alright sean you tweeted something that has made me incredibly en via of you you said the joy of living an un unstructured life and it kinda pissed me off because i want that and i know that you got a lot of messages one of our friend emailed you and said something like dude how on earth do you have this un unstructured life and so i actually have the same question i wanna spend this episode actually asking you all about it tell me everything about this un unstructured life i need to know how you can get so much done by having nothing on your calendar i feel like i could rule to world to i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days on on a roll look do a definition so what is what do i mean when i say the un schedule life the on schedule life all it means is this today or right now even next hour you were gonna do the most important or interesting thing to you right now not what you thought might be the most important thing two weeks ago when somebody put something on your calendar because that's how i used to live right i used to wake up and look at what's on my calendar and it's like wait wait why is the calendar in charge and where did this even come oh this is a meeting i agreed to two weeks ago or this is a recurring one on one with this person but it's not necessarily the thing that i actually think i should be investing my time and my energy into it's not where my brain is it's not what i had inspiration on it's not the most important thing so what i did was i just went to my calendar and i just clicked delete the delete the delete just deleted everything and i just said well i'm gonna live in un schedule life meaning if you wanna call me like the the text message i tweeted out yesterday somebody was like dude this is awesome we were having a good text chat and he's like this is awesome i would love to jam on this sometime maybe next week and i said i'm free to call me right now because i'm in the moment we're inspired by this right now we're both agreeing that this is really interesting and we should explore if there's something here well why would we wait a we and let that you know inspiration is perishable it's like an avocado it turns brown what were you doing when they start texting you i was at that moment i was while i was texting them but but i in general i didn't have like a thing i had to do i have what i call blocks of time so if you've ever read the paul gram post maker versus manage your schedule it's a kind of must read for anybody who wants to build shit anybody who's a creator of any kind whether you're a content creator you're you're an engineer your product creator you're writer whatever you do maker versus manager schedule is very important i'm able to live the on schedule life because i'm not a manager anymore i am not operational anymore but that didn't happen by accident and i i made it so that i wouldn't be that way basically if you look at a manager schedule versus a maker schedule a manager schedules what you described it's a zebra calendar every thirty minutes there's something that thing is usually put on there by your assistant or by an employee or a partner or somebody else a sales call that gets booked on your calendar and you just hop from thing to thing to thing and you're constantly switching and you're constantly doing and for me that was exhausting i didn't like it and i didn't i felt busier than ever and less productive than ever and i had to like shake it up i read that blog post and i decided to make a change and the maker schedule basically just says break your day into a couple of parts so you might have a morning sprint an afternoon sprint or a nighttime sprint if you're like a creative night out and a sprint is roughly ninety minutes to two hours you might schedule three hours because you're gonna putt around a little bit you don't immediately just kinda get into the thing but in reality you're probably only gonna be productive for about ninety minutes and then you you take a break and you just work on the thing where you the thing that is the most interesting thing that's top of mind for you or the most important thing that you feel like you really want throw your entire creative being into so that's what i do and what that leaves is a bunch of free time so when this guy was like hey you know we're talking and this like this is interesting i have a bunch of open space on the calendar that i can fill with whatever is the most interesting thing in the moment it's kind of like a zen way of being present when you're doing that nine ninety minute sprint what part of your home are you sitting in and who's around you i have a place i go to my special place for me that's my office i also have just like this bedroom that i can go into if i'm like if i've been in the office let's say i just need to switch i just need to switch some kind of or i'll walk so going for a walk so i basically have three venues i go to each has his own purpose this office here is like creativity i got the whiteboard i got the camera i got my big monitor if i need to do something that's a presentation or visual in some way i have the bedroom where i have a the ea lounge chair so if i need if i'm doing reading i'll go there and i set a timer so like i will time box everything that i'm doing and i'll say great in this ninety minutes and i kind of say different front what i'm gonna do is x what i'm gonna work on his ex but again the calendar has tons of open space outside of those let's say those two or three sprints of the day there's a bunch of other time that can be family time that could be exercise time that could be take a call with somebody time it could be go out to lunch with somebody it could be anything and because you have that free time you're you're able to actually