August 29, 2025 • 38 mins
Leadership struggles? You’re not alone. Hear how Steven turned career setbacks into success.
Steven drops this truth bomb: everyone’s got something special cooking. Get the right people on the bus who actually give a damn about the mission. Make sure they know what you’re all about and why it matters. When you spot what makes each person tick, you can help them soar.
Steven lays out his journey from code monkey to filmmaker and back again. He’s straight-up about it: success is part hustle, part lucky breaks. He’s been through the startup rollercoaster - both the highs and the face-plants - and sees it all as education.
Steven gets raw about his Fox days - wasn’t feeling the whole pump-out-sequels-for-cash vibe, so he bounced back to tech. Launched two startups that went nowhere. His pro tip? Journal those lessons while they’re fresh, and actually listen when people try to school you.
Enter Sukha - born from the remote work struggle and the endless quest for focus. Steven borrowed from his film days (where remote work is old news) to build something that helps people dodge distractions and get in the zone. The name? It’s Sanskrit for finding your lane and owning it.
Discover insights for building strong teams and managing stress. Find out how to create a workplace where everyone thrives. Transform your approach to leadership today!
Connect with Steven Puri
email: steven@thesukha.co
Website: https://www.thesukha.co
Connect with Tim
Website: timstatingtheobvious.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/timstatingtheobvious
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfDcITKUdniO8R3RP0lvdw
Instagram: @TimStating
Tiktok: @timstatingtheobvious
00:00 Leadership and Creative Talent 04:22 Managing Stress and Preventing Burnout 08:48 From Film to Tech: A Full Circle 12:26 The Die Hard Experience and Career Shift 16:01 Learning from Failure: The ‘Listen’ Lesson 19:35 Suka: From Pandemic to Flow State 25:15 Understanding and Implementing Flow States 33:53 Practical Advice and Key Takeaways
Inspired? Subscribe for more leadership wisdom!
#leadership #motivation #success #inspiration #leadershipdevelopment
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Staton (00:02):
This is Tim Staton with Tim stating the obvious.
What is this podcast about? It's simple.
You are entitled to great leadership.
Everywhere you go, whether it's to church, whether it's to work, whether it's at your house,
you are entitled to great leadership.
And so in this podcast, we take leadership principles and theories and turn them into everyday, relatable and usable advice.
Disclaimer (00:25):
And a quick disclaimer. This show, process or service by trademark, trademark, manufacturer,
otherwise does not necessarily constitute an apply the endorsement of anyone that I am employed
by or favors them in representation.
The views are expressed here in my show are my own expressed and do not necessarily state or
reflect those of any employer.
Tim Staton (00:36):
Today we're excited to welcome Stephen Puri, a trailblazing leader who spearheaded visual effects
on Oscar winning blockbusters like Independence Day 7, Die Hard, then rose to executive roles
at Fox DreamWorks and Sony.
Now as the founder of the Suka Company, he empowers remote workers to achieve peak focus, productivity
(00:57):
and wellness through innovative tools inspired by yoga.
So, Steven, welcome to the show.
Steven (01:03):
Tim, I hope we have some fascinating stuff to talk about. Let's go.
Tim Staton (01:08):
Absolutely. So my first question to you is, how did leading high stakes teams in film shape
your philosophy and motivating creative talent?
Steven (01:19):
Interesting question in that I have a very strong thesis that we all have something great inside
us and the question of this lifetime is, are you going to get it out or not?
So that said, people who are typically called creative, it's usually a code word for like they
create some sort of art, screenplays, paintings, poetry, sculptures, buildings, things like that. Right.
(01:45):
But I do think that on a certain level we all create our lives.
To understand someone who maybe creates, I'm not a sports guy, but I'm just going to say this,
who creates moves on a basketball court and says, here's how we're going to choreograph this
in a way, how different is that than choreographing a ballet?
You're like, this is our movement through this three dimensional space and hopefully it yields
(02:10):
this beautiful result of the. Right. The thing.
So I'm going to say when you say creative people. Yes.
People normally say, hey, Steve, man, you work with some amazing writers and directors, you
work with some great actors. Well, right.
But I'll say this, I think a lot of people create and I think everyone has something in them
and the challenge is how do you get that thing out?
(02:32):
So if you're a leader, if you're a team leader first, I'm just saying foundationally, you have
to hire properly Right, right.
If you've hired the wrong people and they just don't give an F about what you're doing, you're
never going to get something great out of them. Right?
So as a leader, you have two things.
You have to express your mission.
Hey, man, we're here to cure cancer.
We're here to build beautiful buildings for corporations.
(02:55):
We're here to create the next whatever it is.
And you have to express the values. Right?
You got to say, hey, if you're part of this team, this is how we treat each other.
This is how we treat our customers.
This is how we treat our competitors.
So if you do that and someone comes aboard, they're like, hell, yeah, I want to cure cancer.
And absolutely, that matches my value system about how we treat people, even competitors. Right? Then that's step one.
(03:19):
And there is no skipping step one.
If you skip step one, you're going to feel it in your team.
And one bad hire can bring down a team.
So I think the thing you're getting at is this, which is, suppose you do have the right team
and you are creating something, as I said, whether it's a ballet, a screenplay, a building,
a basketball team, whatever you want them to achieve something great, you need to recognize
(03:42):
what each of them individually views as the great thing inside them.
If you can do that, then you can elicit from them that thing that will change the course of
their life, that will change the course of yours.
Every time you hear, use the basketball thing, a great Michael Jordan or Pippen or whatever
(04:03):
talking they work in like, yeah, and this is how my coach made us a team instead of just a bunch
of individual guys running around the court.
I think that's what it is.
You hire properly and then you recognize in each person what is the great thing of which they're capable.
And how do you then draw that out of them.
This is your opportunity to do that great thing.
Tim Staton (04:22):
I love how you frame that, withdrawing it out of them from within.
Steven (04:27):
And.
Tim Staton (04:27):
And let's talk about stress when it comes to that environment, because I'm sure.
Steven (04:32):
Stress, under this word of which you.
Tim Staton (04:35):
Speak under tight lines, there's.
There's a stress built into it. Right.
So you're trying to draw.
Steven (04:40):
State the obvious. Okay.
Tim Staton (04:42):
So you're trying to draw out the best in folks and get them there.
But you also have to be the timeline. So how do we.
How do you deal with stress on those types of teams in order to not lead people to burnout?
Steven (04:55):
Okay. Stress, I think in general is a negative thing, like just Living on cortisol, burning yourself out. You're totally bad.
There's a certain amount of stress that is, hey, I'm trying to achieve something.
If you don't think that, I don't want to say, whoever won the super bowl this past year, if
you don't think that they were in the gym stressing their muscles to the extent that they could
then make that amazing running play or throw the ball the way through, you're kidding yourself.
(05:19):
Stress is necessary part of achievement.
The point at which it crosses over becomes negative.
I think that threshold you're talking about, there are things you can do.
I know a lot of people who listen to your pod.
They are looking to achieve something in their professional life.
They're probably not Travis Kelsey or whatever his name is, or Jordan or someone. They're not athletes. They're actually professional. They're knowledge workers.
(05:43):
They're people who are saying, let me create things with my brain.
And by the way, these people find it valuable and they give me money or some other goods for
things, things that come out of my head. Right.
So what you're really saying is for knowledge workers, how do you manage the amount of pressure
you put on your brain to produce the great things and, you know, mitigate the risks of going overboard.
(06:03):
So we happen, you and I and everyone happen to live in a world where gratefully, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
A lot of smart people have not just researched this, like done studies on people.
They have also proactively said, well, let me go out and test ideas out.
When you think about the research that's been done, yes, we've all heard, like the Pomodoro method, for example, Right.
(06:25):
It is a healthy way of saying your brain needs a break, your body needs a break, and you can
do a 25 and 5 cycle.
You can do like I personally do, like 55 and 5 or 55 and 10 kind of thing.
Because I usually find at the end of 25, I'm in the middle of a thought and it's always a bad thought place to break.
But regardless, I respect the fact that it is a. Hey, man. On a regular schedule.
(06:46):
You should stand up, go downstairs, get a glass of water, go for a walk, stretch at your desk, do something.
My back loves it when I stretch every hour or two.
Even though I go to yoga every day, it still is just like, hey, man, this feels good.
Don't just sit here for four hours straight banging away in code.
So I think it is about managing it through healthy activities like that.
(07:07):
Also, there's a really good Hooperman episode talking about basically brain fuel, right?
So in the short day to day kind of stress, you recognize that you can't think endlessly.
You cannot spend eight hours in deep concentration on something.
An hour eight is going to be worthwhile.
It's very, very rare, right.
You deplete essentially your brain fuel your glucose.
(07:27):
And usually after about 90 minutes, 120 minutes, you're starting to have thoughts that maybe
are not of the caliber that they were in the first hour.
So how do you refresh that?
You find the ways to say, okay, you know what, let's all step away, let's take a little break,
let's do whatever the thing is we're going to do.
Let's think about something else over the long term. If that's very much.
How is my work today structured so I don't burn out today?
(07:49):
Then there's also the thing of nine, nine, six.
Can you work nine to nine, six days a week and be like this is amazing.
Or is that just the corporation eating you alive being like just feed me more fresh bodies, please.
I need them to live.
That is something where you need to monitor yourself.
(08:09):
Because I've seen a wide variety of tolerances.
There are some people with whom I've worked, they do thrive for a long period of time on that.
They're like, hey man, I need to be kind of in.
I do my good work when I'm not actually super balanced.
The way you look at it where other people are like, no.
For example, if I get to yoga at five in the morning, my whole day is different.
(08:30):
If I start 5am coding or something like that, my afternoon is not as good and I do need to find those little breaks.
So it's I'm go to the gym right now, go to yoga later, whatever those things are that just regulate it for me.
So it is a bit of self knowledge.
