:23:08):
That's my highlight too, actually. I have [inaudible 00:23:10].

Jake Knapp (00:23:10):
Oh, good. Right on. Okay.

Lenny (00:23:11):
Record a great podcast episode.

Jake Knapp (00:23:14):
Excellent, excellent. Okay. Yeah. And if you're not watching on video, Lenny had a sticky note and he wrote it down. So, that's actually literally the best way to do this is write it down on a sticky note, put it somewhere where you can see it. And so, you've got highlight, laser during the time of the highlight, energize, make sure you have the energy you need when the time comes. And these are just tactics around sleep and food and exercise, and just things that help with your mental energy, not crazy stuff. And then the final thing is reflect, and this is where we think about this as the scientific method. Did it work? Did what I tried today work out? And if not, just being curious about it, what didn't? And adjusting and trying to think, "Okay, maybe there's another tactic I can try."

(00:23:54):
So, the book is like... What are there like 87 tactics in the book? There's a lot of different approaches, but the expectation is not you're going to use all of them. And the expectation is not that-

Jake Knapp (00:24:00):
... expectation is not you're going to use all of them. And the expectation is not that all of them will work for each person. I use different tactics than John does, and some of his don't work for me, and vice versa. But that idea of centering on a thing, focusing on it, having tactics for that, having tactics for energy, and then having some tactics to reflect and reframe and be curious. That taken together, we find, just can reframe the way it feels. It's not really about productivity. It's not about time management. It's really just about, look, in any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention, and we use it well. And it's not going to happen every day, but if we have some intention around it, it can happen more often than not.

Lenny (00:24:47):
I think that last point is so important and why the highlight works so well for me is usually there's... You don't get anything amazingly done in a day, often. And usually, you're just distracted by all these things, and you're doing all the easy stuff. You talked about this idea of Project A, like here's the thing I really want to get done, but the dopamine hit us so far in the future, and it's so hard. And so, the reason I think the highlight is so powerful is, you get one thing done you're proud of, that is a great day. And it may sound crazy that that's true, but it's so true.

Jake Knapp (00:25:14):
Yeah, totally.

Lenny (00:25:17):
So, I want to talk more in depth about each of these four things, and maybe spend the most time on the highlight and the laser because I think that's where most of the impact comes from.

(00:25:25):
So, with the highlight, do you have any advice? You shared a couple examples of how to come up with like, "Here's the thing to pick for the day." There's a few questions that you recommend, and I think you shared a couple of them. And then, are there any examples of highlights from your guys', I don't know, past couple of weeks that would be good for people to hear an example? And then, also, there's this calendar component, which maybe fits into the laser, but I guess that feels like a really important element of this. So, if you just talk about that?

John Zeratsky (00:25:51):
For me, and again, this is where the framework is intentionally flexible, different people have different highlights. But for me, I am very project oriented. I'm very work oriented. And for me, most days, a really good day comes from having made progress on something that is really important to me. So, my highlights are usually focused work, creative work related. And this has become even more important since we started our own VC firm three years ago. And before that, I was sort of, I guess, more or less a writer, full-time writing, and speaking at events, and doing some consulting. And before that, I was a partner at Google Ventures, at GV, and before that I was a product designer. So, I've been through different modes and contexts in my career. But if you know any VCs, if you're listening to this and you know any VCs, they're probably the busiest, most frazzled people that you know who are constantly on email, constantly in Zoom calls and meetings, and on airplanes all the time.

(00:27:08):
And so, the natural environment of that work is the busy bandwagon, and it's to have a lot of infinity pools that you need to care about. And so, in that context, in order for us to make progress on projects, in order for us to move the ball on a launch related to this program, Character Labs, that we run with pre-seed founders that's coming up, or we're writing a new book, and that's a big project, or working with one of our portfolio companies and running a sprint with them, or writing a newsletter that goes out to our LPs, those things are all really important, and I feel like they give us a unique edge as a VC firm.

(00:27:55):
If we accept the premise I said before, that most VCs are just sort of frantically running around, if we can take these bigger swings at things, then theoretically, they should really help us be successful. So, most of the time, it's all a very long way of saying that most of the time my highlights are like, "What do I want to accomplish at work? What is the thing that I want to get done today?"

(00:28:18):
And so, what I do then is, I structure my calendar around making time for that. There's a tactic in the book called Design Your Day that is really about kind of drawing out your day, and using your calendar as a canvas where you can design how you want to spend your time rather than using your calendar as a thing that is done to you, a thing that tells you what you have to do. Reclaim control over that.

(00:28:48):
And so, most days, the first half of the day before lunch is my focus time, and I protect that very, very intensely, and then use that time to work on whatever my highlight is.

Lenny (00:29:06):
We had a previous guest on, Neer Eyal, also talking about productivity, and he had actually the same advice of just using your calendar as your to-do list, basically, because that's where time's going to go, what your calendar's telling you to do. So, I think there's a pattern here that I think people need to pay attention to.

John Zeratsky (00:29:22):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I mean, we take it even further, and we have sort of a calendar template that we use as a team. So, we have certain times of the week. And it's not exactly the same for all of us on the team, but there are certain times of the week where it's like, yeah, this is when we do these kinds of things. This is when we have these kinds of meetings.

(00:29:43):
And not to say that those are all standing meetings, although we have some of those as well, but these are kind of the content buckets in the template that we can fill with a specific type of activity, but then other parts of the template are sort of reserved for focus work, reserved for individual, solo time to work on things that we need to get done.

(00:30:03):
So, yeah. I think the calendar is, at an individual level and especially at a team level, is this really powerful tool that most people just kind of... Not only do they not use it as a tool, they just sort of hate it. They're sort of like, "Ugh, my calendar, it's a mess. If I could live without a calendar, that would be the dream." But I think if you can use some of these tactics or use other approaches to reclaim it, and use it proactively as a tool for yourself, it can really help you structure your time around the things that you care about.

Lenny (00:30:41):
Yeah. The way I've been starting to use my calendar is this way, exactly, is I try to prepare for work on next week's newsletter post for like an hour and a half, then prep for the podcast coming up in a few weeks. So, it's very specific and broken up.

(00:30:55):
Along those lines, I often don't do these things as I planned. And one of your principles, something around Groundhog Day, it's okay to repeat it if you didn't do it. If you highlight you didn't do, just repeat it again and again until you do it. Right?

Jake Knapp (00:31:09):
I think that what's so cool about this notion of Groundhog Day. And if you've seen the movie... Well, if you haven't seen the movie, see the movie. What a great movie.

Lenny (00:31:09):
It was a good movie.

Jake Knapp (00:31:15):
If you've seen the movie, you know it's like, not to give it away, but he gets better and better at doing the day, and that's kind of this core philosophy that we take on.

(00:31:30):
I think a lot of the time, when in the past I have thought about, "How can I be effective with my time? How can I be productive?" It's beating myself up. It's not a good feeling to be in that head space of like, "I'm screwing up. What can I fix?"

(00:31:49):
And this notion that it's like, you're going to have another chance, you're going to have another chance. "It's okay, just try again, just be curious about what happened," is a big deal. And starting with the calendar, using the calendar as a framework for saying, "Hey, here's what actually happened. Here's what I think is going to happen." That's what you're saying when you do this Design your Day tactic.

(00:32:12):
And I did this exercise earlier this week. I was switching to a new calendar thing, and trying some new features with... We invest in this company called Reclaim, and they do this stuff-

Lenny (00:32:26):
I'm an investor in Reclaim also.

