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If you're a founder or engineer fighting distractions,
here's the challenge most productivity hacks
create Flow Stephen Puri, the VFX
producer behind Oscar winning Independence Day and former
Fox Greenworks executive Turd Shuka
founder, has shipped under Hollywood level
pressure. Today we'll unpack his Flow State
playbook from the coffee shop effect to remote team
rituals so he can do deep work and
be2 time your meaningful
output today on
startup rated IO Stephen Puri. He helped deliver the visual
magic on Independence Day. Braveheart, True Lies,
Godzilla Dentur then moved
upstairs as a studio executive at Fox and DreamWorks. Along
the way he co founded Centropolis FX with his friend
Roland Emerysch, later selling the company and produced in the
Transformers universe with Transformers Prime. He's
a founder again building
Flow State platform for remote workers, developers and
creators. We'll explore what Hollywood war rooms taught
him about focus and what his startup failures told
him about resilience and how to design teams for deep work in
an AI driven distraction heavy world.
That is a nutshell. That's a big sentence.
Yes, but. But you know, in Germany we love big sentences
and compound bounds. Yeah.
Let's talk a little about origins. You told me both of your parents
were engineers. You started in CG and
Metroland Emirates through vfx. What
was the first this is bigger than me moment on
Independence Day? Oh, I think
there were a lot of this is bigger than me moments. I was
very fortunate to meet Roland and Dean, his co
producer and co writer, after I had worked
on about 13 movies. How
that happened is you mentioned my parents were both engineers at IBM.
So when your mother is a great ice skater, you probably learned to ice skate
when you were little. So. So I learned how to code. I was in Los
Angeles at the University of Southern California when computers
became powerful enough to handle film. So I
worked on the digital effects for True Lies with Jim
Cameron seven with David Fincher. I did
Braveheart and Mortal Blood with Mel Gibson, did a bunch of movies and met
Roland and Dean after they'd done Stargate. And
I remember coming over to chat with them and they were building in one of
the hangars at Howard Hughes old aircraft factory which
was been abandoned, but it was a very cheap place to have huge stages. Right.
They had under construction the
alien fighter craft that Jeff Goldblum would later
be inside and install the virus to help save the world.
And it was pretty great having a conversation with them about
doing the movie Together when you're standing next to this massive
starship being created, that was one of many moments
that was hard movie to do, but a great one to do.
Every day. What did leadership under pressure look
like across Braveheart? True Life's Godzilla, and which
habit from those sets still lives in your
founder routine? Okay, so in
many ways, I view leadership as
a way to create an environment for a team to do great things.
I don't view leadership as, oh, I'm here to be
the great one. I think, for example, in the entertainment world, Bob Iger
is a great example of a leader where he has amazing people running
the divisions he's navigated, very complex acquisitions, but
he doesn't make it about him. In contrast to someone like
Elon Musk, who's very full of himself. So
going back to working with people who are very talented,
Mel, Jim, Cameron Fincher, Spielberg, I work with
Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch. The thing that was important was
we have a team here and if everyone has something
inside them that is great to express, how do you create the conditions where
they're going to be great, they're going to get that out. And that's a very
strong theme of my life. I've worked with incredibly
productive, creative, talented people. And it's
about, if we all have something great inside, how do you
make sure you don't die with it still inside you? That's how
I view leadership.
We had quite an extensive conversation before that, and you said
the studio sequel Treadmill felt at one point meaningless
to you, pushing you towards a startup. What
snapped and why? So what you're
referencing is when I had sold
that company with Roland and Dean, and I was in my late twenties,
and as one thinks in their late twenties that they're smarter than they are, they're
more successful, they're better looking than they are. Right. So I had that moment of
like, oh, wow, I sold a company and I had some money in my pocket.
My girlfriend was a flight attendant for Air France, and we traveled for a year
or two and just sort of experienced the world. And I thought,
when we come back, I want to make
movies. I don't want to make a portion of someone else's movie.
So I worked my way up the ladder to be, as you said,
an executive vice president for Kurtzman Mercy at DreamWorks, Vice President
at Fox doing Die Hard, Wolverine and things like that. And I wanted to
be like a studio chairman. So when I got to
Fox, what was interesting is
I came to understand for the first time that my job, which Was
from the outside, rather prestigious.
I'm responsible for delivering the next Die Hard movie, the next Wolverine movie,
a bunch of movies on the slate. It's really just a chair.