A lot of things are take in what the smart people have written and see how they apply to you specifically.
Tim Staton (08:48):
Yeah, the self awareness I think is huge key on how you manage your body.
Like you brought up when it came to you personally and you started out and film and then you
ended up into tech sort of.
So when did you sort of, okay.
Steven (09:06):
Sort of let us rewind and I'll give you a little detail that you know, predates LinkedIn which is.
My parents were both engineers at IBM.
My dad is a hardware engineer.
He has over 50 patents to his name on very large scale integrated circuits like logic, you know,
circuits, CPUs, essentially and my mom was a software engineer.
(09:27):
If your mom's like an Olympic ice skater, you probably learned to ice skate when you're little,
you know what I mean?
So I was a little code monkey. And it was fun.
My mom would take me when I was little to like the university computing center and stuff.
And I get to run jobs with her.
And it was just like what we did as a family, like the way some people would play catch.
Oh, my dad was high school baseball player.
I always played catch with them.
(09:47):
That's how I remember my dad.
So I remember my mom coding.
So I actually fell into film.
This is the forward to the point that you brought up because I was at usc, I was a Watson scholar.
So I had a job at IBM whenever I wanted if I wanted to earn money.
They're like, you can come here, be a junior engineer.
So I was doing that to earn cash.
And I happened to be in LA at sc, which arguably is the best cinema TV school or one of the
(10:11):
top two or three in the world.
So a lot of your friends are filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, indie filmmakers, you kind of
learn that and you go to movies together and listen to it.
And while I was there, film went digital.
And I as an engineer, spoke engineer and I had a creative vocabulary.
So I was super lucky, man.
Let's not discount the value of luck in my life where I was in that little intersection of the
(10:33):
Venn diagram of like speak engineer, speak creative.
Hey, film is becoming a digital thing in the computer.
We can make digital films. Come with us, kid.
And that's how I actually got into film, was producing digital visual effects and titles.
I did a whole variety of stuff from like David Fincher 7, Jim Cameron's true L, Jim Palma's
(10:54):
Carlito's Way, Jim Jarvis Deadman, Woody Allen's Sweetland Films, Braveheart, Immortal Beloved
with Mel, bunch of stuff.
And then produced the digital effects for Independence Day, which we won the Academy Award for
the visual effects, which was super cool.
And I mean there are 100,000 people who are responsible.
It was a huge production, but it helps your career, period.
(11:16):
You worked on the visual effects, the film won.
It's not going to hurt you, right?
So that was how I set up my first company with Roland and Dean, who directed and produced the movie.
The three of us set up a company called Syntropolis Effects.
We did computer generated effects, about 80 person company.
We raised about 15 million and sold that four years later to Das Werk at a 6x multiple, which was great.
(11:36):
And as one does in their 20s, they think they're smarter and more successful and better looking
than they are, when in reality you're kind of lucky and that sort of thing.
And that was then when I got into film production and then later returned actually to engineering.
Just kind of going full circle.
Tim Staton (11:51):
That's amazing how that happens when you.
Steven (11:54):
Code for those playing at home without the video on.
We both just made the whole circle motion on video.
So to really drive that point home, if you.
Tim Staton (12:04):
No, and I'm laughing because I find myself making that full circle too.
Steven (12:10):
So you can't help it.
It's one of those things.
It's like, Tim, what's a goatee?
Tim Staton (12:13):
Do you know what a goatee mustache and like part of a beer.
Steven (12:16):
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Ask anyone in your life that speaks English and they will all gesture to their chin.
It's just a guarantee in life.
Ask someone to go, tia, they'll do, you know, thing here. So, yes, absolutely so.
Tim Staton (12:29):
And not only figuratively making the.
The circle, but literally as well in my own career.
And I think it's interesting how we all kind of go back to that.
Some of us quicker than others.
So what was that driving factor that made you go, you know what?
This is where I want to go.
Or did it just kind of happen by luck or chance?
I know you said luck plays a big part in your life, but did you make a conscious effort to go back?
Steven (12:53):
I will tell you, I am the recipient of a lot of good luck, and I don't want to discount that.
I know people have often said, like, oh, my God, how did you come in EVP here?
And a vice president Fox, blah, blah, oh, you ran a company in soldiers, right?
I have a lot of friends.
I've met a lot of people who've worked very hard.
And, you know, sometimes you get tailwinds and it just.
You fly faster and sometimes you hit headwinds.
(13:14):
There are a couple lucky breaks in my life.
I'm very grateful for them.
I'm very upfront about it.
I've also had two failed startups. Painful.
Learned a lot, but, you know, stuff happens.
So the answer to the question is there've been a couple lucky things that fell in my lap.
I would like to believe I coupled those with hard work.
It's like, ooh, this is an opportunity that just arose.
Okay, you know what, let's make something of this as opposed to, you know, it's kind of half ass it.
Tim Staton (13:38):
So when. When you made the choice to go out of film and back in.
Steven (13:44):
Oh, back in the Startup world.
How I can tell you why.
That was Die Hard 5 right there.
Tim Staton (13:49):
So what was it?
Steven (13:51):
That was an awful experience.
Straight up, I'll tell you, working at Fox, one of the worst professional experiences.
Tim Staton (13:56):
Of my life, period.
Steven (13:58):
Full stop.
Tim Staton (14:00):
Yeah, what made it so bad that you were like, you know what, I.
Steven (14:02):
Need to change without naming names.
I do think that style in an organization comes from the top.
You know, head of the organization can't really micromanage how many pencils are ordered or
where the parking spots are.
But they sure do infuse the organization with, this is ethically who we are, this is what we
will do to achieve our goals.
And man, my friends cautioned me, when Fox came calling, I was at dreamworks.
(14:26):
They made me a really attractive offer, like double your salary.
Hey, you probably grew up on Die Hard.
Do you want to run the Die Hard franchise now?
You want to run the Wolverine franchise? Stuff like that, right? My friends were right.
It was an ethical mismatch.
And I was working on Die Hard 5.
It was, and continues to be a terrible script, but it was just the back pressure from the studio
(14:47):
was, it's a franchise, man. Make it.
Bruce has a window into schedule.
He's going to do it. Just crank it out.
Just don't make it expensive so we don't have a lot of risk.
And I was like, am I going to wake up, be like 40 years old, pushing out Die Hard 9, telling
my kids, hey, daddy's going to go make another bad sequel so we can pay for your college?
I mean, I don't know. There are worse jobs.
Don't get me wrong, it is not working salt mines, and I'm grateful for that.
(15:10):
But it's also something where I was like, I hate coming to work every day.
One of my litmus tests in my life is, if I wake up before my alarm, I'm on the right track.
So the mornings I wake up, I'm like, oh, it's cool.
Let's get this going, you know?
And the days when I hear the alarm go, I'm just like.
I'm like, this is the wrong job. It was like that.
And that's when I thought, what's the only other thing I know how to do, Tim? It's engineering.
(15:32):
Go find some problems and see if you can solve them. And I tried twice.
I raised 15 million for Syntropolis. We sold that.
So I was like, okay, cool, right?
Made some money, traveled for a few years, raised 3 million for two startups.
Both times we didn't really get to The Series A, it was just kind of like, that's sort of working,
sort of not, ah, you know, And I felt embarrassed.
A lot of my friends in film were watching.
(15:53):
They're like, oh, Puri left to go work in tech.
And I was just like, this didn't work. I felt ashamed.
I felt I was depressed. It sucked.
Tim Staton (16:01):
What helped you get through that period?
Steven (16:03):
Hmm. Well, I'd like to say jokingly, alcohol and drugs, but not really.
I'll tell you my process on both of them.
When I reached the moment on those two startups and I said, okay, we're not going to actually
realize the vision that we had for this, right?
And you have to go talk to your investors and say, hey, we tried as hard as we could.
(16:24):
I know the picture I painted of what we're going to do.
We're at 60,000 monthly actives, we need to be at 100,000amillion, we need to be scaling hockey stick kind of stuff.
And we're not, you know, So I don't think in good faith I can raise more money because we don't
have like some other trick to try.
It feels like we have to kind of call this one.
And in that moment, it was interesting in that those two startups, every investor was actually
(16:46):
way cooler than I thought.
Like, what do you want to do next?
Like, hey, we worked with you for two years, this was great.
You know, not everything works.
You know, startups mostly fail.
What do you want to do next?
And there was one investor in for $10,000 of the entire $6 million I lost, right?
There was one $10,000 investor who raked me over the coals.
I was just like, dude, I'm already super depressed, contrate, embarrassed, ashamed.
(17:08):
And he's like, isn't there something else you can try?
I mean, I put $10,000 into this.
I was just like, I am so sorry, man. You know what?
This is, this is on me.
Ultimately, it's not anyone's fault but mine. I ran the company.
I was the founder and CEO and like, I'll take the blame, but I don't know what to do.
And it was awful, right?
So I was like, ugh.
But did do this both times.
I sat with a pad of paper at the end while.
While the wounds were still bleeding, right?
(17:30):
Not when you have a rosy eyed view of like, oh, that wasn't that bad.
I was like, in that moment of I want to kill myself, right, I wrote out longhand on a pad of paper. What? What did I learn?
Like, what did I do wrong?
And I just want to keep that not in a digital file.
I dictated into Siri, like, oh, you know, hey, I wanted to have to, like, my hand to old school,
like, write it on a piece of paper and stare at and go, like, okay.
(17:51):
And the first word on both of those pieces of paper was listen.
I realized that either members of my community, users or friends or, you know, investors had
often given me advice that I thought, well, I'm not really sure if that's really our product.
We should, you know, maybe do that, maybe not.
And sometimes they were right, or it sounded like they could have been, because, you know, sliding
doors, you don't actually know what would have happened if you'd turned left instead of right.
(18:14):
But some of it was like, you know what?
I know what I did didn't work.
