September 19, 2025 • 39 mins
070 The road to original and impactful work can be long and lonely. The digital age has enabled more freedom, creativity and opportunity, but also epidemic levels of disconnection and distraction. It is estimated that 20 percent of North Americas are involved in some early stage enterprise or work online. Even more are opting for remote or hybrid work. When we are literally switching screens every 3 minutes new strategies and tools are needed to help us access our potential and do deep work.
In this episode of Awake In Relationship I speak with Steve Puri, CEO of The Sukha, a productivity app and community of remote workers to discuss hacks for getting into flow, the creative process and building healthy relationships and teams online and off. Steven draws on insights from a long career as a producer and studio executive at DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox for being more productive and getting to the real work that feeds your soul.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Silas Rose (00:22):
Hello, dear listener .
My name is Silas and I welcomeyou to Awake in Relationship.
As any creator or entrepreneurknows, the road to original and
(00:43):
impactful work is often long andlonely.
The digital age really hasopened up so much more
creativity and opportunity to dowhat you love, to make money
from any place in the world onyour laptop.
But this freedom also comes ata cost of distraction and
(01:04):
disconnection at epidemic levels.
The virtualization of work alsomeans the virtualization of
one's really importantrelationships with colleagues
and coworkers.
How do we stay healthy, saneand productive when so much of
our day is spent motionless infront of a screen?
(01:27):
In this episode of Awake InRelationship, I speak with
Stephen Purry, the CEO of theSUCA, an app and community of
remote workers, about gettinginto flow, being more productive
and building relationships inteams teams online and off.
This was a really funconversation for me.
(01:49):
Steven draws on insights andwisdom from a long career as a
producer and studio executive atDreamWorks and 20th Century Fox
.
He's worked with some of thebiggest names in Hollywood,
including Bruce Willis, MelGibson and Steven Spielberg.
If you're interested in thecreative process and deep work,
(02:13):
I think you'll enjoyWell.
Steve Perry, welcome to AwakeIn Relationship.
Steven Puri (02:28):
It is nice to be here.
I hope we have some insightfuland maybe fun things to share,
yeah.
Silas Rose (02:33):
I'm sure we do so.
You've had this sort of longcareer, successful career, as a
studio executive and producer,studio executive and producer.
I'm really wondering about thekind of journey from that kind
of path into creating this app,the Suka app, and focusing on
productivity.
Steven Puri (02:54):
For me, in many ways it's coming a full circle,
because when I was young, myparents were both engineers at
IBM.
My mom was a software engineer,my dad was a hardware engineer.
He's from India, she's from NewYork and you know how it is.
Your mom's a great ice skater.
You probably learned to iceskate when you were little so I
(03:16):
knew how to code.
It was this thing that was inmy family.
I'd go with my mom to thecomputing center.
She'd let me submit jobs on thetail end of her stuff and to
the computing center she let me,you know, submit jobs on the
tail end of her stuff.
And when I went off to school Iknew that was a strong suit of
mine, like math and science andyou know that sort of thing, and
I happened and this is one ofthose like random bits of luck
or the universe just saying likehey, kid, you know, look over
(03:39):
here, kind of things.
So I was going to theuniversity of Southern
California in LA, which has agreat cinema TV school, around
the time that computers becamepowerful enough to manipulate
film.
So it was the rise ofnon-linear editing systems like
Avid Sound, like Pro Tools,silicon Graphics for images, and
(04:01):
I thought that was fascinating.
It was an interestingapplication of my understanding
of computers but moving into acreative area.
So I ended up producing digitaleffects like the digital parts
of people's movies.
That was my entree into film.
Is that is that sort of circleswung around.
It was oh, they really needsomeone who can speak engineer
(04:23):
as well as speak creative, luckyme.
So I got to work with reallytalented people.
I worked with Jim Cameron onTrue Lies.
I worked with David Fincher onSeven, I did Braveheart and
Immortal Beloved with Mel,worked on the DreamWorks logo,
worked on even Jim Jarmuschfilms.
I did Dead man with Jim andJohnny Depp and stuff like that.
(04:46):
And in the course of doing thatI met Roland Emmerich and Dean
Devlin, who had done someB-sci-fi movies like Stargate
and stuff like that, but seemedlike great guys.
And I produced the digitaleffects for Independence Day,
which won the Academy Award,which is great the whole team I
mean it takes a thousand peopleto do anything like that and I
was very, you know, proud to bepart of it.
(05:07):
And that led to me, roland andDean, starting my first company
together, for which we raisedabout $15 million to do digital
effects.
And you know, when you have anAcademy Award winning movie
right behind you, it's easier toraise money than not.
You know, people are willing togamble on you.
So we did that, sold that, andthen that's when I went fully
(05:32):
into creative, where I said,okay, I think I've done what I
wanted to do in my 20s.
You know it's one thing in the20s they're smarter than they
actually are, better looking,they actually are.
All those things that we laterrealized no, you're very lucky.
And so I went into becoming astudio executive.
I want to climb that ladder.
As you know, went to dreamworks.
I was an executive vicepresident for kurtz marcia
dreamworks.
That was the transformers startrek era as a vice president at
(05:55):
fox um running diehard andwolverine franchises and other
action movies, and that had asort of crisis of meeting.
You know, there was definitelya moment on Die Hard 5 where I
was like this movie willabsolutely get made, no matter
how awful the script is.
Just because you can model itfinancially, you don't need a
script.
You don't need anything to say.
(06:15):
If you put out a poster thatsaid the words Die Hard, how
many people just go to see Bruceplay John McClane and the
script is awful.
The guy who wrote it was laterkicked out of the Writers Guild
for plagiarism.
And I was just the guy there.
People think it's a veryglamorous thing.
You'd be like, oh my god,you're running Wolverine, you're
running this franchise, andyou're just the guy or girl
(06:38):
there for a couple of years inthe chair moving the studio
priorities forward.
You're not a hero trying to,you know, reinvent cinema.
It pays well, you get a lot ofaccess to a lot of things.
And that was when I took theturn back into well, I want to
do something where I feel likeI'm making the world a little
bit better.
And the only other thing I knewhow to do sales was engineering
(07:01):
.
So it's like, let's find andthen, a problem that can be
solved through engineering andsee how well I could do.
And I had two failures.
I tried two companies before asuit company took off and you
know those were harsh awakenings, a lot of like dark nights of
the soul, of like am I any goodat this?
You know, should I've juststayed in engineering and not
(07:22):
gone into film?
Would I be able to do thisbetter?
Like it was hard, it wasembarrassing.
You know I'm not going to lie.
There's some ego in that oflike leaving a you know senior
executive studio job and allyour friends are watching and
you fall on your face.
Silas Rose (07:37):
So, essentially, you know you were kind of following
your heart.
Steven Puri (07:43):
It's true, and you know, you and I talked about
this before we recorded which isI discovered yoga in a very
strange way.
My ex-girlfriend Allie, who'sstill a very close friend of
mine and my wife's she had beenthe director of marketing for
YogaWorks years ago and when wewere together, gave me a yoga
(08:06):
mat, you know, and a littleclass card, the way you know
friends do like, go try this.
And I did the eight or 12classes, or it was.
I'll be honest, the day afterthe last little punch was
punched.
I didn't wake up that morningbeing like, oh my God, I have to
get back to that.
I wonder if they have alifetime membership.
You know, I was more like, Ithink, as good boyfriend.
I did what I needed to do andthen, two years later, I was in
(08:31):
India with my dad and we were inRanthambore, which is a it's a
national park, huge, I mean thesize of Connecticut, I don't
know Rhode Island, it's huge andwithin it the reason it's kind
of famous is it has the RoyalBengal Tiger Preserve.
So some family friends werelike you know, stephen, this is
(08:53):
your culture, come and spend acouple weeks, we'll do this.
So we stayed at this hotel thatwas within the preserve and the
deal that they made with theminister of the interior was
they would put this luxury hotelin with just yurts scattered in
the forest, so it never brokethe tree line, you couldn't see
one yurt from the other, it wasjust very integrated in.
So when my dad and I werewalking to our yurt one day, I
(09:14):
saw in the clearing this guy,this Indian guy, standing there,
his white dhoti, totally alone,being curious, walked out there
and walked up to him.
I was like hey, what are youdoing?
He said oh, I lead a yogapractice, which I thought was
semi-amusing in that he'sstanding alone in a forest in
India.
I was like for whom?