The studio will live beyond my tenure there. It was around before
I was there. I'm the guy in the chair for these couple of years,
and someone will come after me. And the studio is going to make these movies
regardless of who is there, because people will just see a movie
because it says Die Hard on the poster. And my
boss, who was the chairman of Fox Films Entertainment, who was a
smart guy, if not a nice guy, a smart guy, he was very
pragmatic. He said, you know, it doesn't actually matter how good this movie is,
how good the script is. We can financially model it based
upon the previous four movies. So as long as we make it cheaply,
we know we won't lose money. And, Yorin, that
is not an extremely inspiring way to lead a
team. It's like, hey, would you go kill yourself to make
this thing? By the way, we know the script sucks, but as long as it
gets shot, when Bruce has some time to shoot the movie, we'll release it and
it'll be fine. And that for me, was the breaking point where I was like,
am I going to wake up, be 40, 50 years old doing die hard
nine in the retirement home? Because people will go see it even
if there's no idea. I couldn't see spending
more time there. I think there's a real value misalignment at Fox.
If you do Die Hard 9, it has to play in a retirement
home. Pretty much, yeah. And obviously now
Bruce is not making his movies anymore, and I hope he and his family are
well. But at the time, he was still quite
vibrant. And the movie got made because he had a
window of time in his schedule. It was not made because this is the
most amazing idea. The best script ever, the best director ever. It was
more, just get something ready and shoot in April
and we'll find a country in Eastern Europe where we can shoot it cheaply.
Not inspiring. Good to have a. It pays well
and it's a fun job to have, but. But someday you're like,
I'm going to wake up sitting around talking about how I did these bad
movies. Not a great way to spend your life.
For everybody who's interested, we do have a founder's world. And then we
also talk about his talker's moment and how Stephen
rebuilt his identity as a founder. The full story, of course,
inside our Founders vault.
I was wondering because you've been in
corporate. I have been two. Even though completely different
capacities and industries. What specific
anti patterns did you learn there that
now shape Shuka product bets.
Okay. An anti pattern. And this might fall
into category of values also, which is,
I think you,
all of us right now are looking at how do we measure work.
And in the tug of war between working at
home, working remotely, working hybrid, working in office,
there's a lot of fear. Right?
I think the fundamental thing that we should focus
on is not, well, where did you do this work?
Were you here under the fluorescent lights with me where I could watch you?
Were you at home? Were you at a beach or at a park? I don't
know where you are, not what time of day you did it. Like, if you're
not here at 2am Joran, you're not working hard, you're not part of the team.
If you're not sleeping under your desk, you're not doing meaningful work. I
don't think those are important. I think work should be measured by the effect
of what you do, not where or when you do it. So if you walk
in the staff meeting tomorrow and you say, guys, actually yesterday I had some
time to think. This is what I was considering.
And everyone in the meeting looks over and goes, oh, my God, we should do
that now. That changes the trajectory
of our company. And then you say, well, you know what? I actually
just thought of that. Walking my dog. Who cares?
I would much rather you said I was walking my dog and I had this
revolutionary idea than I was here all day. I was here 14
hours yesterday. And I have some mediocre things to share. You
know, Stephen, between you and me and something like 50
to 100,000 people listening to this interview, can I tell you a secret?
Yes. I have the best ideas when smoking a cigar.
Okay. I'm glad it's our little secret. No one
tell anyone what you just heard.
Yeah. Awesome. Why do you think that is? Hold on, I want
to ask you a question. Why do you think that is? That's pretty simple.
That's like a moment I do get
completely for myself. I sit there on our covered
porch, on the balcony where there's another balcony on
top. But I have awesome neighbors. They don't mind me going
out late at night smoking cigarette because they're already in bed. Thank you,
neighbors. I look out like it is peaceful world.
There's. There's a lot of green. I see some squirrels running around and
all that stuff. And I. I can really wind down my brain. I can
really relax. And it
takes some time to smoke, like a really good cigarette. So you
relax it for quite some time. May I tell you a story?
Sure. That's why you're here. So when I was
transitioning from being a student at USC
to the film world, which was not my original intention, I sort of fell into
it. I had gotten a job
working at a company that did trailers for movies,
largely for Warner Brothers and for Buena Vista, which is Disney.
So my job, when I was 20 years old at this company was
we would have contracts with the studios where they would send us rough cuts of
movies. Hey, next spring we have this romantic comedy with Steven and
Joran in it. Find a way to promote it. So I would assign
those incoming movies to writer producers. Hey, go take this home.
Watch it. They want it to feel fun or they want it to feel scary.
They want to feel right. So the company is owned by two
guys who are very well established in this field in Hollywood. They were very
respected as great guys to promote movies. So one of them
comes in my office one day, and he's 40 years old,
by the way, smoke cigars. So he comes to my office, and
he's the only person in my life who calls me Stevie. So he goes,
stevie, do you know Bart?