This is probably worth trying.
And now, as we develop, you know, Suka, my current company, the Flow State, apparently, like,
we have a group chat.
Tony and I are in there just asking people like, hey, man, what's working? What's not working?
What do you want more of you want less stuff? Who uses?
Anyone want an integration with Asana? Okay, cool. We could do that.
(18:36):
You know, and very different mentality than.
It's not quite built in public, but it's kind of close, way closer than it used to be.
So I think that's kind of the big one for me.
It was like, I have to capture.
I have to make something positive after this negative experience.
Let me capture what I learned.
And that led me to Tsuka, which is now a joy, which I love.
Tim Staton (18:56):
That's amazing that you. That you wrote that down.
And I was thinking in my mind, I was like, you know, you took, like, the Clause Awitzian approach.
I don't know if you know who Clausewitz is.
He's a war writer from Germany.
Lost everything, and he wrote what he learned from all his failures.
And it's a great state.
So to write out what you learn while you're in your failure state shows one, you know, that
(19:18):
you're a leader who can take accountability, integrity, and forward thought.
So good on you for doing.
Steven (19:23):
That's very kind of you to say. Okay, I'll. I'll take that.
Sounds like a compliment in the middle of depression. Yeah, exactly.
Tim Staton (19:29):
No, that is. I mean, Tim, a lot of.
A lot of people don't.
Don't necessarily take the time to do that.
So good on you for doing that.
Steven (19:35):
That is true. And.
Tim Staton (19:36):
And you hit on something that I was going to ask you about.
Steven (19:38):
Ooh. But we.
Tim Staton (19:40):
But I'm not going to get there yet because we're jumping too far forward.
Steven (19:44):
I like the way you're pacing this.
Tim Staton (19:46):
See, so you had. You had, you know, that horrible experience.
You moved over, you learned some things.
Covid hit, and then you found a new problem to solve.
And so that is when you know this hybrid remote work and how do we become productive?
Steven (20:02):
Yeah, so you're like, stephen, talk about that. You're subtle.
Okay, here's the thought that may sound a little kooky until you think about it, which is film
has been doing remote and hybrid work for like a hundred years.
You don't call it that.
You call it development prep, post production, stuff like that.
Because every movie begins with writers writing alone or in their writing partner's living room
(20:25):
or in a coffee shop.
One script gets some traction, gets some money.
You open up a little production office.
Couple days a week, people are in their meeting because they need to ask you, what does it look like? What are they wearing?
Maybe you're trying to get a director, do a rewrite to get Brad Pitt to star in it.
And then the rest of the week, everyone's off working remotely.
Customers are in costume houses, writers are doing rewrites, and you eventually get to rto,
(20:47):
hopefully on set day and night for months on end.
And then you go back to hybrid and eventually remote.
But again, no one really calls it that in film.
But as a leader, you know how to lead through each phase and you know how to be an individual contributor to each phase.
So that I thought was really interesting because in the pandemic, there were a lot of verticals
(21:07):
where it was a shock to the system.
It's like, oh, zoom is a verb now.
Oh, we can't sit under the same fluorescent bulbs every day for 10 hours.
How is this going to work?
And in film, it's like, here are ways of being accountable, here are ways of maintaining focus,
blocking distractions, things like that.
And with a buddy of mine, we started this company to be like, okay, smart people have written
(21:30):
about how to do this.
How do we make it so simple?
It's just like a website with one play button. And that was.
That was the genesis of what I do.
Tim Staton (21:36):
Now, when you built Suka in mind, it wasn't originally called Suga and you had a different name.
Steven (21:42):
Correct.
Tim Staton (21:42):
So how did you come up with the new name?
Steven (21:45):
Well, it's interesting. So a buddy of mine who is an engineer at Groupon, he wanted to do a
mindful to do list, and he'd asked me about that And I said, I'm not really to do lists. I always abandoned them.
I never really used them that long.
So I'm not the guy to figure that out. But he's very persuasive.
So he started developing this.
He had a baby, and he's like, I got to tap out.
But I said, you know what?
(22:05):
I really would love for this to become a Flow State app, to be more of a mindful, meditative way of blocking distractions.
Because God knows, Laura, my wife and I have enough friends who work at one of the meta companies
or used to work at Twitter, and they're really good.
So I was like, I see a future here.
Laura, as I alluded to, she and I met in yoga when I had the first startup that failed.
(22:30):
I had moved to New York for two years and just was, like, hiding out, thinking about life, planning what to do.
I was helping a friend with a commercial real estate deal and basically just like, trying to
make sense of, like, what did I do wrong and what do I do next? Right? I met Laura.
She's the girl on the mat to my left in yoga. It was awesome, sweet.
Chatted for a few months, went out.
So when we were getting married, we went to Bali, which is a great place to go do yoga on your honeymoon, right?
(22:54):
So we heading over there.
I knew we had to get a new name while we were in Bali.
And I said, laura, I hope lightning strikes.
The universe speaks to me.
My unconscious mind bubbles something up that's cooler than Flow state app number four or distraction blocker 19.
Something like, Amazon's not called bookstore, Nike's not Shoe place.
(23:18):
And Laura's like, cool, I hope that works for you.
And I said, when we got there, do you mind if I speak to a couple of our members?
Because we had a bunch of paying members at that point.
I was like, I just want to ask them, what's your favorite feature? Right.
Maybe that'll seed my unconscious mind, and then over 10 days, something will bubble up.
So I was like, go for it.
I'm going to go to the pool.
You do your little zooms.
I will see you at dinner.
So I talked to three people and I was just like, tell me, is your favorite feature the music
(23:42):
with a thousand hours of flow music?
Is it the Pomodoro timers?
Is it the task list?
Is it the smart assistant that helps you break down your day?
What is it you love the third guy going into the wrap up?
Hey, Tim, I asked you for 10 minutes.
I want to be respectful of your time.
So let's going to go now.
He stopped me and said, stephen, you asked the wrong questions.
I was like, okay, what was the right question?
He's like, you should have asked me why I pay you.
(24:04):
And I said, well, we charge like 30 cents a day, just enough to cover like those servers.
I mean, I don't even collect a paycheck for this.
Tony and I do it because we love it.
And I was like, okay, so you know, why do you pay me?
And he said, I find I have two kinds of days.
At 3 o', clock I can be playing with my kids, they're two and four.
Or at six o' clock I can be kind of down on myself and asking, where'd the day go?
I was busy, but I didn't get the stuff done.
(24:24):
And he's like, I realized the difference is, did I open your app in the morning and just run
it in the background to keep me on track?
And he's like, so I pay you because my kids are not going to be 2 and 4 forever.
I was like, that is a way better answer than what I was asking for. Thank you.
So I go to dinner with Laura.
I was like, I met this guy who's more articulate than I am about what I'm doing, which is weird. And Laura loved it.
(24:45):
She's like, that's really good.
And at night we're brushing her teeth and she looked at me.
She goes, in yoga, we hear all these Sanskrit terms like karma and dharma and prana, your life force and all that. She's like, that, dude. Describe to you Sukha.
That feeling when you're in your lane, you're doing what you're meant to do.
You know, you're good at it. You're.
You're in control of your life and it feels good.
You know, you can do it with ease.
She's like, that's what you should call your company.
(25:07):
I looked it up on my phone.
The Sukha company was available as a website.
I bought it, we went to bed. That was it.
So I run the happiness company, you.
Tim Staton (25:15):
Know, and with testimonies like that, because with, you know, little kids myself, oh, they're not so little now.
They're like preteens, but still, you know, they're not going to be young forever and that time gets away from you.
And are you spending the days doing what's valuable and the things that matter and.
Steven (25:31):
Right.
Tim Staton (25:32):
I love that. But with focusing on things that matter, with your, with your previous horrible
experience that you had, now you have your new company how you implement flow within your organization.
Steven (25:45):
Okay, so let's. For those at home who are nodding like, dude, I'm a flow master, I get this. I love you.
Keep driving, keep doing whatever, you keep doing the dishes at home.
But for those who are like, I maybe have a passing understanding of flow states, I've heard it.
Let me just set the table for a minute so we're all on equal footing.
Okay, so there was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihaly Csik Mihaly.
(26:07):
He died, I think four years ago next month.
And he had a thesis, he said, high performers in these different areas, athletes, artists, scientists,
they describe these concentrated states they go into in very similar ways, the states where
they do the stuff that makes them famous.
So he, like, Prometheus wanted to go up to the mountain, steal fire and bring it down to the rest.
He's like, I want to go. Understand that.
(26:28):
After he did his research, he wrote a book called Flow, that is the seminal work on this, that
is why we call it a flow state.
And he said this, which I thought was beautiful.
He's like the best metaphor I can think of after listening to all of these people is we're all
on the water paddling to move ourselves forward.
But if you align your boat with the current, it magnifies your efforts.
(26:48):
You move, you move further and faster.
And he said, that's what they do.
I thought, why not take the things that he wrote and put them all into one website.
So there's just a one play button.
You didn't have to have this kind of music here, this kind of mental thing here, this kind of thing. Just one play button.
And so that is why I'm such a huge fan of flow states.
Because my first flow state, I didn't know the term it was before I had really encountered his work.
(27:12):
And I was on a flight from Austin to where I live now to San Francisco, and I was illustrating an idea.
I wanted to go into figment, like mock up, kind of in my hacky way.
An idea for a feature that I was going to show my team the next day.
Got on the Alaska, you know, non stop, Wi fi was out.
We took off and we landed like 15 minutes later.
And I was like, an engine fell off. Something bad happened.
(27:33):
We could have maybe made it to Dallas.
And I looked down and over 2 hours and 40 minutes had gone by since I last looked at the time.
Tim Staton (27:40):
Oh, wow.
Steven (27:40):
I was like, what just happened?
And my designs were done.
