September 30, 2025 • 34 mins
Hollywood meets education in this eye-opening conversation with Steven Puri, founder and CEO of the Sukha Company. Drawing from his fascinating career journey—from digital visual effects on Academy Award-winning films to executive roles at major studios like DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox, Puri shares productivity strategies that work across industries.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is how Puri translates high-stakes film production techniques into practical tools for educators. He reveals how elite screenwriters create optimal environments for creativity and focus, explaining how our brains form powerful associations between specific places and types of work. Rather than suggesting educators need luxury writing retreats, he offers accessible ways to create mental triggers that ease the transition into deep work.
The discussion tackles common productivity roadblocks with refreshing honesty. Puri's solution to "the cold start problem"—that paralyzing moment when facing an overwhelming task list—is brilliantly simple yet effective. By limiting visible tasks to just three at a time, his company's users experienced a 77% improvement in completion rates. For educators juggling countless responsibilities, this approach offers immediate relief from the psychological overwhelm that often prevents starting anything at all.
Perhaps most compelling is Puri's emphasis on understanding your personal rhythms. He encourages identifying your "golden hour"—that time when you're naturally most focused and effective—and protecting it fiercely. "Guard it like gold," he advises, suggesting educators block this time in their calendars and dedicate it to deep, meaningful work rather than administrative tasks. This approach transforms productivity from a generalized system into a personalized practice aligned with your unique cognitive patterns.
Listen now and learn how film industry secrets can transform your teaching practice for greater focus, efficiency, and ultimately, more joy in your work.
Buy The Minimalist Teacher book from ASCD+ISTE.
Follow on Instagram @PlanZEducation and @minimalist_ed_podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator podcast,
where the focus is on aless-is-more approach to
education.
Join your hosts, christineArnold and Tammy Musiawski,
authors of the MinimalistTeacher and your School
Leadership.
Edit a minimalist approach torethinking your school ecosystem
each week, as they explorepractical ways to simplify your
(00:36):
work, sharpen your focus andamplify what matters most so you
can teach and lead with greaterclarity, purpose and joy.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
On this week's episode we have a great
conversation with Stephen Puriall about productivity.
His Pair Down Pointer is allabout finding the golden hour.
Stephen Puri is the founder andCEO of the Suka Company.
Stephen Puri is the founder andCEO of the Suka Company,
(01:07):
bridging the worlds of film andtechnology.
Stephen has studied thetechniques to focus, do deep
work and find healthyproductivity.
Find out more at thesukaco.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode
of the Minimalist EducatorPodcast.
This week, christine and I aresuper excited to be talking to
Stephen Puri, who is someonethat we weren't expecting to
have on the show, but we'resuper excited to have him as a
very special guest from out ofthe industry but to talk about
(01:42):
things that we talk about ineducation.
Welcome to the show, stephen.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
It is so nice to be here.
I know that I'm a little afieldfrom most of the things you
talk about I was not mentioningin your book.
I'm not hurt, I'm a little hurt, I'm okay.
But I do hope that some of thethings we talk about are super,
super applicable if you're ineducation and you have work to
do, which I believe is true, andmaybe we can talk about some of
(02:08):
the ways this is applicablethrough, like film stories and
things are like kind ofinteresting, like oh, this is
how that happens inentertainment.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, yeah, I love that connection.
Maybe do you want to just giveus.
I mean, obviously we have a bioof you at the start of the show
.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I'm happy to talk about who I am.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, it'd be great to just hear a little bit about
your background and um kind ofwhere you are now, cause you own
a company called the Sukacompany.
Um, I had a peek at your, yourapp and the productivity tool
that you have, so, um, just kindof give us a give us a rundown
of your background and who youare.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
As we go into hour two of my background, you're
going to regret.
You asked, like Stephen, wrapit up, wrap it up, you're good.
The short version is this is Iwas born to two engineers.
My mom was a systems programmerat IBM.
My dad was a hardware engineerdesigning CPUs.
My mom came up she was a mathteacher and science teacher in
(03:07):
the Bronx and definitely hadthat bent of like education is
important.
Let me share.
So when I was little, shockercoming, I learned how to code
because mom knew how to code.
So I'd go with her down to thecomputing center and do that and
she'd be like here let me fixthat mistake you made, which is
pretty cool.
I know parents teach a lot ofdifferent things to kids.
This is my mom.
She was very generous and bothmy parents came out of abject
(03:29):
poverty, so they had a very deeprespect for like work hard and
do something.
You know.
Like we didn't inherit anything, we kind of like wondered where
dinner was coming from.
So do something with your life,you know, and that was very
true in my brother's childhood.
So that kind of launched me.
(03:55):
I went to USC in California, aninstitution of education, and I
happened to be there in a dormbecause USC has a great cinema
TV school where a lot of myfriends were aspiring Spielbergs
and Lucases.
It's like you go to USC oftenbecause you want to be in cinema
television and you talk to thema lot.
And it was the time in LA whenfilm went digital.
Suddenly computers werepowerful enough to manipulate
(04:17):
film and I spoke engineer and,thanks to my friends, I spoke
creative too.
So when you think about thatVenn diagram, I happened to sit
right in the middle of that andthere were very few people that
did.
My career took off.
So I started producing digitalvisual effects in film using the
things that I knew Most.
(04:39):
Everyone tries to make goodmovies.
They're not all good Got superlucky, produced the digital
visual effects on IndependenceDay.
We won the Academy Award forthat.
It definitely helped my career,helped the career of a lot of
my friends, the whole team onthe movie, and set up a company
with the director and producer.
We'd become good friends andran that company for four years.
We sold that to a Germanconglomerate called Das Werk,
(05:00):
which is like Liberty Media ofGermany, and took two years off.
I was like, oh my God, this isso easy Setting up companies and
selling them later to learnright, cause you're in your
twenties, you know everything,you're invincible Always.
So, uh, sold the company andthen thought, okay, what do I
want to do?
I don't want to wake up and be30, 40 years old producing
(05:21):
effects or someone else's movie.
I wanted to get into filmproduction.
Actually, how do I help get awhole movie made and worked
really hard to do that?
My life is a series of luckystuff that falls in my lap and
me working really hard to makesomething of it.
It is not by design.
I did not say 35 years ago Ihope I could be on the
minimalist educator.
Things happen.
Who knew Right Exactly, whoknew Lucky things happen.
(05:43):
And then, hopefully, you workhard.
So when the door opens you walkthrough, you don't look like an
idiot, right?
The verdict's still out fortoday, but we'll see.
So, that said, I worked my wayup.
I was the executive vicepresident for Kurtzman
University at DreamWorks, whichis a live action thing.
That was like the Transformersera, star Trek, like Eagle Eye
those movies.
I was a vice president ofdevelopment and production at
(06:06):
Fox, 20th Century Fox, so thereI ran the Die Hard franchise,
the Wolverine franchise, a bunchof stuff like that.
I had another moment about 10years later where I was like,
wow, I'm going to wake up, be 40, 50 years old and be the guy
making like Die Hard 9.
Like, okay, kids, daddy's got abig Die Hard 9 to pay for your
college.
And it was not a very inspiringexperience.
(06:26):
So I decided I needed to dosomething where I have a little
more agency.
I'm not just the guy crankingout the soap at the factory
which it is glamorous soap, butit is soap.
Die Hard 5 did not get madebecause of me, let's be super
true, die Hard 5 was going toget made.
I was just the guy at thestudio who had to do it.
Right, okay, super cool.
So I thought the thing I knowhow to do is engineering.
(06:48):
And I was like let me go set upa company, let me find some
problem I find interesting.
And I set up two companies.
Both failed.
It was humiliating.
It was very embarrassing.
I had friends that you know knewI was a senior executive studio
.
I had left to go to this techcompany thing.
And then you bump into them atthe dry cleaners or dinner.
They're like Steven, how's thatthing going?
And you're like terribly, it'sprobably going to fail.
(07:09):
Wish I didn't see you.
And the lessons of those twocompanies, which I felt really
bad.
I raised about $3 million foreach, and when you have to go
back to your investors and say,I know I painted a picture of
this is what success looks like.