(09:36):
He's like anyone who comes by,like there was nothing funny
about this.
He's like anyone who comes by.
I was like when will you teachthis yoga class?
He said this afternoon.
Okay, so if I go to lunch withmy dad and our friends and come
back here, you're going to teachyoga.
He's like yes, so I go to lunchand I know this is terrible,
but I'm kind of excited.
(09:57):
I'm talking to eight full Indianrelatives and friends being
like oh my God, there's this guyin the forest, he's going to
teach yoga.
It's so cool he's staying there.
And they were like the friendsyou had that live in LA when the
outer towers come, like weshould go to Disneyland, and
they're like we've been toDisneyland, you go to Disneyland
, we're going to stay home,right?
So no one wanted to go with meand I was like, fine, I'm gonna
(10:23):
go.
I found the guy.
He was standing in the clearing.
One other tall German touristwith a beautiful DSLR was there
and I walked up and the Indianguy said let us begin.
At the end of that hour Iwanted to call Allie and say I
get it now.
I understand the gift you triedto give me, but I wasn ready
(10:44):
and it became a part of my dailylife ever since.
Silas Rose (10:47):
So it means bliss.
I believe right, blisshappiness, self-fulfillment.
Steven Puri (10:51):
It's that when you were at ease with what you need
to do, and that's why I namedthe company the way I named it.
Silas Rose (11:00):
So yeah, I think it's primarily focused on remote
workers.
Steven Puri (11:06):
I find that remote work like I run a remote company
, I've done a couple of remotecompanies there are a lot of
distractions of sometimesisolation or loneliness.
In terms of social media, whichseems like it's a connector,
(11:27):
but it actually seems like itactually encourages
disconnection and I was like howdo we actually use this in a
way that brings people to ahappier place?
So, yeah, big fan ofdistributed work when
appropriate what are the trendsaround that right now?
(11:48):
well, you know, we had thatshock to the system with the
pandemic, right?
Oh my god, we can't be underthe same fluorescent lights 10
hours a day, five days a week.
We'll kill each other.
Zoom became a verb, all that's.
There were a lot of verticalswhere remote work was a shock.
The funny thing about film thatmost people don't realize is
(12:08):
film, for a hundred years, hassuccessfully managed remote work
, hybrid work and brisk presswork.
It's never really called that.
Like you, a film begins withwriters writing alone or writing
in their writing partnersliving room, right at a coffee
shop, right, and then at somepoint, hopefully, one of those
ideas gets some traction.
It gets some money.
You start to have a smallproduction office where you meet
(12:29):
a couple days a week with thecustomer.
What are they wearing?
I need to go to the costumehouses.
Oh, location scout.
What does it look like?
Oh, there are tax breaks inMontana if we shoot there.
The rest of the week everyonedisperses.
They go to Montana to scout theweek, everyone disperses.
They go to montana to scout.
They go to the costume houses.
The writers go do the rewritefor brad pitt.
Who wants to play it as asouthern gentleman, you know
whatever.
And then you're on set and it'srto.
(12:52):
It is all day and all night formonths of time.
You're working together andthat goes back to hybrid and it
goes back to remote.
But no one in film would eversay each other oh, salas, we're
in the hybrid part of this movie.
You would say, oh, we're inprep, we're in pre-production,
we're in the hybrid part of thismovie.
You would say, oh, we're inprep, we're in pre-production,
we're in post, we're indevelopment.
And that's what I think is sointeresting with remote work is
that it is like a color on yourpalette.
(13:15):
It is not to say that when thepandemic happened and maybe most
people were painting with redsand yellows, suddenly they got
blue.
Everything needs to be bluefrom now on, forever.
Oh, it's rather to say you knowwhat, when appropriate, blue is
a great color.
And when cal newport writesabout like deep work and you
know near talks about triggersand stuff, and you you say, okay
(13:35):
, well, how do I do the thingsthat really bring out for me the
the greatest contribution Ihave in the world?
Silas Rose (13:46):
That's a really interesting reframe, because I
tend to think of, you know again, apps, and no offense to your
app, um, but spending more timeon a screen, uh, in my mind
seems to take away from thecreative process, but, if I
understand it correctly, thatisolation can be a productive
(14:09):
time,
Steven Puri (14:23):
For some person, a coffee shop may be incredibly
distracting.
I'm like, ah, there are peopletalking next to me and then the
barista keeps coming, Whereasfor someone else it is like that
sound of the coffee cups oranything is flow music to them.
You know, and it's really aboutyou know, understanding your
mind and starting to train yourmind.
Silas Rose (14:44):
So, essentially, I think remote work is the future,
for better or worse, and itreally does enable a lot of
freedom for a lot of people,true, but I think there is a
downside that relates toloneliness.
I know a lot of people I workwith and talk to, It's hard to
(15:09):
do your best work when you feelalone.
Steven Puri (15:14):
I will qualify what you said, because I generally
agree with you, but I will saythis there are some things that
I find I need to do, or my teamneeds to do, or teams I've
worked on I've needed to do thatare actually best in person.
I'll tell you, I've never had acreative story conversation
that has been as rich as whenit's in person.
(15:34):
If you and I need to sit downand go, okay, steven, you know
what?
There's something in the thirdact that we need.
It's not connecting.
I've never been on a Zoom or aGoogle Meet or something where I
felt the same energy ofcreativity.
If we're going to get this done, it's efficient.
We don't need to drive anywhere.
But I think there's some caseswhen I do want to feel like that
weird intangible vibe of beingin the room.
(15:56):
It's the same reason I do yogain person, even though I know I
could do it at home with an iPadand a YouTube video of someone
doing yoga.
I know that's possible, but itdoesn't affect me the same way
as 30 people around me alltrying to do something together.
So I feel like there's so muchwith remote and hybrid that is
(16:18):
advantageous, but there are acouple activities that I
actually just want to vibetogether, you know.
So it, it, it varies.
Silas Rose (16:28):
You spent a lot of time around successful creatives
, what do you think the secretsauce is?
What are the habits that enablethat kind of deep work?
Steven Puri (16:50):
I so appreciate asking that.
Let me share a few things thatI've seen, because you're right,
I've been very lucky to workwith people who are very
creative and have developed themental techniques to get great
creative things out right.
So one thing I noticed and thiswas first early my career was
there's a screenwriter, or thereis a screenwriter Ron Bass,
rain man, my Best Friend'sWedding, a bunch of stuff in the
(17:12):
80s and 90s, early 2000s, right, and he was infamous for not
talking to his family in themorning, going to be the dad
who's like hey, he wantspancakes and did you do your
homework?
He's like when I start talkingto you, I lose the ability to to
hear my character's voices inmy head and I need to have that
(17:35):
time, whereas in the afternoonhe could do story breaking or
studio notes or you knowcollaborative sort of work, and
it was so interesting to seethat replicated or reproduced in
other people, whereas a senseof oh, I'm a really high
performer and I know how mybrain works, like in this period
of time, my chronotype says Ishould do this, like this is how
(17:56):
I work, whereas in this otherperiod of time I'd be worthless
if I tried to do it.
I should do something else,like Ron Bass, like writing
dialogue in the quiet wee hours,working with people in the
afternoons, things like that.
And that was one, that sense ofchronotype which many people
have written about veryeloquently.
That was one where I saw inpractice routinely by great
(18:16):
writers in particular and somedirectors.
Another idea is this, one aboutthe loss of ego, where I got at
a certain point in my career todreamworks and you know, the
first time I'm in stevenspielberg's conference room in a
story meeting on a project thatI'm on, where it's like steven
and stacy were running thestudio at the time, the
(18:37):
president of dreamworks is there, the my counterpart, two
writers and you know as much'slike okay, this is day 700 or
whatever.
I'm exaggerating day 60, beinghere, there's still a little
moment of I'm in StevenSpielberg's little Adobe
conference room having a storymeeting, like wow, how did I get
(18:58):
here and how does this work?
And I remember the thing thatstood out for me more than
anything else about that meeting.
There were many parts of thatmeeting that were like other
story meetings I've been in, butthere was one thing that really
jumped out at me and it wasthis At a certain point in the
meeting and I'm going to falsifythe details out of respect for
Stephen and people in the room,right, but let us say we're
working on an alien movie, whichStephen has a lot of experience
(19:18):
making huge alien movies.
Right, this is a guy who'sthought about this and Stephen
proposed something.