And I was like, there's the guy in the vault that delivers tapes. Yeah, I've
met him. Seems nice. Why? He's like, you ever
give Bart a trailer to ride?
I was like, are we talking about the guy who delivers coffee? The same.
Bart, the guy. Where are you going with this? He's like,
stevie, I have an instinct about him.
Jeff, you own the place. Let me give him something to work on, Right? So
I found, like, a Warner Brothers B title that had a month deadline.
So if after a week, he's like, I don't want to do this. I could
give it to a pro. Right? Jeff comes to my office two days
later. Stevie, how's Bart doing? Like, Jeff, I gave him this
thing two days ago. I'm not going to bug him. I'll check with him on
Monday. Okay. Okay, that's great. What else did you give him?
Jeff, he's never written a trailer in his life. I gave him one movie,
and Jeff said something that I've seen
proven true for 20 years in both film and tech.
Jeff said to me, stevie, let me explain to you how
creativity works. It's always about the
other thing. He said, if you give Bart one movie to work
on, he's going to stare at that with little beads of sweat coming down
his temples and he's going to write the most
obvious B version of a trailer.
He's like the part of your mind that does the huh,
what do chocolate and peanut butter taste like together? He's like, that's not the part
of your mind that you think you're thinking with. So you have to give
him something else to think about.
Not only have I seen him proven right so many times, but there is a
book about the neuroscience of this called the Net and the
butterfly by Olivia Fox Caban
and Judah Pollock. And it talks about the
executive mode and the default mode networks in the brain and
talks to a lot of inventors, talks to a lot of creative types and say,
how do you do this? And what's interesting is the default mode
network, which actually exists first when we were small, is
the one that just explores the world. It looks at a cell phone and thinks,
I wonder what that tastes like. Well, the executive mode network is more
like the adult in the room. I have to finish the slide
deck for tomorrow's presentation. Oh, the investor thing is coming up. I need to
do my homework tonight. So it's only when the
executive mode network is busy doing something the default mode network
can play and come up with those ideas. You go, oh, actually that's interesting.
So that is why people have ideas when they are sitting out, looking,
smoking a cigar, walking their dog, driving,
doing the dishes, showering. So many people come to me like, I have my best
ideas in the shower. My best ideas like washing dishes. And
that is why. I see. And
actually I also learned that when I became an entrepreneur,
I sent the adult in my brain a part time vacation.
Okay, let's talk about Transformers prime and later studio
roles. Put you in a massive cross functional team.
What's a communication ritual from that
world every startup should steal today.
Oh, okay. I would say probably the most
valuable thing that you see on show because Transformers prime is a
TV series that I helped set up. I helped staff
and create the organization for that. So that
is a 3D animated show based on the Transformers universe and all
that. So a very similar thing does exist
in the standup world, which is you do
have a morning standup
and that is something that in the animation world
you will have a practice that Pixar is famous for about, you know, the
Pixar movies, right from Toy Story to today, like they've done an
amazing job. They have a very collaborative process of saying, hey, let's
watch things together. Let's talk about the struggles we're having. I don't know why the
third act is not working here. It's a similar thing that I see in the
best startup, you know, best startups that have a standup that's
not just a. This is what I did yesterday. This is
what I'm doing today. This is where I'm blocked. You know, it's like that
becomes such a rote sort of a thing that's not actually that
inspiring as to say, hey, you know what? I want to show something.
I built this feature. What do you think? And take 10 seconds. Take
20 seconds. Go. Now, when you do this in our app, this
works this way. And it's an interesting way to engage
the team, to get collaborative ideas, to shoot down bad ideas
quickly. And you, as a leader, have to create an
environment where best idea wins, where there is no ego.
And I'll tell you another story. When I was at DreamWorks
and I had worked hard, and I got to the point where I was a
senior executive there with Alex and Bob, I remember the very first
meeting I had in Steven Spielberg's conference room, which, yes,
I'd worked hard to get there and had done many projects. But I'm just going
to tell you straight up, the first time I was sitting there and Steven's, it's
all Southwestern Adobe style.
And I looked around, I was like, oh, my God. My life has gotten to
the point where I'm having a story meeting with Steven Spielberg in his private conference
room. This is amazing. And the chairman of DreamWorks, Stacy Snyder
is there, and the president of DreamWorks, myself, two writers,
writing producers. And I saw something that I was
like, wow. And I'm going
to change the details, Jorn, just to be respectful of Stephen in the
process. Okay, I'm going to change the details a bit, but we're working on a
project that's like an Alien movie. And Steven has done
some big alien movie. He spent a lot of time thinking about aliens, right?