That picture is not going tobecome real, and you're going to
lose your money.
I lost about half a million ofmy own, and it really sucks.
(07:31):
It really sucks.
So the nice thing that came outof it, though, is watching how
the world changed around throughthe pandemic when Zoom became a
verb.
That's right, yeah, I saw howapplicable some of the lessons
from film were to modern work,whether it's remote work, hybrid
work, whatever you want to callit, distributed work,
(07:51):
asynchronous, but it is.
There is.
You're sitting with otherpeople in a room working
together, and then there's otherand you can do that other thing
at your cubicle, at your home,at the beach, wherever you want.
But that became a much morepopular thing.
It's normalizing andstabilizing now about what
percentage do you do with no oneelse around, what percentage do
you do with people?
But I've learned a lot ofthings were applicable and
(08:14):
that's a lot.
What I share now is here's someproductivity principles that
help you if you have work to dosolo work, and here's some
interesting stories that'll helpit kind of stick in your mind.
So I was so happy to be invitedon here.
I'd love to share stuff and Ihope it's entertaining.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I hope anyone listening at the end of this is
like, oh, that was worth the 30minutes.
Yeah, I'm sure it will be,stephen for sure.
So you've talked about thesedifferent projects that you've
been involved in, where you'vegot lots of different
responsibilities and money andpeople and everything.
There's a lot of parallels witheducation, with that getting a
project from beginning to end.
So what do you do personallyand through your work that helps
(08:55):
you stay focused and not gettoo overwhelmed.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Okay, so again there's the rule of three.
There are probably six or seventhings that I could share.
Let's choose three that areinteresting and who knows, maybe
down the road we do anotherepisode with another three or
something.
But let's choose three rightnow and I will tell you this
anything I share that soundssmart probably is from someone
else, and I'm just gonna besuper blunt about that, because
(09:21):
when I had these realizations oflike, oh, wow, the thing we're
doing now actually is very muchlike this thing in film, where
it's been done for a hundredyears, I went and read the books
by the smart people, cause Iknow these are not unique
problems.
We did not invent work in the1970s.
You know, it's like when youread flow by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi.
You know where he named flowstates and he said, wow, high
achievers seem to have thisstate they get into.
(09:42):
And you know Michael Jordan,remember, called it the zone,
where he was like when I'm inzone, it's me and the ball, like
I don't even see defenders, Idon't see the stands, like it's
just.
That is the state I'm in and,by the way, I might be the
greatest you know basketballplayer of all time.
Right, and you find parallelswith, like Picasso.
You know we had that.
Um, I was up all night, I thinkI forgot to pee and I didn't eat
(10:04):
or drink.
But hey, guernica, what do youthink?
Do you like it?
It's like that sort of thingwhere you go and it's found in
so many places.
You read Flo, you read JamesClear, you read Cal Newport's
deep work, you read Nir's work.
There's so many people written.
So, in reading about the top 12of those, a lot of what I'm
going to share is there's a lotof commonality and they use
(10:24):
different words and differentframeworks to sell you their
book for $24.95, but they'revery similar ideas, okay.
So all I wanted to do is makethose really accessible to
people and, as you mentioned, Ibuilt it into a little website
where you can kind of use thisfor 30 cents a day and it gives
you kind of all this.
So here's one idea which Inoticed and I noticed this in
(10:45):
film there is a strongassociation.
Your brain, and maybe yourspirit, starts to draw between
places and the kind of work thatyou do, and I'll give you a
really fun example, which isback when I was working with
Roland and Dean.
They wrote at this villa thatthey rented down in Puerto
Vallarta I've never been there,apparently, it's like a $3
(11:06):
million white marble overlookingthe thing, whatever.
And they talked about how therewas this room where in the
morning the light came in overthe pool and it just inspired
them and they've written likeStargate there.
They've written other thingsthere and I'll tell you a funny
thing is so.
This was so important to them.
When Roland told Joey, his oldassistant said Joey, rent the
villa, we need to go down.
Right, joey came back thatFriday.
(11:27):
It was like it's rented.
Someone else is there Aroundthe office.
This was a bad situation.
It was like someone had died.
Roland called John Diemer, hisentertainment attorney, who's a
fantastic attorney, and saidJohn, you must buy the house by
Monday.
Roland owned that villa.
I don't know where the peoplerenting it went, but I'm sure
(11:48):
they were paid nicely to go moveto some other villa in
Margarita and they went downthere to write in that room
where they felt inspired andthey wrote the third highest
grossing movie in the history offilm at that point.
But it doesn't have to be thatluxury.
When I was working with Alex andBob Alex Kurtz and Bob Worsey
great guys Actually.
Bob just died recently, whichis kind of sad.
But they were both wonderfulguys and they had membership in
(12:14):
that $2 million writers club.
They wrote Transformers 1 and 2and Star Trek 11 and 12, the
big movies you see in the summer.
They met back in college.
They had a very different storycoming up from Roland and Dean,
like the big movies you see inthe summer, right, they met back
in college.
They had a very different storycoming up from.
Roland and Dean, right, who areboth like Dean's dad produced
Jack Nicholson's movies.
Roland's family is like theJohn Deere of Germany, right.
So they, when they had to write, they had their assistant rent
(12:38):
a room over at the UniversalHilton, which I'm just going to
say is not a luxury property,we'll leave it at that.
But I think for them, when theyhad to buckle down, it evoked
the dorm room kind of feel oflike Alex on the edge of the bed
with his laptop and Bob at thedesk and that for them is their
way of saying, like we associatethis with when we're just like
creating the next thing, andthat is how they wrote these
(13:01):
million-dollar paycheck scripts.
So that was really interesting.
So understanding place, whetheryou are working as an educator
and you have I'm going to makethis up but you have to do
administrative tasks or tasksrelated to your students or
something, and you start to sayI'm not going to just do this
randomly anywhere.
Wander through my house, wanderthrough the.
This is actually a space whereI dream up lessons plans.
(13:22):
This is a place where I grade.
It's interesting how, once youdo that for a couple of weeks,
you enter that space and yourbrain sort of settles
immediately into oh right, we'regoing to bang that thing out,
and it helps you to focus inthat way.
So that's, I hope, aninteresting story and also kind
of like how it applies.
I'll tell you there's acorollary to that about time.
It's not just place, place.
(13:43):
I found like I used to do themistake of working all over my
house in the afternoon sit onthe sofa downstairs, or
breakfast.
I'd be in the kitchen, so I'dwork at the kitchen table for a
while and it was disjointed.
So now I really try to berigorous about working here.
But there's another one abouttime, and the first time I
encountered this in film was RonBass is a famous screenwriter
(14:04):
my best friend's wedding and I'monly a whole bunch of stuff and
he wrote roles that you wouldget stars in.
Some are movies.
You often it's like the visualeffects of the star, but he
wrote the movies.
It's like, oh, you know whatBrad wants to be in this?
Robert Redford wants to star inthis, right.
And what he knew was this he wasan attorney turned screenwriter
, by the way.
(14:24):
He knew that his mental spacewas early in the morning and he
would get up and he would nottalk to his kids.
He had young kids.
He had a wife Would not talk tothem and then afterwards would
engage once he'd written.
And what he said to them wasthis he said, when I talked to
you in the morning, even if it'shis pedestrian is like hey,
(14:44):
what do you want for a cereal?
Did you get your homework?
Okay, don't miss the bus.
He's like as soon as I do thatwith you, I can't hear my
characters in my head.
I can't write dialogue becauseI don't hear their voices
anymore.
I hear yours and his familyrespected that.
They're like hey, dad's writinga movie for Julia Roberts, Let
him have 5 am to 9 am to do histhing.
(15:04):
But he developed that awarenessand then his family was like we
got you.
We're cool and that is how youwrite the rules.
When a Julia Roberts type goes,I want to say these words yes,
of all the 50 movies that have amillion dollar offer on the
front, this one right.
So it doesn't have to be five to9 am, but you might find that
(15:25):
thing about yourself called yourchronotype, and there's some
great writing about this.
Anyone who's curious about anyof the things we mentioned in
this short podcast, they'rewelcome to email me.
I'll send them a link to someblog post or some book or
something.