Like, I didn't have to scramble to go to the hotel room and Eat a room service, cold, whatever
and try and finish before tomorrow morning.
I could call a buddy of mine.
I was like, hey man, I'm in sf. Want to have dinner?
I have a free night.
And it was an extraordinary experience.
Part of it I realized was there was no wifi.
So there are no slack messages, there are no whatsapps to check.
(28:02):
There's no doom scrolling, there's no.
There were a number of conditions, precedent that sort of made this more available.
But that feeling of like, tim, I'm done, you want to have dinner? That's pretty cool.
Even if you don't know what flow state is.
And some people call it being in the zone.
There's that Michael Jordan quote about when I'm in the zone, it's just me in the ball.
That's what he's talking about, man.
(28:23):
You can call it the zone.
Everyone has their word for it.
But when you've been there and you go, I got my work done faster.
It's high quality and I can be in charge, I'm running my day.
I have a question for you.
I know you've been asking a lot of questions.
I'm going to ask you a question.
Have you had that end of a day where you're like, oh man, I didn't finish anything.
I'll just get up early tomorrow and finish this before I start tomorrow's work?
Tim Staton (28:43):
Yeah, absolutely. And it never really happens.
Steven (28:45):
Exactly. And it's like dominoes during the week.
It's like, then tomorrow night you tell yourself the same thing about Wednesday night. Right. And it's.
We all tell ourselves that lie.
Oh well, you know, I just.
Day got away from me.
But I'm going to finish early tomorrow, right?
Tim Staton (28:55):
Absolutely.
Steven (28:56):
I had enough of those days where I was like, I'm getting down on myself.
Like I'm starting to tell myself a story about like, I suck.
Why can't I get my stuff done?
What am I doing during the day?
And you know, I mean, it's like any recovery program, the first step is admitting you have a problem, man.
And I was like, I have a problem.
I realized I procrastinate, I get distracted, I get overwhelmed.
(29:17):
And that as it comes back to your question about like, how do you implement flow states?
How do you take advantage of flow states in your own life as an IC or as a leader with your
team is recognize the conditions that help you get there. And I'll share these.
And by the way, anything smart that I say is basically because we have gratefully come after
people who have done A lot of research and we get to benefit from what they've spent their lives sharing.
(29:43):
Okay, so I'm not that smart, but I have read smart people. So.
Mihaly Cszentmihalyi said, one condition is it seems that you have to believe what you do is meaningful.
You don't get into a flow state when you're stapling papers or shuffling garbage.
It's just like Picasso's creating Guernica or Jordan's playing in the whatever. Right.
(30:05):
You have to have related to that.
Mihaly said, you have to have skills that apply.
So it's not asking Michael Jordan to paint. Yeah.
And it has to be challenging to use that Michael Jordan thing because I think he's amazing.
It's not Michael Jordan doing an exhibition game at his kid's high school with eighth graders.
You know what I mean? That's not flow.
Flow is you're at the edge of your abilities doing something that is indeed challenging.
(30:27):
It's playing in the NBA against people who are amazing.
He's the best in the world, so those things are interesting.
He also wrote, he said, it seems like one of the characteristics is you have to be able to get feedback.
You have to be able to know how you're doing.
You're not just pouring energy into a black box.
I don't know if it worked.
I don't know if it's any good.
It is being able to stand back and look at the canvas and go, oh my God.
(30:49):
Guernica is shaping up to be the thing that I want it to be.
Or we're winning the game or whatever that may be.
Or if you're coding, it's just that thing where you go, oh my God, the build worked. Ah.
Everything becomes glass, like under your fingers.
You're like, this is what I've been trying to get to work.
So that said, and by the way, I'll put in a little mention about what we did with Suka is when
(31:13):
you work, you have a live productivity graph that you literally get points as you work and you're not distracted. Right.
So you can kind of like see, okay, cool, I'm working.
Like connect your phone, you can connect websites.
And then should you open a website that's on your do not fly list, you get a little pop up and
it goes, hey, Tim, it seems like Facebook is a distraction.
(31:33):
Do you want to close it or do you want to go?
And if you go down a distracting path, you lose points.
So you can look at the end of your session or even during Your session at the curves of your
graph and sort of see, like, well, why?
And scroll your cursor over when it went down in minute 25, and you see, oh, that's when I opened YouTube. Gotcha.
I'll tell you something I noticed about myself.
(31:54):
I looked at my graphs, and there's often a nice little, oh, I'm working for half an hour.
And somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, there'd be a little dip.
And I realized I had a bad habit of, like, hitting this wall of, I'm just gonna open news or
I'm gonna open, I'm gonna do something.
And once I saw that repeated, I was like, oh, dude, know thine self. I get it.
I need to stand up, go to the bathroom, get water, do something.
(32:16):
You know, around that time.
That's a moment when I just.
I'm not super productive because I need kind of a refresh.
So these are interesting things.
So if you're a leader, which I know a lot of leaders listen to your pod, or if you're an IC
is, you sort of say, hey, I'd like to be doing deep work, as Cal Newport would say, and I want
to do great work, and I want to do it where I'm managing my brain, I'm managing my day, not being managed by it.
(32:38):
So you can encourage people in this way.
And I'll close with one thought.
Then I want to go back to you and you guide this.
But some research shows that it does take, like, 15 to 23 minutes to get into a flow state. Right?
You don't just sit down and go, I'm in flow.
It doesn't really work that way.
You kind of need things, like, the same way music helps lull you into it.
If you get interrupted, like, in the middle of your session, if I slack you, I'm like, hey,
(33:01):
Tim, could you send me the latest TPS reports real quick?
And you've got to go find them and drop them in the slack. Whatever.
It'll take you 15 to 23 minutes to get back into that state where it feels good.
You're in the zone, doing great work, right?
So as a leader, something you can do is you can say, hey, what if we agree that each of us has something important to do?
(33:21):
More important than returning emails or, you know, returning slacks?
Why don't we block an hour or two each day when we're going to do that?
And you can agree with your team, well, hey, man, you know, from 9 to 11, let's not set silly zooms with each other.
And Team meetings and customer meetings.
Let's have the time be.
This is when you do this stuff that hopefully you walk into the staff meeting, you say, hey
man, I thought about this.
I designed this, I built this.
(33:42):
And everyone goes, dude, Tim, what?
That changes the trajectory of what we're doing.
As opposed to you walking on snapping.
You're like, I've returned all my emails.
There's no gold medal for returning all your emails.
You know what I mean?
So if you encourage focus time, if you have a team you trust, because there are some aspects
of remote work where leaders are like, I just don't know if I hired the right people.
I think they're slacking off.
(34:02):
So then you're really afraid to do like, hey, go and do an hour of deep work every day.
Cause you're like, are you just sleeping in? You know.
Tim Staton (34:09):
No, no, that, that's a great point.
Because one thing that we do as leaders is shape our environments for people to be successful.
Steven (34:16):
Yep, there you go.
Tim Staton (34:17):
I don't a single leader out there who says, I don't want my people to be as productive or as
successful as they can be.
Steven (34:25):
Yeah.
Tim Staton (34:25):
And one thing that we can do is control our environment.
You know, we, we talked about how, you know, I'm a dad and I tell my oldest son who is now graduated
college and now in a master's degree, I'd say, you know, I can't control what you do, but I
can control your environment as long as you're in.
Steven (34:42):
That is true. Right? Yeah.
Tim Staton (34:43):
And the thing applies for leadership.
And I think like the Souka app is a, is a great company that people can, can check that out on.
So when you're listening this or you're watching this, go ahead and check the descriptions. Everything will be there.
And Steven, if you don't mind, I'll provide your email as well so people can reach out to you directly.
Steven (35:02):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
Because if anyone's listening to this and they're like, oh man, who is that Hungarian guy?
Or what is Cal Newport write? Or who's the near.
My email address is public.
It'll be in the show notes. Drop me an email.
Stephen, can you tell me more about the timeboxing, whatever we talked about?
I will drop you some blog or some link to a book or something.
It will not be the 17 paragraph story of my life because I don't have time to write that.
(35:24):
You don't want to read it either.
But I do get back to everyone in 24 hours.
If I'm not sick of traveling.
So Tim's offer is sincere. I'm here to help.
I'm at a place in my life where I've been very lucky and I can do stuff like, hey, here's a link.
If you're struggling with this, read this.
Tim Staton (35:38):
No, I appreciate it and I know everybody else will appreciate to a benefit as well.
And one thing that I love about this show that we're doing together is practicality.
I always like to leave people with something that they can implement today.
So the Suga app is one of them.
But my last question to you is, did we not talk about anything that you're like, you know what,
(36:01):
Tim, I really wish you asked me this.
Steven (36:04):
Oh, that's a very kind question.
There is something that, like you said, is a free technique.
You don't need anybody's app to do it, but it is incredibly powerful.
And it is simply in the morning, before you dive in, you start getting deep into whatever you're doing.
Take a moment to make sure you're working on the right one or two or three things.
And if you think there are more than three things you're going to do today, you're. You're kidding yourself.
(36:25):
You're not prioritizing because you're not going to do seven things today.
You're going to hopefully do one, two, or three. Well.
So before you start, I don't care if you write on a piece of paper.
A friend of mine has three index cards every day that she puts on her desk and she looks at
those, goes 1, 2, and 3. These are.
If I'm not doing this, I have to ask myself, why?
Why am I not working on that right now?
It's one of the things like in Suka, we allow you to put three things at the top.
(36:47):
That's all you can see.
You can have a longer task list, but when you hit play, it hides everything for the top three
to go focus on this.
So that is the one thing that I would offer we didn't hit, which is know your three things,
your one, two, or three things before you start in the morning.
Because if you're sailing randomly, you're going to get nowhere.
You'll be stuck in the middle of the ocean.
Tim Staton (37:04):
You're absolutely right. I know we've probably talked about this before about a big fan of the big top three.