Oh, I think the alien'sweakness should be blah, blah,
blah and he should come throughthe wall and then be confronted
with the thing.
Right Within three minutes,someone I'm going to call the
coffee boy, sort of passingthrough the room, makes a
(19:39):
comment, goes well, you know, Ifeel like we saw the coming
through the wall and getting hitwith the thing.
You know this other movie?
What saw the coming through thewall and getting hit with the
thing?
Um, you know this other movie?
What if it were this otherthing?
And a part of me inside said,oh my god, that's the last time
we'll ever see that guy livingagain.
Right, and steven was like, ohyeah, it's better, we should do
that.
(19:59):
And the conversation just movedforward and I started to notice
that, among the most talentedpeople that I worked with, they
adhered to best idea wins, notmy idea wins, and that was so
interesting that in that meetingno one blinked.
It was just that was everyone'sagreement.
A better idea.
(20:19):
What's wrong with it?
So it was the coffee boy's idea.
Let's make something great.
Let's not make something that'snecessarily mine, and at the
mediocre level I saw a lot ofthat possessive of.
I need to defend my ideas.
My worth is that we use my idea, not what's best for the film.
Is this tracking?
Is this making sense for you?
Silas Rose (20:46):
That suggests that there's a lot of openness.
Yeah, and some people have that, naturally True, but I think
for most of us it has to becultivated, and this might be a
very good segue into the meat ofthe conversation which is
getting into flow.
Steven Puri (21:02):
I love talking about flow.
You know that, yeah, so isthere a formula?
Um, let me say this, becauseI'm sure there's a portion of
your audience that are flowmasters, that are in their cars
or at home nodding, you know,and they know the answer, and
there's probably a cohort oflisteners that we could lay out
(21:23):
what we're talking about first.
Is that fair?
Silas Rose (21:25):
Yeah, and maybe just for the uninitiated, maybe just
define that.
Steven Puri (21:32):
Yeah, let's do that .
So there was aHungarian-American psychologist,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whohad a very strong thesis that
high performers in these variousdisciplines athletes, artists,
inventors, performers in thesevarious disciplines athletes,
artists, inventors, scientiststhey got into those concentrated
states where they did the workthat made them famous, that
moved the world, and theydescribed it in very similar
(21:54):
ways.
So he, like prometheus, wantedto go up, get the fire from
mount olympus, bring it down tothe rest of us.
So he did this, he did the workfor us to study that and talk
to these people and at at theend he wrote the book Flow,
which is the seminal work onthis, which is from whence we
get flow state.
And he said I think the mostbeautiful metaphor that I can
(22:16):
use is this sense of we're onthe river, paddling ourselves
forward, but if we align ourboat with the current, it
carries us further and faster,it magnifies our efforts.
And that's what these peoplefigured out how to do to get
into a state where they'vealigned themselves with the
current.
And obviously you and I know,since mihael wrote this book
(22:38):
decades ago, a lot of peoplehave researched different
aspects of this and writtenincredibly smart things.
You have, you know cutler, nearand clear and, like you know,
newport of all research.
How do you get into thatconcentrated state?
But he he wrote that and some ofthe experiences he said are
very similar, where he saidthese high performers lose track
(23:02):
of time.
There's not a sense of washingthe clock, there's not a sense
of distractions.
They're there's not a sense ofdistractions.
They're not like going to thebathroom or going to the fridge
to get food, you know, whateverthat thing is.
They become very focused on thetask at hand.
And he said some of theconditions precedent that seem
common.
They have to believe whatthey're doing is meaningful.
Not one of them gets in a flowand it's like stapling papers.
(23:24):
Not one of them gets in a flowand it's like stapling papers
doing something that I think isstupid.
Right, they have to have skillsthat apply.
And he said uh, if you are doingsomething that you're not able
to do, you're not going to getinto flow, and if you're able to
do it, you also need to bedoing it at a level that
challenges you.
So I guess michael jordan wasthat famous quote about when I'm
(23:44):
in the zone, it's just me inthe ball.
You know, the whole worldreduces down to this.
He said you know, it's notmichael jordan playing a high
school exhibition game for hiskids, you know high school sort
of thing.
It's him in the nba, or it'spicasso standing back and going.
Is this half finished guernica?
An execution of this idea Ihave my head about, like it has
to be something that reallychallenges you, and there are
(24:07):
many aspects to it.
This is obviously not somethingwhere I spend hours on, but
it's a fascinating, fascinatingconcept.
Silas Rose (24:18):
And again this implies this sort of congruence
between the head and the heartCompletely.
Steven Puri (24:24):
Yes, and that's a beautiful thing.
Uh, between the head, the headand the heart, completely yes,
and that's that's a beautifulthing when you're doing
something where your head andheart are aligned and you know
you're doing somethingmeaningful that expresses who
you are.
I've, I've, personally have avery deep thesis that we all
have something great inside usand the question of this
lifetime is are you going to getit out or not?
(24:47):
There are a lot of forcesmaking sure you do not.
Silas Rose (24:54):
I'm sure you're familiar with Stephen
Pressfield's work The War of Art.
Yes, there's always resistance.
Steven Puri (25:02):
There's resistance and there are, are I mean, let
us not kid ourselves in that tugof war for your life.
On one side of that rope aretrillion dollar companies who
are not embarrassed to say thattheir business model is stealing
your life period full stop.
That is their business modeland they have the money to pay
the best behavioralpsychologists and put them on
(25:25):
staff, the best UI UX designers,the best engineers, with the
sole goal of saying could youjust try and get more of
people's lives wasted here?
It's almost as if Zuckerbergcalled you up and just said hey,
silas, could I have your lifeBecause I'm going to sell it to
these advertisers and I'll keepthe money, but hey, buddy, I'll
(25:47):
give you some dancing cat videos.
Is that a cool trade for yourlife?
And it sounds ludicrous to saythat clinically, but it's
exactly what's going on, andthat means you're never going to
release the thing.
You're going to die with thegreat thing inside you, which is
totally fine for Elon and Markand Evan and the guys who are on
these platforms that are justattention magnets.
(26:08):
So that, I think, is criminal.
Silas Rose (26:11):
It is criminal and it's the greatest destroyer of
creativity.
Steven Puri (26:17):
It's hard enough to overcome your own insecurities,
maybe your own inertia, yourown laziness, your own
insecurities.
You know, maybe your owninertia, your own laziness, your
own questions of you, know howconfident you are in your
abilities.
And then to couple that with oh, by the way, there's some zero
effort dopamine.
There's a whole bucket righthere.
Just sit on the sofa.
You just need to scroll anddouble tap and enjoy your
(26:38):
dancing cat videos.
Man, that's, that's.
I hope you know this.
I'm about to have my firstchild in eight weeks.
I really hope that my kidsgeneration looks at my
generation with social media theway I look at my dad's
generation with smoking.
I'm like dad, how can you dothat?
(27:00):
Like so many of your friendsdied of lung cancer.
You have emphysema.
What were you thinking?
And my dad's point, to be fair,is hey, man, the movie stars
were all doing it and thetobacco companies were releasing
studies on how healthy tobaccowas and we didn't know that was
a thing.
And I view social media aspernicious as that and as
(27:23):
criminal as creating productsthat create cancer.
Silas Rose (27:28):
So, to be very practical again, I want to kind
of return to those habits.
How does a creative orentrepreneur insulate themselves
and basically create theenvironment of focus where they
can actually get to that
I will tell you how this worksfor me and this is obviously.
(27:49):
You know very much how Idesigned what I do you know
every day which is I recognizedproblems.
I'm very much a person who saysyou know what.
Really think deeply on theproblem before you try to solve
it.
I thought deeply about aproblem that I have, which is I
call the cold start In themorning.
(28:09):
Tomorrow morning, at 9 am I'mgoing to do X, y, z I need to do
.
At 9.15, I'd be returning someemails or scrolling the news or
something.
9.30, I'm getting going.
I've wasted half an hour andthe pain of that is felt six
o'clock when I'm like I'm notdone.
I have to come back afterdinner.
(28:30):
I'll just try and finish up, orthe lie you tell yourself.
I'm going to get up earlytomorrow and finish today's work
before I start tomorrow's work,and this is dominoes through
the week, right?
So that was a real thing for me.
So the way in which I looked atit was to say, well, why am I
doing this?
I'm not stupid.
I may not be the smartestperson on earth, but I'm not
stupid.