So he said something where it's like, oh, you know what? The alien should come
through the wall, and then we're going to discover its weakness. Is this
right? And everyone, of course, writes that down. Steven
Spielberg said, the alien comes to the wall. Weaknesses, right? And. And then
someone who I'm going to say is like, the coffee boy was coming through the
room and said, actually, I feel like we
just saw that last summer in this other movie.
And what if it were actually this thing that the alien
was weak, it was his weakness. And I
thought to myself, that Coffee Boy will never be seen alive
again. He just contradicted Steven Spielberg. This would be the
end of Jerry. He'll be in a dumpster out back.
And what was amazing is, without a
missed beat, Steven said, oh, yeah, that's good, we should
do that. And there was no feeling of, oh,
my God, someone contradicted Steven Spielberg. It was rather
Steven saying, I want this to be great more
than I want it to be mine. And I'll tell
you, I saw this with some of the best designers, some of the
best writers, directors. They
don't have a possessive relationship with ideas. It's
not like you're in, this is my idea. I must defend it to the death.
We'll do it this way. It is rather, I will defend greatness to the
death. And then you lose the
ego because you want the products to be great. Whether it is an
app, whether it is a movie, a TV series.
That process, if you can create that in your company, it comes from the
top. Because once they see the leader is fine with their ideas
being improved, then everyone goes, oh, well, it's okay. It's not an ego
thing. That sounds pretty good. Can I tell you another secret?
Oh, boy. Is this about cigars? It has done a lot of
very cool stuff. But when you first said Steven Spielberg, do you know what
first thing came to my mind? The animated series. He did
Pinky and the Brain. Pinky and the Brain.
Okay, you're going to laugh. That's funny. That was on your mind. You know what
was on my mind today when we were going to talk, when I was thinking,
oh, I wanted to talk to Jordan today, was I think you did a recent
episode where you were interviewing someone who was
working in the finance. I think she was in private equity or something, and she
made selling finance. And you said, you know,
you don't need five apps to tell you you're broke.
Remember this? Yes, I remember
listening to that in the car. I was going to the gym and I laughed
out lo. You know what? You're absolutely right.
Really cool. Let's talk a little bit about
Shuka, your
current company, your current startup. That's why you are here. As
an entrepreneur, you aim for the
coffee shop effect. I
assume it's not being over caffeinated. What does
the science and your user data say about
ambient accountability versus solo focus
playlists? Let me answer that, but then I'm going to
expand it a little bit, if that's okay with you. Okay, so
for those listening at home or playing in the car, what Joran is
alluding to is there is an effect that's known
colloquially as the coffee shop effect.
In research circles, it's often called social facilitation
theory, the Hawthorne effect, other things. And it's based on this
idea, which is there is a
productivity boost, a measurable boost if
you can see someone else working and, you know,
you can be seen working. And whether that is
the negative side of that is, well, it's surveillance. It's like, oh,
everyone can see me. I have to work. Or whether it is, hey, we're doing
this together. It's inspiring. You can debate that, but there
is a productivity boost you get from that. Now, I think what
Joran's getting at, because he wants to laugh a little bit at me, is when
I was a film executive, I had to read a lot of
scripts, a lot of books. You were continually getting
this flow of things coming at you from people who
want you to buy it, Right. Will your studio please buy my idea,
my pitch, my treatment, my. My video game rights, you know,
whatever. And that means you read a lot. And
I'm not a great writer, but
there is a coffee shop, a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf that
is across Sunset Boulevard from the Directors Guild of America.
And it is famously known as this writer's coffee shop.
And when you walk in There, all the MacBooks
are out with people writing on their laptops. And it's not
incredibly social. It is not like people are just running around talking to each
other all the time. But there's an energy in that room that's really interesting because
in one corner, you have that weird old guy writing
who's written, like, three studio movies this year. His quote is a million dollars
a script. But he still comes here in his 50s or 60s, because it's his
habit. He loves the energy of this room. Maybe he's been there for 20 years,
whereas there are other people who just got off the bus from Iowa, you know,
or from Wichita Falls, and they are
writing their first TV pilot. So
what's interesting about that coffee shop effect, and then I'm going to move on to
a broader point, is I would go
there to read. Even though I was not a writer,
I would go there to read because it was inspiring to me. On weekends when
I had, like, six hours, eight hours of reading to do, to be there among
so many people who are trying to do something with their lives,
all of them are trying to write something great. And that is something that, you
know, with Sukha, that we wanted to recreate where you have the ability, if you
want to participate in a group chat, to you Know, turn your
camera on, see other people. It's a very simple idea
of that African proverb, we go
together, we go further. You know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If
you want to go far, go together. Now let me
expand that a little bit, which is the why
of what I do. And actually the most important reason that I'm
sharing a lot this year is what I've learned about flow
states. Because we began talking today. And
for those of you listening, I appreciate your being here because this is really the
closest thing to my heart. I
believe that all of us have something great inside. And the question
that you're going to answer in this lifetime is, will you get it out or
not? And there are some very strong forces
in this world to make sure you do not the people who make
distractions, the trillion dollar companies that hire some of the
best behavioral psychologists, some of the best designers
from the best engineers, their business models to
steal your life. Because they don't want you to create that startup. They don't want
you to come with that new idea. They don't want you to even write that
book. They want to have your life so they can sell it.