So, you know, like, I got three goals a year, three things I do a quarter, three things I do
a month, and three things I do a week, and three things I do a day to get to all of that.
So I love your technique.
Steven (37:20):
I love that. Yeah.
Tim Staton (37:22):
And I appreciate your time and talking with everybody. So thank you.
Steven (37:26):
Thank you for having me.
Tim Staton (37:28):
As always, thank you for stopping by and checking out this episode and listening to it.
I really hope that you enjoyed it.
Before we go, I'd like to ask a favor of you if I could.
If you could please share this episode with one or two people who you think might like this topic.
If you haven't followed or subscribed on the platform that you're listening to and hit all the
bells and icons and all the whistles so that you know that when we post another episode, you'll
(37:50):
be alerted, please go ahead and do all that before you go.
If you got some value out of this episode, please leave a review or a comment so we can help
spread the show to other people who might be interested in the topics that we've talked about
here today, but may not have found our show yet.
Again, thanks for stopping by. I'm Tim Staton. Update the obvious.
This is Tim Staton with Tim stating the obvious.
What is this podcast about? It's simple.
You are entitled to great leadership.
Everywhere you go, whether it's to church, whether it's to work, whether it's at your house,
you are entitled to great leadership.
And so in this podcast, we take leadership principles and theories and turn them into everyday, relatable and usable advice.
Disclaimer (00:25):
And a quick disclaimer. This show, process or service by trademark, trademark, manufacturer,
otherwise does not necessarily constitute an apply the endorsement of anyone that I am employed
by or favors them in representation.
The views are expressed here in my show are my own expressed and do not necessarily state or
reflect those of any employer.
Tim Staton (00:36):
Today we're excited to welcome Stephen Puri, a trailblazing leader who spearheaded visual effects
on Oscar winning blockbusters like Independence Day 7, Die Hard, then rose to executive roles
at Fox DreamWorks and Sony.
Now as the founder of the Suka Company, he empowers remote workers to achieve peak focus, productivity
(00:57):
and wellness through innovative tools inspired by yoga.
So, Steven, welcome to the show.
Steven (01:03):
Tim, I hope we have some fascinating stuff to talk about. Let's go.
Tim Staton (01:08):
Absolutely. So my first question to you is, how did leading high stakes teams in film shape
your philosophy and motivating creative talent?
Steven (01:19):
Interesting question in that I have a very strong thesis that we all have something great inside
us and the question of this lifetime is, are you going to get it out or not?
So that said, people who are typically called creative, it's usually a code word for like they
create some sort of art, screenplays, paintings, poetry, sculptures, buildings, things like that. Right.
(01:45):
But I do think that on a certain level we all create our lives.
To understand someone who maybe creates, I'm not a sports guy, but I'm just going to say this,
who creates moves on a basketball court and says, here's how we're going to choreograph this
in a way, how different is that than choreographing a ballet?
You're like, this is our movement through this three dimensional space and hopefully it yields
(02:10):
this beautiful result of the. Right. The thing.
So I'm going to say when you say creative people. Yes.
People normally say, hey, Steve, man, you work with some amazing writers and directors, you
work with some great actors. Well, right.
But I'll say this, I think a lot of people create and I think everyone has something in them
and the challenge is how do you get that thing out?
(02:32):
So if you're a leader, if you're a team leader first, I'm just saying foundationally, you have
to hire properly Right, right.
If you've hired the wrong people and they just don't give an F about what you're doing, you're
never going to get something great out of them. Right?
So as a leader, you have two things.
You have to express your mission.
Hey, man, we're here to cure cancer.
We're here to build beautiful buildings for corporations.
(02:55):
We're here to create the next whatever it is.
And you have to express the values. Right?
You got to say, hey, if you're part of this team, this is how we treat each other.
This is how we treat our customers.
This is how we treat our competitors.
So if you do that and someone comes aboard, they're like, hell, yeah, I want to cure cancer.
And absolutely, that matches my value system about how we treat people, even competitors. Right? Then that's step one.
(03:19):
And there is no skipping step one.
If you skip step one, you're going to feel it in your team.
And one bad hire can bring down a team.
So I think the thing you're getting at is this, which is, suppose you do have the right team
and you are creating something, as I said, whether it's a ballet, a screenplay, a building,
a basketball team, whatever you want them to achieve something great, you need to recognize
(03:42):
what each of them individually views as the great thing inside them.
If you can do that, then you can elicit from them that thing that will change the course of
their life, that will change the course of yours.
Every time you hear, use the basketball thing, a great Michael Jordan or Pippen or whatever
(04:03):
talking they work in like, yeah, and this is how my coach made us a team instead of just a bunch
of individual guys running around the court.
I think that's what it is.
You hire properly and then you recognize in each person what is the great thing of which they're capable.
And how do you then draw that out of them.
This is your opportunity to do that great thing.
Tim Staton (04:22):
I love how you frame that, withdrawing it out of them from within.
Steven (04:27):
And.
Tim Staton (04:27):
And let's talk about stress when it comes to that environment, because I'm sure.
Steven (04:32):
Stress, under this word of which you.
Tim Staton (04:35):
Speak under tight lines, there's.
There's a stress built into it. Right.
So you're trying to draw.
Steven (04:40):
State the obvious. Okay.
Tim Staton (04:42):
So you're trying to draw out the best in folks and get them there.
But you also have to be the timeline. So how do we.
How do you deal with stress on those types of teams in order to not lead people to burnout?
Steven (04:55):
Okay. Stress, I think in general is a negative thing, like just Living on cortisol, burning yourself out. You're totally bad.
There's a certain amount of stress that is, hey, I'm trying to achieve something.
If you don't think that, I don't want to say, whoever won the super bowl this past year, if
you don't think that they were in the gym stressing their muscles to the extent that they could
then make that amazing running play or throw the ball the way through, you're kidding yourself.
(05:19):
Stress is necessary part of achievement.
The point at which it crosses over becomes negative.
I think that threshold you're talking about, there are things you can do.
I know a lot of people who listen to your pod.
They are looking to achieve something in their professional life.
They're probably not Travis Kelsey or whatever his name is, or Jordan or someone. They're not athletes. They're actually professional. They're knowledge workers.
(05:43):
They're people who are saying, let me create things with my brain.
And by the way, these people find it valuable and they give me money or some other goods for
things, things that come out of my head. Right.
So what you're really saying is for knowledge workers, how do you manage the amount of pressure
you put on your brain to produce the great things and, you know, mitigate the risks of going overboard.
(06:03):
So we happen, you and I and everyone happen to live in a world where gratefully, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
A lot of smart people have not just researched this, like done studies on people.
They have also proactively said, well, let me go out and test ideas out.
When you think about the research that's been done, yes, we've all heard, like the Pomodoro method, for example, Right.
(06:25):
It is a healthy way of saying your brain needs a break, your body needs a break, and you can
do a 25 and 5 cycle.
You can do like I personally do, like 55 and 5 or 55 and 10 kind of thing.
Because I usually find at the end of 25, I'm in the middle of a thought and it's always a bad thought place to break.
But regardless, I respect the fact that it is a. Hey, man. On a regular schedule.
(06:46):
You should stand up, go downstairs, get a glass of water, go for a walk, stretch at your desk, do something.
My back loves it when I stretch every hour or two.
Even though I go to yoga every day, it still is just like, hey, man, this feels good.
Don't just sit here for four hours straight banging away in code.
So I think it is about managing it through healthy activities like that.
(07:07):
Also, there's a really good Hooperman episode talking about basically brain fuel, right?
So in the short day to day kind of stress, you recognize that you can't think endlessly.
You cannot spend eight hours in deep concentration on something.
An hour eight is going to be worthwhile.
It's very, very rare, right.
You deplete essentially your brain fuel your glucose.
(07:27):
And usually after about 90 minutes, 120 minutes, you're starting to have thoughts that maybe
are not of the caliber that they were in the first hour.
So how do you refresh that?
You find the ways to say, okay, you know what, let's all step away, let's take a little break,
let's do whatever the thing is we're going to do.
Let's think about something else over the long term. If that's very much.
How is my work today structured so I don't burn out today?
(07:49):
Then there's also the thing of nine, nine, six.
Can you work nine to nine, six days a week and be like this is amazing.
Or is that just the corporation eating you alive being like just feed me more fresh bodies, please.
I need them to live.
That is something where you need to monitor yourself.
(08:09):
Because I've seen a wide variety of tolerances.
There are some people with whom I've worked, they do thrive for a long period of time on that.
They're like, hey man, I need to be kind of in.
I do my good work when I'm not actually super balanced.
The way you look at it where other people are like, no.
For example, if I get to yoga at five in the morning, my whole day is different.
(08:30):
If I start 5am coding or something like that, my afternoon is not as good and I do need to find those little breaks.
So it's I'm go to the gym right now, go to yoga later, whatever those things are that just regulate it for me.
So it is a bit of self knowledge.
A lot of things are take in what the smart people have written and see how they apply to you specifically.
Tim Staton (08:48):
Yeah, the self awareness I think is huge key on how you manage your body.
Like you brought up when it came to you personally and you started out and film and then you
ended up into tech sort of.
So when did you sort of, okay.
Steven (09:06):
Sort of let us rewind and I'll give you a little detail that you know, predates LinkedIn which is.
My parents were both engineers at IBM.
My dad is a hardware engineer.
He has over 50 patents to his name on very large scale integrated circuits like logic, you know,
circuits, CPUs, essentially and my mom was a software engineer.
(09:27):
If your mom's like an Olympic ice skater, you probably learned to ice skate when you're little,
you know what I mean?
So I was a little code monkey. And it was fun.
My mom would take me when I was little to like the university computing center and stuff.
And I get to run jobs with her.
And it was just like what we did as a family, like the way some people would play catch.
Oh, my dad was high school baseball player.
I always played catch with them.
(09:47):
That's how I remember my dad.