And you asked a couple of whysand I got to oh well, I feel a
(28:53):
kind of like overwhelm orparalysis or something to get
started.
Either there's something I haveto do that's really big how am
I going to make a dent in thatbefore you know my noon podcast
here?
Or you know there's so manythings on my to-do list and I
said the way I solved that waswhen we were building.
The suka company said you knowwhat I want to have a little
(29:14):
smart assistant that helps mejust choose the three top things
, hide everything else while I'mworking.
So I just see three things thatI need to do and I noticed
during the day.
A second problem I have is if Ihit something hard, oh man, I'm
coding and like I keep havingbuild errors.
What am I?
What's wrong here?
You know I'm writing a blogpost and just the muses are not
(29:35):
singing.
You know I, to get dopamine,will pick up my phone.
It's almost like muscle memory.
Let me see what's up.
Oh my God, maybe Eric Garnet,what's up from France or
whatever?
I don't know who's around today.
So what I developed for thatwith Tony, my partner and
Michael is what's the easiestway to actually give me a moment
(29:58):
, just a moment, to say do Iwant to do this?
So when I start my session inthe morning with Suka, I just
hit play and the music starts,and all that.
There's a QR code.
I shoot at my phone and I putit down.
If I pick up my phone while I'mworking, my smart assistant
says hey, steven, is your phonehelping you?
And I get that one moment to go.
(30:19):
Who do I want to be?
Do I want to be the guy who'slike done at three o'clock?
playing with his kids?
Or do I want to be grumpy guyat six?
And same thing with thewebsites.
Like if I open a website thatI've said is distracting for me
like could be youtube, could beamazon, could be for some people
it's espn or nfl, but not mereally and you still pop up.
(30:41):
If you're on there for fiveseconds, you get a pop-up that
says, hey, it looks like this isdistracting you, is it?
And you get that choice.
Who do I want to be?
I think that's ultimately thebest thing we can do.
So those are some ways I'vefound to combat the attention
merchants that try very well totake you away from doing the
(31:07):
thing you're meant to do.
You know, with social media, those algorithms
came for our attention, ourfocus, and it really seems like
you know the direction that AIis going in, It's coming for our
interior life, I'm not atechno-optimist, but you're much
(31:31):
more embedded in that world.
Are you optimistic about AI?
Steven Puri (31:37):
Well, let me say two things.
Thing is, I know right now aisprang as a public consciousness
really around large languagemodels lms right, chat, gpt,
gemini, anthropic, claude, andyou know all these, and what's
curious about them is they arereally more like google
(32:00):
autocomplete than they are likeintelligence, because in essence
, what they're doing is, ifGoogle autocomplete says you
type these characters, the endof the word is probably these
characters, right, what they'redoing is doing that with words
and thoughts.
You know words and ideas.
Every time someone types, hey,it looks like it is blank out,
so like 40% chance, the word'srainy, try rainy and see if
(32:22):
steven likes rainy, you know, ifhe doesn't try sunny, you know,
and they're just doingprobability.
You know probabilistic, sort oflike weights, and that's not
really that scary to me becauseit's it's like uh, do you
remember?
There's a great story I don'tremember whose story.
This is about the horse thatcould count and it was amazing.
And they later realized thehorse just had learned to move
(32:46):
its hoof enough times untilpeople went oh wow, we counted
to nine.
He had no idea what nine was.
All he knew was stop doing thehoof thing when everyone reacted
right.
So that's kind of where we are.
Now.
The deeper question you'regetting at because I know how
you think I suspect I know howyou think about these things is,
yeah, we are moving towards aworld, but there are a lot of
(33:08):
things that we do, a lot ofthings knowledge, work that will
be done better here.
We're not talking about having,you know, lotus 123 and google
sheets, microsoft excel, do ourspreadsheets for us and
calculate compound interest,like we've had that for 30 years
plus right.
We're talking about hey, man,you wrote that business plan
(33:29):
better than I can.
You made that slide deck really, really well.
And then what is our utility?
And that is a I would love tosay I'm smart enough to tell you
where it's going to go, but Ican tell you that I think is
absolutely terrifying.
As I think about what is it we,laura and I, want our children
to learn, like we fundamentallywant them to learn to think.
(33:50):
We can say that in a noble wayread, some of the great authors
study physics.
I do all these things.
We're going to pass along tothem.
Will those be ?
Silas Obviously obviouslythere's a lot of utility with
those tools but, I really feellike it's going to put a premium
(34:15):
on real creativity.
Steven I hope that you areright.
I hope that it does make thatpart of being human more and
more valuable and doesn't wipeit out.
I'll tell you a funny story, ashort one because we're wrapping
up, but my first job when Isegued out of usc into film was
actually at a trailer company.
That's how I got into digitaleffects.
Two guys ran it who were verythey've been doing promos and
(34:39):
trailers for 20 years very well,you know established in
business.
And one of them came in myoffice when I was a junior guy.
There.
My job was movies would come inrough cut from Warner Brothers
or Disney and I would assignthem to a writer-producer.
Hey, silas, you did a great jobon that Will Ferrell thing last
year.
Here's another Will Ferrellcomedy Can you write this, right
(35:00):
?
He came in my office.
He said hey, stevie, do youknow Bart?
And I was like I know Bart,there's a guy in the vault who
delivers tapes.
Yeah, he said, do you ever givehim a trailer to write?
And I said we're talking aboutthe same guy who delivers coffee
and picks up tapes.
Right, he goes yeah, yeah, yeah, I have an instinct about him.
I'm like Jeff names on the door, like you know, you're the
(35:26):
reason why we're here.
Let me give him something.
So I gave him this warnerbrothers b title that had a long
deadline case.
He hated it or did a bad job,right?
Jeff came to my office two dayslater he said how's bart doing?
So I haven't bugged him.
This is the first time he'sever written a trailer.
I'll ask him on monday, okay,okay, fine, stevie, he goes.
What else did you give him,jeff?
He's never written a trailerbefore.
I'm not getting two things.
And jeff said, to his credit,one of the first things was
(35:50):
really valuable in my life, saidstevie, let me explain to you
how creativity works.
It's always about the otherthing.
If you give Bart one thing tofocus on, he will sit there and
and stare at it with little likebeads of sweat coming down his
temples and he will write themost obvious B version of that
trailer.
You can imagine that's the partof your brain that does that.
(36:13):
I don't know what aboutchocolate and peanut butter?
What does a cell phone tastelike?
That's not the part you thinkthat you're thinking with.
So you have to give themsomething else to focus on.
I've seen that proven rightcountless times across film and
tech and there's a book on theneuroscience of it called uh the
(36:33):
net and the butterfly by oliviafox and uh judah pollock.
That talks just about thatdefault mode executive mode
interplay.
That I thought was veryinteresting about that kind of
association.
Is AI going to get to thatchocolate and peanut butter
thing, as Jeff would say?
Silas Rose (36:54):
Words of wisdom.
Well, stephen, thank you somuch for this conversation.
I think we got into flow here.
Steven Puri (37:06):
This is a beautiful moment.
Thank you for having me on andfor those listening.
I appreciate you guys listening.
I hope in some way we'rehelpful.
Silas Rose (37:14):
How can people find out more about the app and you?
Steven Puri (37:19):
My address is very public.
It is steven with a v atthesukaco, which is
t-h-e-s-u-k-h-aco.
If there's any reference I'vemade to the crazy Hungarian guy
or Cal Newport or whoever andsomeone wants to read more, it
doesn't have to be about mycompany.
(37:39):
I happily return all my emails.
I'll give you a link ofsomething to read.
It will not be long.
I'm not going to write thehistory of my life.
You're not interested inreading it.
But that offer is open and ifanyone wants to try getting into
a flow state, pick a task.
You have to do Something thattakes a half an hour an hour,
like a meaningful task and go tothe website.
It's free Seven days.
It's free, no credit cardT-H-E-S-U-K-k-h-a dot c-o and
(38:00):
the SUKA app.
Silas Rose (38:01):
I hope it helps you.
I hope you do something great.
Suka s-u-k-h-a dot c-o.
Or check out the links atawakenedrelationshipcom.
If you enjoyed thisconversation and the content I
put out here at AwakenedRelationship, it'd be wonderful
(38:22):
if you took a moment and shareda glowing review on Apple,
Spotify or wherever you listento podcasts.
I can sometimes be found onInstagram, Substack and LinkedIn
.
Send me a message.