Jake Knapp (00:32:27):
Oh, well.

Lenny (00:32:28):
How about that? Not planned, this promotion.

Jake Knapp (00:32:33):
Yeah, little [inaudible 00:32:36] there.

John Zeratsky (00:32:37):
It sounds like we knew that, but we actually didn't know that. I didn't know that you-

Jake Knapp (00:32:37):
We did not know that.

Lenny (00:32:41):
How about that?

Jake Knapp (00:32:41):
That was just discovered. So anyway, I was just looking at my calendar, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do what John does. When I wake up, I'm going to schedule when I exercise, when I eat breakfast. I'm going to schedule when I take a shower, everything, and block it all out. When I walk and feed the dogs, everything's going to be on there, so that then I can have this idea, and when the day starts, I know there's slots for all those things. And then I've found this week that what I thought happened, how long I thought those things take, was not how long they take. And so, set that thing to repeat every day and look at it, and then I'm like, "Oh, okay, interesting. That's not what happened."

(00:33:20):
Okay, so I can adjust it. I can adjust the template and be a bit more kind to myself about this part, be a bit more kind to myself about that part. Gosh, the morning time wasn't a good focus time for me. I'll see if I can... Is there a way I can make that block happen in the afternoon? It's just a helpful way to track stuff and see it.

(00:33:41):
Especially, I think a lot of people are visual learners. We can benefit from seeing things. It's not everybody, but a lot of us are in that camp. And when you put it on the calendar, you can see it, and that helps a lot.

Lenny (00:33:54):
And also keeps someone else from booking that time. Double win.

Jake Knapp (00:33:58):
Not to be undervalued, keeps someone else from booking that time. Right. And they look, they see, oh, okay, Lenny's already got stuff going on. I figured out, okay, I better be cautious before I ask for something. And that default, to be helpful to other people, and say yes when they put something on a free spot on your calendar, defeats a lot of our inner purposes.

(00:34:20):
And one core idea I don't think we've mentioned yet is that we strongly believe in people's intuition about how they should spend their time if they have the chance. What really is important. And that is true. We're talking about running this VC fund, or writing books, which are obviously very like, well, we're in charge of those things.

(00:34:39):
But this is also true, we've been employees in big organizations, I also believe it's true that if you have a boss, and a boss's boss's boss, that you have great insight about what, if you had a window of time, would be the highest leverage thing for you to do. And it might not show up on your OKRs, it might not be on your boss's radar, your boss's boss's boss's boss's radar. You have great intuition, and we want to create space for you to do that thing because you're going to feel better about it, you're going to be more satisfied, and also good things are going to happen.

Lenny (00:35:10):
We're spending a lot of time on this highlight, but I think it's because it's so powerful. It's such a simple idea, but so effective. So, just to kind of give people tactical advice for how to actually implement this, just a couple things that I'll summarize.

(00:35:23):
One is, to pick the highlight, you had a couple of questions I have here, for how to help you pick one for the day. So, you either ask which highlight will bring you the most satisfaction? Or, when I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy? Maybe that's the same question. But I-

Jake Knapp (00:35:39):
Slightly different, slightly different.

Lenny (00:35:41):
Slightly different. That's true. Okay, good.

Jake Knapp (00:35:43):
Satisfaction could be like, "I know this thing has to get done, and I got it done."

Lenny (00:35:47):
Good point.

Jake Knapp (00:35:47):
Joy could be like, "Man, that was great." And they're in the same family, but they're cousins.

Lenny (00:35:55):
Great point, great point.

John Zeratsky (00:35:56):
Yeah. And I mentioned, a lot of my highlights, personally, are very much in the urgency or satisfaction camp. They're these big chunky projects. I got it done. I finished that deck. I finished writing that thing.

(00:36:11):
But I also try to stay attuned to when I need something else in my day, when I need... I need some joy. I need some fun, some play. I need to prioritize going for a run, or going for a walk, or cooking a big dinner. And so, I trust my gut on those things, and I say, "Okay, what's most important to me today is not to be productive, but to do something else."

(00:36:39):
And sometimes that's the best highlight for me. For other people, maybe that's their highlight every single day. Maybe they work as a... I don't know, I've talked to a lot of people who work in healthcare settings about this. They're a nurse or a doctor, and when they're at work, they're at work. They're not bouncing around between meetings and emails and Zooms. They're on their feet. There's no time to do anything else. So, their highlight is probably something they need to do at the end of the day to unwind, or take care of themselves.

(00:37:11):
So, you have these three different strategies that we talk about, urgency, satisfaction, and joy, as being three different places you can look for the right highlight for you each day. But ultimately, I think it comes down to just trusting your gut and sort of asking yourself, like you said, "What do I want to look back on and have said, yeah, I'm glad I made time for that"?

Lenny (00:37:33):
Awesome. So, you touched on the third. So, it's basically, what would give you the most satisfaction? So, in the morning, you essentially ask, or the night before. I think one of you, I forget, because when I was listening to the audiobook, I don't know who's talking. But one of you is like, "I like to do it the day before." Is that right?

John Zeratsky (00:37:48):
Yeah, that's me.

Lenny (00:37:50):
Okay. Okay.

Jake Knapp (00:37:51):
That's John talking.

Lenny (00:37:52):
Okay. So, the questions you asked either the night before or in the morning are, "What would give me the most satisfaction today, or the next day? What would give me the most joy? Or what's the most pressing thing that I need to get done?"

(00:38:03):
So, you do that, and then the advice is either write it on a Post-It... I actually bought these tiny little Post-Its by accident. I was trying to buy regular Post-Its, and they're actually really great for this specific use case, so it's perfect. Write your highlight, stick it on the monitor.

(00:38:17):
So, that's one way of doing it. The other is stick it in your calendar, where you have focus time. In theory, it's like every day, here's my focus time, where you have the most energy. Is that the general advice?

John Zeratsky (00:38:28):
Generally, although I think that that's probably more important for a certain kind of highlight. I have focused time most mornings. To be really specific and nerdy about it, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings I have focus time. Tuesday and Friday mornings I have meetings. But on a Thursday night, my highlight might actually be to have friends over and cook dinner. And that's not the same as focus time, but it's this pressure release valve where I'm like, "That's the thing that I want to make sure..." I want to make sure I wrap up email at 5 so that have time to get everything ready, but it's not necessarily that peak energy moment in the way that we might think about being productive or getting things done or getting into that flow state.

Jake Knapp (00:39:22):
Awesome.

Lenny (00:39:22):
So, there's a lot of ways to do it. So, maybe you just take away, if you're listening to this, is just think about what could be your highlight for today or tomorrow?

John Zeratsky (00:39:30):
Yeah. And I would say, go one step further and make sure to write it down. Don't just think about it, because there's something really special that happens when you write things down, even if it's on a sticky. Even if it's in your notebook, your journal, even if it's a note on your phone. Take that step as well.

Jake Knapp (00:39:50):
Even if you don't see it again, just writing it down is a big deal.

John Zeratsky (00:39:55):
Yeah, that's a really important point.

Jake Knapp (00:39:56):
I can give you a concrete example of a highlight, and a failed highlight, from yesterday, actually. And so, most days these days, my highlight is around making progress on the book. John alluded to working on a book, and so obviously it's a huge project. I heard it said that if you are writing books, it's like having homework forever. You always feel like there's always more to do. And so, that's mostly been my highlight.