That's where I live.
But your chronotype.
The more you become sensitiveto that, the more you're like oh
, you know what Like in thiswindow of time.
(15:46):
I'm good at this or I suck at.
This is the wrong time to tryto grade or dream up creative
lessons, but this is when Ishould be some road activity,
cause my brain's kind of likeoff Right.
Just another thought.
Yeah, it's long speech.
I hear you guys are like do weget to talk?
Yes, you get to speak.
I'll be quiet.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I mean that's why we have guests, right, because we
want to hear you guys talking.
But just lots of connectionsmade about you know the
chronotype, you know Dan Pink'sbook when is super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
One of our friends, ali, wrote a professional
learning book for educators thatincludes some of the
chronotypes and, just likethrough some of our own work
around writing and teaching andleading, like we've figured out,
like when we can do things andwhen we can't, and what works
and what doesn't, we alwaystweaking the way we do things.
One of my favorite ones, though, just thinking about little
(16:32):
stories, was report writingseason.
When we used to teach togetherin Singapore, we would go to
Bali for the weekend and writethe reports in a pool.
So that was when you know likejust there was four of us.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
That didn't suck, did it?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It did not suck and we got stuff done.
You know, we just had to choosethe right ambiance, be in the
right spot, be with the rightpeople.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I'm with you.
You're playing right in mystory.
I love this.
Keep going Like.
Thank you for corroborating.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean with that you run into
challenges, right?
So what are some of thosebiggest obstacles that when you
get into those flow states thatsometimes you can't avoid them.
What do you do about that?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Does everyone, do all your listeners know what a flow
state is?
Should we take a moment to talkabout that, or are they kind of
like they know?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Just yeah, maybe give us a quick definition.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Okay, so just very briefly.
And the seminal book on this iscalled Flow.
He named it Mihaly, hungarianguy, and his thesis, his
observation, was that people whoare high achievers can get into
this highly concentrated stateand sometimes the velocity with
which you move forward is beyondjust your own paddling.
(17:48):
It's almost like the river iscarrying you forward as you
paddle.
And for that reason, he said, Iwant to call it flow, because I
like that metaphor and that'swhere this term flow state comes
from is when you get into that.
I had it the very first time Iwas on an American flight from
Texas to San Francisco and thewifi was out and I had to do
(18:09):
some like Figma designs for myteam, sort of illustrate this
idea.
And I remember we took off andwe landed.
I was like, oh my God,something's wrong with the plane
.
We just took off and I lookeddown and two hours and 40
minutes had gone by.
I had no conception of it.
I don't even know if the drinkcart came by.
I didn't go pee, nothing.
I was just like the plane isbroken, we're landing somewhere
in Texas, it's been 10 minuteswe've been in the air, and that
(18:33):
loss of sense of time and thatway to block that distraction.
That is the beauty of being inflow state and for me it was
great because when I landed,there's a great New England
lobster roll place.
That's right by SFO and I hadtime to go there because I
didn't have to rush to my hoteland try and finish my designs.
They were done.
(18:53):
I could just go have aConnecticut style lobster roll,
which they do very well.
I should mention their name.
It'd be free lobster roll.
I'll say, um anyway.
So just to set the table, flowStates super awesome If you can
do it.
By the way, you can't do it in15 minutes.
It is something where it takesyou 15 to 25 minutes to drop in
and if you get distracted it'sanother 15, 25 minutes just to
(19:15):
get back from distraction.
So you kind of have to be uh,jealously guard your time, treat
the time as sacred going.
You know what?
Here's an hour or two where I'mgoing to do really meaningful
work and not I get distracted.
That's really my app that Ibuilt is a flow state app is to
help you get into a flow stateand just do that thing where,
like in two hours, you're likeI'm done for the day, like I did
all the stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I thought it'd take four unfortunately, sometimes in
schools we don't necessarilyalways have like ownership over
how we spend our time right,like, even if you do like kind
of dedicate a block of time to aparticular task, you know
someone will hurt their knee atplaytime, or you know someone
will have an emergency orsomething or other, and they,
you know they come in and theyneed you.
(19:55):
So if we, if we do have thesedays where like nothing has gone
to plan, that we're nowherenear a flow state like, what is
your message to us?
To like pick it up the next dayand try again and not be too
disheartened by it all okay,okay.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
So I love you picked up the disheartened thing
because I'm going to tell you alot of how I built.
What I built was workingbackwards from problems I have
and pain that I feel.
So we're going to shoehorn intothis episode two bits of pain
and I'll tell you how Iunderstood them, how I dug down
to go, what really is causingthis pain.
(20:32):
And maybe we can do that withinthe bounds of this time.
I'll try and be succinct.
So one of the problems was whenI agreed with myself this is
the block I actually do havewhich may be after school in
some worlds.
For me it was usually in themorning.
It's like I'm going to getgoing at 9, 8.30, 9.30, whatever
, but I would find myself atthat time doing something that
wasn't exactly on task.
(20:52):
I should go through my emails,let me get that done.
Oh, I should quickly just checkTwitter or something and make
sure I'm up on the news orsomething.
I'll only read the news if I'mat home.
Let me throw in a load oflaundry, so it's going while I'm
working or I'm multitasking.
When I dug down on that which Icall the cold start problem and
(21:14):
I wasn't actually starting ontime it really boiled down to
two kinds of overwhelm and I'vetalked to now hundreds of
members in my community in theSUCA and it is super common
these two things.
Which is, it's overwhelmed whenyou look at a task list and
you're like all this stuff needsto get done, but there are like
17 things on there.
It's just overwhelming.
It's paralysis from like how isthat all going to get done?
(21:37):
So less gets done, right?
So I dug down to that.
I was like, okay, so it'sreally not about I can't get all
these things done, but justbeing confronted with it is
really hard.
So it's going to sound so silly, but I'll tell you what I did
and it helps me is when I startmy session.
The website we have is verysimple.
It's a play button, hit, play,focus.
(22:01):
Music plays.
We have like a thousand hoursof different kinds of upbeat,
down-tempo, whatever.
There's a smart assistant thatgreets you and says, hey, let's
start our day.
I looked at your task list,stephen.
You have like 17 things.
Let's choose three.
These three seem like they'reimportant.
Are these the right three?
Oh yeah, they are, or no?
Actually, swap this one out forsomething else.
Okay, great, we're going totake these three.
It seems like this is how longyou need, based upon other tasks
(22:23):
you've done.
Let's get going.
And I can only see those threewhile I work.
Can I tell you, since westarted this, say, let's just
watch these three things.
Our members, including me, havea 77% better chance of finishing
all three than when you couldsee the whole list.
(22:43):
Same tasks, same amount of time.
But it's just the thing.
Like you see three, you go.
I could totally do that and youdo, as opposed to 17, where
you're like people would get twotasks done in the exact same
amount of time.
Nothing changed other thanlet's just make this human,
let's not be intimidated.
And the other part of theoverwhelm is sometimes there's a
task on there where you're likewrite my book.
(23:05):
I'm not going to do that in twohours.
I'm not going to write my book.
I don't know if you guys likewrite my lesson plan for the
semester or whatever.
It's not going to happen to menow in my 11 am Zoom or my 8 am
class or something.
So when your smart assistantsees that again he or she, what
kind of gender voice you wantI'll be like you know what?
That's awesome, that's a goal.
Write your book, steven.
(23:30):
What if, today, we just outlinechapter three, how about we
make that the task?
And it seems like from chaptersone and two, you need about 35
minutes for that, and then thatsuddenly feels like, oh, when I
was driving yesterday, I didhave that idea for chapter three
.
I could totally yeah, I couldjot that down 35 minutes, and it
just gets going, and thatmomentum of like oh, I'm getting
stuff done, it just builds.
It feels great when you starthitting that complete button and
tasks start disappearing.
(23:50):
I'm even thinking, by the way,maybe by the time someone hears
this of when you click complete,there might be a little
confetti or something.
It'd just be likecongratulations, you got that
done.
So those are the kind of things.
Let me touch on the second thing, though, which is you brought
up that feeling of beingdisheartened, and this is one
that I felt, which is, at theend of the day, that, ah, poof,
(24:13):
you know what?