So I remember my mom coding.
So I actually fell into film.
This is the forward to the point that you brought up because I was at usc, I was a Watson scholar.
So I had a job at IBM whenever I wanted if I wanted to earn money.
They're like, you can come here, be a junior engineer.
So I was doing that to earn cash.
And I happened to be in LA at sc, which arguably is the best cinema TV school or one of the
(10:11):
top two or three in the world.
So a lot of your friends are filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, indie filmmakers, you kind of
learn that and you go to movies together and listen to it.
And while I was there, film went digital.
And I as an engineer, spoke engineer and I had a creative vocabulary.
So I was super lucky, man.
Let's not discount the value of luck in my life where I was in that little intersection of the
(10:33):
Venn diagram of like speak engineer, speak creative.
Hey, film is becoming a digital thing in the computer.
We can make digital films. Come with us, kid.
And that's how I actually got into film, was producing digital visual effects and titles.
I did a whole variety of stuff from like David Fincher 7, Jim Cameron's true L, Jim Palma's
(10:54):
Carlito's Way, Jim Jarvis Deadman, Woody Allen's Sweetland Films, Braveheart, Immortal Beloved
with Mel, bunch of stuff.
And then produced the digital effects for Independence Day, which we won the Academy Award for
the visual effects, which was super cool.
And I mean there are 100,000 people who are responsible.
It was a huge production, but it helps your career, period.
(11:16):
You worked on the visual effects, the film won.
It's not going to hurt you, right?
So that was how I set up my first company with Roland and Dean, who directed and produced the movie.
The three of us set up a company called Syntropolis Effects.
We did computer generated effects, about 80 person company.
We raised about 15 million and sold that four years later to Das Werk at a 6x multiple, which was great.
(11:36):
And as one does in their 20s, they think they're smarter and more successful and better looking
than they are, when in reality you're kind of lucky and that sort of thing.
And that was then when I got into film production and then later returned actually to engineering.
Just kind of going full circle.
Tim Staton (11:51):
That's amazing how that happens when you.
Steven (11:54):
Code for those playing at home without the video on.
We both just made the whole circle motion on video.
So to really drive that point home, if you.
Tim Staton (12:04):
No, and I'm laughing because I find myself making that full circle too.
Steven (12:10):
So you can't help it.
It's one of those things.
It's like, Tim, what's a goatee?
Tim Staton (12:13):
Do you know what a goatee mustache and like part of a beer.
Steven (12:16):
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Ask anyone in your life that speaks English and they will all gesture to their chin.
It's just a guarantee in life.
Ask someone to go, tia, they'll do, you know, thing here. So, yes, absolutely so.
Tim Staton (12:29):
And not only figuratively making the.
The circle, but literally as well in my own career.
And I think it's interesting how we all kind of go back to that.
Some of us quicker than others.
So what was that driving factor that made you go, you know what?
This is where I want to go.
Or did it just kind of happen by luck or chance?
I know you said luck plays a big part in your life, but did you make a conscious effort to go back?
Steven (12:53):
I will tell you, I am the recipient of a lot of good luck, and I don't want to discount that.
I know people have often said, like, oh, my God, how did you come in EVP here?
And a vice president Fox, blah, blah, oh, you ran a company in soldiers, right?
I have a lot of friends.
I've met a lot of people who've worked very hard.
And, you know, sometimes you get tailwinds and it just.
You fly faster and sometimes you hit headwinds.
(13:14):
There are a couple lucky breaks in my life.
I'm very grateful for them.
I'm very upfront about it.
I've also had two failed startups. Painful.
Learned a lot, but, you know, stuff happens.
So the answer to the question is there've been a couple lucky things that fell in my lap.
I would like to believe I coupled those with hard work.
It's like, ooh, this is an opportunity that just arose.
Okay, you know what, let's make something of this as opposed to, you know, it's kind of half ass it.
Tim Staton (13:38):
So when. When you made the choice to go out of film and back in.
Steven (13:44):
Oh, back in the Startup world.
How I can tell you why.
That was Die Hard 5 right there.
Tim Staton (13:49):
So what was it?
Steven (13:51):
That was an awful experience.
Straight up, I'll tell you, working at Fox, one of the worst professional experiences.
Tim Staton (13:56):
Of my life, period.
Steven (13:58):
Full stop.
Tim Staton (14:00):
Yeah, what made it so bad that you were like, you know what, I.
Steven (14:02):
Need to change without naming names.
I do think that style in an organization comes from the top.
You know, head of the organization can't really micromanage how many pencils are ordered or
where the parking spots are.
But they sure do infuse the organization with, this is ethically who we are, this is what we
will do to achieve our goals.
And man, my friends cautioned me, when Fox came calling, I was at dreamworks.
(14:26):
They made me a really attractive offer, like double your salary.
Hey, you probably grew up on Die Hard.
Do you want to run the Die Hard franchise now?
You want to run the Wolverine franchise? Stuff like that, right? My friends were right.
It was an ethical mismatch.
And I was working on Die Hard 5.
It was, and continues to be a terrible script, but it was just the back pressure from the studio
(14:47):
was, it's a franchise, man. Make it.
Bruce has a window into schedule.
He's going to do it. Just crank it out.
Just don't make it expensive so we don't have a lot of risk.
And I was like, am I going to wake up, be like 40 years old, pushing out Die Hard 9, telling
my kids, hey, daddy's going to go make another bad sequel so we can pay for your college?
I mean, I don't know. There are worse jobs.
Don't get me wrong, it is not working salt mines, and I'm grateful for that.
(15:10):
But it's also something where I was like, I hate coming to work every day.
One of my litmus tests in my life is, if I wake up before my alarm, I'm on the right track.
So the mornings I wake up, I'm like, oh, it's cool.
Let's get this going, you know?
And the days when I hear the alarm go, I'm just like.
I'm like, this is the wrong job. It was like that.
And that's when I thought, what's the only other thing I know how to do, Tim? It's engineering.
(15:32):
Go find some problems and see if you can solve them. And I tried twice.
I raised 15 million for Syntropolis. We sold that.
So I was like, okay, cool, right?
Made some money, traveled for a few years, raised 3 million for two startups.
Both times we didn't really get to The Series A, it was just kind of like, that's sort of working,
sort of not, ah, you know, And I felt embarrassed.
A lot of my friends in film were watching.
(15:53):
They're like, oh, Puri left to go work in tech.
And I was just like, this didn't work. I felt ashamed.
I felt I was depressed. It sucked.
Tim Staton (16:01):
What helped you get through that period?
Steven (16:03):
Hmm. Well, I'd like to say jokingly, alcohol and drugs, but not really.
I'll tell you my process on both of them.
When I reached the moment on those two startups and I said, okay, we're not going to actually
realize the vision that we had for this, right?
And you have to go talk to your investors and say, hey, we tried as hard as we could.
(16:24):
I know the picture I painted of what we're going to do.
We're at 60,000 monthly actives, we need to be at 100,000amillion, we need to be scaling hockey stick kind of stuff.
And we're not, you know, So I don't think in good faith I can raise more money because we don't
have like some other trick to try.
It feels like we have to kind of call this one.
And in that moment, it was interesting in that those two startups, every investor was actually
(16:46):
way cooler than I thought.
Like, what do you want to do next?
Like, hey, we worked with you for two years, this was great.
You know, not everything works.
You know, startups mostly fail.
What do you want to do next?
And there was one investor in for $10,000 of the entire $6 million I lost, right?
There was one $10,000 investor who raked me over the coals.
I was just like, dude, I'm already super depressed, contrate, embarrassed, ashamed.
(17:08):
And he's like, isn't there something else you can try?
I mean, I put $10,000 into this.
I was just like, I am so sorry, man. You know what?
This is, this is on me.
Ultimately, it's not anyone's fault but mine. I ran the company.
I was the founder and CEO and like, I'll take the blame, but I don't know what to do.
And it was awful, right?
So I was like, ugh.
But did do this both times.
I sat with a pad of paper at the end while.
While the wounds were still bleeding, right?
(17:30):
Not when you have a rosy eyed view of like, oh, that wasn't that bad.
I was like, in that moment of I want to kill myself, right, I wrote out longhand on a pad of paper. What? What did I learn?
Like, what did I do wrong?
And I just want to keep that not in a digital file.
I dictated into Siri, like, oh, you know, hey, I wanted to have to, like, my hand to old school,
like, write it on a piece of paper and stare at and go, like, okay.
(17:51):
And the first word on both of those pieces of paper was listen.
I realized that either members of my community, users or friends or, you know, investors had
often given me advice that I thought, well, I'm not really sure if that's really our product.
We should, you know, maybe do that, maybe not.
And sometimes they were right, or it sounded like they could have been, because, you know, sliding
doors, you don't actually know what would have happened if you'd turned left instead of right.
(18:14):
But some of it was like, you know what?
I know what I did didn't work.
This is probably worth trying.
And now, as we develop, you know, Suka, my current company, the Flow State, apparently, like,
we have a group chat.
Tony and I are in there just asking people like, hey, man, what's working? What's not working?
What do you want more of you want less stuff? Who uses?
Anyone want an integration with Asana? Okay, cool. We could do that.
(18:36):
You know, and very different mentality than.
It's not quite built in public, but it's kind of close, way closer than it used to be.
So I think that's kind of the big one for me.
It was like, I have to capture.
I have to make something positive after this negative experience.
Let me capture what I learned.
And that led me to Tsuka, which is now a joy, which I love.
Tim Staton (18:56):
That's amazing that you. That you wrote that down.
And I was thinking in my mind, I was like, you know, you took, like, the Clause Awitzian approach.
I don't know if you know who Clausewitz is.
He's a war writer from Germany.
Lost everything, and he wrote what he learned from all his failures.
And it's a great state.
So to write out what you learn while you're in your failure state shows one, you know, that
(19:18):
you're a leader who can take accountability, integrity, and forward thought.
