How To Get Sh*t Done Without Being Busy

Sam Parr

Alright, Sean, you tweeted something that has made me incredibly envious of you. You said, "The joy of living an unscheduled life," and it kinda pissed me off because I want that. I know that you got a lot of messages. One of our friends emailed you and said something like, "Dude, how on earth do you have this unscheduled life?" So, I actually have the same question. I want to spend this episode asking you all about it. Tell me everything about this unscheduled life. I need to know how you can get so much done by having nothing on your calendar.

Shaan Puri

Well, let's do a definition. What do I mean when I say "the unscheduled life"? The unscheduled life means that today, or even in the next hour, you are going to 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. That's how I used to live. I would wake up and look at what's on my calendar, and it's like, "Wait, wait, wait. Why is the calendar in charge? Where does this even come from?" Oh, this is a meeting I agreed to two weeks ago, or this is a recurring one-on-one with this person. But it's not necessarily the thing that I actually think I should be investing my time and energy into. It's not where my brain is; it's not what I have inspiration on; it's not the most important thing. So, what I did was go to my calendar and just clicked delete, delete, delete, delete. I deleted everything and said, "Well, I'm going to live an unscheduled life." Meaning, if you want to call me—like the text message I tweeted out yesterday—somebody was like, "Dude, this is awesome!" We were having a good text chat, and he said, "I would love to jam on this sometime, maybe next week." I just said, "I'm free, call me right now!" Because I'm in the moment, we're inspired by this right now, and we both agree that this is really interesting and we should explore if there's something here. Why would we wait a week? Inspiration is perishable; it's like an avocado—it turns brown.

Sam Parr

What were you doing when they started texting you?

Shaan Puri

I was, at that moment, well... I was texting them. But in general, I didn't have a specific thing I had to do. I have what I call "blocks of time." If you've ever read the Paul Graham post "Maker versus Manager Schedule," it's a must-read for anybody who wants to build something. Anyone who's a creator of any kind—whether you're a content creator, an engineer, a product creator, or a writer—should find "Maker versus Manager Schedule" very important. I'm able to live an unscheduled life because I'm not a manager anymore. I am not operational anymore, but that didn't happen by accident. I made it so that I wouldn't be that way. Basically, if you look at a manager's schedule versus a maker's schedule, a manager's schedule is what you described: it's a zebra calendar. Every 30 minutes, there's something scheduled. That thing is usually put on there by your assistant, an employee, a partner, or somebody else—a sales call that gets booked on your calendar. You just hop from thing to thing, constantly switching, and for me, that was exhausting. I didn't like it. I felt busier than ever and less productive than ever. I had to shake it up. I read that blog post and decided to make a change. The maker schedule basically says to break your day into a couple of parts. You might have a morning sprint, an afternoon sprint, or a nighttime sprint if you're a creative night owl. A sprint is roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours. You might schedule 3 hours because you're going to putz around a little bit; you don't immediately get into the thing. But in reality, you're probably only going to be productive for about 90 minutes. Then, you take a break and just work on the thing that is the most interesting or the most important to you—something you really want to throw your entire creative being into. That's what I do, and what that leaves is a bunch of free time. So when this guy was like, "Hey," you know, we're talking, and it's like, "This is interesting." I have a bunch of open space on the calendar that I can fill with whatever is the most interesting thing in the moment. It's kind of like a zen way of being present.

Sam Parr

When you're doing that 90-minute sprint, what part of your home are you sitting in and who's around you?

Shaan Puri

I have a place I go to, my special place. For me, that's my office. I also have this bedroom that I can go into if I've been in the office for a while and just need to switch things up. I also like to go for a walk. So, I basically have three venues I go to, each with its own purpose. This office here is for creativity. I have the whiteboard, the camera, and my big monitor for presentations or anything visual. Then, I have the bedroom where I have an Eames lounge chair. If I need to do some reading, I'll go there and set a timer. I timebox everything I'm doing. For example, I’ll say, "In this 90 minutes, I'm going to work on X." But again, the calendar has tons of open space outside of those two or three sprints of the day. There’s a bunch of other time that could be for family, exercise, taking a call with someone, or going out to lunch. Because you have that free time, you're actually able to get more done, even though your calendar looks less productive.

Sam Parr

Where are you? A lot of times, people use—and I do this too—my calendar as a to-do list. So then, where are you keeping your to-dos or your ideas?