(00:40:24):
But yesterday, I wanted to prepare for this podcast. I knew that was going to be satisfying, to feel like I was ready. We don't think about talking about Make Time all the time, like we said, it's sort of like a side project for us. So, I wanted to be ready and somewhat coherent. And I knew I'd be satisfied, but I also knew it was urgent. We're going to be doing the recording today. So, that was my highlight. Write that down. "Get ready for podcast."

(00:40:50):
And I had two focus blocks, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. It should be easy. Focus block number one, kind of just didn't do a good job. I was distracted, I was in my email, I was doing everything that I would say you shouldn't do, I was doing. Feeling down on myself. I've become a loser. I didn't get anything done.

(00:41:10):
Okay, second focus block. Man, now the pressure's on. I got to do it. And so, I finally get into the zone. And my wife thinks I have a pretty serious case of undiagnosed ADHD, so a lot of it is just, if I really do have a deadline, then I really will click in. So, now I have a deadline. I'm doing it, and I'm making notes, and getting there, but I feel like there's still a ways to go.

(00:41:32):
And my 12-year-old son bursts into the room, and it was, "Oh gosh, you're invading me right when I'm at peak focus." And he is like, "Hey, I'm going to do one more trip outside to sled in the snow. Do you want to come?" And I'm like, first reaction, "No, absolutely not. I can get this thing done. It's my highlight. This is the one thing I need to do today. I can do it max level of quality if I can just stay in this precious zone of focus."

(00:42:02):
But then I was like, "Wait a second, what's really going to be the highlight of my day? What's really going to be the highlight, the thing that I might actually remember in the future?" We rarely get snow here. I live on this island in Washington state. We maybe get significant snowfall once every two years. We've only lived here for a few years. He's 12. He loves snow more than anything in the world. He loves snow. But he grew up in California, so he hasn't had many days, and he's 12. He's on the cusp of being a teenager. There's not, maybe, any more days in his life that he's going to want me to get on the sled with him and wrap my arms around him and go down the hill.

(00:42:38):
I was like, "I got to get out there." So, okay. Pause this, ran outside. We did it. And man, it was magical. And I didn't know we were going to get one more in, because the snow was supposed to be melting already. We went down the hill, we went down the hill, we went... It got dark, we had to stop. But it was so magic. And I remember the very last end of the sled run, and it's like the last one, and he's like, "Man," he's like, "That was a great last sled run. So glad we did it."

(00:43:10):
And I was like, "Yeah, so glad we did it. It's great." Come back inside, 15 minutes. I try to hustle and get this done. So, I was like, maybe it was like 80% or 75% to where I wanted to be on this. I couldn't check off that highlight as being the most important thing. But because of the framing of, it might be wrong, what am I going to remember, all this stuff, it just felt natural to me to switch modes and say, "Oh my god, that actually is a highlight. That's this thing that's going to be really, really precious. That's where the joy and the satisfaction are most for today."

(00:43:47):
And still, because I had written down the other thing, I still did it instead of churning on email the entire day. But I screwed up twice, but it still turned out pretty good. So, anyway, that's kind of what it can look like at its best. And a lot of times, it doesn't make that much sense, and a lot of times I miss the special moments, or I miss the key work moments, or the key time when I could have gotten the most done. But I just feel better about it, which is a lot of what this is about. I just feel better about it because I feel more intentional.

Lenny (00:44:17):
Well, thank you for sharing the real talk. I think you made the right choice. I feel bad for having you have to decide between your kid and this podcast.

Jake Knapp (00:44:24):
You didn't have anything to do with it. No, no, no. I just wanted to... It's selfish for me to want to be prepared. I just want to look good. I just want to sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Lenny (00:44:32):
Well, it's working out. It all worked out. That's a great story. It reminds me, in your book at some point, I forget who it was of you that had to... You're like, "Here's my priorities in my life right now." And it was like family, writing, Make Time, something else, and then you're like, "Okay, actually Make Time is more important right now than my family," because you just have to get this done, and I wonder if this is a counter.

Jake Knapp (00:44:51):
Well, yeah. I mean, I think that part of what people have found useful about Make Time is that John and I come at this from different perspectives. And I have kids. I have a twelve-year-old and a twenty-year-old, sons, and dealing with being a dad is a big part of how I try to figure out how to make sense of what to do.

(00:45:13):
And John doesn't have kids, and so he has it easy. No, he doesn't, but that's just a different frame of mind. And I think sometimes I read something that people without kids wrote, and I think, "Well yeah, sure. I am sure that's wonderful for you, but what about X-Y-Z?"

(00:45:34):
And although, I'm sure a lot of people who have more kids, or when they have young kids, it would... But that's a real part of it. And whether it's your family, your significant other, anything that's going on in your life that's not part of your work, there are times when you, on a day, or in a moment, you have to shift those priorities. And it can help to just be this idea of stack-ranking things, and being clear about it, can help you just come to terms with it. "I'm making that decision right now. It makes sense to make right now." Or at least, I can see that I did it, and if it seems like I screwed it up, I'd flip it back. I know where it happened.

(00:46:14):
A lot of this is just like if you were designing a product or writing code or whatever, you can see that's where the bug happened. I'll just try to fix that line.

Lenny (00:46:23):
Yeah. I love how real you're getting, and it also reminds me of... We just had a kid. He's seven months old, so I'm going through a lot.

Jake Knapp (00:46:30):
Oh, congratulations.

Lenny (00:46:31):
Thank you.

Jake Knapp (00:46:31):
That's busy times. Seven months old is busy times.

Lenny (00:46:34):
Yeah, that's great.

Jake Knapp (00:46:34):
People always told me, told us, when we had kids when they were babies. They're always like, "Oh, just you wait." I just feel like this is a thing that people want to tell other parents. "Just you wait until this happens." And then one person said, "You know what? Generally speaking, it gets easier and easier and easier. Every month, every week, generally speaking, it gets easier." And I think that is true, so just keep that in mind if you're ever feeling like it's overwhelming.

Lenny (00:46:59):
No, I think that is true. I've experienced that. It also gets more amazing. That's what I'm finding, too.

Jake Knapp (00:47:03):
Yeah, yeah.

Lenny (00:47:05):
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Lenny (00:48:00):
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(00:48:09):
I want to talk about the next bucket that, you call it laser, you could also think of it as just how to focus better, and this is where most of the very tactical tips for how to avoid getting distracted are. So what I think might be helpful here is let's just do a rapid fire through as your favorite tactical tips to help people stay focused, and the ones that you actually do and find most helpful, I think it's like six years later now since you published the book, the better. So let's go through some stuff here.

John Zeratsky (00:48:37):
Yeah, the basic principle with laser is that willpower is never going to win, and there's great research on this, but for now just trust me, you're not going to white-knuckle your way through not looking at Twitter when you're trying to work. So it's all about making it hard, creating barriers to getting distracted. So a few things for me, I'm not on Instagram and I'm not on Facebook. I was on both of those things and I left both of them, I disabled my accounts. I am on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I don't have either of those apps installed on my phone. I stay logged out of those sites on my computer, except for when I want to use them for some specific purpose.