I really love hearing from myaudience, and especially if you
(38:43):
have great suggestions forfuture guests or topics to cover
on the show.
Thank you so much for tuning in, dear listener.
Till next time, stay connected.
Thanks for tuning in to thisepisode of Awake in Relationship
(39:09):
.
If you liked what you heard,please click subscribe to get
the latest show delivered freshto your device, or sign up for
our newsletter atawakeinrelationshipcom.
Sharing is caring.
Hello, dear listener .
My name is Silas and I welcomeyou to Awake in Relationship.
As any creator or entrepreneurknows, the road to original and
(00:43):
impactful work is often long andlonely.
The digital age really hasopened up so much more
creativity and opportunity to dowhat you love, to make money
from any place in the world onyour laptop.
But this freedom also comes ata cost of distraction and
(01:04):
disconnection at epidemic levels.
The virtualization of work alsomeans the virtualization of
one's really importantrelationships with colleagues
and coworkers.
How do we stay healthy, saneand productive when so much of
our day is spent motionless infront of a screen?
(01:27):
In this episode of Awake InRelationship, I speak with
Stephen Purry, the CEO of theSUCA, an app and community of
remote workers, about gettinginto flow, being more productive
and building relationships inteams teams online and off.
This was a really funconversation for me.
(01:49):
Steven draws on insights andwisdom from a long career as a
producer and studio executive atDreamWorks and 20th Century Fox
.
He's worked with some of thebiggest names in Hollywood,
including Bruce Willis, MelGibson and Steven Spielberg.
If you're interested in thecreative process and deep work,
(02:13):
I think you'll enjoyWell.
Steve Perry, welcome to AwakeIn Relationship.
Steven Puri (02:28):
It is nice to be here.
I hope we have some insightfuland maybe fun things to share,
yeah.
Silas Rose (02:33):
I'm sure we do so.
You've had this sort of longcareer, successful career, as a
studio executive and producer,studio executive and producer.
I'm really wondering about thekind of journey from that kind
of path into creating this app,the Suka app, and focusing on
productivity.
Steven Puri (02:54):
For me, in many ways it's coming a full circle,
because when I was young, myparents were both engineers at
IBM.
My mom was a software engineer,my dad was a hardware engineer.
He's from India, she's from NewYork and you know how it is.
Your mom's a great ice skater.
You probably learned to iceskate when you were little so I
(03:16):
knew how to code.
It was this thing that was inmy family.
I'd go with my mom to thecomputing center.
She'd let me submit jobs on thetail end of her stuff and to
the computing center she let me,you know, submit jobs on the
tail end of her stuff.
And when I went off to school Iknew that was a strong suit of
mine, like math and science andyou know that sort of thing, and
I happened and this is one ofthose like random bits of luck
or the universe just saying likehey, kid, you know, look over
(03:39):
here, kind of things.
So I was going to theuniversity of Southern
California in LA, which has agreat cinema TV school, around
the time that computers becamepowerful enough to manipulate
film.
So it was the rise ofnon-linear editing systems like
Avid Sound, like Pro Tools,silicon Graphics for images, and
(04:01):
I thought that was fascinating.
It was an interestingapplication of my understanding
of computers but moving into acreative area.
So I ended up producing digitaleffects like the digital parts
of people's movies.
That was my entree into film.
Is that is that sort of circleswung around.
It was oh, they really needsomeone who can speak engineer
(04:23):
as well as speak creative, luckyme.
So I got to work with reallytalented people.
I worked with Jim Cameron onTrue Lies.
I worked with David Fincher onSeven, I did Braveheart and
Immortal Beloved with Mel,worked on the DreamWorks logo,
worked on even Jim Jarmuschfilms.
I did Dead man with Jim andJohnny Depp and stuff like that.
(04:46):
And in the course of doing thatI met Roland Emmerich and Dean
Devlin, who had done someB-sci-fi movies like Stargate
and stuff like that, but seemedlike great guys.
And I produced the digitaleffects for Independence Day,
which won the Academy Award,which is great the whole team I
mean it takes a thousand peopleto do anything like that and I
was very, you know, proud to bepart of it.
(05:07):
And that led to me, roland andDean, starting my first company
together, for which we raisedabout $15 million to do digital
effects.
And you know, when you have anAcademy Award winning movie
right behind you, it's easier toraise money than not.
You know, people are willing togamble on you.
So we did that, sold that, andthen that's when I went fully
(05:32):
into creative, where I said,okay, I think I've done what I
wanted to do in my 20s.
You know it's one thing in the20s they're smarter than they
actually are, better looking,they actually are.
All those things that we laterrealized no, you're very lucky.
And so I went into becoming astudio executive.
I want to climb that ladder.
As you know, went to dreamworks.
I was an executive vicepresident for kurtz marcia
dreamworks.
That was the transformers startrek era as a vice president at
(05:55):
fox um running diehard andwolverine franchises and other
action movies, and that had asort of crisis of meeting.
You know, there was definitelya moment on Die Hard 5 where I
was like this movie willabsolutely get made, no matter
how awful the script is.
Just because you can model itfinancially, you don't need a
script.
You don't need anything to say.
(06:15):
If you put out a poster thatsaid the words Die Hard, how
many people just go to see Bruceplay John McClane and the
script is awful.
The guy who wrote it was laterkicked out of the Writers Guild
for plagiarism.
And I was just the guy there.
People think it's a veryglamorous thing.
You'd be like, oh my god,you're running Wolverine, you're
running this franchise, andyou're just the guy or girl
(06:38):
there for a couple of years inthe chair moving the studio
priorities forward.
You're not a hero trying to,you know, reinvent cinema.
It pays well, you get a lot ofaccess to a lot of things.
And that was when I took theturn back into well, I want to
do something where I feel likeI'm making the world a little
bit better.
And the only other thing I knewhow to do sales was engineering
(07:01):
.
So it's like, let's find andthen, a problem that can be
solved through engineering andsee how well I could do.
And I had two failures.
I tried two companies before asuit company took off and you
know those were harsh awakenings, a lot of like dark nights of
the soul, of like am I any goodat this?
You know, should I've juststayed in engineering and not
(07:22):
gone into film?
Would I be able to do thisbetter?
Like it was hard, it wasembarrassing.
You know I'm not going to lie.
There's some ego in that oflike leaving a you know senior
executive studio job and allyour friends are watching and
you fall on your face.
Silas Rose (07:37):
So, essentially, you know you were kind of following
your heart.
Steven Puri (07:43):
It's true, and you know, you and I talked about
this before we recorded which isI discovered yoga in a very
strange way.
My ex-girlfriend Allie, who'sstill a very close friend of
mine and my wife's she had beenthe director of marketing for
YogaWorks years ago and when wewere together, gave me a yoga
(08:06):
mat, you know, and a littleclass card, the way you know
friends do like, go try this.
And I did the eight or 12classes, or it was.
I'll be honest, the day afterthe last little punch was
punched.
I didn't wake up that morningbeing like, oh my God, I have to
get back to that.
I wonder if they have alifetime membership.
You know, I was more like, Ithink, as good boyfriend.
I did what I needed to do andthen, two years later, I was in
(08:31):
India with my dad and we were inRanthambore, which is a it's a
national park, huge, I mean thesize of Connecticut, I don't
know Rhode Island, it's huge andwithin it the reason it's kind
of famous is it has the RoyalBengal Tiger Preserve.
So some family friends werelike you know, stephen, this is
(08:53):
your culture, come and spend acouple weeks, we'll do this.
So we stayed at this hotel thatwas within the preserve and the
deal that they made with theminister of the interior was
they would put this luxury hotelin with just yurts scattered in
the forest, so it never brokethe tree line, you couldn't see
one yurt from the other, it wasjust very integrated in.
So when my dad and I werewalking to our yurt one day, I
(09:14):
saw in the clearing this guy,this Indian guy, standing there,
his white dhoti, totally alone,being curious, walked out there
and walked up to him.
I was like hey, what are youdoing?
He said oh, I lead a yogapractice, which I thought was
semi-amusing in that he'sstanding alone in a forest in
India.
I was like for whom?
(09:36):
He's like anyone who comes by,like there was nothing funny
about this.
He's like anyone who comes by.
I was like when will you teachthis yoga class?
He said this afternoon.
Okay, so if I go to lunch withmy dad and our friends and come
back here, you're going to teachyoga.
He's like yes, so I go to lunchand I know this is terrible,
but I'm kind of excited.
