Focused - 2: Booked Up With Myself

Episode Date: August 9, 2016

Just because you're independent doesn't mean you don't need a schedule. This episode is about building (and breaking) routines.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Routines. It's good to have routines, isn't it? You're not supposed to have a routine. You just quit your job. You're an independent.

You have the free lifestyle now, right? That's right. We've all thrown off our chains. We have left the 9 to 5 grind behind. The commute has passed us by. We're 21st century professionals. Time has no meaning. Oh, I love that part. I need that in my life. Yeah, except no. See, this is one of the things about being an independent person. The great thing about it is that you've thrown off those chains but you know the chains maybe you don't need the chains but uh constraints exist for a reason um i mean for many reasons part of it is society right like other people like you could work at three in the morning right you could work at three in the morning but but do you answer email at three in the morning your clients do not want to meet with you at three in the morning i could work at three in the morning, but... But do you answer email at three in the morning? Your clients do not want to meet with you at three in the morning. I can work at three in

the morning, but my podcast pals do not want to do a podcast at three in the morning. So, you know, there's people and you and I both have families and our families are not independent content creators who work in their pajamas. So, they've got routines. They go to jobs or school and eat breakfast at a normal time like a person and have an expectation that in the evening, there's going to be some family time. And so you can't be just totally loosey-goosey. And that doesn't even begin to start cracking human nature, right? Which is just like, people like routines. People like routines. We're programmed to follow routines. Even if you're independent and you think you don't have a routine and you look at yourself, you have a routine. Well, that's the big danger, right? Is that if you don't set a routine, if you don't consciously plan how you

want to schedule your work, you will fall into a pattern. And it's a pattern that's not really of your own design, or it's of your accidental design and not your intentional design. And that seems to be really dangerous, right? Because you are probably not accounting, you're just kind of meandering, you're not accounting for all the stuff that you need to do. And if you exert, I really believe, if you exert a little more of a conscious effort to set your routine, you will still get in a groove and be able to do your own thing. But, but it'll be a little more purposeful maybe than if you just kind of fall into it. Yeah. The good news is you have the ability to self-determine your routine, which you didn't have working for the man. The bad news is you need to set your routine and self-determinate.

And I think it's one of the best bits of advice I got when I first went in, it was from our old pal Merlin Mann. And he said, you get to set new habits. How many times in your life do you get to set new habits? It's not very often. And that really sunk in for me. It's like, wow, I do. And I really threw out a lot of assumptions out the window. I mean, I was always a morning person at the old job. I would get up very early and go in because that's before everybody else arrived. And I could get work done before everybody started banging on my door and asking me questions. And, you know, I threw just a lot of those things I thought were about me. Maybe

it turns out they weren't once I was able to kind of have a little more control over how I set things up. Or you were problem solving for an office that had a lot of people in it and finding a way to get around that by going in early. And now you don't have to solve for that problem. So maybe your solution to your current setup is very different because that's not the set parameters that you have up front. And so the decisions you make will be totally different. Yeah. Yeah. And so in terms of routines, there's a lot of different kinds of them as well. I got thinking about this when we first raised the topic. I mean, you have time management routines. You can have routines that you look at in terms of day cycles or week cycles or even month cycles.

And all of that stuff is happening whether you like it or not. When I talk about throwing off your chains, yeah, the last thing I want to do with somebody who's newly independent especially is say, okay, you threw off the chains of your employer now it is time for you to go to the chain shop and pick out your own chains and change you know i don't want to say that at the same time uh you know routine is important and you got to have some of it like we said or or it'll happen for you um and it's a comfort it really is i mean it's not just that humans want to be a rat in a maze. It's that it is some of the best ways and in a world where as an independent person, you feel completely like cut loose and unstructured potentially from, you know, what do structure to make yourself happy and to make yourself productive. And I love that I have a podcast that I do every Monday. I used to do it at 11 a.m.

I do it at 9 a.m. now. And the reason I did that is I wanted to start my day with it because I felt like my week didn't start until that podcast happened. And so I said, let's start it at 9 a.m. And I end my week usually on Friday afternoon with a different podcast that I do every week. And I've also got a podcast on Wednesday mornings. I have these things that are scheduled regularly, and it gives my week shape. It gives me a point where I need to turn on and say, I am now working.