(00:49:22):
LinkedIn I need to use all the time, because I'm a VC and I have to look people up and stuff, so I found this Chrome plugin, or Chrome extension, I guess is the right word, that disables the feed in LinkedIn. So when I go to LinkedIn.com, it's the search bar at the top but there's no feed, which is amazing because I can use LinkedIn as the phone book and then not get distracted. So those are some of the very, very concrete specific things that I do, all, again, with the goal of putting a speed bump between me and that thing so that if I go, and I don't do this much anymore but I used to, literally my hands on the keyboard would just be like, T-W-I, like Twitter.com, and then you see that log in screen instead of my juicy feed and I'm like, oh yeah, right, okay, I did that on purpose, great, I broke that feedback loop a little bit.

Lenny (00:50:18):
I did a similar thing with Twitter/X, where I deleted the app and I just used the mobile website. I think this point of logging out is really powerful, I think people haven't heard that idea as much, because it's not like you can't log in really easily, you just click a couple things and you're back. But to your point, it reminds you, okay, I see, I really shouldn't have done this.

John Zeratsky (00:50:37):
Well, I also signed up for two-factor authentication for everything, not because I care about somebody hacking my account, but because it's another speed bump. Because that way, even if your browser remembers your password, or I use one password, so even if the browser extension is going to fill it in for me, there's still another step, so it's sort of reverse engineering my own distractibility.

Lenny (00:51:03):
That feature that everyone's always talking about that Apple built of the code being automatically there in the keyboard, that's counter to this friction that you've created.

John Zeratsky (00:51:11):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Lenny (00:51:12):
Okay, so it's interesting is I had this, and then I just like, goddammit I really just want to be on Twitter. And so I just re-installed it again recently, and I need to fight that again.

John Zeratsky (00:51:22):
Well, I go through cycles like that too, and I go through that a lot with email. Jake, you still don't have email on your phone, is that right?

Jake Knapp (00:51:33):
No, I would be on the floor checking email right now on this call if I did, on the floor.

John Zeratsky (00:51:38):
I used to do that, Jake inspired me a long time ago to remove email from my phone, and so for years and years that's been my default. But more recently I've had more reasons to install it, mostly related to travel, if I'm on the go and I just want to stay on top of things. And something that Jake and I have talked about a lot is you go through these different cycles of, hey, I need this thing, or I want this thing, and then part of the reflect step, part of paying attention and reflecting on how it's going is to recognize, oh wow, I've actually been spending a lot of time on email on my phone, or a lot of time on Twitter, maybe I'll just uninstall it for a while. Maybe I'll just reset and do that for a while. And then there'll be some other thing that happens that causes you to reinstall it, and that's totally fine, because you're being deliberate about it and you're paying attention, rather than saying it has to always be this way forever and it's set in stone.

Lenny (00:52:35):
That's a great tip of just coming back to it, not feeling like you're defeated, it's like, all right, let's try this again.

Jake Knapp (00:52:40):
Yeah, I think a big part of it is if you can experience the feeling of not having it on your phone. Like I'm old enough to have lived in a world building products where there were no smartphones, and we got a lot done back then, things happened. I mean, for God's sake, they designed the first iPhone without being able to use iPhones while they did it, you can do a lot. So this idea that we have to have it or everything's going to fall apart, that's just not true for 99.99999% of everyone.

(00:53:16):
It's interesting to see what it feels like if you delete all of the infinity pools off of your phone, and this is something I did out of rage at myself in 2012. It was another situation where I was with my kids, who were much younger at the time, and I was spending time with them, we're playing wooden trains, and all of a sudden my son's like, "Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad," and I'm like, "God, what?" And I didn't even realize it but I was on my phone, and I don't even remember what I was doing, email or something, but I think I told him, he's like, "What's on your phone?" Because to him, he was like, we're doing something really fun, so if you're on your phone it must be something really cool, maybe it would be a cool thing to share, because this is great, so it must be another great thing. He wasn't trying to shame me or anything.

(00:54:06):
And I was all defensive, I'm like, "Well, I need to do this for work," which was, I think, my internal monologue of why I was doing this thing that actually was just a really low-friction dopamine hit. And then I thought, God, this is not what I wanted, this is not why I worked so hard today so I would get done with my work so I could be home in time to do this before my kids go to bed. And I was like, screw this, so I just started deleting things on my phone, and I deleted email and I deleted Facebook and I deleted this, everything that had an infinity pool, everything that had an infinite amount of content. News is like this, anything streaming.

(00:54:44):
When we wrote this book, it came out in 2018, I think we said we thought it was going to get worse, and it has. But at that point in time there was really Netflix, and now there's all these streaming services. At that point in time there was Instagram and Facebook, but now there's TikTok, the best part of every video available instantly right here. This stuff, it only gets harder to resist. When you clear all that stuff off of your phone, it's painful, the idea of deleting all this stuff, and each time the phone's going to ask you, "This is going to delete all the data and settings, are you sure you want to do that?" It doesn't want you to. And when you do that though, what does that feel like? And it's usually a feeling of discomfort, but also relief that I don't have to check this, this thing, I don't have to check it, I don't have to.

(00:55:34):
And if you've ever felt like your phone was in the Lord of the Rings, how Bilbo, I guess, yeah, Lord of the Rings, they want to put their hand in their pocket and touch the ring, or put the ring on without even knowing it, Frodo's like, "I didn't even realize I did it." That's what this thing is like. And when you take those off, just that feeling of relief is, to me, so powerful, that having done this for a decade now, and yeah, there's exceptions, like I'm traveling, God, I have to check my email for X reason, and I install it and I check it. And then it automatically, because I'm aware of it, I'll just feel this static.

(00:56:11):
There's this notion of attention residue, and I think the researcher who coined this term is Sophie Leroy from the University of Washington. Anyway, you can look that up, I think I learned about that from Cal Newport. But this idea says, it makes a lot of sense, that you pay attention to some things and they just stick in your head and they create this static, those apps just create this static. The idea of email being on my phone and accessible at any time creates a discomfort, a disquiet that now that I've seen it and felt what it's like to not have it, I could not imagine experiencing it.

(00:56:44):
You do give some things up. You're not going to be as responsive. John and I don't have as many Twitter followers as we'd have if we used Twitter. There are these things that you look at other people, and I just saw a post on LinkedIn because I haven't used plug-in yet, but I looked on this post and it was a colleague that I used to have and she was saying, "Yeah, I posted a few tweets last year and a couple of them went viral and I gained 30,000 followers." And I was like, man, all I have is 30,000 followers, and that was from years and years ago, I thought I was a pretty big deal, oh jeez, maybe I should... And I was like, oh God, don't do it, because I know when I'm doing it, then I'll be thinking about it all the time and the attention residue will spoil my life.

(00:57:28):
So yeah, anyway, sorry, that's just a rant, but you should try it. The distraction-free phone thing is just worth trying, if you can take off everything, if not just try taking off the thing that's your kryptonite. What's the thing that is the hardest for you to resist, sucks your attention the most, makes you feel not good? Take it off for, try it for a day, or try it for two hours, just to feel that feeling. And then once you've felt the feeling you'll always know, I could release that, and I think that's powerful.

Lenny (00:57:57):
And I think when you delete it, it's important to know nothing's being deleted when you're deleting the app, you can reinstall it, you log in, it's all the same.

Jake Knapp (00:58:04):
It's all the same, that's an important point. They make it sound like, oh my God, this is a big deal. It's not.

Lenny (00:58:09):
Yeah, just have to remember your password or Google auth, or whatever you're using. This metaphor of The Lord of the Rings and the ring is so good for how it feels to just say, I'm just going to check Twitter, what's the problem, I'm just going to check it again, I'll just check it, check it. That's so good. And then in Lord of the Rings, the way they resist the ring is they hide it, they put it somewhere else, they give it to Frodo to take it, right? That's the same solution, it's just like, I can't get access to it, it's over there.