(09:57):
I'm talking to eight full Indianrelatives and friends being
like oh my God, there's this guyin the forest, he's going to
teach yoga.
It's so cool he's staying there.
And they were like the friendsyou had that live in LA when the
outer towers come, like weshould go to Disneyland, and
they're like we've been toDisneyland, you go to Disneyland
, we're going to stay home,right?
So no one wanted to go with meand I was like, fine, I'm gonna
(10:23):
go.
I found the guy.
He was standing in the clearing.
One other tall German touristwith a beautiful DSLR was there
and I walked up and the Indianguy said let us begin.
At the end of that hour Iwanted to call Allie and say I
get it now.
I understand the gift you triedto give me, but I wasn ready
(10:44):
and it became a part of my dailylife ever since.
Silas Rose (10:47):
So it means bliss.
I believe right, blisshappiness, self-fulfillment.
Steven Puri (10:51):
It's that when you were at ease with what you need
to do, and that's why I namedthe company the way I named it.
Silas Rose (11:00):
So yeah, I think it's primarily focused on remote
workers.
Steven Puri (11:06):
I find that remote work like I run a remote company
, I've done a couple of remotecompanies there are a lot of
distractions of sometimesisolation or loneliness.
In terms of social media, whichseems like it's a connector,
(11:27):
but it actually seems like itactually encourages
disconnection and I was like howdo we actually use this in a
way that brings people to ahappier place?
So, yeah, big fan ofdistributed work when
appropriate what are the trendsaround that right now?
(11:48):
well, you know, we had thatshock to the system with the
pandemic, right?
Oh my god, we can't be underthe same fluorescent lights 10
hours a day, five days a week.
We'll kill each other.
Zoom became a verb, all that's.
There were a lot of verticalswhere remote work was a shock.
The funny thing about film thatmost people don't realize is
(12:08):
film, for a hundred years, hassuccessfully managed remote work
, hybrid work and brisk presswork.
It's never really called that.
Like you, a film begins withwriters writing alone or writing
in their writing partnersliving room, right at a coffee
shop, right, and then at somepoint, hopefully, one of those
ideas gets some traction.
It gets some money.
You start to have a smallproduction office where you meet
(12:29):
a couple days a week with thecustomer.
What are they wearing?
I need to go to the costumehouses.
Oh, location scout.
What does it look like?
Oh, there are tax breaks inMontana if we shoot there.
The rest of the week everyonedisperses.
They go to Montana to scout theweek, everyone disperses.
They go to montana to scout.
They go to the costume houses.
The writers go do the rewritefor brad pitt.
Who wants to play it as asouthern gentleman, you know
whatever.
And then you're on set and it'srto.
(12:52):
It is all day and all night formonths of time.
You're working together andthat goes back to hybrid and it
goes back to remote.
But no one in film would eversay each other oh, salas, we're
in the hybrid part of this movie.
You would say, oh, we're inprep, we're in pre-production,
we're in the hybrid part of thismovie.
You would say, oh, we're inprep, we're in pre-production,
we're in post, we're indevelopment.
And that's what I think is sointeresting with remote work is
that it is like a color on yourpalette.
(13:15):
It is not to say that when thepandemic happened and maybe most
people were painting with redsand yellows, suddenly they got
blue.
Everything needs to be bluefrom now on, forever.
Oh, it's rather to say you knowwhat, when appropriate, blue is
a great color.
And when cal newport writesabout like deep work and you
know near talks about triggersand stuff, and you you say, okay
(13:35):
, well, how do I do the thingsthat really bring out for me the
the greatest contribution Ihave in the world?
Silas Rose (13:46):
That's a really interesting reframe, because I
tend to think of, you know again, apps, and no offense to your
app, um, but spending more timeon a screen, uh, in my mind
seems to take away from thecreative process, but, if I
understand it correctly, thatisolation can be a productive
(14:09):
time,
Steven Puri (14:23):
For some person, a coffee shop may be incredibly
distracting.
I'm like, ah, there are peopletalking next to me and then the
barista keeps coming, Whereasfor someone else it is like that
sound of the coffee cups oranything is flow music to them.
You know, and it's really aboutyou know, understanding your
mind and starting to train yourmind.
Silas Rose (14:44):
So, essentially, I think remote work is the future,
for better or worse, and itreally does enable a lot of
freedom for a lot of people,true, but I think there is a
downside that relates toloneliness.
I know a lot of people I workwith and talk to, It's hard to
(15:09):
do your best work when you feelalone.
Steven Puri (15:14):
I will qualify what you said, because I generally
agree with you, but I will saythis there are some things that
I find I need to do, or my teamneeds to do, or teams I've
worked on I've needed to do thatare actually best in person.
I'll tell you, I've never had acreative story conversation
that has been as rich as whenit's in person.
(15:34):
If you and I need to sit downand go, okay, steven, you know
what?
There's something in the thirdact that we need.
It's not connecting.
I've never been on a Zoom or aGoogle Meet or something where I
felt the same energy ofcreativity.
If we're going to get this done, it's efficient.
We don't need to drive anywhere.
But I think there's some caseswhen I do want to feel like that
weird intangible vibe of beingin the room.
(15:56):
It's the same reason I do yogain person, even though I know I
could do it at home with an iPadand a YouTube video of someone
doing yoga.
I know that's possible, but itdoesn't affect me the same way
as 30 people around me alltrying to do something together.
So I feel like there's so muchwith remote and hybrid that is
(16:18):
advantageous, but there are acouple activities that I
actually just want to vibetogether, you know.
So it, it, it varies.
Silas Rose (16:28):
You spent a lot of time around successful creatives
, what do you think the secretsauce is?
What are the habits that enablethat kind of deep work?
Steven Puri (16:50):
I so appreciate asking that.
Let me share a few things thatI've seen, because you're right,
I've been very lucky to workwith people who are very
creative and have developed themental techniques to get great
creative things out right.
So one thing I noticed and thiswas first early my career was
there's a screenwriter, or thereis a screenwriter Ron Bass,
rain man, my Best Friend'sWedding, a bunch of stuff in the
(17:12):
80s and 90s, early 2000s, right, and he was infamous for not
talking to his family in themorning, going to be the dad
who's like hey, he wantspancakes and did you do your
homework?
He's like when I start talkingto you, I lose the ability to to
hear my character's voices inmy head and I need to have that
(17:35):
time, whereas in the afternoonhe could do story breaking or
studio notes or you knowcollaborative sort of work, and
it was so interesting to seethat replicated or reproduced in
other people, whereas a senseof oh, I'm a really high
performer and I know how mybrain works, like in this period
of time, my chronotype says Ishould do this, like this is how
(17:56):
I work, whereas in this otherperiod of time I'd be worthless
if I tried to do it.
I should do something else,like Ron Bass, like writing
dialogue in the quiet wee hours,working with people in the
afternoons, things like that.
And that was one, that sense ofchronotype which many people
have written about veryeloquently.
That was one where I saw inpractice routinely by great
(18:16):
writers in particular and somedirectors.
Another idea is this, one aboutthe loss of ego, where I got at
a certain point in my career todreamworks and you know, the
first time I'm in stevenspielberg's conference room in a
story meeting on a project thatI'm on, where it's like steven
and stacy were running thestudio at the time, the
(18:37):
president of dreamworks is there, the my counterpart, two
writers and you know as much'slike okay, this is day 700 or
whatever.
I'm exaggerating day 60, beinghere, there's still a little
moment of I'm in StevenSpielberg's little Adobe
conference room having a storymeeting, like wow, how did I get
(18:58):
here and how does this work?
And I remember the thing thatstood out for me more than
anything else about that meeting.
There were many parts of thatmeeting that were like other
story meetings I've been in, butthere was one thing that really
jumped out at me and it wasthis At a certain point in the
meeting and I'm going to falsifythe details out of respect for
Stephen and people in the room,right, but let us say we're
working on an alien movie, whichStephen has a lot of experience
(19:18):
making huge alien movies.
Right, this is a guy who'sthought about this and Stephen
proposed something.
Oh, I think the alien'sweakness should be blah, blah,
blah and he should come throughthe wall and then be confronted
with the thing.
Right Within three minutes,someone I'm going to call the
coffee boy, sort of passingthrough the room, makes a
(19:39):
comment, goes well, you know, Ifeel like we saw the coming
through the wall and getting hitwith the thing.
You know this other movie?
