Latest / FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast / Unlocking Flow: How to Focus, Recharge, and Stay Productive Without Burning Out – with Steven Puri

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Unlocking Flow: How to Focus, Recharge, and Stay Productive Without Burning Out – with Steven Puri · FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast

• 1:07
  Hi and welcome to fit me Turo fitness podcast today, I might have a little bit different episode than usually, as my guest, Stephen Puri. I don't know if I pronounced it correctly. Got it is not necessarily fitness coach or or client of mine. So before I tell you more about I rather leave work with Steven. So please introduce yourself, who you are, what you are doing and and what is who you are.
• 1:42
  Sure I am very happy to be here.
• 1:42
  And for those listening, I am not the normal guest on this podcast, and this is going to be a little different episode, so let me give you my background briefly. I've been a senior executive at two motion picture studios. I've also raised $21 million of venture capital and founded three tech companies, and in doing that. The last six years of my life have really been dedicated to. How do we find focus? How do we develop the habits that allow us to do the great things which are capable? And what I thought was so interesting in talking with Turo is these habits can be the habits that help you, paint that help you. You know, be Michael Jordan, that make you able to invent, you know, new tools the world uses. And the opportunity to come here and talk about some of those is really very intriguing to me, and I hope it's a good episode for all of us. Yeah, no, it was, this is exactly that.
• 2:40
  That was the main reason I get requests weekly and it's what really stand out is that kind of burnout, but we will talk about it later. But I was thinking that this might be an amazing episode for little bit different like not just the typical fitness talk, but because there are so many different things that they are also related to fitness and and even you might think that it, it could be time management with your or productivity with your work or with your family, but also within your workouts or within your fitness, because we all have same kind of struggles finding a time What is priority and how to deal with those things and and I'm curious to learn from you, Steven.
• 3:33
  Well, here we are. Where shall we begin?
• 3:37
  Let's start with productivity.
• 3:37
  As that is, that is your I think you are very good. You have, before we dive deeper into that, you have sukha community. So would you tell a little bit about that community?
• 3:55
  Sure. So for those who are listening and are familiar with flow states, I created a flow state app based upon the last six years of research that I've done, and my desire to help people get into flow for those who don't know what a flow state is, we'll give you a brief explanation now. So there was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihai chin, sent me high and he said, I noticed that high performers have these concentrated states they get into where they do great things.
• 4:30
  He said, I want to understand, how do they do this? What are the conditions precedent that allow them to get there? And he said, It's across disciplines.
• 4:37
  It is athletes, artists, inventors, you know, different people, but they have this place they go, where they do the things that change their world, or maybe the world around them.
• 4:47
  So it's called many things. I'll explain to you. Mihai, he wrote the seminal book on this, called flow. And the reason he chose this is, he said, I like the metaphor that you can be paddling, you can move yourself forward, but if you do it on the river, the river carries you forward. It magnifies your efforts. He said, I want to call this flow and that is where the term flow states come from. Now, as I said, people call it different things. Michael Jordan has this famous quote where he says he's in the zone. He said, When I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball. There are no defenders, there's no scoreboard, there's no spectators. It just the entire world. Comes down to that.
• 5:32
  There's no time, there's no distraction, it's me in the ball. But also, you know, Picasso had a similar quote where he talked about, I stayed up all night, I lost track of time, I didn't eat, I forgot to drink water. But look, I, you know, I created Guernica. What do you think I'm tangling the quote a bit, but it's that sense of these people whose names we know in daily life, they have a way to access this state, and how do we make that available to a lot of people? So the answer your question is, I built an app for people who are working on.
• 6:06
  Computer to get into a flow state using all the music and the, you know, automated coaching, things like that that help you get there and block your distractions. However, the larger principle is a very powerful one that I'd love to talk about how like, this is something like, I'm ex athlete, ex professionalized hockey player.
• 6:25
  I'm coaching women's ice hockey national team Italian we are preparing to upcoming Olympics.
• 6:35
  And by the way, my wife was a d1 ice hockey player in the east. Oh, amazing. So a lot of her friends from college are now professional ice hockey players here in the United States and Canada. Oh, nice.
• 6:49
  Yeah. We have, we have, we have, also many athletes from Canada.
• 6:54
  They are now coming to help us, or they got the passport. So they might, some of them might know your wife. What is your wife? Called Laura Minkin, and you're gonna laugh because she's now a senior vice president at PNC Bank.