So if you are out there listening and you have that thing inside you
like, I refuse to die with this idea
still inside me, then that tug of war
for your life you really have to look at. Because on one side you have
those trillion dollar ideas paying the biggest paychecks to the smartest people
tugging, and on the other side of that rope,
it's you alone.
So you need to have people around you and tools that help you
to actually become who you could be. Because you don't want to end up
that 80 year old guy or girl sitting on the sofa scrolling and double
tapping and telling people how you could have created that company, you had
that idea for the app, you could have written that book, because that's
miserable. And by the way, no one wants to be around that person.
They want to be around someone who tried. You may fail what you are
contemplating doing. You come here to listen to this podcast because you have
something you believe you can do. You may not succeed,
but if you try and fail, that is noble
and people can respect that. But giving your life away,
there's no nobility in that. So that is why I talk a lot
about flow states and how to block distractions and how to
get out the great thing inside you. And that's why I was really excited to
come on this podcast today. Because I think the
people listening here, they want to do Something with their lives,
and I love that. Back to you, Jorn.
I actually realized that I also used this effect of
being seen, because with a friend of mine, I'm doing like one
hour a week. We call it the hour of the Skunk, where
we just go online on a meeting, webcams on.
We both work on the things you really don't want to do,
like tax filings,
all the administrative trivia. You just have to.
Yeah, I love that in German. Die
stunde Distincties. And so have
you. I've not heard an episode where you talked about body doubling. Is that something
we should talk about now? No, no,
no, actually. Actually, I do it all myself. Like the owl of the
skunk. It's all me. Oh, it's just you. I thought you were on webcams together
with your friend. Yeah, exactly. So. So I'm there, he's
there, and we both work on different things, but we force each
other to do the stuff we don't want to do. You know, like the book.
Eat that frog. Exactly. That's the idea behind that. Eat the
frog. There you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So
the technique that Jorn is referencing is commonly known, and it's very popular
with neurodivergence, popular in ADHD circles,
of turning on your webcam, working with one or more people.
And it's not that you talk, it's not that you interact, but it's just a
way of having a sense of presence. There's someone else there, as I do
the thing that may be super annoying to do or I've been procrastinating
on, and you eat the frog. You do the thing that's hard.
You, I guess, spend an hour with the skunk.
Exactly. Sometimes I feel like that.
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in here.
But let us move to next question. You shared that 22
minutes can be lost, regaining focus after interruptions.
How does Shukra reduce this, like,
context switch tax in practice? Oh,
good question. Okay, so, as you know, I love stories. Let me
tell you a story about how I discovered this. And then I'm going to go
into more of the neuroscience of it and how it can be applied. Right. So
I live in Austin, Texas. You know where this is very well, because you've lived
in Texas. I was flying to San Francisco, where
the next day I was going to meet with my team. And on the flight
I thought, I'm going to mock up. I'm going to go into Figma, mock up
this idea for a feature well, enough that I can Demonstrate it tomorrow,
and then actual designer can pick it up and finish it.
I got on the flight, and there's an Alaska nonstop
from Austin to San Francisco. We took off. They announced the WI
fi was out, and we landed about 15 minutes later.
And I thought, the engine has fallen off. Something bad has happened. We lost
hydraulic systems, and we're in Dallas. We didn't go anywhere.
I looked down at the little clock on my MacBook. Over 2 hours
and 40 minutes had gone by. I had no
concept. Time had moved. We were in San
Francisco, and my designs were done. And I was
actually quite proud of them. And
I thought to myself, I couldn't tell you if the drink cart came by. I
couldn't tell you the name of the guy in the seat next to me. I
had no concept of any of these distracting things around me,
but I had this great feeling of being in control of my life. That night.
I thought to myself, I'm going to get off the plane, grab a sandwich in
the hotel lobby, go up to my hotel room, and try and finish the designs.