get more stuff done even though your calendar looks less productive where are you so a lot of times people use and i do this too i use my calendar as a to do list so then where are you keeping your to dos or your ideas i don't have a list i have two things i have the big thing i call it my one big thing i'm doing today and the question i asked myself in the morning is what's the one thing that if i the one outcome that i'm working on that if i just did that one thing today would be a win part of my morning routine is i set that out i i just asked that question what is one thing that if i did i wouldn't have to do anything else for this state to still be a win whereas what most people will do is what are all the things i have to do today or what's the last email last five emails i i gotta do that now and that becomes this long checklist and you know all are not created so i proactively try to figure out what's the one big thing i set that out and then i do that thing and then anything else i do that day is gravy what do you say to someone who they're like dude i just like i have to do these things or i am not in i don't have the same job as you sean like i can't do i can't just play around all day i've gotta actually do important shit that people tell me to do well i think there's two ways to look at it so the first is are you again are you a manager or are you an operator or are you a creator builder producer of some kind if you're a manager of people or your manager of projects then more likely your schedule is gonna tend towards that however i was a product manager that was my job title i had meetings i had to be in i had one on ones i had stand up meetings i had all that stuff that was like you can't just be like hey guys i'm gonna create some open space like that wasn't gonna be an acceptable thing but even then i knew i wanted to move towards this so the first thing is you decide how do you want your life to be and i would decided i wanted my life to be this way so what i did was i first carved out a single day i said great i can have as many meetings and i have i can have a shitty calendar four out of the five days a week but on thursdays that's my day thursdays i keep clear thursdays are sacred and i did it for one day then i was able to do tuesdays and thursdays and then i was able to say okay i'm so productive on the tuesdays and thursdays this i experimented it this is this is a good method for me now how do i get myself into a role where this could be my default work style and then you work towards that you've set that agenda and these and you figure out okay it might not be able to do something i could just go full on hundred percent today but nine months from now i can work towards that and i could set it out and i could tell my boss and i could tell my my team but this is how i'm gonna organize things and i'm gonna do only i'm gonna do all my meetings only mondays and i'm gonna leave the other four days of the week clear for me to do whatever is the highest impact thing where i can roll up my sleeves and dive in so somebody wants to let's say for one of your companies you're hiring someone or you have an important customer meeting that you have to go to and they say let's talk in two weeks do you say no to most things or do you do you book far out okay look if it's my company in his revenue i say yes right if i'm if i'm the guy who does that but i don't i don't put myself in that position i'm not the sales guy in any of these companies anymore rarely rarely are there meetings where it's like i need to be the guy who's there it's scheduled a month out and i say but i do those when of course when when the time comes you have to do it you do it it's just i don't default into that the way that most people do i'll tell you a little simple like thing have you ever heard the charlie mu thing where it says show me your incentives and i'll show you your outcome yeah it's good i have another version of that show me your google calendar and i'll show you your priorities right because people will say all kinds of shit oh yeah this year i really care about getting in shape show me your calendar where are your workouts where your meal plan where where is it what what are you doing where where is the thing or oh my goal is to really you know get this project off the ground awesome how are you gonna do that when like eighty nine percent of your calendars filled with other crap it's like show me your calendar and i'll tell you what your priorities are it's a very very simple test you should take you should literally take a screenshot of your google calendar to show to somebody and say if all you saw was my next two weeks what would you say is this person's priorities what is this person going to accomplish if this is what their schedule looks like what type of outcomes will they get in their life and so you know i think that's a really important thing to internalize because then you say alright what's the alternative the alternative is this sam if i said to you what are the top three most important like priorities in your life and not like the health of my family or like you know that that not like that i'm talking about like shifts or changes you're trying to make like things where you're gonna need so to put in new effort to get a new result what are the top three kind of of those shifts you're trying to make in your life this year working out early in the morning as opposed during the day so i could just get it out the day get it out the way so seven am exercising the second one is trying to wrap up by six by six o'clock and so making sure i get everything done by six o'clock so i can be present with family and then the third thing would be focusing on content because if i grow my audience i can continue growing