Jake Knapp (00:58:36):
Right, right. Yeah, you got to be like Gandalf. Even if that ring would do great things for you, you got to give it to Frodo for a while, maybe show up at the end with an eagle.

Lenny (00:58:45):
Just too eerie, yeah, yeah, the eagle.

Jake Knapp (00:58:46):
Scoop them up.

Lenny (00:58:47):
Yeah, oh man. So the key tips here are find the apps that are sucking your attention, could be Twitter, could be LinkedIn, could be your email, and delete them and/or log out of them. What else?

John Zeratsky (00:59:00):
There's a few tactics that Jake and I both use that are related to TV, watching TV, and a really simple one, which is also kind of a luxury one, but I think there are ways to do it that are pretty universal, is just not having a TV in your main living space. Again, not having the default be like, I'm home, the TV is on, what are we watching? And so for me and my wife, that's always been the TV is just in a different room. And Jake, do you use a projector where if you want to watch something you have to get it out, set it up, and make a decision to watch something?

Jake Knapp (00:59:40):
Yeah, so it's a bit of a project. And it doesn't take that long, but you definitely are not just click, and you don't see it when it's not set up. So we have a projection screen that's all folded up in the corner, and the projector's in a cabinet, so you got to get it out and get a chair and put it on there. If you're motivated enough you can do it, but it takes a few minutes.

Lenny (01:00:06):
You need an old-timey camera that you have to wind.

Jake Knapp (01:00:06):
Yeah, right.

Lenny (01:00:07):
Someone has to sit there.

John Zeratsky (01:00:11):
Here's another one that-

Jake Knapp (01:00:13):
[inaudible 01:00:13] in the back.

John Zeratsky (01:00:15):
Yeah, right. Another one that's really helpful for me that actually is sort of a bridge is the laser section and the energized section, because it relates to sleep, is I don't keep my phone in the bedroom. The phone doesn't come in the bedroom. And not only that, the place where it charges, the MagSafe little charging place for it, is downstairs. It's on a different floor, it's in the kitchen. So when I put that there at the end of the night and I go upstairs, I might still be awake for an hour, I might read, I might get ready for bed, all those things, but the phone is a way to make sure that the last thing I do each day is not on my phone. That's super helpful to me, and I think there's a bunch of ways, whether it's in a drawer or in a cabinet, there's a bunch of ways you can implement that tactic that I think could make a big difference.

Lenny (01:01:07):
My wife and I have been talking about that actually, but the issue is to watch our kid with the Nanit app we need our phone. I know that you can get other devices that aren't on the phone, but we just like the Nanit, and so we've stuck with that.

John Zeratsky (01:01:20):
Yeah, one tactic that's related to that that a lot of people have told us they've had success with, and not specifically with the Nanit app, but some people have said, "Oh, I can't uninstall those apps because," Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever, "because I do social media for my work. Literally my job is I do marketing at the company, I have to be on social media." So what some people will do is they'll have a separate device. So it's almost like the old days of your personal phone and your work phone, they'll just have a work device, like a work iPad, that those apps are only there, and when they're working they're on it, when they're not working they put it away. So you could have another device that's the Nanit device and that's all it does and it's in a nice little stand by the bed, that can create some separation as well.

Lenny (01:02:09):
That's a great idea. I think there's a company, I think it was Arianna Huffington made a thing where it's a little bed for your phone, where you put it somewhere in the living room and you put it to bed and you charge it there and it's outside your room.

John Zeratsky (01:02:21):
Yeah. There's a company, I can't think of the name right now, but I can look it up and send it to you, there's a company that makes a cool box that not only you put your phone in, it charges, but it has some sort of way of, it interacts with the phone, it puts it into Do Not Disturb, or there's some cool integration that it does. So yeah, those things are a little bit gimmicky, but if it helps you create that default, I think it's worth it.

Lenny (01:02:48):
Here's the trick my wife wanted to share with you guys as she was reading the book, she's like, "Tell them about this thing that we've been doing," which is with TikTok. She doesn't install the app, and she basically relies on me to send her TikTok videos I like to her account, which she then checks on my phone.

Jake Knapp (01:03:04):
You're Frodo.

Lenny (01:03:05):
Yeah, yeah, I'm holding the TikTok, my precious. And so the trick there, there's two wins, one is she only sees the best stuff. She respects my taste of videos to watch. And then two is I'm always like, "Give me my phone back," and so there's limited time where she can watch them, and that keeps her from getting addicted to TikTok.

John Zeratsky (01:03:27):
Yeah. My wife and I have a similar dynamic, but in reverse and with news. I spend very little time reading the news, and I don't have any news apps on my phone, but my wife's pretty into the news. She has a healthcare background and she studied journalism in school, so she loves particularly those two topics in the intersection of those two. And so she gives me a news digest. When we're chatting at the end of the day, or when we're doing something together, she'll just, it's not structured, it's not some official thing, but she just shares what she was reading about that day. It's nice, it gives us something to talk about, I think it suits both of our styles and our preferences. It's good for her, it's good for me, so it's fun to think about how you can implement some of these ideas in a relationship as well.

Lenny (01:04:23):
How do I subscribe to this feed of your wife sharing the news every day? It sounds like a great podcast we all need.

Jake Knapp (01:04:29):
Really, really good stuff, or really important stuff, will find us. I think there is, part of the busy bandwagon, or part of the infinity pools thing, is this feeling inside that I'm responsible for staying up to date with the most important news in the world, or the most important news in my inbox, or my company or my team, work, and I'm responsible also for getting the very best of entertainment that's out at this moment that's the most topical and the funniest, or the most interesting, whatever, at this moment.

(01:05:04):
And it's okay to let go of that and, the good stuff, it'll come to you. People will share it with you or you'll hear about it. If it's a really big news story, you'll hear about it eventually. If it's going to affect you, actually, you'll hear about it. And with most news, and most entertainment, we don't play a role, it's hard to admit, but we don't actually play a role in what happens, and so the idea that we're responsible for being on it all the time, that's a job that we can quit, or at least take a sabbatical from.

Lenny (01:05:38):
So Tim Ferriss talked about this in The 4-Hour Workweek, is way back in the day is just like, I wait for people to tell me what I need to know, exactly what John just shared before this, and I find this with, so first of all you find that when you delete Twitter, LinkedIn, you go week without it, and nothing is any different. You still know everything you need to know, your job, everything's going great. You missed a bunch of stuff that had no impact on your life. And so I think doing that exercise helps you realize that and I don't need to be on Twitter all the time.

(01:06:08):
And not to get political, but with news about Trump, there's always these headlines, "Trump, look what he did in this lawsuit today, it's over." I just feel like there's so many posts about all these things Trump is doing every day, and none of them, nothing happens. It's just the same thing, just keeps going. If something actually happened there I would hear it from a lot of people, the New York Times would send me a big push. So it's like, I don't need to know all these things he's doing every day.

Jake Knapp (01:06:36):
Well, it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is, that is true. Trump is always going to be in the news, and it's always going to, that's the constant, that's the third constant, death, taxes, and Trump will be in the news.