• 7:10
  Oh, wow, but we do a lot of yoga. Yeah, no, but it's often how, like, you know, you play hockey, but you learn so many different elements how to succeed then in later in life, and get, probably like a high verb, like and probably like this flow state.
• 7:29
  What you are talking is one of them. And if you are familiar what it is how to get there, easier, more often, you will have probably, or your chances are, succeeding in a real world lot higher. It is very true. One of the things the Turo that I appreciated in our emails was the understanding of the relationship between physicality, spirituality and energy. You know, your mental state, like these are all together. They can't really be separated if you want to win.
• 8:05
  Yeah, but how, how you like? I want to go deeper a little bit in that flow state. Like, yeah, there are like, obviously, it's, it's a state that it's not very it's not going to happen every day, probably like for most people, or it's very hard true.
• 8:22
  How do you train yourself? Yeah, how? What is like, realistically? How often people can get into that flow state that you, you know, for athletes I can talk about from my own own experience, and athletes I work with that it's, it's kind of state, like you said, that there is no distractions you are focusing on, for example, life, okay, it's just a one shift at the time. You don't know how much time there is left, or who your opponent is, and it it happens. Sometimes it's it doesn't happen every game, or it didn't happen every every game for me, or I don't I think that there will be no athlete who is able to get there, or very few who are able to get there in kind of every single game, but how to increase those chances?
• 9:10
  Or what is, what are the keys to enter into the flow state?
• 9:14
  Okay, so let us begin with what Mihai wrote in his book, right?
• 9:18
  And anything smart that I say in the next few minutes, let us attribute that to some other person whose work I've read.
• 9:25
  Okay, so I don't want to claim to be the smart person here, but some of the things that behind noticed about how these high performers get into a flow state is, he said, Yes, it is about blocking distractions. Sometimes music helps. We can talk about that, but he said you have to have skills that apply to the thing you're doing. So it's it's not Michael Jordan painting and it's not Picasso playing basketball, right? You have to believe what you're doing is meaningful, which is a really interesting one, right? So if this, if you convince yourself that the the thing you're doing, which may be a game, it may be even playing against yourself, if you believe it is meaningful that allows you to start the world to fall away. He also said, you have to be challenged.
• 10:13
  You know, it is not a Michael Jordan playing with a bunch of eighth graders. It is something where at the edge of your abilities, you are being asked to do something that is difficult and it's curious. Now I'll tell you for me, before I knew the term flow state, the first time I had this experience, I live in Austin, Texas, and I was flying to San Francisco, I had to go meet with my team, and on the flight, I thought, I need to do some designs to illustrate this idea for this thing we were building.
• 10:51
  I remember the plane took off and the plane landed, and I thought the engine must have fallen off, like we must be in Dallas, like we did. Something bad happened, because this flight was about 10 minutes long and down and two hours and 40 minutes had gone. By. I had no concept. I I couldn't tell you if the drink cart came by. I didn't go to the bathroom, but my designs were done. We were landing, and I locked out the world. I had focused on this thing. And I remember this feeling of like, this is incredible. Like I thought I would go to the hotel and work all night to try and get this done, and the next day have the me, and I was like, I have time to go to dinner. So that kicked off, obviously, some research into what was this thing that happened? Because I'd never experienced that before. I was used to you just have to work really hard and really hard and lots of hours and you sort of get things done, as opposed to this highly concentrated state where, like magic happened for me, right, which is, I think, where Mahai journey started.
• 11:51
  What is this thing that these high performers can access, right? So for me, that process of accessing a flow state was one of those very intellectual but for athletes, it is again, that thing where sometimes there is no one competing against you because you were in your world, it is you against the clock. It is you against, you know, the physics of the ball moving, that sort of or the puck, you know, in some cases. So that is when you talk about, can you achieve that every day? I think the real question is, are those conditions precedent to every day, like, if you were doing a routine practice where it's the same people and the same thing, you know, are you challenged at the edge of your ability? Do you believe it's meaningful, you know? Like, are those things true, or is that only true when it is, you know, the NBA Finals, there are five seconds left. You know this, this is a meaningful, meaningful experience. So I know for myself, with the app that I built, I can get into a flow state every morning. And this is, you know about chronotype, about knowing what times of day you're good certain things, but I know that it's accessible routinely. If those conditions are true, I hope that answers your question, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Because this is, it's, it makes a lot of sense.
• 13:13
  It makes a lot of sense like that. It's, it's, you have to create those it's not going to happen just a regular day when where you are just doing your regular test, that you have to have kind of purpose and being challenged in in a ways that it's even possible, because it's not if you are preparing your meal or or doing regular workout, what you do five times a week, if it doesn't, which is just to get workout done because it's in a schedule, if there is no other meaning, it's it's it's unrealistic to expect that you are going to enter into a flow.