In reality, I called a friend of mine and said, hey, I have a free
night in San Francisco. Do you want to have dinner? And that felt
amazing. To not be behind, but to start, be ahead.
And at the time, I did not know the term flow state.
Now, I'm sure there are many people listening who are flow
masters, and they know all about flow states. But for those who
don't, or maybe have heard it in passing, let me just do 30 seconds on
what a flow state is, that we're all on equal footing. Okay?
There was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihai Csik
Nai, and he had a strong thesis.
His thesis was man high performers in these
different disciplines, inventors and athletes and
artists, they get into these
concentrated states where they do the things that make them famous, the things
that change the world. And they describe these states in very similar
ways. What is that state? How does it work?
So, like Prometheus from the mythology, he wanted to go
up to Mount Olympus, steal some fire, and bring it down to the rest of
us. So when he did his research, at the end of it, he wrote a
book, and the book is called Flow, and that is the
seminal work on this. It is from whence we get the term flow states. And
he said this was the most beautiful metaphor I could use
for what I found, which is, we are all on the river,
paddling to move ourselves forward. But if you align your
boat with the current, you go faster and you go
further, because it magnifies your efforts. And that's what these
people do. Now, in the intervening decades,
many smart people have expanded on his research and said, oh, this is the
thing. There is a way in which you could be more in control of your
day, more in control of your mind and your energy to do things.
Super helpful. If you are an entrepreneur, a solopreneur,
if you are working on things on the side, if you have knowledge,
work to do, like you may be a developer, you may be a designer, you
may be an author, and this is
what I am passionate about. Suka, which you referenced
and I appreciate you bringing that up. Suka is ultimately
a flow state app. I don't call it that all the time because not everyone
knows what a flow state is. We call it a Focus app. But what it
is is we looked at the research and Mihaly did an
amazing job saying, here's how you know you're in a flow state
and here are the techniques that these high performers use
to get into it. And we just said, what if there was a simple website
with a play button right in the middle that did most of this for you?
And I can go into what some of those things are because people can do
this. They don't need my app or anyone's app. If you're interested
in having control of your life, creating your startup better,
creating whatever it is you're working on for your team better.
Mihaly said flow states seem to be
characterized by loss of track of time, which I experienced.
Maybe you weren't. Have you've experienced a flow state, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So you lose track of time, distractions are blocked, you're
very focused on the task at hand. You do it at a very
high level. Your return of energy
from the task is much higher than things that drain you because
you can look at it and say, oh, I've done something of meaning.
And when he talked about what are the things that help you get into a
flow state and stay there, he said, number one,
everyone that he spoke to could get into flow state on a
task that he thought was meaningful. No one gets into a flow state like
paying their bills or returning stupid emails or
filing taxes, right? You don't get a flow state. When there was
a famous basketball player in this country, Michael Jordan, who
had this quote where he said, when I'm in the zone, it's only me and
the ball. And what he was saying, which zone is another word for
this flow state. He's saying, I can reduce my world down to
what is important and all that's important is I control this ball to go where
it needs to go. The stands are not important. The scoreboard's not important. The
defenders are actually not important. All that's important
is I move this ball where it needs to go.
And this is a guy who did stuff that 30 years later is
still in the highlight reels for the best basketball in the world.
And Picasso wrote about that too. He has a great quote about, I
was up all night and I forgot to pee. No
bio breaks and I didn't drink water.
But hey, look, I made some progress on Guernica.
So Mihaly said, what you're doing has to be meaningful. You
have to be challenged. You have to have skills that apply. It's not Michael Jordan
painting and it's not Picasso playing basketball. You have
to have some feedback. You have to know you're not
pouring energy into a black box with no idea if it's working.
Picasso has to be able to stand back and say, this huge canvas
that I'm creating. Am I starting to realize this vision I have in my head
of what is the horror of war or Michael Jordan looking at the
scoreboard and saying, okay, I'm going to win this game. This is what I
wanted. So as this applies to Suka, what I
built is I just said, without downloading an app,
without doing a lot of things, how can we take what Mihaly wrote
and make that available? Just a simple play button in the center of the screen.
So music helps people
get into flow and stay in flow. You brought up Jorn how a lot of
research is 15 to 23 minutes to get into
a flow state. You don't just sit down, say, I'm in flow, and you're deeply
in flow. It takes a few minutes, like music playing,
focusing. If you get interrupted, it's another
15 to 23 minutes to get back to that state. Right.
So there are a number of components. We can talk about them and I'm happy
to do so, but I've been talking for a long time now. I want to
give it back to you. But that is really what I think is the secret
sauce of our episode is how can you harness
a flow state to do the things that propel your life and your team's
life forward?