It is the work week. It gives me a place where I can turn off and say it's Friday afternoon and maybe it's time to unplug for a little while. It's incredibly powerful. And that is a week bookend, right? I'm not even talking about like, what time do you set your alarm clock? But for me, just having that week shape, a shape of my week where I'm sort of doing the same stuff at the same times every week has been incredibly valuable to me. Yeah. And it's not that hard. And one of the other advantages of being independent is it's subject to change. I mean, when you're working for the man, you are kind of subject to whatever it is that their routine is for you and you don't have a lot of control over it. Whereas an independent, you can set up some routines and try them and maybe in a month or

six months or whatever you say that's not working for me right guess what you get to set new ones i i not to bring in the uh the um when do you take a shower uh question but uh i actually that's one of the things that i've been toying with because um i've heard people say when you go independent you know basically get up like you're going to work and then you're going to be at work. And I've resisted that because I've actually really liked the ability to sort of like get up and I do some reading. My kids are getting ready to go to school. They go out the door. My wife goes out the door.

At that point, the computer's on and I'm already working. And so I start earlier. And then I take a break before lunch usually. And that's usually when I take a shower and I make myself some lunch and maybe I walk the dog sort of in the middle of the day. I got in a state where I felt like there were too many days. I won't let it go a second day, but there are too many days where my wife gets home from work and I'm like, oh, I never showered today. I never took the dog out today. And that was not my routine was failing me. And so to break myself out of that, the next day I just got up in the morning and took a shower and went to work. Basically, like the old way of doing it because I needed to question my routine. And that's still in flux right now.

I'm like, I haven't really decided what I'm going to settle on, whether I'm going to go and enforce my old routine a little bit more strictly or if I'm going to try something new that might work better. Yeah, I am. Just to get into the weeds a little bit more strictly or if I'm going to try something new that might work better. Yeah, I am. Just to get into the weeds a little bit, I get up and do kind of the initial, I try to take care of one big thing in the morning first, you know, and then my wife takes care of getting the kids out the door and all that other stuff. And usually her and I take like a two-mile walk. There's like where I live, there's a circuit you can walk in. And so I'd get a little bit of work done. Then I, and I feel like I have a handle on the day and then we'll take our walk and I'll do my shower and get back to work. But the good news is all this stuff, you know, this isn't the way we want everybody to do things, but I mean, it's, it is having that,

knowing that you have that planned out, I think really does help add structure. And the reason we're doing all this routine stuff in my, in my mind is I think I make better work when I have more focus and more routine built in. I mean, when I say that, you know, we are comfortable with routines, this is why is that the routines, again, you don't want them to be shackles. You don't want them to be a prison that you're trapped inside. But we live in houses with walls, right? I mean, there is value in having structure. It's just that, you know, you want to live in a house and not a jail cell. And so you want to have some flexibility. But at the same time, I do believe people do their best work when they don't have to worry about every little detail, right? You want

to have the structure set up, even if you set it up yourself, and then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Then you know how things are going to go and you can focus on getting your work done. And it's much more powerful to do that. And it can be a daily routine. It can be a weekly routine like I talked about where I've also got a shape to my week and I feel like, oh, it's Wednesday. What do I do on Wednesday? I hate the idea when I started this. I was really concerned that I was going to be one of those people like my mom and my in-laws who are retired people.

And they've started to lose track of what day it is. Like, oh, is it Tuesday? Like, oh, my God, I don't want to be that person, right? And so the weekly routine gives me a shape. I know that it's like every now and then my wife will be like, what day is it today? And I'll be like, it's Wednesday. I know it's Wednesday because i'm doing clockwise this morning It's like I really like that. I've got that i've got that shape to my week

And then some people will even extend that like you said, you know Maybe there's a shape to your month. You got more work here more work there our friend. Mike hurley Has an interesting routine. He has a fortnightly cycle, which I think is really interesting where he's got like a really on week where he's got a lot of stuff to do. And then he has an off week where there's a lot less. And it works for him, at least for now. And maybe he'll change some. But he's got like his super project-filled week. And then he's got another week where he can back up a little bit and he's still got work to do um but he's also got time to uh do some downtime but also to work on other projects and longer term stuff and think think about stuff that's not in his uh not in his his daily set of needs maybe he's thinking about the future of relay or uh you know a conference that he wants to do or something like that um and that's a routine that works for him is a week on week off. And that, that can, that can work. Yeah. And I think everybody's different. That's,

this is one of those weird things because you know, what depends on the type of work you do. Like another thing I try and do is if at all possible, because for the, so I have two businesses, you know, I'm kind of do this Max Barkey nerd thing. And then I'm also a business lawyer. And for the lawyer part, I need to meet with people all the time. I need to meet with clients. I do my damnedest to make those Tuesday and Thursday. You know, I would really, in a perfect world, I don't leave the house on Monday and Friday. And I'm able to focus on whatever things need to get done.