I'll get up early tomorrow.
This is a lie.
I would tell myself.
I'll get up early tomorrow, andbefore I start the work on
tomorrow's things that I have to, I'll do this, you know, by
I'll skip the gym, or I'll skipit, or I'll do it during
breakfast or whatever, right?
And it is a lie, because thentomorrow dominoes into Wednesday
and the next day dominoes intoThursday.
And it is just a lie, right.
(24:40):
And I'll tell you.
This is actually how I named mycompany the weird ass name it
has, I'll just tell you.
So I met Laura in yoga inManhattan.
When my second company failed,I was so embarrassed I left LA,
moved to Manhattan and just hungout for two years in Manhattan.
I was just like I don't want tobump into anybody, right?
So I'm doing yoga, verytherapeutic.
She was on the left, to my left.
We've been together 10 years.
As you guys know, she'spregnant right now.
We're in a baby.
It's awesome.
(25:00):
So when we were getting marrieda couple of years ago, I needed
a name for this company.
We had a working title.
We'd had some early users.
We're tuning it and we're goingoff to Bali, which I'm very
grateful.
We're a place where we can goto Bali and spend 10 days there
for our honeymoon.
All the way, I was like you knowwhat, laura, this is maybe a
gift from the universe.
No one's going to bug me for 10days.
(25:22):
They're like Stephen's on hishoneymoon.
Don't ask him to approve thepurchase order, right.
I was like wait.
I was like maybe my unconsciousmind will bubble up like a cool
name, because all the namesI've been doing my brainstorming
notepad on are like flow, state, focus, distraction, app 14.
I mean just like awful stuff,right, okay.
So she's like okay, great, youknow, let's make that intention
(25:43):
for this 10 days.
You have a great day for this.
So I was like cool, it's likesomething that might help.
Me is the first day.
Would you mind if I spoke tomaybe three, two or three of our
early users and just ask them,like, what they like about it?
And that might just be goodseeds that'll bubble.
Something will grow out ofthose over the next 10 days.
She's like I'll be at the pool,have fun, I'll see you at
dinner.
So I did those.
(26:05):
I said post some group chat.
Who wants to chat?
So three people say yes and Isaid I just want 10 minutes.
I asked them what's yourfavorite feature?
Do you love the music?
Do you love the Pomodoro timer?
Do you love the smart assistant?
Like, what do you love?
And the third one is just aboutdone.
Going to the wrap up, you'relike oh Tammy, thank you so much
.
It's been eight minutes.
I promised 10.
So we have a great day.
(26:25):
And the guy said to me he'sstill a member, by the way, I
see him in there sometimes.
He said to me, stephen, youshould ask me why I pay you.
Okay, well, it's 30 cents a day, so it didn't seem like the
biggest thing.
(26:46):
But why do you pay me?
And he said so.
At three o'clock I can beplaying with my kids.
They're two and four years oldor at six o'clock I can be down
myself and be like where thehell did the day go?
So the difference is do I openyour app in the morning?
My kids are not going to be twoand four forever and I pay you
(27:10):
for those memories.
I was like whoa, okay.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's profound.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Yeah, you, you you won that round.
So I go to dinner with Laura.
I'm like, oh my God, I spoke tothis guy who's more articulate
about my own company than I am.
Right, this is what he said.
She's like well, that's good.
So we're brushing our teeth,going to bed and Laura looks at
me.
She goes.
You know, in yoga we hear allthese Sanskrit terms.
You know karma and dharma andsatya right, she's like the
(27:39):
universe just spoke to you.
You wanted this, it came to you.
The universe spoke to youthrough this dude you don't know
.
And he's describing sukha.
He's describing that feeling ofhappiness when you're
self-fulfilled, when you'redoing something you're good at
you know you're good at it andyou feel like an ease in your
life.
She said you got what youwanted.
And from bed that night in Bali, in our hotel room, I looked up
(28:01):
the website the Sukha company,the happiness company and it was
available and I bought it andnamed the company and that was
it.
And that is ultimately what Ido is the tools we offer are
just the path, and I was focusedon the tools or the goal.
The goal is happiness.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's an amazing story just to find because it is
so hard coming up with namesand like finding the right thing
to describe.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
I had every bad name.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Right and it's just like that.
Just sounds like everybodyelse's thing and you know so.
Like that, it's a name thatsticks with you and it describes
exactly.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Hopefully true, I'll tell you.
A funny thing is what you said.
I looked up some of my badnames and they were taken.
I was like these big projectsthat you're working on and you
know takes a lot of commitmentand time and energy and focus.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
What do you say?
The role of rest is in beingable to maintain that
productivity on a task, on aproject, because I think there's
a lot of very tired teachersout in the world.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
My mom was one.
Yes, there are two parts of myanswer.
One part is when you're working, there are smart people who've
written about, like, what is ahealthy rhythm for work?
So, as you know, italian guycame up with this Pomodoro
technique, which was like 25 andfive for a certain number of
cycles and it just gives thatfive minutes to stand up, maybe
(29:29):
scratch, get a glass of water,do whatever.
We built that into the Sukha.
Like, when you work, there is aPomodoro timer.
You can adjust it if you want,like I actually do 55 and five
because it feels better to me.
But on your break, when we'rebuilding this in your score, you
will get points if you takeyour break.
If you're like I'm going totake these five minutes, I'm
going to go walk around theblock, you can click.
(29:51):
I walked around the block, get15 points, I got a glass of
water.
We offer desk stretching If youjust want to stand up, my
hamstrings get tight aftersitting.
I was like we should have somevideos.
It was just like hey, for 60seconds or two minutes, just
want to stretch.
So that's, I think, reallyimportant in the bounds of this
is my work time, but I stillneed to have some recharge and
sometimes it's just breathing.
(30:12):
Just close your eyes andbreathe for two minutes.
It really helps.
And then I think the largeranswer to your question is you
need to be sensitive to how am Ispending my day?
Parts, because if you don't getenough rest, which is whatever
level is appropriate for youlike Laura needs more rest than
I do If you don't get enoughrest it affects everything and
(30:38):
then things take longer.
So if you are like I am, whichis I'm like a six to six and a
half hour sleep guy, laura islike a seven and a half hour
sleep girl, know that.
And if there are rhythms youstart to see in your life where
it's like man, my mental clarityfrom like six to 8 am is
amazing, but like 6 pm isterrible.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
You know what?
Speaker 4 (30:53):
See if you can work a half hour nap in.
Sometimes a little disco naphelps, so it is kind of
respecting your rhythms.
But you have to start measuringthem because without data,
unlike what you do, I think whyOura rings are so popular and
Apple watches, and it's justlike once you you start to
measure something, you can startto see a pattern and go oh my
god, you know what it is.
I'm always tired on the daysthat I don't go for a walk.
(31:14):
It just energizes me, you know,and you start to see a pattern.
Then you can do something andit's actionable that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I like how so many things that you've said today is
about really like thinkingabout who you are and what works
for you, because sometimes whenyou read all of these
productivity things it's kind ofcookie cutter, isn't it?
It's like this will work foreverybody.
But you're really talking tothat.
Know yourself, figure out whatworks for you and then use the
(31:42):
tools that are going to help you.
Yeah, that's very good.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Thank you for hearing that.
That is very true.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So, stephen, at the end of our podcast episodes, we
like to ask our guests for apare-down pointer, something
that's going to be a really nicereminder for our guests.
It could be something thatyou've already talked about, or
building on something else, ifyou want to.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Okay, I will tell you one thing, if nothing in this
(32:32):
episode sticks with whomever'slistening at this point, but
this, I will simply say thiswhich is when you figure out
when your golden hour is mine isin the morning before, like 10,
before when you find yourgolden time, guard it like gold,
block it in your calendar.
If you are part of anorganization where people can
book time with you, block it insuch a way.
People are like he's in ameeting With whom With himself.
She's not available right now.
What's she doing?
She's doing deep work, theactual work that moves your life
forward or your organizationforward, not the hey.
I wrote the TPS report, I filedthe thing.
(32:54):
I returned the emails.
They don't move your companyforward, your school forward,
your life forward.