• 13:49
  Stake, Yes, awesome. Then what about other thing? What I what I wanted to learn from you, is productivity and and let's get started. Like, what is, what do you think is the what are most people getting wrong about productivity.
• 14:09
  Okay, so let's talk about how to get things right, and I think implicit in that will be what we do wrong. Right. A moment ago, I mentioned chronotype, and just to break this up, let me give you a very interesting, fun example from film. There's a famous screenwriter who was an attorney who decided he wanted to become a screenwriter. And he was known because in the morning, he would not talk to anyone, not even his children.
• 14:40
  Five to nine in the morning, he had to deal with his family. He said, I'm not the dad that's gonna say, what cereal Do you want? Can I make you pancakes?
• 14:46
  Did you do your homework? He said, I can't talk to you and understand. It's because I need to do this thing. And what that thing was is, he said, I can't hear my character's voices after I start talking, when I have a conversation about, did you do your homework? You know what time you leave school? He said, I lose the abilities to hear these voices, so I need that time in the morning of clarity of quiet, where you get up without saying hi to his wife and go to his room and work. Now this is a man who wrote the scripts that get Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts to to star in his movie. He's written, you know, best friend's wedding and Rain Man and movies that have won Oscars, right?
• 15:35
  Movie stars who have 50 offers on their desk with million dollar checks, they've chosen his scripts. They say, these are the words I want to say, I want to play this character, right?
• 15:44
  Yeah. He was very aware of his chronotype. He's like, this is my time to do this. Now, not everyone wants to be a screenwriter, but what he understood about himself was very, very important, and it's applicable to everyone. So that is one thing that I think you could do wrong if you have not figured. At what time of day you're adept at doing certain things. And again, there's some great trainers who like in this day part, we are going to do this kind of training. Here's when you're going to do your mental or your spiritual training. Here's when you're gonna do physical training.
• 16:21
  Here's when you're going to compete. You know, whether you're a boxer, an ice hockey player, you know, soccer player, whatever. Right. So that's one thing you can do right or wrong, is be sensitive or insensitive, be aware of what time of day to do things. Another one is about distraction. And I'll tell you, this is something you know, the platform that I built, you mentioned sukko, which Suk, by the way means happiness. And I it came. I have a daily yoga practice, as you know, and the word came, it's a Sanskrit word for happiness, right? So this is something I studied with the kind of productivity when you do need to write something, you know, do something on computer, and there are ways for you to black out, to block out distraction that are through, you know, meditative practices, you know, turning the world away. And there are also tools you can use, like music. For example, a lot of research has found for certain kinds of creativity, music that is 60 to 90 beats per minute, certain key signatures, ambient, non vocal music helps people get there.
• 17:28
  And have you guys ever talked about binaural beats? No, no.
• 17:31
  Okay, so here's an interesting thing, and this is something I learned in developing this platform, right? So over the past six years, a number of members have come to me and said, Oh, hey, we're experimenting with binaural beats. Could you offer some of this right now, I have 1000 hours of music in the platform because a lot of friends are film composers who have time on their hands, so they wrote music for me, right? So I research binaural beats. What is this thing they're asking about? And here's something they that there is research this is growing up gone right now, about if you have two different inputs into your ears that are staggered by a certain number of cycles per second, it stimulates your brain in a certain way because your brain is trying to reconcile.
• 18:18
  Maybe it's 30 hertz, 40 hertz, the two left and right channels are different, and it causes your brain to to react in a different way, to stimulate it and break out of old patterns.
• 18:32
  There are people who swear by this. I've tried it. You have to have headphones, or you have to have earbuds. You have to have a way of sending different messages to left and right ears.
• 18:42
  But it's super interesting, because if you do it for 3040, minutes, you start to realize your brain starts thinking in different ways. So as you think about this, because I know you obviously work with fantastic athletes around the world, that concept of like, how do we get someone into that state where it's just them in the ball, the soccer ball, the hockey puck, whatever it is, right? Sometimes that ability to say, I'm blocking the world out through music, and maybe using that stimulation by normal beats can be something interesting to experiment with. And I'll leave that to you. Yeah, no, absolutely. This is so interesting. So what you would say that, what how to get access to that kind of tools or or what you would say that I should if I would like to get myself or my athletes to that state, what kind of, how many beats you should listen with the right ear and left ear like, yes, there is, there is research that there are different brain waves to stimulate right and this is right at the edge of science. So some of the things that I'm telling you may be true in our belief today, but in three years, we may have learned more.