So good on you for doing.
Steven (19:23):
That's very kind of you to say. Okay, I'll. I'll take that.
Sounds like a compliment in the middle of depression. Yeah, exactly.
Tim Staton (19:29):
No, that is. I mean, Tim, a lot of.
A lot of people don't.
Don't necessarily take the time to do that.
So good on you for doing that.
Steven (19:35):
That is true. And.
Tim Staton (19:36):
And you hit on something that I was going to ask you about.
Steven (19:38):
Ooh. But we.
Tim Staton (19:40):
But I'm not going to get there yet because we're jumping too far forward.
Steven (19:44):
I like the way you're pacing this.
Tim Staton (19:46):
See, so you had. You had, you know, that horrible experience.
You moved over, you learned some things.
Covid hit, and then you found a new problem to solve.
And so that is when you know this hybrid remote work and how do we become productive?
Steven (20:02):
Yeah, so you're like, stephen, talk about that. You're subtle.
Okay, here's the thought that may sound a little kooky until you think about it, which is film
has been doing remote and hybrid work for like a hundred years.
You don't call it that.
You call it development prep, post production, stuff like that.
Because every movie begins with writers writing alone or in their writing partner's living room
(20:25):
or in a coffee shop.
One script gets some traction, gets some money.
You open up a little production office.
Couple days a week, people are in their meeting because they need to ask you, what does it look like? What are they wearing?
Maybe you're trying to get a director, do a rewrite to get Brad Pitt to star in it.
And then the rest of the week, everyone's off working remotely.
Customers are in costume houses, writers are doing rewrites, and you eventually get to rto,
(20:47):
hopefully on set day and night for months on end.
And then you go back to hybrid and eventually remote.
But again, no one really calls it that in film.
But as a leader, you know how to lead through each phase and you know how to be an individual contributor to each phase.
So that I thought was really interesting because in the pandemic, there were a lot of verticals
(21:07):
where it was a shock to the system.
It's like, oh, zoom is a verb now.
Oh, we can't sit under the same fluorescent bulbs every day for 10 hours.
How is this going to work?
And in film, it's like, here are ways of being accountable, here are ways of maintaining focus,
blocking distractions, things like that.
And with a buddy of mine, we started this company to be like, okay, smart people have written
(21:30):
about how to do this.
How do we make it so simple?
It's just like a website with one play button. And that was.
That was the genesis of what I do.
Tim Staton (21:36):
Now, when you built Suka in mind, it wasn't originally called Suga and you had a different name.
Steven (21:42):
Correct.
Tim Staton (21:42):
So how did you come up with the new name?
Steven (21:45):
Well, it's interesting. So a buddy of mine who is an engineer at Groupon, he wanted to do a
mindful to do list, and he'd asked me about that And I said, I'm not really to do lists. I always abandoned them.
I never really used them that long.
So I'm not the guy to figure that out. But he's very persuasive.
So he started developing this.
He had a baby, and he's like, I got to tap out.
But I said, you know what?
(22:05):
I really would love for this to become a Flow State app, to be more of a mindful, meditative way of blocking distractions.
Because God knows, Laura, my wife and I have enough friends who work at one of the meta companies
or used to work at Twitter, and they're really good.
So I was like, I see a future here.
Laura, as I alluded to, she and I met in yoga when I had the first startup that failed.
(22:30):
I had moved to New York for two years and just was, like, hiding out, thinking about life, planning what to do.
I was helping a friend with a commercial real estate deal and basically just like, trying to
make sense of, like, what did I do wrong and what do I do next? Right? I met Laura.
She's the girl on the mat to my left in yoga. It was awesome, sweet.
Chatted for a few months, went out.
So when we were getting married, we went to Bali, which is a great place to go do yoga on your honeymoon, right?
(22:54):
So we heading over there.
I knew we had to get a new name while we were in Bali.
And I said, laura, I hope lightning strikes.
The universe speaks to me.
My unconscious mind bubbles something up that's cooler than Flow state app number four or distraction blocker 19.
Something like, Amazon's not called bookstore, Nike's not Shoe place.
(23:18):
And Laura's like, cool, I hope that works for you.
And I said, when we got there, do you mind if I speak to a couple of our members?
Because we had a bunch of paying members at that point.
I was like, I just want to ask them, what's your favorite feature? Right.
Maybe that'll seed my unconscious mind, and then over 10 days, something will bubble up.
So I was like, go for it.
I'm going to go to the pool.
You do your little zooms.
I will see you at dinner.
So I talked to three people and I was just like, tell me, is your favorite feature the music
(23:42):
with a thousand hours of flow music?
Is it the Pomodoro timers?
Is it the task list?
Is it the smart assistant that helps you break down your day?
What is it you love the third guy going into the wrap up?
Hey, Tim, I asked you for 10 minutes.
I want to be respectful of your time.
So let's going to go now.
He stopped me and said, stephen, you asked the wrong questions.
I was like, okay, what was the right question?
He's like, you should have asked me why I pay you.
(24:04):
And I said, well, we charge like 30 cents a day, just enough to cover like those servers.
I mean, I don't even collect a paycheck for this.
Tony and I do it because we love it.
And I was like, okay, so you know, why do you pay me?
And he said, I find I have two kinds of days.
At 3 o', clock I can be playing with my kids, they're two and four.
Or at six o' clock I can be kind of down on myself and asking, where'd the day go?
I was busy, but I didn't get the stuff done.
(24:24):
And he's like, I realized the difference is, did I open your app in the morning and just run
it in the background to keep me on track?
And he's like, so I pay you because my kids are not going to be 2 and 4 forever.
I was like, that is a way better answer than what I was asking for. Thank you.
So I go to dinner with Laura.
I was like, I met this guy who's more articulate than I am about what I'm doing, which is weird. And Laura loved it.
(24:45):
She's like, that's really good.
And at night we're brushing her teeth and she looked at me.
She goes, in yoga, we hear all these Sanskrit terms like karma and dharma and prana, your life force and all that. She's like, that, dude. Describe to you Sukha.
That feeling when you're in your lane, you're doing what you're meant to do.
You know, you're good at it. You're.
You're in control of your life and it feels good.
You know, you can do it with ease.
She's like, that's what you should call your company.
(25:07):
I looked it up on my phone.
The Sukha company was available as a website.
I bought it, we went to bed. That was it.
So I run the happiness company, you.
Tim Staton (25:15):
Know, and with testimonies like that, because with, you know, little kids myself, oh, they're not so little now.
They're like preteens, but still, you know, they're not going to be young forever and that time gets away from you.
And are you spending the days doing what's valuable and the things that matter and.
Steven (25:31):
Right.
Tim Staton (25:32):
I love that. But with focusing on things that matter, with your, with your previous horrible
experience that you had, now you have your new company how you implement flow within your organization.
Steven (25:45):
Okay, so let's. For those at home who are nodding like, dude, I'm a flow master, I get this. I love you.
Keep driving, keep doing whatever, you keep doing the dishes at home.
But for those who are like, I maybe have a passing understanding of flow states, I've heard it.
Let me just set the table for a minute so we're all on equal footing.
Okay, so there was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihaly Csik Mihaly.
(26:07):
He died, I think four years ago next month.
And he had a thesis, he said, high performers in these different areas, athletes, artists, scientists,
they describe these concentrated states they go into in very similar ways, the states where
they do the stuff that makes them famous.
So he, like, Prometheus wanted to go up to the mountain, steal fire and bring it down to the rest.
He's like, I want to go. Understand that.
(26:28):
After he did his research, he wrote a book called Flow, that is the seminal work on this, that
is why we call it a flow state.
And he said this, which I thought was beautiful.
He's like the best metaphor I can think of after listening to all of these people is we're all
on the water paddling to move ourselves forward.
But if you align your boat with the current, it magnifies your efforts.
(26:48):
You move, you move further and faster.
And he said, that's what they do.
I thought, why not take the things that he wrote and put them all into one website.
So there's just a one play button.
You didn't have to have this kind of music here, this kind of mental thing here, this kind of thing. Just one play button.
And so that is why I'm such a huge fan of flow states.
Because my first flow state, I didn't know the term it was before I had really encountered his work.
(27:12):
And I was on a flight from Austin to where I live now to San Francisco, and I was illustrating an idea.
I wanted to go into figment, like mock up, kind of in my hacky way.
An idea for a feature that I was going to show my team the next day.
Got on the Alaska, you know, non stop, Wi fi was out.
We took off and we landed like 15 minutes later.
And I was like, an engine fell off. Something bad happened.
(27:33):
We could have maybe made it to Dallas.
And I looked down and over 2 hours and 40 minutes had gone by since I last looked at the time.
Tim Staton (27:40):
Oh, wow.
Steven (27:40):
I was like, what just happened?
And my designs were done.
Like, I didn't have to scramble to go to the hotel room and Eat a room service, cold, whatever
and try and finish before tomorrow morning.
I could call a buddy of mine.
I was like, hey man, I'm in sf. Want to have dinner?
I have a free night.
And it was an extraordinary experience.
Part of it I realized was there was no wifi.
So there are no slack messages, there are no whatsapps to check.
(28:02):
There's no doom scrolling, there's no.
There were a number of conditions, precedent that sort of made this more available.
But that feeling of like, tim, I'm done, you want to have dinner? That's pretty cool.
Even if you don't know what flow state is.
And some people call it being in the zone.
There's that Michael Jordan quote about when I'm in the zone, it's just me in the ball.
That's what he's talking about, man.
(28:23):
You can call it the zone.
Everyone has their word for it.
But when you've been there and you go, I got my work done faster.
It's high quality and I can be in charge, I'm running my day.
I have a question for you.
I know you've been asking a lot of questions.
I'm going to ask you a question.
Have you had that end of a day where you're like, oh man, I didn't finish anything.