my company okay wonderful most people will not have the level of clarity you have like part the reason you have the success you have is because you have that level of clarity if you ask most people what are the top three priorities change you know shift in your life that you're trying to make it's not at the tip of the tone and if it's not it's the tip of the tongue if it's not at the front of your mind it's pretty unlikely you're prioritizing it and doing it and you're acting it you're revisiting it daily the the effort you would need to make to make a change in your life change it's not so easy that it'll happen without you thinking about it and i think it's normal to go through fun like the reason we talked about in this last episode and i was like i'm obsessed with this idea of having like a really hard challenge and the reason being is for like last so i had a kid five months ago and basically three months leading up to the kid and then the five months after you i you you you go through a period at least did and many people go through different periods where you're kinda sleep walking through life but you're just kinda like doing the same thing every day you're being a little bit less purposeful you're being a little bit more reactive and i think that a lot of people including myself at times i sleep walk through life and i just do whatever and so it's nice to have those priorities where you like reflect i i like to do them quarterly because if i do them annually then i i i found myself sleep walking at month six yeah you you gotta shake yourself out of it by default you will go into autopilot it's easier to be an autopilot it's easier to not ask the hard questions of yourself of what actually matters and what am i doing and do my priorities do my calendar match my priorities and what the hell are my priorities anyways and you know am i am i living up to my word am i doing what i said i gonna do it's very like that's the effort part it it's much easier to not do that so you know if wait let me but let me ask you a question you alright you're weird because i'll text you something important and i won't hear back for like two weeks and i'll be like sean i need to reply on this we have to make a decision decisions it's important to you not to me well but we have a close in a partnership and if it's important to me a lot of times it should be important to you and i'm like dude we have to just determine like this tax thing or whatever or like i have to change schedules let me tell me yes or no and then other times we'll we'll just bring up a random topic like wouldn't it be funny if we did x y and z and you'll type such long text and you'll do so many of them and i'll have put my phone down for thirty minutes and i'll we'll go and look at it and i'm like dude like what's that funny thing where it's like either i'm not gonna read all this either good for you or i'm sorry it happened yeah like it it was like like i'm like is there's so much information and there'll be a group chat sometimes it's me you and a third party like ben and you guys have already like had this massive brainstorm i made a decision i'm like oh it's fuck i don't don't i can't read all this do you have your text on and your twitter dms on in slack and email on to where you're actually looking at it throughout the day text i do get notifications for not everything else though so so yeah i i definitely keep the notifications off for most things you know again part of this philosophy is offense not defense how do i if something's important to me i could throw my whole weight into it and i'm not gonna be either distracted or sidetracked by other people's priorities one of the great quotes is about the news and like something i think all said that he goes the news is job is to make you know someone else's problem your problem like that's what they're trying to do you know today in you know in alameda there was a shop lifting at the grocery store and you're like oh my god it's like you don't live in alameda you weren't at the grocery store it doesn't affect you but the the job of the news is to sort of take this problem that's not yours and put it on your plate and so i'm very conscious of that i wanna give you a few quick hit of like little phrases that have that are very helpful to me in doing this the first is be effective not efficient most people who wanna be productive they think about efficiency how do we get the most done in the least amount of time right work per unit of time i i fall in that category i think the the problem is that it's easy to mistake motion with progress and just because you do something well or fast doesn't mean you doesn't make that thing important and so it is far more important to just identify what is the right thing for me to even spend my energy on and i might waste an hour thinking about that thing before i even put my hands on the keyboard or try to do something right and so i focus on effect whereas i think most people focus on efficiency i focus at figuring out what is the thing that what is the lever even worth pulling and i don't care if i'm that inefficient with it i might be inefficient i might spend three days on that thing but as long as i picked the right thing it was totally worth it and i actually had to do less things overall because i didn't worry about getting the most amount of stuff done stuff is not my my goal next thing you said something about working out the first thing in the morning i think that's another great principle the big thing is the first thing most of us when we make it to do list we sort of procrastinate the big thing and we'll use like small things to kinda get some momentum going before we actually like do the important thing but what that means is like if you're honest