John Zeratsky (01:06:51):
A related tactic that I've been doing for a long time is my main source of news is the Economist magazine, which is far too highbrow for what I need, but the main feature of it is that it's weekly, because at the end of the week, the zillion stories about Trump, or whatever, if there was something of consequence, it gets distilled into this really good summary. Really, really good. The Economist has some of the best journalists in the world, they're just absolutely fantastic, and so not only does it have this really nice cadence of once a week, if something matters it's going to get rolled up there, it's going to get summarized. And so that's one of my most durable habits related to these tactics, is reading the news once a week, reading the Economist. It fits my brain, it fits my life rhythm really well.

Lenny (01:07:54):
Yeah, it's the opposite of Twitter, basically.

John Zeratsky (01:07:58):
Yeah.

Lenny (01:07:58):
So yeah, let's hear a couple more tactics and then let's touch on the other two parts of this framework.

Jake Knapp (01:08:03):
Well, first a pairing, and then one more. The pairing is reset expectations and slow your inbox. So these are two tactics related mostly to the email and messaging. So resetting expectations is just about having maybe a conversation with people you work with, but it can be as simple as a signature in your email. And so one great example of this is a signature that says, I'm checking email two times a day as an experiment to improve my focus, or I'm checking email once or twice a day, you decide how spicy you want to get with this option, because I'm working on an important project. And just a simple line that people will see passively as you send emails that will reset their expectations of how quickly you'll respond. And if you like you can say, I'm checking email once a day because I'm working on a big project, you can text me if it's urgent. Feel free to text me, you can invite people to do so.

(01:09:11):
But that very act of just putting it in there, you can also do it as an out of office autoresponder, so just like, hey, instead of I'm actually out of the office like, hey, I'm going to be slow to respond to email because I'm working on an important project. That because is really important, and we talk in the book about this, a funny study about the power of because and this case where people would make up bogus excuses, but they'd say, "Because to cut a line," it's an old study, they're making photocopies, but they would cut the line and say, "I need to cut the line because I need to make copies." And just saying because dramatically boosted the percentage of the time that a person would let them cut the line. We're suckers for explanations, all of us. So if you say because people will feel better, and you can feel better about saying it.

(01:09:58):
But this idea that you're just going to put up a placard, basically, that says, hey, I'm slow to respond because I'm working on a project, and maybe give people an escalation path, or don't, that's a huge deal. And it seems like it would be a huge deal because it changes others expectations, and that is true. But the real power of it is in changing our own expectations about what we are going to do and what we are expected to do. Most of the stress comes internally, from our feeling that if we don't get back to people right away, we're not enough, we're not measuring up, we feel some kind of shame or guilt about not doing it and not being fast and not being responsive. And so doing this statement is just about renegotiating with ourselves.

(01:10:46):
The other one is to slow down your inbox. This is a simple one, if you start to do that, if you start to just check your email once or twice a day, or even less frequently, or even if you check it a little bit more frequently but you aren't responding to emails, you don't hold yourself accountable to this idea of an empty inbox, then the whole loop slows down. If you respond to emails really fast, you respond to messages really fast, people respond back to you and then there's more to respond to. And if you slow down that little hamster wheel, it slows down. And so that's powerful too. So those two around email I think can be really helpful, they help me with this, my default feeling about email and messaging and everything is I should be as responsive as possible, and I have to constantly renegotiate that with myself, and those are ways I do it.

(01:11:36):
This other one that's pretty extreme, that I only just tried for the first time, it's in the book but I hadn't actually tried it, but this was a reader of our blog told us about this. Her name is Krissa, I think she allowed us to use her first name but not her last name. So Krissa, if you're listening, shout out to you, this turned out to be a great tactic, but it's to cancel the internet. And she had canceled the internet at home, which is wild. But what I did was I have an office, a very small office in this small town here where I live, and-

Jake Knapp (01:12:00):
Small office in this small town here where I live and I canceled the internet there so that I could, when I went there, all I can do are tasks that you can't do with the internet, which is a lot. I mean, you can use a lot of apps in offline mode and it's a great place for me to write. It's a great place for me to do focus work, design something, presentation, but any kind of focused thinking, reading, writing can happen there and now the whole feeling of stepping into that room where I cannot access the internet is insane.

(01:12:32):
To create this kind of a thing at home, you can do things like put a timer on your internet. You can actually buy one of those vacation timers, plug it into the wall, plug your router into that, and it will actually switch your internet off at a certain hour or hours. There's also software that'll let you do this selectively, but the big notion of just having there be a time when you are off and it's a fairly significant pain to get back on again, it's more than just clicking wifi on, wifi off. I find for me that's not enough of a speed bump. It's pretty powerful.

Lenny (01:13:07):
Just the way you're describing the feeling of walking into an office that has no internet, I totally feel that. Just imagine, just like, "I have no internet here. I could do so many things. I could read."

Jake Knapp (01:13:19):
It might be a coffee shop where you don't find out what the wifi password is and there's just this amazing, amazing feeling. Maybe it's just you go to a park where there's no wifi, just whatever it might be, finding a place where you can't, you just can't get that stuff. Leave your phone at home if you can't bear to delete all the apps. It's so great. It's so great. And then you're not fighting the battle.

(01:13:46):
A lot of this stuff, there's a visualization I think of where I've got the highlight in front of me. It's right there. This thing I can see that I want to do, but it's like five feet away or 10 feet away, and right next to me just kind of vibrating are all of the... You can imagine all the app logos, they're just kind of vibrating right around my head.

(01:14:07):
They're right there and touching any one of them, it's like they're little pieces of candy. It's all going to feel good. There's this really good meal, five to 10 feet away is this great sandwich, but these little pieces of candy are right in my face and it's going to be hard to resist just popping a little Sour Patch Kid or Laffy Taffy in my mouth, but if I could push them away, if I can just push them far enough away so that there is far away or farther away than the sandwich, I'm going to eat the sandwich. And Mike, if that's what you do basically with these barriers to these distractions, then you can get into laser mode and it's easy. You want to. Once there's space, you'll want to do the thing that's most important. It's just it's hard because the candy is right in our face.

Lenny (01:14:50):
Such a good metaphor. You also have this metaphor of Odysseus sailing past the sirens. If folks know that story where there was a siren, I don't know, cliff thing where he's just sailing.

Jake Knapp (01:15:01):
I know well, in eighth grade I played Odysseus in school play, so I can tell you all about it.

Lenny (01:15:06):
Man, what a character to play. Yeah. And in that story, he wanted to experience these sirens who nobody could resist, but he forced his sailors to tie him to the ship and not allow him to do anything, even though he's like, "Let me go. I need to go there." Because everyone crashed into the sirens. Anyway, I'm doing a bad job explaining this story, but I think it just comes back to the same point again and again that you can't rely on your willpower to not go towards these vibrating candies all around you that you need to set up these systems.

Jake Knapp (01:15:41):
I think there's this notion that we will use willpower maybe comes from the fact that some people can, maybe some people are just using willpower or they're on Twitter, they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're doing all these things, and they're also functioning just fine, or at least what we see from the outside is just fine. But maybe internally too, it's fine.

(01:16:07):
It just seems that everybody I actually talk to and certainly my personal experiences, all that stuff makes me feel bad and actually undercuts my ability to do the things that are meaningful. The meaningful contributions I can make through my work or through my life, whatever. They're all undermined and undercut by the bad feelings and the distraction that come from all of social media, all of the news and almost all of my email. And so if that's true for anybody, if it's even remotely true for us, we have to just radically rethink what we're doing.