What saw the coming through thewall and getting hit with the
thing?
Um, you know this other movie?
What if it were this otherthing?
And a part of me inside said,oh my god, that's the last time
we'll ever see that guy livingagain.
Right, and steven was like, ohyeah, it's better, we should do
that.
(19:59):
And the conversation just movedforward and I started to notice
that, among the most talentedpeople that I worked with, they
adhered to best idea wins, notmy idea wins, and that was so
interesting that in that meetingno one blinked.
It was just that was everyone'sagreement.
A better idea.
(20:19):
What's wrong with it?
So it was the coffee boy's idea.
Let's make something great.
Let's not make something that'snecessarily mine, and at the
mediocre level I saw a lot ofthat possessive of.
I need to defend my ideas.
My worth is that we use my idea, not what's best for the film.
Is this tracking?
Is this making sense for you?
Silas Rose (20:46):
That suggests that there's a lot of openness.
Yeah, and some people have that, naturally True, but I think
for most of us it has to becultivated, and this might be a
very good segue into the meat ofthe conversation which is
getting into flow.
Steven Puri (21:02):
I love talking about flow.
You know that, yeah, so isthere a formula?
Um, let me say this, becauseI'm sure there's a portion of
your audience that are flowmasters, that are in their cars
or at home nodding, you know,and they know the answer, and
there's probably a cohort oflisteners that we could lay out
(21:23):
what we're talking about first.
Is that fair?
Silas Rose (21:25):
Yeah, and maybe just for the uninitiated, maybe just
define that.
Steven Puri (21:32):
Yeah, let's do that .
So there was aHungarian-American psychologist,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whohad a very strong thesis that
high performers in these variousdisciplines athletes, artists,
inventors, performers in thesevarious disciplines athletes,
artists, inventors, scientiststhey got into those concentrated
states where they did the workthat made them famous, that
moved the world, and theydescribed it in very similar
(21:54):
ways.
So he, like prometheus, wantedto go up, get the fire from
mount olympus, bring it down tothe rest of us.
So he did this, he did the workfor us to study that and talk
to these people and at at theend he wrote the book Flow,
which is the seminal work onthis, which is from whence we
get flow state.
And he said I think the mostbeautiful metaphor that I can
(22:16):
use is this sense of we're onthe river, paddling ourselves
forward, but if we align ourboat with the current, it
carries us further and faster,it magnifies our efforts.
And that's what these peoplefigured out how to do to get
into a state where they'vealigned themselves with the
current.
And obviously you and I know,since mihael wrote this book
(22:38):
decades ago, a lot of peoplehave researched different
aspects of this and writtenincredibly smart things.
You have, you know cutler, nearand clear and, like you know,
newport of all research.
How do you get into thatconcentrated state?
But he he wrote that and some ofthe experiences he said are
very similar, where he saidthese high performers lose track
(23:02):
of time.
There's not a sense of washingthe clock, there's not a sense
of distractions.
They're there's not a sense ofdistractions.
They're not like going to thebathroom or going to the fridge
to get food, you know, whateverthat thing is.
They become very focused on thetask at hand.
And he said some of theconditions precedent that seem
common.
They have to believe whatthey're doing is meaningful.
Not one of them gets in a flowand it's like stapling papers.
(23:24):
Not one of them gets in a flowand it's like stapling papers
doing something that I think isstupid.
Right, they have to have skillsthat apply.
And he said uh, if you are doingsomething that you're not able
to do, you're not going to getinto flow, and if you're able to
do it, you also need to bedoing it at a level that
challenges you.
So I guess michael jordan wasthat famous quote about when I'm
(23:44):
in the zone, it's just me inthe ball.
You know, the whole worldreduces down to this.
He said you know, it's notmichael jordan playing a high
school exhibition game for hiskids, you know high school sort
of thing.
It's him in the nba, or it'spicasso standing back and going.
Is this half finished guernica?
An execution of this idea Ihave my head about, like it has
to be something that reallychallenges you, and there are
(24:07):
many aspects to it.
This is obviously not somethingwhere I spend hours on, but
it's a fascinating, fascinatingconcept.
Silas Rose (24:18):
And again this implies this sort of congruence
between the head and the heartCompletely.
Steven Puri (24:24):
Yes, and that's a beautiful thing.
Uh, between the head, the headand the heart, completely yes,
and that's that's a beautifulthing when you're doing
something where your head andheart are aligned and you know
you're doing somethingmeaningful that expresses who
you are.
I've, I've, personally have avery deep thesis that we all
have something great inside usand the question of this
lifetime is are you going to getit out or not?
(24:47):
There are a lot of forcesmaking sure you do not.
Silas Rose (24:54):
I'm sure you're familiar with Stephen
Pressfield's work The War of Art.
Yes, there's always resistance.
Steven Puri (25:02):
There's resistance and there are, are I mean, let
us not kid ourselves in that tugof war for your life.
On one side of that rope aretrillion dollar companies who
are not embarrassed to say thattheir business model is stealing
your life period full stop.
That is their business modeland they have the money to pay
the best behavioralpsychologists and put them on
(25:25):
staff, the best UI UX designers,the best engineers, with the
sole goal of saying could youjust try and get more of
people's lives wasted here?
It's almost as if Zuckerbergcalled you up and just said hey,
silas, could I have your lifeBecause I'm going to sell it to
these advertisers and I'll keepthe money, but hey, buddy, I'll
(25:47):
give you some dancing cat videos.
Is that a cool trade for yourlife?
And it sounds ludicrous to saythat clinically, but it's
exactly what's going on, andthat means you're never going to
release the thing.
You're going to die with thegreat thing inside you, which is
totally fine for Elon and Markand Evan and the guys who are on
these platforms that are justattention magnets.
(26:08):
So that, I think, is criminal.
Silas Rose (26:11):
It is criminal and it's the greatest destroyer of
creativity.
Steven Puri (26:17):
It's hard enough to overcome your own insecurities,
maybe your own inertia, yourown laziness, your own
insecurities.
You know, maybe your owninertia, your own laziness, your
own questions of you, know howconfident you are in your
abilities.
And then to couple that with oh, by the way, there's some zero
effort dopamine.
There's a whole bucket righthere.
Just sit on the sofa.
You just need to scroll anddouble tap and enjoy your
(26:38):
dancing cat videos.
Man, that's, that's.
I hope you know this.
I'm about to have my firstchild in eight weeks.
I really hope that my kidsgeneration looks at my
generation with social media theway I look at my dad's
generation with smoking.
I'm like dad, how can you dothat?
(27:00):
Like so many of your friendsdied of lung cancer.
You have emphysema.
What were you thinking?
And my dad's point, to be fair,is hey, man, the movie stars
were all doing it and thetobacco companies were releasing
studies on how healthy tobaccowas and we didn't know that was
a thing.
And I view social media aspernicious as that and as
(27:23):
criminal as creating productsthat create cancer.
Silas Rose (27:28):
So, to be very practical again, I want to kind
of return to those habits.
How does a creative orentrepreneur insulate themselves
and basically create theenvironment of focus where they
can actually get to that
I will tell you how this worksfor me and this is obviously.
(27:49):
You know very much how Idesigned what I do you know
every day which is I recognizedproblems.
I'm very much a person who saysyou know what.
Really think deeply on theproblem before you try to solve
it.
I thought deeply about aproblem that I have, which is I
call the cold start In themorning.
(28:09):
Tomorrow morning, at 9 am I'mgoing to do X, y, z I need to do
.
At 9.15, I'd be returning someemails or scrolling the news or
something.
9.30, I'm getting going.
I've wasted half an hour andthe pain of that is felt six
o'clock when I'm like I'm notdone.
I have to come back afterdinner.
(28:30):
I'll just try and finish up, orthe lie you tell yourself.
I'm going to get up earlytomorrow and finish today's work
before I start tomorrow's work,and this is dominoes through
the week, right?
So that was a real thing for me.
So the way in which I looked atit was to say, well, why am I
doing this?
I'm not stupid.
I may not be the smartestperson on earth, but I'm not
stupid.
And you asked a couple of whysand I got to oh well, I feel a
(28:53):
kind of like overwhelm orparalysis or something to get
started.
Either there's something I haveto do that's really big how am
I going to make a dent in thatbefore you know my noon podcast
here?
Or you know there's so manythings on my to-do list and I
said the way I solved that waswhen we were building.