Shaan Puri

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. The question I ask myself in the morning is, "What's the one thing, 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 to set that out. I just ask that question: What is one thing that if I did, I wouldn't have to do anything else for this day to still be a win? Whereas what most people do is ask, "What are all the things I have to do today?" or "What's the last email, the last five emails I got? Oh, I gotta do that now." That becomes this long checklist. You know, all to-dos are not created equal. So I proactively try to figure out what's the one big thing. I set that out, and then I do that thing. Anything else I do that day is gravy.

Sam Parr

What do you say to someone who is like, "Dude, I just have to do these things or I am not in. I don't have the same job as you, Sean. I can't just play around all day. I've got to actually do important stuff that people are telling me to do?"

Shaan Puri

Well, I think there are two ways to look at it. The first is: are you a manager, an operator, or a creator, builder, or producer of some kind? If you're a manager of people or a manager of projects, then more likely your schedule is going to tend towards that. However, I was a product manager; that was my job title. I had meetings I had to be in, one-on-ones, stand-up meetings, and all that stuff. You can't just be like, "Hey guys, I'm going to create some open space." That wasn't going to be an acceptable thing. But even then, I knew I wanted to move towards this. So the first thing is to decide how you want your life to be. I decided I wanted my life to be this way. What I did was carve out a single day. I said, "Great, I can have as many meetings as I want, and I can have a busy calendar four out of the five days a week, but on Thursdays, that's my day. Thursdays I keep clear; Thursdays are sacred." I did it for one day, then I was able to do Tuesdays and Thursdays. I found that I was so productive on those days. I experimented, and this was a good method for me. Now, how do I get myself into a role where this could be my default work style? You work towards that. You've set that agenda, and you figure out, "Okay, it might not be something I can just go full on 100% today, but nine months from now, I can work towards that." I could set it out and tell my boss and my team that this is how I'm going to organize things. I'm going to do all my meetings only on Mondays, and I'm going to 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.

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's easy because I'm going to show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say "I," I mean not my team; I mean I'm the one who actually made it. I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out at **joinhampton.com**. It's a community for founders, and one of the ways that we've grown is by creating these surveys. We ask our members certain questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask. So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, and all these interesting questions. Then, we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. You can actually see the landing page that I made at **joinhampton.com/wealth**. The hard part with Hampton is that we are appealing to a sort of higher-end customer, similar to brands like Louis Vuitton or Ferrari. So, I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates—that's what we use. We just change the colors a little bit to match our brand. It's very easy. They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. Once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. I can then see over the next handful of weeks how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. I can track where the revenue came from—whether it was from Twitter, LinkedIn, or whatever. I can actually go and look at it and say, "Oh, well that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." If you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it! You can check it out; go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. Alright, now back to MFM. So, 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 book far out?

Shaan Puri

Alright, look. If it's my company and it's revenue, I say yes. Right? If I'm the guy who does that. But I don't put myself in that position. I'm not the sales guy in any of these companies anymore. Rarely, rarely are there meetings where it's like I need to be the guy who's there. It's scheduled a month out, and I say yes. But I do those, of course, when the time comes. You have to do it; you do it. It's just I don't default into that the way that most people do. I'll tell you a simple thing: Have you ever heard the Charlie Munger thing where he says, "Show me your incentives and I'll show you your outcome"?

Sam Parr

Yes, it's good.

Shaan Puri

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 things. "Oh yeah, this year I really care about getting in shape." Cool! Show me your calendar. Where are your workouts? Where's your meal plan? Where is it? What are you doing? Or, "Oh, my goal is to really get this project off the ground." Awesome! How are you going to do that when 89% of your calendar is filled with other crap? It's like, "Show me your calendar, and I'll tell you what your priorities are." It's a very, very simple test you should take. You should literally take a screenshot of your Google Calendar, show it to somebody, and say, "If all you saw was my next two weeks, what would you say are 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?" 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 priorities in your life?" Not like "the health of my family" or something like that. I'm talking about shifts or changes you're trying to make. Things where you're going to need to put in new effort to get a new result. What are the top three shifts you're trying to make in your life this year?

Sam Parr

Working out early in the morning, as opposed to during the day, allows me to get it out of the way. So, I exercise at 7 AM. The second thing is trying to wrap up by 6 o'clock. I make sure I get everything done by that time so I can be present with my family. The third thing would be focusing on content. If I grow my audience, I can continue growing my company.

Shaan Puri

Okay, wonderful. Most people will not have the level of clarity you have. Part of the reason you have the success you do is because you possess that level of clarity. If you ask most people what their top three priorities are or what changes or shifts in their life they are trying to make, it's not at the tip of their tongue. If it's not at the tip of the tongue, if it's not at the front of their mind, it's pretty unlikely they're prioritizing it, acting on it, or revisiting it daily. The effort you would need to make to create a change in your life is not so easy that it will happen without you thinking about it.