• 19:48
  Okay, so when you think about alpha, beta, gamma, delta brain waves, that sort of thing, right? And we have some theories about, you know, maybe you know gamma brain waves, or delta brain waves are more about creativity, which are more about focus? There are different numbers of cycles per second for the the offset between your ears, 3040, we have a bunch of playlists in our platform that are about 36 cycles per second, you know, delta. Now. There are also some great apps like brain FM and Dell that are just music.
• 20:19
  That's all that they do, but they offer binaural beat playlists, and it'd be interesting thing, I think, for you to experiment with, to say, like, hey, you know, if we heard this for half an hour, an hour, does it affect your ability to block out the world? And, you know, get to that. Michael Jordan, it's just me in the ball, you know?
• 20:39
  Yeah, no, definitely. I, I'm gonna introduce I for sure, at least, to try, like, you know, if it's not working, or it doesn't happen. Doesn't happen anything, you know, at least you try. But those are kind of all tools, what we have access to, and it doesn't cost anything to, at least to give it a shot through.
• 21:00
  Yes, you know, experiment and see which gives you an edge.
• 21:03
  Yeah, what is. And about, like you mentioned a little bit about distractions. And now, like, what I hear especially from women, is that multitasking, like I know, usually, what I have said is so many like men like myself, if I try to do two things at the same time, there is no way, or even even more than two things, maybe two you can, I can barely two or two income and walk. That still probably works. It's a two task, but almost one is too much. But for women like they are, they are at least they believe that they are able to do like, three, four or five things.
• 21:47
  So, what'd you tell it like, 1020, years ago, there was definitely a, oh, you know, great people multitask, can juggle. There's just like phenomenon of how you have to be a great multitasker, right? So modern research has shown there is no such thing. It's not a gender thing. It's not a boy, girl, it's not a tall, short, old, young. There is no such thing. This is what it is. Is we can mono task, right? We hold in our brain. What is the context for the thing that I'm doing? It could be you're paying your bills and you're just thinking, Oh, the electricity bill. It could be you're you're inventing something. So you're monotasking, and you hold the context in your in your brain, of what it is I'm doing when you multitask, what you're actually doing is you're saying, Okay, let me take this context. Let me store it here. Let me find the context for something else, load it. Do that task. Oh, I'm going to switch back to the other task. Okay, let me take this context, store it. Let me go over here, take that context, load that in. So multitasking is really just mono tasking, where you burn extra energy storing and loading and storing loading the context for the thing you're doing is actually less efficient in terms of your brain energy.
• 23:13
  Yeah, so is it? Is it just that that is the kind of cost of of multi desk needs that you actually need lot more energy than you would do mono tasking and one thing at a time. Yeah, that's exactly it. And, you know, the same way in which you have to become very sensitive with with the people you coach and yourself about your physical energy. Have I exhausted this muscle? Have I, you know, brought it to a place where it can recover? Right? Your brain is is similar. And there's actually very good there's a the hubris lab. Andrew hubman did a good podcast episode where he talked about the brain glucose levels. And what's interesting to see is like, the same way in which we think about ATP and we think about, you know, do we have enough carbohydrates and all these like things to make our muscles able to perform?
• 24:00
  Your brain is similar. And after about 90 minutes of concentration, it is interesting. The group glucose level drops to the point where your brain is not as efficient anymore. It also experiences fatigue or exhaustion like a muscle, which is why it's very valuable to say, hey, you know what? After two hours, I need to take a mental break. I'll give you an example. In our platform, it's gamified, so you can see your score, how well you're doing. Are you distracted? Are you focused? You know, that sort of thing. And at the end of two hours, you don't earn any more points. You actually earn points at that point for going for a walk, right? Because we want to encourage you. Go refresh your brain. Go walk around your neighborhood. Do something to get ready for the next thing, right? You know, hydrate, breathe, just try taking five minutes and just box breathing.
• 25:06
  It's amazing. The way water, oxygen, sunlight, help us refresh the brain, the same way a muscle needs to be rested, you know, when it's fatigued? Yeah, no, no, it makes so much sense. And I think I, I listened to same, same podcast episode from Huberman lab, and it's, it's so interesting to know, like to listen like you have like, like, you know when you, when you hear things like you mentioned that, you know, it's, it's like a muscle. It get you get tired.