And on Tuesday and Thursday, because those days quite often are a loss for me, you know, because if I can stack them, I get, you know, dressed up fancy and get out in my car and drive around and meet with people. Um, but I don't want to, I would rather do that one day a week or two days a week than four days a week. Right. Right. Well, breaking up your, um, breaking up your routine is problematic too. Like I, I've had that where I've had somebody, like, oh, let's have lunch. It's like, okay, well, we can have lunch, but it's going to take me half an hour to drive there. And I'll say yes, because I do want to see other human beings and break up the routine every now and then. But it comes at a cost, and I would rather sort of schedule some things together. together. Or, I mean, calendars, I hate to be a calendar nerd, but I was talking on Upgrade with Mike about my task management system. And I find that I use routines for a lot of my tasks. That's

how I end up getting things done is that I schedule them in. So I created a calendar, even though I no longer have meetings. I used to have meetings all the time when I was managing a group of 50 people. I had lots of meetings. Most of what I did was meetings. And now I don't, but my calendar is still pretty full because I schedule my tasks. I have not just the podcast,

but like if I know I'm writing a column for Macworld every week, I put a time of the week, a recurring event that says, write your Macworld column here. And it's not the day it's due per se. It's two or three hours that I'm going to clear my schedule. And I know that when that hits, I'm going to sit down and write that column. And I can move it and stuff, but I put it in there because I know it's going to take a certain amount of time to work on it. And I want to schedule that in. And it serves as a reminder and a prod like, oh, later in the day, I have to work on that. So I'm

going to work on this stuff, this stuff now. And I do that. I do that for ongoing work. I do that for individual assignments where I'll block out time. The calendar ends up being a great way for me to set some routine and then also leave some space for variation. And then also, it's funny, you mentioned taking a walk with your wife. I also schedule timeout in my calendar, which I know seems crazy on one level, but I do it because I find that's a way for me to, again, if something comes up, I can always change it. But I've scheduled the time out into my into my day. So like, I'm a volunteer, I'm on a board of a nonprofit, I have scheduled like an

hour a week that I devote to that. And it's on my calendar. And I can move it or ignore it. But it's there. And it's a it's a prod to me to do it. And I'm trying to revise a novel that I wrote, because I'd like to get it published at some point down the road, and it needs to be revised. novel that I wrote because I'd like to get it published at some point down the road and it needs to be revised. I put novel revision down on my calendar for a few hours on a morning as my novel time. And again, it doesn't have to be there every week, but that has been really useful in saying, oh, it's Thursday morning. I'm going to work on the novel on Thursday morning. There's nothing wrong with making an appointment with yourself. I mean, I, my, I, I'm booked up with myself at this point, but it's good. It works. It works for me.

It works for me and, and it's changed over time and it continues to be a work in progress. It is absolutely constrained by my family's routine. You know, I, I have based on when my wife is working and her hours are not super consistent right now, you know, until she gets a full time position. She's got sort of she's going here and there at various times. So that's I have to sort of schedule around that. My kids are in different schools and they come home at different times. And so I have to kind of work around being aware that I should probably be here when they get home. I don't have to be, but I like to do that.

All of that is happening. So I'm not working at nine at night because generally because, you know, that's everybody else is on a schedule where that's a good time to have family time. And in the middle of the day is a bad time for it. it. By the way, speaking of schedules, summer vacation is terrible because my kids are suddenly untethered from reality and are floating around the house and are getting up late and everybody and since my kids have to go to school before my wife has to go to work by like an hour, you know, she's her schedule will often shift an hour later and it's, that's tough because I can build up my routines and then they break them. Children are destroyers of routines.

They ruin everything, but it's, it's just, it's another, it's another thing to keep in mind that I actually find that I have to either rejigger or, or re-exert myself in terms of my routines and my schedule based on uh changes in in in my family so if you've got you know a family or friends or people you live with who um who have changes in their routine that's going to impact you because like for me the summer i have to be last summer i really had to be much more diligent about closing the door setting boundaries about getting up in the morning because the kids were not going to be the prompt. I didn't have to get my daughter up at 6.45 anymore all of a sudden. And that's tough to get up because it can be so easy to sleep in.

And I need to not. See, my kids are older. I've got one who's in second year of college and one is getting ready to start high school. And they're um, they're pretty self-sufficient. I don't, but, um, it, it, it is nice being around when they need me. I mean, I guess that's another show, but, but there is a routine element to this too. My college kid and I, once a week, we go out to Starbucks together and, you know, we, the date kind of floats a little bit depending on her schedule and mine, but, uh, we have about three-hour block of time that we go and work. And we don't talk. It's not like father-daughter bonding time.