The suka company said you knowwhat I want to have a little
(29:14):
smart assistant that helps mejust choose the three top things
, hide everything else while I'mworking.
So I just see three things thatI need to do and I noticed
during the day.
A second problem I have is if Ihit something hard, oh man, I'm
coding and like I keep havingbuild errors.
What am I?
What's wrong here?
You know I'm writing a blogpost and just the muses are not
(29:35):
singing.
You know I, to get dopamine,will pick up my phone.
It's almost like muscle memory.
Let me see what's up.
Oh my God, maybe Eric Garnet,what's up from France or
whatever?
I don't know who's around today.
So what I developed for thatwith Tony, my partner and
Michael is what's the easiestway to actually give me a moment
(29:58):
, just a moment, to say do Iwant to do this?
So when I start my session inthe morning with Suka, I just
hit play and the music starts,and all that.
There's a QR code.
I shoot at my phone and I putit down.
If I pick up my phone while I'mworking, my smart assistant
says hey, steven, is your phonehelping you?
And I get that one moment to go.
(30:19):
Who do I want to be?
Do I want to be the guy who'slike done at three o'clock?
playing with his kids?
Or do I want to be grumpy guyat six?
And same thing with thewebsites.
Like if I open a website thatI've said is distracting for me
like could be youtube, could beamazon, could be for some people
it's espn or nfl, but not mereally and you still pop up.
(30:41):
If you're on there for fiveseconds, you get a pop-up that
says, hey, it looks like this isdistracting you, is it?
And you get that choice.
Who do I want to be?
I think that's ultimately thebest thing we can do.
So those are some ways I'vefound to combat the attention
merchants that try very well totake you away from doing the
(31:07):
thing you're meant to do.
You know, with social media, those algorithms
came for our attention, ourfocus, and it really seems like
you know the direction that AIis going in, It's coming for our
interior life, I'm not atechno-optimist, but you're much
(31:31):
more embedded in that world.
Are you optimistic about AI?
Steven Puri (31:37):
Well, let me say two things.
Thing is, I know right now aisprang as a public consciousness
really around large languagemodels lms right, chat, gpt,
gemini, anthropic, claude, andyou know all these, and what's
curious about them is they arereally more like google
(32:00):
autocomplete than they are likeintelligence, because in essence
, what they're doing is, ifGoogle autocomplete says you
type these characters, the endof the word is probably these
characters, right, what they'redoing is doing that with words
and thoughts.
You know words and ideas.
Every time someone types, hey,it looks like it is blank out,
so like 40% chance, the word'srainy, try rainy and see if
(32:22):
steven likes rainy, you know, ifhe doesn't try sunny, you know,
and they're just doingprobability.
You know probabilistic, sort oflike weights, and that's not
really that scary to me becauseit's it's like uh, do you
remember?
There's a great story I don'tremember whose story.
This is about the horse thatcould count and it was amazing.
And they later realized thehorse just had learned to move
(32:46):
its hoof enough times untilpeople went oh wow, we counted
to nine.
He had no idea what nine was.
All he knew was stop doing thehoof thing when everyone reacted
right.
So that's kind of where we are.
Now.
The deeper question you'regetting at because I know how
you think I suspect I know howyou think about these things is,
yeah, we are moving towards aworld, but there are a lot of
(33:08):
things that we do, a lot ofthings knowledge, work that will
be done better here.
We're not talking about having,you know, lotus 123 and google
sheets, microsoft excel, do ourspreadsheets for us and
calculate compound interest,like we've had that for 30 years
plus right.
We're talking about hey, man,you wrote that business plan
(33:29):
better than I can.
You made that slide deck really, really well.
And then what is our utility?
And that is a I would love tosay I'm smart enough to tell you
where it's going to go, but Ican tell you that I think is
absolutely terrifying.
As I think about what is it we,laura and I, want our children
to learn, like we fundamentallywant them to learn to think.
(33:50):
We can say that in a noble wayread, some of the great authors
study physics.
I do all these things.
We're going to pass along tothem.
Will those be ?
Silas Obviously obviouslythere's a lot of utility with
those tools but, I really feellike it's going to put a premium
(34:15):
on real creativity.
Steven I hope that you areright.
I hope that it does make thatpart of being human more and
more valuable and doesn't wipeit out.
I'll tell you a funny story, ashort one because we're wrapping
up, but my first job when Isegued out of usc into film was
actually at a trailer company.
That's how I got into digitaleffects.
Two guys ran it who were verythey've been doing promos and
(34:39):
trailers for 20 years very well,you know established in
business.
And one of them came in myoffice when I was a junior guy.
There.
My job was movies would come inrough cut from Warner Brothers
or Disney and I would assignthem to a writer-producer.
Hey, silas, you did a great jobon that Will Ferrell thing last
year.
Here's another Will Ferrellcomedy Can you write this, right
(35:00):
?
He came in my office.
He said hey, stevie, do youknow Bart?
And I was like I know Bart,there's a guy in the vault who
delivers tapes.
Yeah, he said, do you ever givehim a trailer to write?
And I said we're talking aboutthe same guy who delivers coffee
and picks up tapes.
Right, he goes yeah, yeah, yeah, I have an instinct about him.
I'm like Jeff names on the door, like you know, you're the
(35:26):
reason why we're here.
Let me give him something.
So I gave him this warnerbrothers b title that had a long
deadline case.
He hated it or did a bad job,right?
Jeff came to my office two dayslater he said how's bart doing?
So I haven't bugged him.
This is the first time he'sever written a trailer.
I'll ask him on monday, okay,okay, fine, stevie, he goes.
What else did you give him,jeff?
He's never written a trailerbefore.
I'm not getting two things.
And jeff said, to his credit,one of the first things was
(35:50):
really valuable in my life, saidstevie, let me explain to you
how creativity works.
It's always about the otherthing.
If you give Bart one thing tofocus on, he will sit there and
and stare at it with little likebeads of sweat coming down his
temples and he will write themost obvious B version of that
trailer.
You can imagine that's the partof your brain that does that.
(36:13):
I don't know what aboutchocolate and peanut butter?
What does a cell phone tastelike?
That's not the part you thinkthat you're thinking with.
So you have to give themsomething else to focus on.
I've seen that proven rightcountless times across film and
tech and there's a book on theneuroscience of it called uh the
(36:33):
net and the butterfly by oliviafox and uh judah pollock.
That talks just about thatdefault mode executive mode
interplay.
That I thought was veryinteresting about that kind of
association.
Is AI going to get to thatchocolate and peanut butter
thing, as Jeff would say?
Silas Rose (36:54):
Words of wisdom.
Well, stephen, thank you somuch for this conversation.
I think we got into flow here.
Steven Puri (37:06):
This is a beautiful moment.
Thank you for having me on andfor those listening.
I appreciate you guys listening.
I hope in some way we'rehelpful.
Silas Rose (37:14):
How can people find out more about the app and you?
Steven Puri (37:19):
My address is very public.
It is steven with a v atthesukaco, which is
t-h-e-s-u-k-h-aco.
If there's any reference I'vemade to the crazy Hungarian guy
or Cal Newport or whoever andsomeone wants to read more, it
doesn't have to be about mycompany.
(37:39):
I happily return all my emails.
I'll give you a link ofsomething to read.
It will not be long.
I'm not going to write thehistory of my life.
You're not interested inreading it.
But that offer is open and ifanyone wants to try getting into
a flow state, pick a task.
You have to do Something thattakes a half an hour an hour,
like a meaningful task and go tothe website.
It's free Seven days.
It's free, no credit cardT-H-E-S-U-K-k-h-a dot c-o and
(38:00):
the SUKA app.
Silas Rose (38:01):
I hope it helps you.
I hope you do something great.
Suka s-u-k-h-a dot c-o.
Or check out the links atawakenedrelationshipcom.
If you enjoyed thisconversation and the content I
put out here at AwakenedRelationship, it'd be wonderful
(38:22):
if you took a moment and shareda glowing review on Apple,
Spotify or wherever you listento podcasts.
I can sometimes be found onInstagram, Substack and LinkedIn
.
Send me a message.
I really love hearing from myaudience, and especially if you
(38:43):
have great suggestions forfuture guests or topics to cover
on the show.
Thank you so much for tuning in, dear listener.
Till next time, stay connected.
Thanks for tuning in to thisepisode of Awake in Relationship
(39:09):
.
If you liked what you heard,please click subscribe to get
the latest show delivered freshto your device, or sign up for
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