• 25:36
  It's like a 90 minutes, for sure, not more than two hours, what you are able to focus but still, you know, when you try to push yourself like, like, for me, like I hear often that, you know, I have to study or finish my working task, but I don't have time for a walk or for a workout or something, and then, like, I'm thinking and asking like that, are you really doing like, eight hours in a row, concentrated work where you. Are fully productive, or are you taking some breaks in between or or at least, my own experience is that if I, if I in a days, when I work out and I might get some work done, then I go for a workout and come back to work, I'm a lot more productive than that. I try to work out through from early morning till midday.
• 26:32
  And it's like, you know, today, try to take that six hours working block, or if I divide it with the two blocks and do my own 3040, minute workout in the middle, it's I get a lot more done. And love that you understand yourself that way, that you'd understand how to get the great thing out of yourself. I have a very strong thesis that we all have something great inside. And the question of this life is, are you going to get it out or not? Yeah, and it comes from understanding yourself measuring improving. So yeah, if you do two hours of chest presses in a row, you're not going to get the same benefit as doing an intense amount and then breaking, recovering and then doing another intense amount.
• 27:22
  Oh, yeah, that's a very, very well said. So what is like now, when there is so many people who are like, you know, now there is a big word like called burnout, but so many, so many people still like, you know, it's kind of disease, what you want to avoid, but you probably like, so many people are already having, Like, at least some kind of symptoms that all are in danger to getting, actually in a burnout. So what is, what is one thing, what you would immediately do, that you would get more done without burning out.
• 28:03
  You've already said it, but I'm going to hang a lantern on what you said, which is, as you know yourself, you know the point at which you can't keep repeating the activity you're doing without taking a break. So it is very much about saying, hey, if I'm going to be emotionally burned out, spiritually burned out, mentally burned out. It is like a muscle where the muscle gets fatigued. And a certain way of to say, Okay, I'm done doing quad work. Like the marginal return of more quad work right now is very low. I need to go do something to feed that, whether it is, hey, I'm going to take in nutrients. I'm going to take in water, oxygen, whatever it is that I need to regenerate. And I'm going to come back to this, and I will do it fiercely and as a winner, you know, as someone who's serious about this, right?
• 28:52
  But it is not about saying like, you know, and this is a culture in San Francisco, which, you know, I've lived there is, there's sometimes a glory. Oh, I was up until 4am Oh, I was, I was coding all night. I slept under my desk. Right? Do you hear an athlete who's like, oh yeah, I was in the gym until 5am to get ready for this game today? No, you go home and sleep. Work hard. Work out.
• 29:16
  Practice. Work through trainer, your coach, yeah, and go sleep.
• 29:20
  Get ready for the gate. Don't sleep under you know the bleachers at the gym.
• 29:27
  That's, it's, it's a very good example. Actually, like, it makes you like, you know, I hear it also like, or many people you know, who think are in that high business, they have, of course, they have a lot of things to do, what they need to be accomplished. You have, you might have your deadlines or whatever, and it's continuous cycle that you are. You need to do more and be more efficient, bring more profits for a company or your own company or whatever.
• 29:55
  And at the same time, you should be taking care of your family or loved ones, and you should be taking care of your own health and but then, of course, it's, it's hard to kind of take care of everything, or prior, prioritize everything. And what is, what do you think is the best? Like, how to find that kind of work, family, health, balance, like, what you would say, like, I think, because I think that there are three big things I think for almost everyone, is that your own health, your family and your work or business, yeah, I think it has to do with being honest with yourself about your priorities. You know, like, if you want to change the world, you have to admit that to yourself, and with that comes sacrifice you know, like, if you decide you want to be the best quarterback, the best you know, forward, the best, whatever it is it means. You're not going to be at your son's little league game three days a week, and you have to admit that to yourself.
• 31:12
  You have to have that honesty with your family to say, hey, I want to be great at this. Hear the sacrifices I'm willing to make. Can we do this and still be a family, right? And if the thing you want is you want to be at your son's little league game three days a week, and you want to get enough sleep and you want to this, then you have to say, you know, my priorities are different. My priorities family.
• 31:33
  Then maybe it's health, then maybe it's work. But I think it really comes down to you have to be honest. Because if you are dishonest to yourself and say, these are all priorities, I'm gonna do all, you're not going to do all of that. And the one that is actually not number one, maybe it's your health. Yeah, it's going to let you know, oh yeah, when you start to get sick, when you start to break things, when you start to have muscle tears because you're not sleeping, and you're trying to be there for your family, and you're trying to do this, you know what? I mean? Yeah? Say, Hey, this, this 123, is actually the priority of my life.