Find that time, lock it, startit like it's gold.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Love it.
That's great.
Thank you so much for joiningus today, Stephen.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, it's all in English allin color, as promised?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, and we'd love to invite you back sometime for
another chat as well.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Let me know when.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
All righty, thank you so much.
Okay, bye everybody.
This episode was brought to youby the Suka Company, the focus
app that actually helps you getyour work done.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Find out more at wwwpasukaco.
Thank you for listening to theMinimalist Educator podcast.
Join Christine and Tammy andguests again next time for more
conversations about how tosimplify and clarify the
responsibilities and tasks inyour role.
If today's episode helped yourethink, reimagine, reduce or
realign something in yourpractice, share it in a comment
(33:56):
or with a colleague.
For resources and updates,visit planzeducationcom and
subscribe to receive weeklyemails.
Until next time, keep it simpleand stay intentional.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator podcast,
where the focus is on aless-is-more approach to
education.
Join your hosts, christineArnold and Tammy Musiawski,
authors of the MinimalistTeacher and your School
Leadership.
Edit a minimalist approach torethinking your school ecosystem
each week, as they explorepractical ways to simplify your
(00:36):
work, sharpen your focus andamplify what matters most so you
can teach and lead with greaterclarity, purpose and joy.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
On this week's episode we have a great
conversation with Stephen Puriall about productivity.
His Pair Down Pointer is allabout finding the golden hour.
Stephen Puri is the founder andCEO of the Suka Company.
Stephen Puri is the founder andCEO of the Suka Company,
(01:07):
bridging the worlds of film andtechnology.
Stephen has studied thetechniques to focus, do deep
work and find healthyproductivity.
Find out more at thesukaco.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode
of the Minimalist EducatorPodcast.
This week, christine and I aresuper excited to be talking to
Stephen Puri, who is someonethat we weren't expecting to
have on the show, but we'resuper excited to have him as a
very special guest from out ofthe industry but to talk about
(01:42):
things that we talk about ineducation.
Welcome to the show, stephen.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
It is so nice to be here.
I know that I'm a little afieldfrom most of the things you
talk about I was not mentioningin your book.
I'm not hurt, I'm a little hurt, I'm okay.
But I do hope that some of thethings we talk about are super,
super applicable if you're ineducation and you have work to
do, which I believe is true, andmaybe we can talk about some of
(02:08):
the ways this is applicablethrough, like film stories and
things are like kind ofinteresting, like oh, this is
how that happens inentertainment.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, yeah, I love that connection.
Maybe do you want to just giveus.
I mean, obviously we have a bioof you at the start of the show
.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I'm happy to talk about who I am.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, it'd be great to just hear a little bit about
your background and um kind ofwhere you are now, cause you own
a company called the Sukacompany.
Um, I had a peek at your, yourapp and the productivity tool
that you have, so, um, just kindof give us a give us a rundown
of your background and who youare.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
As we go into hour two of my background, you're
going to regret.
You asked, like Stephen, wrapit up, wrap it up, you're good.
The short version is this is Iwas born to two engineers.
My mom was a systems programmerat IBM.
My dad was a hardware engineerdesigning CPUs.
My mom came up she was a mathteacher and science teacher in
(03:07):
the Bronx and definitely hadthat bent of like education is
important.
Let me share.
So when I was little, shockercoming, I learned how to code
because mom knew how to code.
So I'd go with her down to thecomputing center and do that and
she'd be like here let me fixthat mistake you made, which is
pretty cool.
I know parents teach a lot ofdifferent things to kids.
This is my mom.
She was very generous and bothmy parents came out of abject
(03:29):
poverty, so they had a very deeprespect for like work hard and
do something.
You know.
Like we didn't inherit anything, we kind of like wondered where
dinner was coming from.
So do something with your life,you know, and that was very
true in my brother's childhood.
So that kind of launched me.
(03:55):
I went to USC in California, aninstitution of education, and I
happened to be there in a dormbecause USC has a great cinema
TV school where a lot of myfriends were aspiring Spielbergs
and Lucases.
It's like you go to USC oftenbecause you want to be in cinema
television and you talk to thema lot.
And it was the time in LA whenfilm went digital.
Suddenly computers werepowerful enough to manipulate
(04:17):
film and I spoke engineer and,thanks to my friends, I spoke
creative too.
So when you think about thatVenn diagram, I happened to sit
right in the middle of that andthere were very few people that
did.
My career took off.
So I started producing digitalvisual effects in film using the
things that I knew Most.
(04:39):
Everyone tries to make goodmovies.
They're not all good Got superlucky, produced the digital
visual effects on IndependenceDay.
We won the Academy Award forthat.
It definitely helped my career,helped the career of a lot of
my friends, the whole team onthe movie, and set up a company
with the director and producer.
We'd become good friends andran that company for four years.
We sold that to a Germanconglomerate called Das Werk,
(05:00):
which is like Liberty Media ofGermany, and took two years off.
I was like, oh my God, this isso easy Setting up companies and
selling them later to learnright, cause you're in your
twenties, you know everything,you're invincible Always.
So, uh, sold the company andthen thought, okay, what do I
want to do?
I don't want to wake up and be30, 40 years old producing
(05:21):
effects or someone else's movie.
I wanted to get into filmproduction.
Actually, how do I help get awhole movie made and worked
really hard to do that?
My life is a series of luckystuff that falls in my lap and
me working really hard to makesomething of it.
It is not by design.
I did not say 35 years ago Ihope I could be on the
minimalist educator.
Things happen.
Who knew Right Exactly, whoknew Lucky things happen.
(05:43):
And then, hopefully, you workhard.
So when the door opens you walkthrough, you don't look like an
idiot, right?
The verdict's still out fortoday, but we'll see.
So, that said, I worked my wayup.
I was the executive vicepresident for Kurtzman
University at DreamWorks, whichis a live action thing.
That was like the Transformersera, star Trek, like Eagle Eye
those movies.
I was a vice president ofdevelopment and production at
(06:06):
Fox, 20th Century Fox, so thereI ran the Die Hard franchise,
the Wolverine franchise, a bunchof stuff like that.
I had another moment about 10years later where I was like,
wow, I'm going to wake up, be 40, 50 years old and be the guy
making like Die Hard 9.
Like, okay, kids, daddy's got abig Die Hard 9 to pay for your
college.
And it was not a very inspiringexperience.
(06:26):
So I decided I needed to dosomething where I have a little
more agency.
I'm not just the guy crankingout the soap at the factory
which it is glamorous soap, butit is soap.
Die Hard 5 did not get madebecause of me, let's be super
true, die Hard 5 was going toget made.
I was just the guy at thestudio who had to do it.
Right, okay, super cool.
So I thought the thing I knowhow to do is engineering.
(06:48):
And I was like let me go set upa company, let me find some
problem I find interesting.
And I set up two companies.
Both failed.
It was humiliating.
It was very embarrassing.
I had friends that you know knewI was a senior executive studio
.
I had left to go to this techcompany thing.
And then you bump into them atthe dry cleaners or dinner.
They're like Steven, how's thatthing going?
And you're like terribly, it'sprobably going to fail.
(07:09):
Wish I didn't see you.
And the lessons of those twocompanies, which I felt really
bad.
I raised about $3 million foreach, and when you have to go
back to your investors and say,I know I painted a picture of
this is what success looks like.
That picture is not going tobecome real, and you're going to
lose your money.
I lost about half a million ofmy own, and it really sucks.
(07:31):
It really sucks.
So the nice thing that came outof it, though, is watching how
the world changed around throughthe pandemic when Zoom became a
verb.
That's right, yeah, I saw howapplicable some of the lessons
from film were to modern work,whether it's remote work, hybrid
work, whatever you want to callit, distributed work,
(07:51):
asynchronous, but it is.
There is.
You're sitting with otherpeople in a room working
together, and then there's otherand you can do that other thing
at your cubicle, at your home,at the beach, wherever you want.
But that became a much morepopular thing.
It's normalizing andstabilizing now about what
percentage do you do with no oneelse around, what percentage do
you do with people?
But I've learned a lot ofthings were applicable and
(08:14):
that's a lot.