about it there are many days where you didn't actually spend enough time on the thing or you didn't even get around to it and so big thing first thing it's just like a simple simple phrase you can repeat yourself alright what's the big thing that's my first thing today that helps you because then you don't feel like you need to keep working more and more and more hours because you already got the big thing done at the very beginning of your dude it's so much better to do it in the morning you you know it's really lame and i don't ever wanna admit this but i'm going to fucking saw hill bloom inspired me to work out don't he did you see what he plays he is he's on youtube now and i love sa hill he's a dear friend of mine and i'm but i'm gonna make fun of him because he's a pretty boy and he kinda like has he has everything he's kinda like done he's like i love my family and i'm grateful and we're like bro don't say that that's yeah yeah but you already say that thing man that's not cool and he's got abs and he's cool and whatever and he'll just be handsome man happy saw not that's not like where you can't have it all however his youtube videos are so good dude he's the real deal he gets bet four every morning and get after it and i watch these videos and i'm like i'm so soft this is awesome and so that's one of the reasons why i'm i'm not gonna morning not gonna lie his youtube blog that for me too but it the he it was actually one thing that pushed me over the edge he tweeted something out that goes he goes i don't know any losers that work out first thing in the morning it's it's true it's so good is there any loser who just wakes up and work out at seven am i've never met him if there he said that on our podcast it was on our pod that he said that and he said that and like i'm sure there's some examples but dude i felt so soft when he said that because i i not like that right so you know but i did that i looked at my calendar i'm like oh the most important thing for this year is re wiring my habits to be the habits of a healthy person well what are the habits of a healthy person they wake up and they work out that's a common habit if i looked at my calendar it's like here's my workout sandwiched in between you know two things at three in the afternoon when it's disposable nap yeah you know it's like well that's probably not the ideal time to do this might why don't i just start with sucks i'll give you the last thing last little last little tip of the un unstructured life what a lot of people do is they we're all looking for love but we settle for connection meaning we all want awesome relationships with other people in our life but we settle for thirty minute zoom calls and thirty minute zoom calls become the default because it's like the it's like the the atomic unit that's like an acceptable that's like an acceptable ask and it's an acceptable request to to accept is okay i'll do a thirty minute zoom call but it's like death by a thousand paper cuts it's like a death by thousand thirty minutes zooms it's like this is how most people are living with other people so one shift i made i got this from my buddy john k is the barbell strategy he's like i have a lot of quick text messages with people we're just a one off text we're not even like texting all day it's just i'll text them one voice note or a random link or one you know you know three word text about something that they did and that's it because must i have a lot of text quick quick casual relationships exec and then i'll just go and spend the day with somebody i'll like clear my calendar for all for the full day and i'll go spend the day with him like for example today my un unstructured life i have this one podcast that's the only thing oh i have my more morning workout then i have this podcast that's the only thing i had on my calendar today done with the workout by eight forty five and podcast at nine am now for the rest of the day my calendar is clear wait dude you only need fifteen minutes between a workout and the this is why ari he's late all the time by the way you only need fifteen minutes i cannot think i need an hour of like a a grace period i can't believe you do do you really what do you do for the hour i just it like out sometimes i'm i work out so hard i wanna throw up i'm like i do i can't like i need like decompress for okay i'm not that intense i'm not like dead i'm not like absolutely dead at the end of my workouts but fifteen minutes is more than enough to to cool down for me do shower i don't shower between the between the work on the pod can you smell me like it's like i'm not like a clean for shirt i'm cool with that i just get so uncomfortable i'm just uncomfortable shower after this hey anyways the the other thing i was would say is the rest of my day today i bet this guy luke who was awesome and i was like luke pick any afternoon that's free for you i'd like to let's let's come to like i'm gonna drive down to where you are and let's spend half a day together i wanna go for a walk because let's talk i was like you're fascinating to me and i wanna make time to just go deep let's let's go hang and let's like what do you like to you like squash let's my squash i don't i don't know anything about squash you wanna go on a date you you wanna a date not a day i wanna a half day i want a full half day if i could get the full day i take the full day but i just met this guy and so i'm like alright he'll he'll do the half day and so that's the barbell strategy a bunch of lightweight text messages but then let's spend a full day a weekend let me fly to you and let's hang out for the day and then i'll fly back like carve out time to go deep where you have a real experience with somebody and it you go deeper past the surface level it's