Two add ons to that. What really helps me is at
one point listening to a lot of those
background music on a commonly used
video app that is like working jazz, relaxing jazz,
something like this. I have almost. I'm almost constantly wearing
headphones for that simple reason. Because I have like two very
loud boys just behind this wall. And so I really
need to do that. And a second piece that I found
really helps me focus is interaction.
And actually I also do realize that that this
now maybe for a month or two, works
for me with AI, with large language
models, because I assign them roles. I assign them
not, not really personalities. Like they don't have like funny
voices or something, but they do have a purpose. And then you can
work with them like in a, in an,
in an idealized team. Because I found some research.
If you not only set up, for example,
let's say ChatGPT is the most used one. If you not only set
up ChatGPT and give it a prompt, but if you really set up a
personality, something that helps you towards your goal
and then have a group of different people who have different angles,
those virtual people, then you can get a much, much better
result. And that's what I'm doing. And that also newly
helps me get into flow. That is so interesting.
Number one, my hat is off to you that you are that thoughtful about
your flow practice. That's awesome.
And that is interesting to me what you said about
having that interaction that specifically keeps, you know, gets
you there and keeps you there, helps you doing your best work.
It's actually something I'm going to talk about with my partner later today because we've
been working on our, you know, essentially GPT, your, your
assistant in Suga and
I would love to think more about that. That's a great idea. Okay, what should
we talk about next? Well, when we're done with the interview,
I can show you some insights.
You talked about Michael Jordan and Picasso. I'm very sure
they are not the reference customer. And if they. In case of
Michael Jordan, if he's using flow, he's
not stating it outright, but what's your biggest validated
use case so far? Like developers, designers,
writers, solos, any surprising activation
metrics that predict. Okay,
I'm going to tell you a couple things that I found interesting because in running,
you know, this for years now and talking to a lot of members,
I know that our biggest cohorts are knowledge workers, right? Which are
often developers, designers, writers, you know, like
people who have multiple hours a day
of sitting on a laptop and doing something and if
the desire is to do it better, to do it faster,
that is where flow states are very helpful because you stay in the thing. You
don't context switch going between things. You don't
try and multitask, which is not really a thing it's just monotasking with
context switching. And there are a couple practices
that I have seen validated by a number of people. This is not
just theory number one is time blocking
and time blocking as it relates to your chronotype.
So chronotype, for those who don't know, is the concept that
there are times of day when you're more adept at doing
certain kinds of things. And I'll give you a film example because
it's a fun way of illustrating this and memorable, which is Ron Bass
was a huge screenwriter in Hollywood, wrote My Best Friend's
Wedding and Rain man and all these, like, movie star movies, Right.
He famously would not talk to his family in the morning.
He's like, I'm not the dad who's going to say, who wants pancakes? You know,
did you do your homework? Who needs a ride to school? He's like,
I can't talk to you because when I talk
to you, I lose the ability to hear my character's voices.
And that's when I get paid a million, $2 million a script to do. So
what he would do is he knew his chronotype and he said, I'll get up
at 4 or 5 in the morning. So I have four hours to write
and I'm going to get up, not say hello to his wife, go to his
office and write. Now, he knew that his chronotype was such. He was very
good with collaborative work. In the afternoon, after lunch is when he was
good, meeting with other writers, meeting with producers and studio executives
and talking about story, talking about. About things like that. So that was
the first brush I had with someone who was very aware of their chronotype
and harnessed that. Why do I bring this up?
Because you can figure out your chronotype very easily. You don't need an
app. You don't need to pay anyone. If you have a pencil and a
piece of paper and you can use a computer if you want, but I'm just
saying, it is this rudimentary, right?
Create a simple list for each day,
morning and afternoon, and just roughly say what you did and do it for
five days. Oh, Monday morning from 8 to 11, I worked on
blog posts and put down how you felt. Tuesday
afternoon, I was working on coding from two to five. How'd you feel
when you look at that after five days or do it for two weeks, you
will start to see your patterns. Man. When
I write creative stuff in the morning, I have a clarity.
Then in the afternoon, I try and do it and I always feel blocked. Or
I feel like it's stupid. I have to rewrite it. Oh, when I write my
code late at night, because I think all code should be written in the middle
of the night, I get a lot done, but I end up refactoring it the
next day. I should pay attention to that. And then you start to develop
a sense of when you should be doing certain things. So if you are a
solopreneur, if you're doing a side hustle or you're working from home,
you may want to have a meeting with yourself that you put in your
calendar. When you say, Hey, 2 to 4pm
Is my sweet spot for this, or 8 to 10 in the morning
is my sweet spot for this. Block it in your calendar so no one schedules
team meetings with you. Zooms. If they slack, you know,
they know you're busy. And use that time for that thing
because you'd be amazed if you know you're good from like 7
to 9am at this thing. You can get in that time done what other people
do in seven to 11. And you have to respect that. You have to
treat the time as sacred. Was her little jingle.