• 32:08
  Yeah, no, those that is, for me, it's, it's very, very sad. And I totally agree, like, what I what I think myself, and what I heard a lot is like that those three priorities, like, it's, it's most people, I believe that they try to, kind, of course, they are all important things, and they try to do everything like you said. They are all number one priorities. Or you shouldn't be leaving something behind. But I believe that you should actually, you can periodize like you said, and focus maybe two things at the time and not it doesn't mean that you leave, you know, if you say that, let's say that now my focus, my priorities, are my family and my own health, that you don't just go to work. It says that work is in a maintenance and it means that you are, you are not probably going to change the world or or anything, or, if it's like, say that, okay, now my my my priorities is my family, like I want to go to watch my son's ball game three times a week and bringing him to practice and spend time with my wife, and then I have this big project in work. So it means that your own health is going to be on kind of maintenance. So it means that you are still doing something for that, but that it's not going to be you. You won't have time to work out five, six times a week for hours. So it's and but the good thing is, with this priorities that you can, you can always change those priorities. And it shouldn't be, I think absolutely it's it should be like when you are really honest with yourself and meet your priorities that okay. Now for next two months, I don't have anything PC in my work, so I put family and my own health as a priority, and then next month it's going to be big work project. So it's going to be work and own health or whatever. So it says, Just give so much clarity and saying that, okay, this is how it is. I'm not trying to do any anything, because then it often, at least what I see like, obviously, I'm you are specialized with the work balance, maybe family. I'm more on that own health part.
• 34:31
  And what I often see from people is that that is the that's the first thing. Then when something else is higher or higher priorities, then then it's like nothing for own health. So and it, it's it often takes maybe years, maybe decades, that you don't do anything. But then you know your own health. It's it you always, at some point you can't buy it. It's one of the very few things in nowadays that you can't buy your own health.
• 35:02
  There is no amount of money which is getting you to broke out tongue.
• 35:09
  What you just said is so true.
• 35:09
  If you notice, the richest people on Earth, the thing that they are trying to get is health, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And that is, that is like, it's not, if you are losing muscle, there is no amount of money that will get you back your heart health or or your your you know, you can have a surgery. You can have these all kind of tools, but they are kind of putting some plaster or something like just a quick help to help you come over for next couple weeks or months, but it's never going to change the whole thing. So it's you gotta invest your own work and your own time for your own health too.
• 35:58
  Yes, and decisions. This is a concept from economics, but decisions are made at the margin. You. You know, it is one thing to sit back, you know, in your chair. I sit in my chair and say, Well, this is how I want my life to be, and I want to have everything. I want to do everything right. It's not how decisions are actually made.
• 36:17
  Decisions are made at the margin, which is my priorities are revealed when I actually have to choose, am I going to work out? Because at the same time, I could go pick up the cake for my son's birthday party. I could do that one more report to move my career forward. And at that margin is where I decide, is it my health, my fitness? Is it how my son will feel with the birthday cake? Is it how my career will change and when you have to make a decision against, you know, among these things, that's when you reveal to yourself your priority, yeah, and, and I think, I think that it's, it's so well said, by the way. And I think that this this is the one of the hardest part to like, actually, to recognize those like, you know, because we can tell ourselves that, you know, my family is my priority. Like it's it's, for most people, it's you say that it's your priority. But then if things like you just said you gotta go to get birthday cake, and you are actually not going to get that because you got this one work, working project. It's not actually your priority. Then it's your work. What is priority at the moment? This is what you see in great movies and in great stories. The characters may say many things, but the characters reveal themselves through their actions. The character who may say, oh, you know, I'm here for supporting the goodness of the children and the environment and all that, but when you actually see that character throw, you know, his cup on the ground, like he he he actually doesn't care about the environment. He doesn't care about the children's playground. Yeah, you know, it's through action we reveal our character. Yeah, how, how you would what are your favorite tips to or ways to recognize for example, let's use your own example, like, what are your own priorities and how you measure them? Like, what is, what is measurement? Or how you know that you are saying that this is actually my priority?
• 38:30
  Well, I'll tell you now, this is very revealing about my life, but I'm gonna answer your question, which is, I have three priorities this year, and I can tell you in what order they are right now, which is going to change in a couple months, right? So the platform that I offer the super company, or the Focus app, the flow state app, right? So, Laura, my wife, the, do you want ice hockey player?
• 38:51
  Right? Yeah, she and I had a deal this year where from now until November. This is my number one thing. I find a great amount of joy in all the people who are able to use what I built and it helps them in their life.