Sam Parr

And I think it's normal to go through funks. The reason we talked about this in the last episode is that Misoji and I were discussing my obsession with the idea of having a really hard challenge. The reason being is that I had a kid 5 months ago. In the 3 months leading up to the birth and then the 5 months after, you go through a... at least I did, and many people go through different periods where you're kind of sleepwalking through life. You're just doing the same thing every day, being a little less purposeful, and a little more reactive. I think that a lot of people, including myself at times, sleepwalk through life and just do whatever. So, it's nice to have those priorities where you can reflect. I like to do them quarterly because if I do them annually, I find myself sleepwalking by month 6.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you gotta shake yourself out of it. By default, you will go into autopilot. It's easier to be on autopilot. It's easier to not ask the hard questions of yourself, like: "What actually matters? What am I doing? Do my priorities match my calendar? What the hell are my priorities anyway?" And, you know, am I living up to my word? Am I doing what I said I was going to do? It's very... that's the effort part. It is much easier to not do that. So, you know, if...

Sam Parr

Wait, let me ask you a question. You're weird because I'll text you something important, and I won't hear back for like two weeks. I'll be like, "Sean, I need a reply on this. We have to make a decision."

Shaan Puri

It was important to you, not to me. Well...

Sam Parr

But we have a close enough partnership that if it's important to me, a lot of times it should be important to you. I'm like, "Dude, we have to determine this tax thing or whatever, or I have to change schedules. Let me know, yes or no." Then other times, we'll just bring up a random topic, like, "Would it be funny if we did X, Y, and Z?" You'll type such long texts and you'll do so many of them. I'll put my phone down for 30 minutes, and when I go back to look at it, I'm like, "Dude, 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?" It's like, there is so much information! And there'll be a group chat sometimes with me, you, and a third party like Ben. You guys have already had this massive brainstorm and made a decision, and I'm like, "Oh, what the heck? I can't read all this." Do you have your texts on, and your Twitter DMs on, and Slack and email on, to where you're actually looking at it throughout the day?

Shaan Puri

Text: I do get notifications for not everything else, though. So, yeah, I definitely keep the notifications off for most things. You know, again, part of this philosophy is offense, not defense. How do I... if something's important to me, I could throw my whole weight into it, and I'm not going to be either distracted or sidetracked by other people's priorities. One of the great quotes is about the news. I think Naval said this: "The news's job is to make you know someone else's problem is your problem." That's what they're trying to do. For example, today in Alameda, there was a shoplifting at the grocery store, and you're like, "Oh my God!" But you don't live in Alameda, you weren't at the grocery store, and it doesn't affect you. The job of the news is to take this problem that's not yours and put it on your plate. So, I'm very conscious of that. I want to give you a few quick hitters of little phrases that have been very helpful to me in doing this. The first is: **Be effective, not efficient.** Most people who want to be productive think about efficiency—how do I get the most done in the least amount of time, right? Work per unit of time.

Sam Parr

I fall in that category.

Shaan Puri

I think that the problem is that it's easy to mistake motion for progress. Just because you do something well or fast doesn't mean it makes that thing important. It is far more important to identify what is the right thing for me to even spend my energy on. I might waste an hour thinking about that thing before I even put my hands on the keyboard or try to do something. I focus on effect, whereas I think most people focus on efficiency. I focus on figuring out what is the thing that is worth pulling the lever on. I don't care if I'm efficient with it. I might be inefficient; I might spend three days on that thing. But as long as I picked the right thing, it was totally worth it. I actually had to do fewer things overall because I didn't worry about getting the most amount of stuff done. Stuff is not my goal. Next, you mentioned something about working out first thing in the morning. I think that's another great principle. The big thing is that most of us, when we make a to-do list, tend to procrastinate the big thing. We use small tasks to kind of get some momentum going before we actually do the important thing. But what that means is, if you're honest about it, there are many days where you didn't actually spend enough time on the important task or you didn't even get around to it. So, "big thing first thing" is just a simple phrase you can repeat to 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 hours since you've already got the big thing done at the very beginning of your day.

Sam Parr

And dude, it's so much better to do it in the morning. You know, it's really lame, and I don't ever want to admit this, but I'm going to. Fucking Sahil Bloom inspired me to work out in the morning. Just an appointment. He is on YouTube now, and I love Sahil. He's a dear friend of mine, but I'm always going to make fun of him because he's a pretty boy. He kind of has everything; he's kind of like done.