What I share now is here's someproductivity principles that
help you if you have work to dosolo work, and here's some
interesting stories that'll helpit kind of stick in your mind.
So I was so happy to be invitedon here.
I'd love to share stuff and Ihope it's entertaining.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I hope anyone listening at the end of this is
like, oh, that was worth the 30minutes.
Yeah, I'm sure it will be,stephen for sure.
So you've talked about thesedifferent projects that you've
been involved in, where you'vegot lots of different
responsibilities and money andpeople and everything.
There's a lot of parallels witheducation, with that getting a
project from beginning to end.
So what do you do personallyand through your work that helps
(08:55):
you stay focused and not gettoo overwhelmed.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Okay, so again there's the rule of three.
There are probably six or seventhings that I could share.
Let's choose three that areinteresting and who knows, maybe
down the road we do anotherepisode with another three or
something.
But let's choose three rightnow and I will tell you this
anything I share that soundssmart probably is from someone
else, and I'm just gonna besuper blunt about that, because
(09:21):
when I had these realizations oflike, oh, wow, the thing we're
doing now actually is very muchlike this thing in film, where
it's been done for a hundredyears, I went and read the books
by the smart people, cause Iknow these are not unique
problems.
We did not invent work in the1970s.
You know, it's like when youread flow by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi.
You know where he named flowstates and he said, wow, high
achievers seem to have thisstate they get into.
(09:42):
And you know Michael Jordan,remember, called it the zone,
where he was like when I'm inzone, it's me and the ball, like
I don't even see defenders, Idon't see the stands, like it's
just.
That is the state I'm in and,by the way, I might be the
greatest you know basketballplayer of all time.
Right, and you find parallelswith, like Picasso.
You know we had that.
Um, I was up all night, I thinkI forgot to pee and I didn't eat
(10:04):
or drink.
But hey, guernica, what do youthink?
Do you like it?
It's like that sort of thingwhere you go and it's found in
so many places.
You read Flo, you read JamesClear, you read Cal Newport's
deep work, you read Nir's work.
There's so many people written.
So, in reading about the top 12of those, a lot of what I'm
going to share is there's a lotof commonality and they use
(10:24):
different words and differentframeworks to sell you their
book for $24.95, but they'revery similar ideas, okay.
So all I wanted to do is makethose really accessible to
people and, as you mentioned, Ibuilt it into a little website
where you can kind of use thisfor 30 cents a day and it gives
you kind of all this.
So here's one idea which Inoticed and I noticed this in
(10:45):
film there is a strongassociation.
Your brain, and maybe yourspirit, starts to draw between
places and the kind of work thatyou do, and I'll give you a
really fun example, which isback when I was working with
Roland and Dean.
They wrote at this villa thatthey rented down in Puerto
Vallarta I've never been there,apparently, it's like a $3
(11:06):
million white marble overlookingthe thing, whatever.
And they talked about how therewas this room where in the
morning the light came in overthe pool and it just inspired
them and they've written likeStargate there.
They've written other thingsthere and I'll tell you a funny
thing is so.
This was so important to them.
When Roland told Joey, his oldassistant said Joey, rent the
villa, we need to go down.
Right, joey came back thatFriday.
(11:27):
It was like it's rented.
Someone else is there Aroundthe office.
This was a bad situation.
It was like someone had died.
Roland called John Diemer, hisentertainment attorney, who's a
fantastic attorney, and saidJohn, you must buy the house by
Monday.
Roland owned that villa.
I don't know where the peoplerenting it went, but I'm sure
(11:48):
they were paid nicely to go moveto some other villa in
Margarita and they went downthere to write in that room
where they felt inspired andthey wrote the third highest
grossing movie in the history offilm at that point.
But it doesn't have to be thatluxury.
When I was working with Alex andBob Alex Kurtz and Bob Worsey
great guys Actually.
Bob just died recently, whichis kind of sad.
But they were both wonderfulguys and they had membership in
(12:14):
that $2 million writers club.
They wrote Transformers 1 and 2and Star Trek 11 and 12, the
big movies you see in the summer.
They met back in college.
They had a very different storycoming up from Roland and Dean,
like the big movies you see inthe summer, right, they met back
in college.
They had a very different storycoming up from.
Roland and Dean, right, who areboth like Dean's dad produced
Jack Nicholson's movies.
Roland's family is like theJohn Deere of Germany, right.
So they, when they had to write, they had their assistant rent
(12:38):
a room over at the UniversalHilton, which I'm just going to
say is not a luxury property,we'll leave it at that.
But I think for them, when theyhad to buckle down, it evoked
the dorm room kind of feel oflike Alex on the edge of the bed
with his laptop and Bob at thedesk and that for them is their
way of saying, like we associatethis with when we're just like
creating the next thing, andthat is how they wrote these
(13:01):
million-dollar paycheck scripts.
So that was really interesting.
So understanding place, whetheryou are working as an educator
and you have I'm going to makethis up but you have to do
administrative tasks or tasksrelated to your students or
something, and you start to sayI'm not going to just do this
randomly anywhere.
Wander through my house, wanderthrough the.
This is actually a space whereI dream up lessons plans.
(13:22):
This is a place where I grade.
It's interesting how, once youdo that for a couple of weeks,
you enter that space and yourbrain sort of settles
immediately into oh right, we'regoing to bang that thing out,
and it helps you to focus inthat way.
So that's, I hope, aninteresting story and also kind
of like how it applies.
I'll tell you there's acorollary to that about time.
It's not just place, place.
(13:43):
I found like I used to do themistake of working all over my
house in the afternoon sit onthe sofa downstairs, or
breakfast.
I'd be in the kitchen, so I'dwork at the kitchen table for a
while and it was disjointed.
So now I really try to berigorous about working here.
But there's another one abouttime, and the first time I
encountered this in film was RonBass is a famous screenwriter
(14:04):
my best friend's wedding and I'monly a whole bunch of stuff and
he wrote roles that you wouldget stars in.
Some are movies.
You often it's like the visualeffects of the star, but he
wrote the movies.
It's like, oh, you know whatBrad wants to be in this?
Robert Redford wants to star inthis, right.
And what he knew was this he wasan attorney turned screenwriter
, by the way.
(14:24):
He knew that his mental spacewas early in the morning and he
would get up and he would nottalk to his kids.
He had young kids.
He had a wife Would not talk tothem and then afterwards would
engage once he'd written.
And what he said to them wasthis he said, when I talked to
you in the morning, even if it'shis pedestrian is like hey,
(14:44):
what do you want for a cereal?
Did you get your homework?
Okay, don't miss the bus.
He's like as soon as I do thatwith you, I can't hear my
characters in my head.
I can't write dialogue becauseI don't hear their voices
anymore.
I hear yours and his familyrespected that.
They're like hey, dad's writinga movie for Julia Roberts, Let
him have 5 am to 9 am to do histhing.
(15:04):
But he developed that awarenessand then his family was like we
got you.
We're cool and that is how youwrite the rules.
When a Julia Roberts type goes,I want to say these words yes,
of all the 50 movies that have amillion dollar offer on the
front, this one right.
So it doesn't have to be five to9 am, but you might find that
(15:25):
thing about yourself called yourchronotype, and there's some
great writing about this.
Anyone who's curious about anyof the things we mentioned in
this short podcast, they'rewelcome to email me.
I'll send them a link to someblog post or some book or
something.
That's where I live.
But your chronotype.
The more you become sensitiveto that, the more you're like oh
, you know what Like in thiswindow of time.
(15:46):
I'm good at this or I suck at.
This is the wrong time to tryto grade or dream up creative
lessons, but this is when Ishould be some road activity,
cause my brain's kind of likeoff Right.
Just another thought.
Yeah, it's long speech.
I hear you guys are like do weget to talk?
Yes, you get to speak.
I'll be quiet.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I mean that's why we have guests, right, because we
want to hear you guys talking.
But just lots of connectionsmade about you know the
chronotype, you know Dan Pink'sbook when is super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
One of our friends, ali, wrote a professional
learning book for educators thatincludes some of the
chronotypes and, just likethrough some of our own work
around writing and teaching andleading, like we've figured out,
like when we can do things andwhen we can't, and what works
and what doesn't, we alwaystweaking the way we do things.