• 39:06
  I don't even collect a paycheck for this. I do this because I love seeing people do something great, right? So that is my number one priority right now.
• 39:12
  Laura and I have been together for 10 years. We have a deeply loving relationship with that ups and downs and all that, but we're in a very good place. She said, You know what, why don't you focus the next few months on your company and making that beautiful? And I can be number two, like, I'll be here. She has her company that she does at the bank. And my third priority, which is going to become number one, I'm going to have a son in November.
• 39:38
  Oh, wow. I know it's amazing.
• 39:38
  Very excited about so right now it's third priority, which means, you know, going to the OB GYN, doing the NT sonograms, you know, learning, reading books and blogs. Father, how will that work? But I know, come November, that's good.
• 39:58
  Oh, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
• 39:58
  And this is, this is just an example how to how you change.
• 40:01
  And you know, already before, and you have had this conversation that this is how I'm going to do it for next months, and then this is the moment, like, obviously, it's a clear moment, and probably, like, easy to make that now I'm going to shift that it's focuses now more on family and instead of Business.
• 40:26
  That is exactly it. And we talked about how if you are aware of what you need and what you want, if you're honest about that, that you can then design a life that gives you that. And if it is I want to go win the Stanley Cup, which I know someone just did this week, right? Yeah, you look at the people who've won the Stanley Cup, you say, What were their priorities? How did they get there? What did they do? And then you end up structuring your life a certain way, seeking out the right coaches, and you have to have that deal with your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you know to say, this is how my priorities are going to work. Is that okay, right?
• 41:08
  Or, if you say, you know, my role model is Jamie diamond at JPMorgan Chase, okay, how does he structure his life? How did he get there? And you can model on that. And they have different business coaches. A friend of mine is a is an executive coach.
• 41:22
  She makes about $350,000 per client per year. She coaches names that you know from reading, you know, the newspaper, and she's one of those people that says, Let me help design the life that you want, if we can pick the role model, whether it is the best NBA player ever, you know, the CEO of a major bank, the guy who invents like friends of ours invented Siri in the iPhone and being the search engine, things like that. And they made that their priority, often, until they had children, and then suddenly their children and things changed, yeah, yeah. So it is, I assume now, listeners, somebody might be overwhelmed like that. You know, you have, I have so many priorities, like what is happening in life at the moment, and what is the one thing where you would where should someone who feels now overwhelmed, where you should get started?
• 42:21
  I would get started by writing an honest list of what I wanted to say when I died, wow, if you found me on my deathbed and said, Steven, what was, what was great about your life, if I could honestly write down, okay, it was this, this and this.
• 42:43
  Because once you think about all the daily drama being over, and it's all done, and you were just saying, Hey, I have five minutes left to live. What did I live for? A lot of things become clear, you know, and maybe that thing that you'll say is, I'm very proud that I won Wimbledon.
• 42:58
  Mm, hmm, I'm very proud that we created a banking app that helped all of Africa have access to banking.
• 43:10
  Maybe I was the best father I could be. But if you start by saying, When I die, what is it?
• 43:15
  I want to be able to say, you would start designing today.
• 43:23
  Yeah. So well said, and then I would add into that, like, it's, it's so true. And then, like, I would probably like, if you like you said, then like I would say, the second step is to take a look on your calendar. What is, what are your priorities? Are you actually? Are you actually doing those? Are those actions in your like, if I assume everyone has kind of calendar with appointments for themselves, and then if you tell that those are priorities, but there is like, for example, if my priority at the moment is my own workouts, but I don't have time for my own workouts because I'm Busy with my family and my my work. So it's, it's it's not, it's not my priority.
• 44:14
  That is exactly right. So what is I want to close this episode.
• 44:17
  I have few more questions, but it's time is flying. I feel like that. We are already 50 minutes in, and I think we could go, I hope people still find this interesting. I hope someone's still listening like, what is what is like? One productivity habit, what that changed your life?
• 44:43
  I live by my calendar. Now, what you just said is very true for me and true for my wife is I recognize that the one thing that you can't have more of is time. If you can get more food, you can get more exercise, you can do many more things, but the thing that is absolutely Limited is time. So how you spend each moment is very, very telling. So for me, my calendar how I decide to spend this two hours with you, right in the hope that someone listening benefits and says, Wow, I learned something.