Shaan Puri

Good stuff! I love my family and I'm grateful. And we're like, "Bro, don't say that." That's... yeah, but yeah, don't say that thing, man. That's not cool.

Sam Parr

And he's got abs, and he's cool, and whatever.

Shaan Puri

And to be handsome and happy, Sahil, it's not... that's not how life works.

Sam Parr

You can't have it all. However, his YouTube videos are so good. Dude, he's the real deal. He gets up at 4 every morning and gets after it. I watch these videos and I'm like, "I'm so soft." This is awesome! So that's one of the reasons why I'm talking about this.

Shaan Puri

The morning... not gonna lie, his YouTube vlogs did that for me too. But it was actually one thing that pushed me over the edge. He tweeted something out that goes, "I don't know any losers that work out first thing in the morning."

Sam Parr

It's so true. It's so good.

Shaan Puri

Right. Any loser who just wakes up and works out at 7 AM? I've never met him, if there is one.

Sam Parr

He said that on our podcast. It was on our pod that he said that.

Shaan Puri

And like, I'm sure there are some examples, but...

Sam Parr

Dude, I felt so soft when he said that because I'm not like that.

Shaan Puri

Right, so, you know, I did that. I looked at my calendar and I'm like, "Oh, the most important thing for this year is rewiring my habits to be the habits of a healthy person." Well, what are the habits of a healthy person? They wake up and they work out. That's a common habit. If I looked at my calendar, it's like, "Here's my workout," sandwiched in between, you know, two things at 3 in the afternoon when it's most people's nap time. You know, it's like, "Well, that's probably not the ideal time to do this." Why don't I just start waking...

Sam Parr

Doing this sucks.

Shaan Puri

I'll give you one last tip about the unscheduled life. What a lot of people do is that we're all looking for love, but we settle for connection. Meaning, we all want awesome relationships with other people in our lives, but we settle for 30-minute Zoom calls. These 30-minute Zoom calls become the default because it's like the atomic unit that's an acceptable ask. It's an acceptable request to accept, "Okay, I'll do a 30-minute Zoom call." But it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. It's like a death by a thousand 30-minute Zooms. This is how most people are living with others. One shift I made, which I got from my buddy John Coogan, is the barbell strategy. He said, "I have a lot of quick text messages with people." It's just a one-off text. We're not even texting all day. It's just I'll text them one voice note, a random link, or a three-word text about something they did, and that's it. So, I have a lot of quick, casual relationships. And then, I'll just go and spend the day with somebody. I'll clear my calendar for the full day and spend the day with them. For example, today in my unscheduled life, I have this one podcast—that's the only thing. I have my morning workout, then I have this podcast. That's the only thing I had on my calendar today. I was done with the workout by 8:45, and the podcast is at 9 AM. Now, for the rest of the day, my calendar is clear.

Sam Parr

Wait, dude, you only need 15 minutes between a workout. This is why Ari is late all the time, by the way. You only need 15 minutes! I cannot think; I need an hour of grace. I can't believe you do. Do you really?

Shaan Puri

What do you do for the hour?

Sam Parr

I just... sometimes I'll work out so hard I want to throw up. I'm like, "Dude, I can't!" I need to decompress for a second.

Shaan Puri

Well, okay, I'm not that intense with that. I'm not like dead... I'm not absolutely dead at the end of my workouts. But 15 minutes is more than enough to cool down for me. Do you shower? I don't shower between the workout and the pod. No, can you smell me? Like, it's okay.

Sam Parr

I'm not a clean freak; I'm cool with that. I just get so uncomfortable. I'm just uncomfortable.

Shaan Puri

Hour after this... Anyway, the other thing I was going to say is about the rest of my day today. I met this guy, Luke, who was awesome. I was like, "Luke, pick any afternoon that's free for you. I'd like to drive down to where you are and let's spend half a day together." I want to go for a walk and talk. I was like, "You're fascinating to me, and I want to make time to just go deep." Let's hang out! What do you like to do? You like squash? Let's play squash! I don't know anything about squash.

Sam Parr

You just... you want to go on a date. You want a date.

Shaan Puri

Not a date. I want a half day. I want a full half day with you. If I could get the full day, I'd take the full day. But I just met this guy, and so I'm like, "Alright, 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. It's about carving out time to go deep, where you have a real experience with somebody. You go deeper past the surface level. It's much better than the 30-minute Zoom. It sounds like something that's a really expensive hang, but it's truly not once you eliminate all the 30-minute Zooms that come in between, you know, what you could do in that. So I try to do that about 1 or 2 times a month.