One of my favorite ones, though, just thinking about little
(16:32):
stories, was report writingseason.
When we used to teach togetherin Singapore, we would go to
Bali for the weekend and writethe reports in a pool.
So that was when you know likejust there was four of us.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
That didn't suck, did it?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It did not suck and we got stuff done.
You know, we just had to choosethe right ambiance, be in the
right spot, be with the rightpeople.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I'm with you.
You're playing right in mystory.
I love this.
Keep going Like.
Thank you for corroborating.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean with that you run into
challenges, right?
So what are some of thosebiggest obstacles that when you
get into those flow states thatsometimes you can't avoid them.
What do you do about that?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Does everyone, do all your listeners know what a flow
state is?
Should we take a moment to talkabout that, or are they kind of
like they know?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Just yeah, maybe give us a quick definition.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Okay, so just very briefly.
And the seminal book on this iscalled Flow.
He named it Mihaly, hungarianguy, and his thesis, his
observation, was that people whoare high achievers can get into
this highly concentrated stateand sometimes the velocity with
which you move forward is beyondjust your own paddling.
(17:48):
It's almost like the river iscarrying you forward as you
paddle.
And for that reason, he said, Iwant to call it flow, because I
like that metaphor and that'swhere this term flow state comes
from is when you get into that.
I had it the very first time Iwas on an American flight from
Texas to San Francisco and thewifi was out and I had to do
(18:09):
some like Figma designs for myteam, sort of illustrate this
idea.
And I remember we took off andwe landed.
I was like, oh my God,something's wrong with the plane
.
We just took off and I lookeddown and two hours and 40
minutes had gone by.
I had no conception of it.
I don't even know if the drinkcart came by.
I didn't go pee, nothing.
I was just like the plane isbroken, we're landing somewhere
in Texas, it's been 10 minuteswe've been in the air, and that
(18:33):
loss of sense of time and thatway to block that distraction.
That is the beauty of being inflow state and for me it was
great because when I landed,there's a great New England
lobster roll place.
That's right by SFO and I hadtime to go there because I
didn't have to rush to my hoteland try and finish my designs.
They were done.
(18:53):
I could just go have aConnecticut style lobster roll,
which they do very well.
I should mention their name.
It'd be free lobster roll.
I'll say, um anyway.
So just to set the table, flowStates super awesome If you can
do it.
By the way, you can't do it in15 minutes.
It is something where it takesyou 15 to 25 minutes to drop in
and if you get distracted it'sanother 15, 25 minutes just to
(19:15):
get back from distraction.
So you kind of have to be uh,jealously guard your time, treat
the time as sacred going.
You know what?
Here's an hour or two where I'mgoing to do really meaningful
work and not I get distracted.
That's really my app that Ibuilt is a flow state app is to
help you get into a flow stateand just do that thing where,
like in two hours, you're likeI'm done for the day, like I did
all the stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I thought it'd take four unfortunately, sometimes in
schools we don't necessarilyalways have like ownership over
how we spend our time right,like, even if you do like kind
of dedicate a block of time to aparticular task, you know
someone will hurt their knee atplaytime, or you know someone
will have an emergency orsomething or other, and they,
you know they come in and theyneed you.
(19:55):
So if we, if we do have thesedays where like nothing has gone
to plan, that we're nowherenear a flow state like, what is
your message to us?
To like pick it up the next dayand try again and not be too
disheartened by it all okay,okay.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
So I love you picked up the disheartened thing
because I'm going to tell you alot of how I built.
What I built was workingbackwards from problems I have
and pain that I feel.
So we're going to shoehorn intothis episode two bits of pain
and I'll tell you how Iunderstood them, how I dug down
to go, what really is causingthis pain.
(20:32):
And maybe we can do that withinthe bounds of this time.
I'll try and be succinct.
So one of the problems was whenI agreed with myself this is
the block I actually do havewhich may be after school in
some worlds.
For me it was usually in themorning.
It's like I'm going to getgoing at 9, 8.30, 9.30, whatever
, but I would find myself atthat time doing something that
wasn't exactly on task.
(20:52):
I should go through my emails,let me get that done.
Oh, I should quickly just checkTwitter or something and make
sure I'm up on the news orsomething.
I'll only read the news if I'mat home.
Let me throw in a load oflaundry, so it's going while I'm
working or I'm multitasking.
When I dug down on that which Icall the cold start problem and
(21:14):
I wasn't actually starting ontime it really boiled down to
two kinds of overwhelm and I'vetalked to now hundreds of
members in my community in theSUCA and it is super common
these two things.
Which is, it's overwhelmed whenyou look at a task list and
you're like all this stuff needsto get done, but there are like
17 things on there.
It's just overwhelming.
It's paralysis from like how isthat all going to get done?
(21:37):
So less gets done, right?
So I dug down to that.
I was like, okay, so it'sreally not about I can't get all
these things done, but justbeing confronted with it is
really hard.
So it's going to sound so silly, but I'll tell you what I did
and it helps me is when I startmy session.
The website we have is verysimple.
It's a play button, hit, play,focus.
(22:01):
Music plays.
We have like a thousand hoursof different kinds of upbeat,
down-tempo, whatever.
There's a smart assistant thatgreets you and says, hey, let's
start our day.
I looked at your task list,stephen.
You have like 17 things.
Let's choose three.
These three seem like they'reimportant.
Are these the right three?
Oh yeah, they are, or no?
Actually, swap this one out forsomething else.
Okay, great, we're going totake these three.
It seems like this is how longyou need, based upon other tasks
(22:23):
you've done.
Let's get going.
And I can only see those threewhile I work.
Can I tell you, since westarted this, say, let's just
watch these three things.
Our members, including me, havea 77% better chance of finishing
all three than when you couldsee the whole list.
(22:43):
Same tasks, same amount of time.
But it's just the thing.
Like you see three, you go.
I could totally do that and youdo, as opposed to 17, where
you're like people would get twotasks done in the exact same
amount of time.
Nothing changed other thanlet's just make this human,
let's not be intimidated.
And the other part of theoverwhelm is sometimes there's a
task on there where you're likewrite my book.
(23:05):
I'm not going to do that in twohours.
I'm not going to write my book.
I don't know if you guys likewrite my lesson plan for the
semester or whatever.
It's not going to happen to menow in my 11 am Zoom or my 8 am
class or something.
So when your smart assistantsees that again he or she, what
kind of gender voice you wantI'll be like you know what?
That's awesome, that's a goal.
Write your book, steven.
(23:30):
What if, today, we just outlinechapter three, how about we
make that the task?
And it seems like from chaptersone and two, you need about 35
minutes for that, and then thatsuddenly feels like, oh, when I
was driving yesterday, I didhave that idea for chapter three
.
I could totally yeah, I couldjot that down 35 minutes, and it
just gets going, and thatmomentum of like oh, I'm getting
stuff done, it just builds.
It feels great when you starthitting that complete button and
tasks start disappearing.
(23:50):
I'm even thinking, by the way,maybe by the time someone hears
this of when you click complete,there might be a little
confetti or something.
It'd just be likecongratulations, you got that
done.
So those are the kind of things.
Let me touch on the second thing, though, which is you brought
up that feeling of beingdisheartened, and this is one
that I felt, which is, at theend of the day, that, ah, poof,
(24:13):
you know what?
I'll get up early tomorrow.
This is a lie.
I would tell myself.
I'll get up early tomorrow, andbefore I start the work on
tomorrow's things that I have to, I'll do this, you know, by
I'll skip the gym, or I'll skipit, or I'll do it during
breakfast or whatever, right?
And it is a lie, because thentomorrow dominoes into Wednesday
and the next day dominoes intoThursday.
And it is just a lie, right.
(24:40):
And I'll tell you.
This is actually how I named mycompany the weird ass name it
has, I'll just tell you.
So I met Laura in yoga inManhattan.
When my second company failed,I was so embarrassed I left LA,
moved to Manhattan and just hungout for two years in Manhattan.
I was just like I don't want tobump into anybody, right?
So I'm doing yoga, verytherapeutic.
She was on the left, to my left.
We've been together 10 years.