I'll just get up early tomorrow and finish this before I start tomorrow's work?
Tim Staton (28:43):
Yeah, absolutely. And it never really happens.
Steven (28:45):
Exactly. And it's like dominoes during the week.
It's like, then tomorrow night you tell yourself the same thing about Wednesday night. Right. And it's.
We all tell ourselves that lie.
Oh well, you know, I just.
Day got away from me.
But I'm going to finish early tomorrow, right?
Tim Staton (28:55):
Absolutely.
Steven (28:56):
I had enough of those days where I was like, I'm getting down on myself.
Like I'm starting to tell myself a story about like, I suck.
Why can't I get my stuff done?
What am I doing during the day?
And you know, I mean, it's like any recovery program, the first step is admitting you have a problem, man.
And I was like, I have a problem.
I realized I procrastinate, I get distracted, I get overwhelmed.
(29:17):
And that as it comes back to your question about like, how do you implement flow states?
How do you take advantage of flow states in your own life as an IC or as a leader with your
team is recognize the conditions that help you get there. And I'll share these.
And by the way, anything smart that I say is basically because we have gratefully come after
people who have done A lot of research and we get to benefit from what they've spent their lives sharing.
(29:43):
Okay, so I'm not that smart, but I have read smart people. So.
Mihaly Cszentmihalyi said, one condition is it seems that you have to believe what you do is meaningful.
You don't get into a flow state when you're stapling papers or shuffling garbage.
It's just like Picasso's creating Guernica or Jordan's playing in the whatever. Right.
(30:05):
You have to have related to that.
Mihaly said, you have to have skills that apply.
So it's not asking Michael Jordan to paint. Yeah.
And it has to be challenging to use that Michael Jordan thing because I think he's amazing.
It's not Michael Jordan doing an exhibition game at his kid's high school with eighth graders.
You know what I mean? That's not flow.
Flow is you're at the edge of your abilities doing something that is indeed challenging.
(30:27):
It's playing in the NBA against people who are amazing.
He's the best in the world, so those things are interesting.
He also wrote, he said, it seems like one of the characteristics is you have to be able to get feedback.
You have to be able to know how you're doing.
You're not just pouring energy into a black box.
I don't know if it worked.
I don't know if it's any good.
It is being able to stand back and look at the canvas and go, oh my God.
(30:49):
Guernica is shaping up to be the thing that I want it to be.
Or we're winning the game or whatever that may be.
Or if you're coding, it's just that thing where you go, oh my God, the build worked. Ah.
Everything becomes glass, like under your fingers.
You're like, this is what I've been trying to get to work.
So that said, and by the way, I'll put in a little mention about what we did with Suka is when
(31:13):
you work, you have a live productivity graph that you literally get points as you work and you're not distracted. Right.
So you can kind of like see, okay, cool, I'm working.
Like connect your phone, you can connect websites.
And then should you open a website that's on your do not fly list, you get a little pop up and
it goes, hey, Tim, it seems like Facebook is a distraction.
(31:33):
Do you want to close it or do you want to go?
And if you go down a distracting path, you lose points.
So you can look at the end of your session or even during Your session at the curves of your
graph and sort of see, like, well, why?
And scroll your cursor over when it went down in minute 25, and you see, oh, that's when I opened YouTube. Gotcha.
I'll tell you something I noticed about myself.
(31:54):
I looked at my graphs, and there's often a nice little, oh, I'm working for half an hour.
And somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, there'd be a little dip.
And I realized I had a bad habit of, like, hitting this wall of, I'm just gonna open news or
I'm gonna open, I'm gonna do something.
And once I saw that repeated, I was like, oh, dude, know thine self. I get it.
I need to stand up, go to the bathroom, get water, do something.
(32:16):
You know, around that time.
That's a moment when I just.
I'm not super productive because I need kind of a refresh.
So these are interesting things.
So if you're a leader, which I know a lot of leaders listen to your pod, or if you're an IC
is, you sort of say, hey, I'd like to be doing deep work, as Cal Newport would say, and I want
to do great work, and I want to do it where I'm managing my brain, I'm managing my day, not being managed by it.
(32:38):
So you can encourage people in this way.
And I'll close with one thought.
Then I want to go back to you and you guide this.
But some research shows that it does take, like, 15 to 23 minutes to get into a flow state. Right?
You don't just sit down and go, I'm in flow.
It doesn't really work that way.
You kind of need things, like, the same way music helps lull you into it.
If you get interrupted, like, in the middle of your session, if I slack you, I'm like, hey,
(33:01):
Tim, could you send me the latest TPS reports real quick?
And you've got to go find them and drop them in the slack. Whatever.
It'll take you 15 to 23 minutes to get back into that state where it feels good.
You're in the zone, doing great work, right?
So as a leader, something you can do is you can say, hey, what if we agree that each of us has something important to do?
(33:21):
More important than returning emails or, you know, returning slacks?
Why don't we block an hour or two each day when we're going to do that?
And you can agree with your team, well, hey, man, you know, from 9 to 11, let's not set silly zooms with each other.
And Team meetings and customer meetings.
Let's have the time be.
This is when you do this stuff that hopefully you walk into the staff meeting, you say, hey
man, I thought about this.
I designed this, I built this.
(33:42):
And everyone goes, dude, Tim, what?
That changes the trajectory of what we're doing.
As opposed to you walking on snapping.
You're like, I've returned all my emails.
There's no gold medal for returning all your emails.
You know what I mean?
So if you encourage focus time, if you have a team you trust, because there are some aspects
of remote work where leaders are like, I just don't know if I hired the right people.
I think they're slacking off.
(34:02):
So then you're really afraid to do like, hey, go and do an hour of deep work every day.
Cause you're like, are you just sleeping in? You know.
Tim Staton (34:09):
No, no, that, that's a great point.
Because one thing that we do as leaders is shape our environments for people to be successful.
Steven (34:16):
Yep, there you go.
Tim Staton (34:17):
I don't a single leader out there who says, I don't want my people to be as productive or as
successful as they can be.
Steven (34:25):
Yeah.
Tim Staton (34:25):
And one thing that we can do is control our environment.
You know, we, we talked about how, you know, I'm a dad and I tell my oldest son who is now graduated
college and now in a master's degree, I'd say, you know, I can't control what you do, but I
can control your environment as long as you're in.
Steven (34:42):
That is true. Right? Yeah.
Tim Staton (34:43):
And the thing applies for leadership.
And I think like the Souka app is a, is a great company that people can, can check that out on.
So when you're listening this or you're watching this, go ahead and check the descriptions. Everything will be there.
And Steven, if you don't mind, I'll provide your email as well so people can reach out to you directly.
Steven (35:02):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
Because if anyone's listening to this and they're like, oh man, who is that Hungarian guy?
Or what is Cal Newport write? Or who's the near.
My email address is public.
It'll be in the show notes. Drop me an email.
Stephen, can you tell me more about the timeboxing, whatever we talked about?
I will drop you some blog or some link to a book or something.
It will not be the 17 paragraph story of my life because I don't have time to write that.
(35:24):
You don't want to read it either.
But I do get back to everyone in 24 hours.
If I'm not sick of traveling.
So Tim's offer is sincere. I'm here to help.
I'm at a place in my life where I've been very lucky and I can do stuff like, hey, here's a link.
If you're struggling with this, read this.
Tim Staton (35:38):
No, I appreciate it and I know everybody else will appreciate to a benefit as well.
And one thing that I love about this show that we're doing together is practicality.
I always like to leave people with something that they can implement today.
So the Suga app is one of them.
But my last question to you is, did we not talk about anything that you're like, you know what,
(36:01):
Tim, I really wish you asked me this.
Steven (36:04):
Oh, that's a very kind question.
There is something that, like you said, is a free technique.
You don't need anybody's app to do it, but it is incredibly powerful.
And it is simply in the morning, before you dive in, you start getting deep into whatever you're doing.
Take a moment to make sure you're working on the right one or two or three things.
And if you think there are more than three things you're going to do today, you're. You're kidding yourself.
(36:25):
You're not prioritizing because you're not going to do seven things today.
You're going to hopefully do one, two, or three. Well.
So before you start, I don't care if you write on a piece of paper.
A friend of mine has three index cards every day that she puts on her desk and she looks at
those, goes 1, 2, and 3. These are.
If I'm not doing this, I have to ask myself, why?
Why am I not working on that right now?
It's one of the things like in Suka, we allow you to put three things at the top.
(36:47):
That's all you can see.
You can have a longer task list, but when you hit play, it hides everything for the top three
to go focus on this.
So that is the one thing that I would offer we didn't hit, which is know your three things,
your one, two, or three things before you start in the morning.
Because if you're sailing randomly, you're going to get nowhere.
You'll be stuck in the middle of the ocean.
Tim Staton (37:04):
You're absolutely right. I know we've probably talked about this before about a big fan of the big top three.
So, you know, like, I got three goals a year, three things I do a quarter, three things I do
a month, and three things I do a week, and three things I do a day to get to all of that.
So I love your technique.
Steven (37:20):
I love that. Yeah.
Tim Staton (37:22):
And I appreciate your time and talking with everybody. So thank you.
Steven (37:26):
Thank you for having me.
Tim Staton (37:28):
As always, thank you for stopping by and checking out this episode and listening to it.
I really hope that you enjoyed it.
Before we go, I'd like to ask a favor of you if I could.
If you could please share this episode with one or two people who you think might like this topic.
If you haven't followed or subscribed on the platform that you're listening to and hit all the
bells and icons and all the whistles so that you know that when we post another episode, you'll
(37:50):
be alerted, please go ahead and do all that before you go.
If you got some value out of this episode, please leave a review or a comment so we can help
spread the show to other people who might be interested in the topics that we've talked about
here today, but may not have found our show yet.
Again, thanks for stopping by. I'm Tim Staton. Update the obvious.
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