That's just my smartwatch. I have two
pieces to add to that. One of them is actually when you talked
about seeing or hearing the characters talking,
what came to mind was when I was in London, I was in the house
of Charles Dickens, and he actually had a mirror in
front, a big mirror in his writing room. And he got in front of it
and acted like his characters. And then at one point, he knew
how this would play out. And then he got back to writing. And that's incredibly
cool. Second piece is. I already knew for quite
decades that I'm a night person. I'm a night owl. I do my
best work between, let's say, 8:00pm, 20
and 2:00am the next morning. Yeah,
that. That's my best time. But I do have some
blockers. That's time for best. Time for what, though? Because that's
time for creative work. Yeah, it's. It's not for tax
filing, but it's for, like working
on the business, not in the business. Doing some preparation,
having some new ideas, what to do. And basically that's the best
time for me to do creative work. That's awesome. You know that I
do have blocks in my calendar.
I'm not a philosopher, so I just call them get you done.
Fair enough. But I'll tell you a funny story. So there's a guy
that I've seen body doubling in Suka
about The last year or two, usually in the evenings or on weekends.
And this spring he posted in the group
chat, where you can share things you're working on and people can ask you, oh,
I finished my website, here's a link, right? So it's a nice collaborative thing. He
posted in there, he finished his dissertation
and people asked him like, hey, congratulations, that's awesome. He said, well, you know
what? I'm actually a high school assistant vice
principal in Missouri. And what I've
been doing is using Suka because at night I have maybe 90 minutes of
focus time in between family dinner and school
responsibilities and all that. So I have to use it really well. So at night
I have this 90 minute block and in that I've been studying for my
PhD in engineering. And then on weekends I do the same thing. He
said, so I have to be very efficient with the little bit of
time I have when I'm not with my kids, I'm not at work. And so
he said, but don't get excited because I only turned
in the dissertation. I still have to defend it in front of the panel, like
two weeks from Monday or something. So that weekend, coming up
to the Monday, there are a number of people in the group chat. They're like,
hey, Roy, good luck, man. You have this. We're excited to hear how it
goes. And on Monday, he was absent, he
didn't say anything. And people started asking like, hey, has anyone heard from Roy?
How did it go with his defense of his PhD thing?
And Tuesday morning he dropped into the group chat
and he said, you may now call me Dr. King.
And people went crazy.
And it validated something. You began this episode by talking about this,
but I had to learn this. It validated the power of
community. When we started
doing suka, even under an earlier name and developing this whole stuff, it
was a single player game. It was here, here are your tools.
There's beautiful music, there are timers, there's a smart assistant.
We'll block your phone, we'll block your website. They're all the tools sitting there. But
it was alone. And I, as the founder, knew all these members,
almost like a hub, and spoke sort of model, but they didn't know each other.
And I had an idea. Should people be able
to see each other, talk to each other? So I talked to a
couple members. I was like, is this a good idea or is this the most
distracting thing ever? Is this going to be terrible? Right? And one
woman said this to me. She said, listen, Steven, I can go to the
Nike store. I can buy a pair of shoes. They will sell me
a left shoe and a right shoe. I put them on my feet, I run.
It works. But there are a hundred
million people around the world in the Nike run club because
when you run together, you run further, you run faster,
you're more accountable. The days that you
feel bad and your friends come by and pick you off the sofa and you
go running, you feel great. Are amazing. And the days when one of your
friends needs you to be there and support them and give them energy, they feel
even better. She's like, you should do it. It is one of my favorite things
because now we do have experiences, like what I was saying with Roy King,
where you're part of a group of people
who are trying to do something great and there's an energy. Whether it's the
coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, whether it's
a run club, there's something powerful about when you're around people
like you that are all trying to do something great. It lifts all
of you up. I
see. For our audience, I was wondering
what breaks your focus most
like Slack pings, meetings, social media, comment.
We'll compile a cheat sheet down here. Steven,
actually, we would be now going into the ad break,
but we've been talking so long. How do you think
we call this episode one and then instantly start recording
episode two? Fantastic. Let's do it.
Awesome, guys. Hope to have you back pretty soon. And
actually, for you and me, it will be just a few seconds. For the people
out there, it will be a few days until the next episode comes out.
See you soon. Talk to you soon.
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