Sam Parr

And we'll wrap this part up, but you're kind of forgetting one thing. I think you're forgetting it because you are different than me. You're not easily bothered. For example, I turn off my Twitter DMs. I try not to give out my phone number anymore because I get overwhelmed with inbound messages from people who I'm acquaintances with, and they want to hang out. I get so burnt out from saying no; I feel immense guilt. You do something that I think you should fix, which is you agree to stuff and then forget that you agreed to it. But that doesn't bother you. That really bothers me. So I just say no to everything. You're quite good at ignoring stuff, which could be a huge pain in the ass sometimes, but I actually think that it is more productive.

Shaan Puri

Look, I agree with you. There is a trade-off to everything. The trade-off of the unscheduled life is that it's not compatible with other people who live a highly scheduled life. The trade-off of the unscheduled life is that you're not going to reply to every message that someone else sends you, where they feel they are owed a response. But you didn't ask for that. You didn't ask them to email you something. There's a founder in my portfolio who emailed me and was like, "Hey, I'm in town. Wanna get a coffee?" By the way, I would happily get a coffee with this guy; I like him. But I didn't even think about it because that week was crazy. My sister-in-law had a baby, and my father-in-law had to go to the ER. That week was a little bit nuts for us, and I was basically just watching the kids. We were at the hospital most of the week. But even if I wasn't, I still didn't feel like just because you ask me something means I have to comply. This is not my religion; that's not the way I roll.

Sam Parr

But that's a very "you" thing. That's a very "you" thing.

Shaan Puri

And there's collateral damage with that. He got pissed. He was like, "Dude..." Or no, I emailed him back. I was like, "Sorry, I was busy this week. Sounds like you're not in San Francisco anymore. Next time you're here, we'd love to grab coffee." And he's like, "Not gonna lie, bit of a turn off that our investor didn't want to get coffee." I was like, "I don't know. I mean, I agree that might be a turn off for you, but you know, that might be a turn off for you. That's a fair thing to say. But I don't live my life that way where I have to do all the things you want me to do or anybody wants me to do. There's a lot of requests of things people want me to do. There is a trade-off. There's a selfishness to it. I personally also feel that it's selfish for other people to have to make their priority your priority. I don't do that. I agree, I agree."

Sam Parr

I agree, but it's not... maybe it is practical, but it's a challenge. I struggle with this. Where people message me, and I’ll go to bed at night being like, "Fuck, this guy texted me." He texted me at 10, 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, dude.

Shaan Puri

It's weird, yeah. The only thing that could save you is **charisma**. It's like you're a bad boyfriend. It's like, "Oh, he's such a jerk," but then when he's here, when I do talk to him, he's totally present. He clearly has good intentions and blah, blah, blah. You sort of salvage it. That's the only saving grace.

Sam Parr

No, dude, COVID was awesome. Getting married was awesome, and then having a kid... that was great!

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Sam Parr

Having a kid is freaking awesome! Kids are amazing.

Shaan Puri

Are like...

Sam Parr

There's been so many.

Shaan Puri

For your schedule, it's amazing! Yeah, alright, so let me just say one last thing. Here's the disclaimer: the "out of touch" that works for you wouldn't work for me. I already said this, but I started doing this when I was 25 years old. I had a job where I was the low man on the totem pole; I was a product manager. It can be done in any position. If it's important to you, go read "The 4-Hour Workweek." If you don't believe me, the "4-Hour Workweek" was around this principle of owning your time and using your time the way you want. It emphasizes delegating, automating, being remote, and being free to live your life the way that you want. The second thing is that there are trade-offs. They're real. Some people don't like me; some people think I'm a flake. Some people think I'm not responsive, and that bothers some people. I have to live with that trade-off because I really appreciate the benefits that it gives me. The third thing is, yes, it's a privilege to be able to do that. However, if it's a lifestyle you want, then you should just work towards it. You should ask yourself: what type of job, what type of career, and what type of financial independence would I need in order to live that life? Then you can decide for yourself if that's important or not. I decided for myself when I was 24 or 25 that it was important to me. I'm now 35, and it's manifested itself; it's self-actualized now.

Sam Parr

So, it took a decade. It probably took 8 years.

Shaan Puri

It was a shift. It was a transition over time. And, like again, learning how to do anything takes some time, but that's fine.

Sam Parr

I think that's great. Did we... well, I think we... I think you answered the shit out of that question. Alright, is that it? Is that the pod? That's it, that's the pod.