As you guys know, she'spregnant right now.
We're in a baby.
It's awesome.
(25:00):
So when we were getting marrieda couple of years ago, I needed
a name for this company.
We had a working title.
We'd had some early users.
We're tuning it and we're goingoff to Bali, which I'm very
grateful.
We're a place where we can goto Bali and spend 10 days there
for our honeymoon.
All the way, I was like you knowwhat, laura, this is maybe a
gift from the universe.
No one's going to bug me for 10days.
(25:22):
They're like Stephen's on hishoneymoon.
Don't ask him to approve thepurchase order, right.
I was like wait.
I was like maybe my unconsciousmind will bubble up like a cool
name, because all the namesI've been doing my brainstorming
notepad on are like flow, state, focus, distraction, app 14.
I mean just like awful stuff,right, okay.
So she's like okay, great, youknow, let's make that intention
(25:43):
for this 10 days.
You have a great day for this.
So I was like cool, it's likesomething that might help.
Me is the first day.
Would you mind if I spoke tomaybe three, two or three of our
early users and just ask them,like, what they like about it?
And that might just be goodseeds that'll bubble.
Something will grow out ofthose over the next 10 days.
She's like I'll be at the pool,have fun, I'll see you at
dinner.
So I did those.
(26:05):
I said post some group chat.
Who wants to chat?
So three people say yes and Isaid I just want 10 minutes.
I asked them what's yourfavorite feature?
Do you love the music?
Do you love the Pomodoro timer?
Do you love the smart assistant?
Like, what do you love?
And the third one is just aboutdone.
Going to the wrap up, you'relike oh Tammy, thank you so much
.
It's been eight minutes.
I promised 10.
So we have a great day.
(26:25):
And the guy said to me he'sstill a member, by the way, I
see him in there sometimes.
He said to me, stephen, youshould ask me why I pay you.
Okay, well, it's 30 cents a day, so it didn't seem like the
biggest thing.
(26:46):
But why do you pay me?
And he said so.
At three o'clock I can beplaying with my kids.
They're two and four years oldor at six o'clock I can be down
myself and be like where thehell did the day go?
So the difference is do I openyour app in the morning?
My kids are not going to be twoand four forever and I pay you
(27:10):
for those memories.
I was like whoa, okay.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's profound.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Yeah, you, you you won that round.
So I go to dinner with Laura.
I'm like, oh my God, I spoke tothis guy who's more articulate
about my own company than I am.
Right, this is what he said.
She's like well, that's good.
So we're brushing our teeth,going to bed and Laura looks at
me.
She goes.
You know, in yoga we hear allthese Sanskrit terms.
You know karma and dharma andsatya right, she's like the
(27:39):
universe just spoke to you.
You wanted this, it came to you.
The universe spoke to youthrough this dude you don't know
.
And he's describing sukha.
He's describing that feeling ofhappiness when you're
self-fulfilled, when you'redoing something you're good at
you know you're good at it andyou feel like an ease in your
life.
She said you got what youwanted.
And from bed that night in Bali, in our hotel room, I looked up
(28:01):
the website the Sukha company,the happiness company and it was
available and I bought it andnamed the company and that was
it.
And that is ultimately what Ido is the tools we offer are
just the path, and I was focusedon the tools or the goal.
The goal is happiness.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's an amazing story just to find because it is
so hard coming up with namesand like finding the right thing
to describe.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
I had every bad name.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Right and it's just like that.
Just sounds like everybodyelse's thing and you know so.
Like that, it's a name thatsticks with you and it describes
exactly.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Hopefully true, I'll tell you.
A funny thing is what you said.
I looked up some of my badnames and they were taken.
I was like these big projectsthat you're working on and you
know takes a lot of commitmentand time and energy and focus.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
What do you say?
The role of rest is in beingable to maintain that
productivity on a task, on aproject, because I think there's
a lot of very tired teachersout in the world.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
My mom was one.
Yes, there are two parts of myanswer.
One part is when you're working, there are smart people who've
written about, like, what is ahealthy rhythm for work?
So, as you know, italian guycame up with this Pomodoro
technique, which was like 25 andfive for a certain number of
cycles and it just gives thatfive minutes to stand up, maybe
(29:29):
scratch, get a glass of water,do whatever.
We built that into the Sukha.
Like, when you work, there is aPomodoro timer.
You can adjust it if you want,like I actually do 55 and five
because it feels better to me.
But on your break, when we'rebuilding this in your score, you
will get points if you takeyour break.
If you're like I'm going totake these five minutes, I'm
going to go walk around theblock, you can click.
(29:51):
I walked around the block, get15 points, I got a glass of
water.
We offer desk stretching If youjust want to stand up, my
hamstrings get tight aftersitting.
I was like we should have somevideos.
It was just like hey, for 60seconds or two minutes, just
want to stretch.
So that's, I think, reallyimportant in the bounds of this
is my work time, but I stillneed to have some recharge and
sometimes it's just breathing.
(30:12):
Just close your eyes andbreathe for two minutes.
It really helps.
And then I think the largeranswer to your question is you
need to be sensitive to how am Ispending my day?
Parts, because if you don't getenough rest, which is whatever
level is appropriate for youlike Laura needs more rest than
I do If you don't get enoughrest it affects everything and
(30:38):
then things take longer.
So if you are like I am, whichis I'm like a six to six and a
half hour sleep guy, laura islike a seven and a half hour
sleep girl, know that.
And if there are rhythms youstart to see in your life where
it's like man, my mental clarityfrom like six to 8 am is
amazing, but like 6 pm isterrible.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
You know what?
Speaker 4 (30:53):
See if you can work a half hour nap in.
Sometimes a little disco naphelps, so it is kind of
respecting your rhythms.
But you have to start measuringthem because without data,
unlike what you do, I think whyOura rings are so popular and
Apple watches, and it's justlike once you you start to
measure something, you can startto see a pattern and go oh my
god, you know what it is.
I'm always tired on the daysthat I don't go for a walk.
(31:14):
It just energizes me, you know,and you start to see a pattern.
Then you can do something andit's actionable that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I like how so many things that you've said today is
about really like thinkingabout who you are and what works
for you, because sometimes whenyou read all of these
productivity things it's kind ofcookie cutter, isn't it?
It's like this will work foreverybody.
But you're really talking tothat.
Know yourself, figure out whatworks for you and then use the
(31:42):
tools that are going to help you.
Yeah, that's very good.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Thank you for hearing that.
That is very true.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So, stephen, at the end of our podcast episodes, we
like to ask our guests for apare-down pointer, something
that's going to be a really nicereminder for our guests.
It could be something thatyou've already talked about, or
building on something else, ifyou want to.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Okay, I will tell you one thing, if nothing in this
(32:32):
episode sticks with whomever'slistening at this point, but
this, I will simply say thiswhich is when you figure out
when your golden hour is mine isin the morning before, like 10,
before when you find yourgolden time, guard it like gold,
block it in your calendar.
If you are part of anorganization where people can
book time with you, block it insuch a way.
People are like he's in ameeting With whom With himself.
She's not available right now.
What's she doing?
She's doing deep work, theactual work that moves your life
forward or your organizationforward, not the hey.
I wrote the TPS report, I filedthe thing.
(32:54):
I returned the emails.
They don't move your companyforward, your school forward,
your life forward.
Find that time, lock it, startit like it's gold.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Love it.
That's great.
Thank you so much for joiningus today, Stephen.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, it's all in English allin color, as promised?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, and we'd love to invite you back sometime for
another chat as well.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Let me know when.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
All righty, thank you so much.
Okay, bye everybody.
This episode was brought to youby the Suka Company, the focus
app that actually helps you getyour work done.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Find out more at wwwpasukaco.
Thank you for listening to theMinimalist Educator podcast.
Join Christine and Tammy andguests again next time for more
conversations about how tosimplify and clarify the
responsibilities and tasks inyour role.
If today's episode helped yourethink, reimagine, reduce or
realign something in yourpractice, share it in a comment
(33:56):
or with a colleague.
For resources and updates,visit planzeducationcom and
subscribe to receive weeklyemails.
Until next time, keep it simpleand stay intentional.
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