• 45:20
  I can adopt that technique. That is how I decided to use these two hours. And if you look at my calendar today, you'll see that each thing on there is there as a representation of some priority I have. So for me, my calendar is the structure of my life. My priorities are represented there. And that goes into yoga tonight, before I go to yoga, before I go to dinner, Laura and I are going to yoga, and that's Wow. That is a daily practice for us, I love the physical and the spiritual sort of melded in that which I did not. When I originally did yoga, I did not understand that I had, I had a girlfriend who was the director of marketing for Yoga works, and she gave me a free class card with like, you know, eight or 12 classes, and she gave me a map like a good boy.
• 46:04
  My friend. I went after the classes. I didn't really think about it, and I went back. And then I happened to be in India with my father and some friends.
• 46:14
  Couple years later, in the middle of the forest, there was a guy who was teaching yoga class for free, just community yoga. Wow. And I thought, I have nothing to do right now. I'm gonna go try this. And at the end of that class, I wanted to call my old girlfriend to say, I now understand the gift you were trying to give me three years ago. Wow. And it's a daily part of my life. So that's in my calendar.
• 46:42
  Yeah. Is this something like because this that would, I would ask this is my second question that if, if someone want to apply these concepts, like, let's keep it in fitness now that, like, for example, you would like to work out more or eat better or sleeping better or more, how can you apply these concepts like, what advice you would give?
• 47:09
  Really, I don't want to come up with new advice, because I believe what I said, which is, if you are honest about your priorities, and a great way to do that is think at the end of my life, what do I want to say?
• 47:18
  And then you look at your calendar, you say, there are only this many seconds in the day. How am I going to use them that work to get me that life.
• 47:28
  That is that I don't want to over complicate it. That is it?
• 47:31
  Yeah, I think a really helpful way to begin, yeah, and probably, like you said, adding those things into your calendar. But it's kind of like it's at least for me, what works really well. Like earlier, I would say that I would work out when I feel like doing it, but I realized that that method, it worked sometimes, but especially things that I naturally don't enjoy.
• 47:54
  And strength training, even I'm a strength coach, is not one of those things I naturally enjoy doing. I know that I need to be doing or doing doing it, because if I don't do it, I start to feel I start to have pain. I don't feel as good as I do. It makes me feel amazing about i and and I'm not just motivation that I'm intend, that I'm going to do it when I feel like doing it, or when I don't decide before when I'm going to do it.
• 48:23
  It doesn't happen as consistently as it is in my calendar. It's non equitable event for my self. Like it's it's there and it I don't ask myself questions that, how do I feel like? Am I like? Of course, I some days I don't feel motivated working out. I that's the last thing I want to do, and I try to talk myself out of doing it, but the way how I do this day, I built I made it as easy as possible for myself. I have a small home gym in my garage, and all I have to do is get there, do one exercise, great. And after that, if I still feel like that, okay, today is not today. I don't have time motivation. I'm not doing it. Once I have done one exercise, I give myself permission to quit, and it made me more often than not, at least, to get started. And then I know myself also, that, once I get started, maybe I might not finish the whole workout, but I do more than that one exercise, and of more often than not, I end up doing lot more and getting at least some kind of workout in instead of doing nothing. And of course, then once you start to skip those workouts, it's it's every week becomes easier, and sooner than you, than not, you realize that there is, like, a couple months, maybe even years for me, yes, my short break from strength training, it ended up being 10 years. So have some kind of experience from doing that myself and now not trying to not repeat the same mistakes again.
• 50:11
  Yeah, awesome, Steven. Thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed, really appreciate, appreciate your time and learned so much. I hope someone enjoyed it. If someone wants to connect you, you have any platform how to connect with you. Your services. Feel free to tell everything.
• 50:32
  I will say this. If there's anything that I've mentioned and you are listening in your car at home, you know, whenever working out and you want to know more about it, you're welcome to email me. My email address is very public. It is Steven at the sukkah.co that's T H, E, S, U, K, H, a.co, if you're looking for a link to me High's book, or what was that reference to hubermans Podcast? I am happy to reply. It will not be 19 paragraphs the story of my life.
• 51:02
  I don't have time for that, but I do get back to. All my emails in 24 hours if I'm not sick or traveling, awesome. And if someone wants to try the platform with that I built, it is at the suka T H, E, S, U, K, H, a.co, and it's free for seven days, no credit card. Just helps you get into a flow state if you have you know work to do on your computer.
• 51:24
  Thank you. I will let your email address your company? Link to my show notes, so you can check them out from there. So thank you so much for listening, and if you enjoyed you enjoyed the episode, please leave five star review. Those are helping so much to more people to find the truth. So leave a review if you liked it. Thank you so much, and talk to you soon. Okay.