much better than the thirty minute zoom and it sounds like something that's like a really expensive hang but it's truly not once you eliminate all the thirty minute zooms that come in between you know what what you could do in in that so i try to do that you about one or two times a month and we'll wrap this part up but you're you're kinda forgetting one thing and i think you're forgetting it because i think you are different than you're different than me which is you're not bothered easily and so for example i get i i turn off my twitter dms i i not to get my phone number out anymore because i get overwhelmed with inbound messages of just like people who i'm acquaintance with and they wanna hang out and i get so like burned out of saying no i feel i have immense guilt you do something that i think you should fix which is you agree to stuff and then forget that you agree to it and so but but but that doesn't bother you that really bothers me so i just say no to everything you're quite good at just ignore at ignoring stuff which could be a huge pain in the ass sometimes but i actually think that it is more productive look i i agree with you there's a there is a trade off to everything the trade off of the un schedule life is that that that's not compatible with other people who live a highly scheduled life the trade off of the un unstructured life is that you're not gonna reply to every message that somebody else sent you where they feel they are owed a response but it was not you didn't ask for that you didn't ask them to email you something there's a founder of our portfolio who email me and i was like hey i'm in town wanna i get a coffee and by the way like i would happily get a coffee with this guy i like this but i even like think about it because that week crazy my sister had a baby my father had to go the like that week was like a little bit nuts for us and i was basically just like watching the kids at a hospital most of the week but even if i wasn't i still didn't feel even if wasn't i still didn't feel like just because you asked me something means i have to comply this is not a it's not my that's not the way i roll but but but that's a very you thing that's correct you think there's collateral damage with that he got pissed he was like dude or no i even emailed him i was like sorry i was like busy this week it sounds like you're not in san francisco anymore next time you're here with would love to grab coffee he's like not gonna lie bit of a turn off that you know you know our investor didn't wanna get coffee and i was like i don't know i mean i i agree that might be a turn off for you but you know that that might be a turn off for that's a fair that's a fair thing to say but i don't live my life that way where i have to do all the things you want me to do or anybody wants me to do there's a lot of requests of things people want me to do there is a trade up there's a selfish to it i personally also feel that it's selfish for other people to have to to put make their priority to your priority i don't do that i agree i agree agree but it's not practical maybe it is practical but it's a challenge i i struggle with this where people message me and i i i'll go to bed at night being and like fuck this guy texted me and he texted me at ten so i could act like i'm sleeping but i gotta figure out what i'm gonna reply with tomorrow i'm gonna get out of this did it well you know the only thing that saves you charisma the only thing that could save you is charisma because it's like you're a bad boyfriend that's like oh he's such a jerk but then when he's here when i do talk to him he's totally present he he he he clearly has good intentions and blah blah you sort of salvage it that's only like saving grace no dude covid was awesome getting and then i got married that was awesome having accounting stuff yeah having a kid freaking awesome kids are like there's been for your schedule it's amazing yeah so let me just say one last thing here's the disclaimer the out of touch that works for you it wouldn't hurt work for me disclaimer i already said this but i started doing this when i was twenty five years old and i had a job where i was the low man of the total i a product manager it can be done in any position it's if it's important to you go read the four hour workweek week if you don't believe me it's like four hour workweek week was was around this principle of of owning your time and using your time the way you want del and automating and being remote and being free to live your life the way that you want the second thing is there are trade offs they're real some people don't like me some people think a flake some people think don't i'm not responsive that bothers some people have to live with that trade off because i really appreciate the benefits that it gives me and the third thing which is yes it's a privilege to be able to do that however if if it's a lifestyle you want then you should just work towards it right so you should say what type of job what type of career what type of financial independence would i need in order to live that life and then you could decide for yourself if that's important or not after i decide if myself when i twenty four twenty five that it was important to me i'm now thirty five and it's manifested itself it's it's self actual now so it took a decade it probably took eight it was a shift it a transition over time like again like learning how to learning how to do anything takes some you know some time but that's fine i think that's great do we i think we i i think you answered the share out of that question alright alright is that it is that the pod i say that's the pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in and like a day's off on a road travel never looking back