(01:16:42):
This thing, I think we basically are steered toward becoming reaction machines and this notion of, "I'm going to have an empty inbox. I'm going to do every task. I'm going to be a fast responder, I'm going to be in every meeting. I'm going to do that because I want to help other people, and that's the way it works." I think this desire to be helpful is a big driver of it. I think we want to alleviate our stress and other people's stress, and that seems like the right way to do it. It's candy. Some of the stuff is candy and easy.

(01:17:12):
We also see this modeled by people in power, so like CEOs and bosses, it works for them because they're applying their influence through being constantly reactive and being in meetings all the time. That's just how they do what they do. That's how they apply their influence. But even for them, I think it has limits as a way to apply influence. At the bare minimum for the rest of us. And for those of us who again, I think is the vast, vast majority for whom all of these things create problems and we're not able to easily willpower and self-esteem manage all this stuff, if we're a reaction machine, we're not doing meaningful work, no Project A's and we're not really alive as humans. We're just chat bots. So it's worth experimenting if you don't want to live your life out as a chatbot.

Lenny (01:18:00):
I think the point you made there around the feeling is just a really important point that even if you feel really productive enough and you're getting things done, is if you're feeling bad, it's still an important thing to focus on. This idea of, are you spending time on things you want to spend time on? You also reminded me of this app I'll mention briefly that I think you guys will love, I don't know if you've heard of this. It's called mailmanhq.com. It shuts off your Gmail for periods of time. So you could say, "Only allow my email through at these times of day." And so instead of email whatever, it's just like you can batch your release of email.

Jake Knapp (01:18:35):
That's beautiful. Mailman HQ?

Lenny (01:18:37):
Mailman hq.com.

Jake Knapp (01:18:39):
Okay, I'm writing that down right now.

Lenny (01:18:40):
Yeah, I go on and off it because sometimes I just want on an email, but it makes a big difference. It's wild how just not even knowing your email makes a big difference.

Jake Knapp (01:18:49):
Yeah.

Lenny (01:18:50):
Okay. Let's touch on the last two parts of this framework, energize and reflect, and then let's spend a little time on Sprint for people to get a sense of what this method is all about. For folks that haven't read the book.

John Zeratsky (01:19:03):
So to replay the system overall highlight is about the thing you want to make time for today. The most important thing today, laser is about creating barriers to distraction so that you have much your energy or as much of your attention as possible to focus on your highlight on that one thing. Energize is sort of like a booster to laser.

(01:19:29):
It's sort of like the big idea is that our brains and bodies are connected and our ability to pay attention and to focus and to do those things that we care about only works when we are well and we have slept, we have eaten well, we have exercised, we have talked to other people the right amount, not too much, not too little and so we put this as part of the make time framework because we don't think you should go crazy, try a million biohacker type of things, but we do think it's worth applying this same philosophy of pay attention to what's working, what's not, have a system, try some new things, pay attention to those things, run these experiments. We think it's worth doing that for your health, for your energy as well, because it really does make a difference.

Lenny (01:20:27):
Maybe share one or two tips there real quick for people to energize to create a little more energy during their day?

John Zeratsky (01:20:33):
In the year since we wrote the book and as my life has just continued to change and I've gotten a little bit older, I've realized that sleep is probably the single most important thing. I mentioned earlier, not having my phone in the bedroom, no TV in the bedroom, hopefully that goes without saying, but just being able to really construct an environment that allows me to sleep. I started wearing an eye mask recently.

Lenny (01:21:01):
I do that.

John Zeratsky (01:21:02):
Yeah, really helps me fall asleep and stay asleep and then the other thing is exercise is a big source of energy for me, but I realized that I was making excuses about why I didn't need to or shouldn't exercise in any given day. So even though this is not what we recommended in the book specifically, I ended up signing on with a personal trainer so that I have accountability, I have a schedule, I have somebody who's thinking about what I need that's not just me and those two things have kind of been the pillars of how I build energy over the last few years.

Lenny (01:21:47):
I use this app called Future, I'm a investor, quick disclaimer, but it's basically a personal trainer through an app that's like a real person that helps you design a workout for you, and then they give you the workout on the app and you just follow the instructions and that's the thing that got you working out three times a week.

John Zeratsky (01:22:03):
Nice. Yeah.

Jake Knapp (01:22:04):
That's awesome.

Lenny (01:22:04):
Killing it. Okay. And then within reflect, maybe just briefly talk about the importance there and then one thing people could do to reflect on how things are going.

Jake Knapp (01:22:14):
Reflect is just simply the act of looking back on the day and treating the day. It wasn't marble gravestone of your successes or failures, it's just a experiment that you ran. What happened in the experiment? Taking note of it in that lens, what did it look like? There's a template in our book that has some questions you can answer, but really it's pretty simple.

(01:22:44):
If you write down your highlight in the morning or the night before, if you're draw it and you stick it somewhere visible, then at the end of the day you just look at it and just like, "Okay, did that happen or did that not happen?" If you stick it somewhere visible, you won't even have to do anything. You'll just come across it and you'll know if did that happen or not? So that's the simplest part of it is writing it down, sticking it will create a reflection loop for you.

(01:23:14):
Another thing that I think is quite powerful at the end of the day is to write down, keep a notebook by the side of the bed and write down one or two or three things that you are grateful for during the day, just like a simple gratitude journal. And you'll start, this keeps you in this frame of mind of what was cool today, what happened that was satisfying or joyful, what brought me joy and then if you start the day thinking about what you'd like to happen and then you look back and say, "What was great?" Your brain is just starting to look for those good things. Look for those big highlights, and that's a great way to live your life day to day saying, "This is what I hope will happen. This is what did happen. Now I'm more tuned into what it might happen tomorrow. Oh, now I'm more tuned into what happened today." And again, and it's just a really nice loop. So was there a connection between what you hoped would happen? Did you manage to do your highlight? If so, what helped you do it? What worked or didn't work? What made it hard? It might be an energy thing that suggests a tweak to when you drink coffee or if you take a walk or whatever. It might've been a focus thing. So maybe I'll try another barrier for this thing because that undercut me. Whatever it is, it's just basically, in summary, curiosity about your day instead of self-judgment about your day.

Lenny (01:24:30):
I think we've covered Make Time and tons of depth if people want to practice these things, highly recommend getting the book. It's called Make Time and it's really quick to read and it's basically just a long list of things you can do and we talked about a lot of them. There's a lot more. And I think part of the premise of the book is try stuff, see what works, see what doesn't. Keep reflecting, iterating, some of these things, even if you find two things that change how productive you're, that's a huge win.

Jake Knapp (01:24:55):
I highly recommend people get the book. That's great. And it's our best attempt to put together a how-to guide for doing this stuff. For what it's worth, we're not really motivated to try to create a self-improvement empire. This is not our full-time job. We just hope it works for you and is useful. So if you don't want to buy the book, we get it. Go to maketime.blog and just check out some of the experiments and things that are available there or just try one or two of the things that we talked about today. Try the highlight. If you're going to do one thing, just try right now writing down what you want your highlight to be, either for today or if it's late in the day for tomorrow on a sticky note and put it somewhere that you'll see it tomorrow.

(01:25:41):
Just that is a great step in the right direction. Try having a conversation with your colleagues or putting a signature or an autoresponder in your mail that says you're going to slow down or talking to them about slowing down at character. At our VC fund, we had a conversation and decided we're going to try to have our main communication happen in Notion so that if we're talking about something, it's in a form, it becomes a document, and the expectation of how you react and respond there is going to be different than in a tool that's designed to get you responding as fast as possible, like an email inbox or Slack.

(01:26:16):
So just have a conversation about that. Take a couple apps off your phone. You don't have to buy the book or become totally bought into the system to do those things, but that's what we really want. We just want you to have more time for what matters for you.

Lenny (01:26:30):
Amazing. So I've used up basically all our time talking about Make Time. I think we should have a follow-up episode just to talk about Sprint. What I think we do is let's cut off the lightning round and whatever stuff you guys would've shared there, we'll include in the show notes. I'll send you those questions asynchronously, but let's just talk about Sprint for a few minutes just to give people a sense of what is this framework, it's extremely popular, lets a lot of really successful products, and then we'll wrap up and point people in the direction that you recommend.

Jake Knapp (01:26:59):
Cool.

Lenny (01:27:00):
What is this framework of Sprint? When do people use this idea, this framework, this approach? And what are some examples of what has come out of somebody applying Sprints?

Jake Knapp (01:27:10):
The big idea with a design Sprint is to go from a zero to a prototype and a test of that prototype in just five days. And it's a recipe, it's a scripted set of activities that we developed over a number of many years. First, started with some projects I was doing at Google and I run some experiments with the way I was working. I was a product designer on Gmail in the 2000's, and I also co-founded Google Meet. And in the sort of week where we really catalyzed what had been a project that was going nowhere, this 20% project of people who were familiar with Google, like a side project was going nowhere for a year and a half. It was really on the rocks. And in one focused week working together, we decided me and these two other folks we're going to clear everything off.

(01:27:59):
I visited them in the Stockholm office where they were. We created a working prototype. Instead of trying to come up with the perfect plan, the perfect PRD, the perfect pitch to executives we're like, "Let's just build a prototype and put it in front of our colleagues and get them using it." And we did that and that was the thing that stuck. And so from there on, I was like, "I need to recreate these kinds of moments for teams because that's powerful." So we ran hundreds of these at Google Ventures with startups, tweaked and refined the process, wrote this book called Sprint.

(01:28:28):
We run a venture fund today, John and I and our colleague Eli, called Character. We help teams find and expand product market fit with Sprint. It's a tool for doing that and it uses a lot of these principles we talked about with Make Time to change the defaults, but not just the defaults of the way an individual works, but the ways teams work, the way people make decisions, the way we evaluate what's a good idea, a good strategy and worth pursuing based not on just a hunch or a guest, but based on something we can actually see with customer reactions. So all of that kind of in a nutshell is what Sprint does.

John Zeratsky (01:29:07):
This idea of getting unstuck and turning maybe some abstract ideas or some concepts that you've been discussing, turning that into a concrete prototype, something that you can look at and you can click around and you can actually try. It works in a lot of different contexts, and we've heard amazing stories from people who read the book and have run Sprints at companies that have a hundred thousand people and governments and all sorts of different organizations, but the stories that are in Sprint are about working with startups.

(01:29:45):
We think this is especially valuable for startups because typically you've raised a certain amount of money which buys you a certain amount of runway. You have a certain amount of time to prove that you have product market fit to prove that the thing that you're making is the right thing for some customers. And so the faster you can do that, the more quickly you can find out if you're on the right track, the more quickly you can learn and you can course correct and ultimately you can get to a better place faster than if you spent months working on that prototype or that first version of the product before releasing it.

Lenny (01:30:22):
I think what's awesome about it is as a product manager, the idea of containing a new idea experiment to five days versus this ongoing teams distracted on this idea just like, "Cool, we're going to spend a week, see where this goes. They're not going to spend months exploring. We're not going to talk about it. And just in theory, let's just try it." I think it's really powerful. And so for folks that may want to explore this until we do a follow-up episode, is it just by the book, is there anything else you could point them to think about this idea and implementing it?

Jake Knapp (01:30:49):
Yeah. Well, if you are thinking about, or in the very early stages of starting a company, a great thing to do is to get in touch with us at character.vc. And actually we're just opening up applications to our labs program. So character.VC/labs. Our labs program is an intensive program for startups, and we will run a sequence of Sprints including some new formats that are not in the book, but are excellent.

(01:31:20):
This will be our third time running through this. We found that it's especially valuable for AI startups. So it just turns out that a lot of the complex issues you have to figure out with turning something that may not initially be trustworthy may require a big behavior shift to customers who aren't used to working in this way and sometimes artificial intelligence can produce things that feel kind of alien to people.

(01:31:45):
And so making this stuff actually useful, more than just a chatbot with little stars that's in the corner that says, "Hey, would you like to ask the AI a question about this?" But something that's really meaningful, doing this kind of repeated and we'd run a sequence of Sprints doing it again and again, you work with directly with John and I, we find a really powerful way to get started.

(01:32:04):
Anyway, that's a big advertisement for Character Labs. But yeah, in general, check out the book. Also, would say if you're not quite ready to dip your toe in the whole book, you can go to the sprintbook.com. And we have a ton of resources on there, including a new thing, which is a Miro board, a Miro template that I created that has step-by-step instructions for every single step as well as 30+ videos of me explaining each step and actually I think I'm wearing the same sweatshirt in those, so if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see more of me in this sweatshirt in that template. And that's free, that's free and there's a bunch of resources on the website that are free as well. So anybody, everybody should be able to access this stuff.

Lenny (01:32:51):
Stuff. Amazing. And again, for folks that may want to check out the Labs cohort, is there anything other than AI-oriented that would be ideal? Just how early stage, any other markets that are ideal for the Sprint process and the way you're approaching it?

John Zeratsky (01:33:05):
Yeah, it's a four-week Sprint program for pre-seed software startups. So we only invest in software startups at Character, and this program is really ideal for companies who they know what they're doing. They're not just like, "Oh, I want to start a company." They have an idea of an opportunity that exists, a market that they're focused on, but they definitely haven't reached product market fit.

(01:33:31):
They may not even have a product to test that hypothesis with. So it's very early stage, and we are pretty flexible on the sector, the industry that you're in. But what we find is that the more there's kind of a big behavioral risk, the better this stuff works. So if you're just trying to make a slightly better version of something that already exists, and maybe it's going to be a little cheaper or a little faster, a little easier to use, you probably don't need this stuff. You can probably just do it and probably going to work.

(01:34:06):
But if you are like one of our portfolio companies, they make AI that controls the industrial facilities. They came from Google DeepMind and they did this for Google data centers before, something like that where you have to convince plant operators who are wearing hard hats and dealing with huge equipment, you have to convince them to trust AI. That's a big behavior shift. That's a big behavioral risk. Or in healthcare, in education, places where it feels like the technology can really make a big difference for people, but it can be hard to get over that hurdle of trust and understanding. Those are the types of opportunities that we think we can really help with.

Lenny (01:34:50):
Playing on hard mode, these sounds extremely difficult. I love it.

John Zeratsky (01:34:53):
Yeah.

Lenny (01:34:54):
So if you're thinking about starting a company or if you're in the process of starting a company, check out character.vc/ labs. John, Jake, thank you so much for being here and for making time for this podcast conversation.

John Zeratsky (01:35:06):
Thank you for having us. This was great.

Jake Knapp (01:35:08):
Yeah, thanks for having us.

Lenny (01:35:09):
Absolutely. My pleasure.

Jake Knapp (01:35:10):
It was really a pleasure, Lenny.

Lenny (01:35:10):
The pleasure is mine. Bye everyone.

(01:35:15):
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