But I think she likes having me there with her, and I like her there. I guess we kind of motivate each other a little bit. But that's a nice piece of the indie routine is that you can create things like that. On the subject of the calendar, I didn't think of this when we play on the show, but I actually have a calendar in my digital calendar and the title is Routine. Oh, wow. I guess I should have thought of that.

But I mean, I am one of those insane-o people that I have so many things on that routine calendar that happen every day. And I think it's easy to make those appointments with yourself, but you actually have to keep them and reschedule them. You fall into a problem if you make those appointments yourself and you just treat them as non-appointments and you ignore them. No, you have to honor your own calendar.

You do. And so that's why I kind of came up with a routine calendar. And then I make, like you, I have a lot of scheduled time in there. If you look at it, I think it just, you would think I'm a little nuts, but it really works for me. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm able to pull this indie stuff off is because I can give myself that structure and routine. One of the things I do in terms of routine that I think is hugely helpful to me is I go through my task. I have a task management app that I'm a big fan of. If you don't, if you've never listened to the 300 some episodes of Mac Power Users, you know it.

But they have an audit, kind of an audit or review feature in the app. So I do that in the evening. So I look at the next day, what are the tasks that are going to be hitting me next day? What's my calendar the next day? And I try to get a handle on it before I go to bed. I don't do it immediately before I go to bed. I do around seven o'clock. And that way, when I wake up in the morning, I can that first, you know, I was talking about how I get something done before I take the walk with my wife. I'm able to because all of the, you know, logistical part of planning the day was already done for me. It was done the night before. And that's a routine that I find quite helpful. But, you know, I don't think this show in particular is one where we're going to tell you this should be your schedule every day. But I do think we really want to get across that you need a routine. How do routines work with leisure time? Well, I think, I mean, like I was saying earlier, on one level, you can also like schedule. If you need to schedule it, do it that way. But I think, I think it's important to have, um, making breaks part of

your routine, like, uh, whether it's every day or it's on certain days, like I, my wife and I, um, again, a topic for another show, but about kind of like keeping some separation and, and, and recognizing that the person who were, who's working from home, especially is somebody who is working and not hanging around at home to do chores, necessarily. So we break up the like meal planning. And I, you know, I, Tuesday and Saturday are days where I always am cooking dinner. And then we vary it for the other days. But, you know, I try to, first off, I have a door and it's a fire door, so it swings closed. And I try to schedule in the closing of the door. I have a routine for that too, believe it or not. I have a shut down the computer, turn off the light, close the door kind of routine. It's not like this room isn't

here and it's not like I can't come and turn the computer back on later. But I try at a certain time, usually after my wife comes home from work, sometimes it's when dinner's ready, do the shutdown, turn it off routine to stop working. Because I think that's part of it too, is that, you know, they provide you, your routine provides you some ammunition to override that screaming in your head that says, no, must continue working forever or we'll never survive. Right. To be like, no, no, no, it's OK. This is the time where you need to hang it up a little bit and go be with your family or or or take a walk or go see a movie or whatever it is that you do to be in recreation or leisure or family time and make a break. And if you don't build that in, you will be trapped. Yeah, I totally agree.

I think routines can actually enhance and increase the ability to do leisure time. One of the things I do on the, like, if everything's working according to plan on Monday and Friday, I'm basically at my computer all day grinding through work, whether it's a book or a brief or whatever. And I'm a big fan of Pomodoro timers. You know, I set a 50 minute timer and say, okay, I'm going to work 50 minutes. And then, then I take a 15 minute break and because I'm home, I can go out and pull weeds in the garden or, you know, just go out. It's just, I take 15 minutes just, you know, by get away from the computer. And that's kind of a routine I have

on those working days. And I'm super productive when I can make that system work for me. So, so when you break a routine, I mean, when do you decide that this routine isn't working for me anymore? Uh, well, that's, that's the, that's the challenge. I feel like we, we, uh, talked about this when we talked about scope, the same thing, the idea that, um, that, uh, you've always got to keep an eye on it, right? You've got to,'ve always got to keep an eye on it, right? You've got to keep an eye on your routine and see what's working and what's not working. You've got to keep some space in your schedule for thinking about the long term. I mean, I think this goes hand in hand with what we were talking about, about scope.

The idea that if I'm thinking of doing a project, a long-term project that, that, uh, I need to make time to think about it. When, when I said, you know, Mike Hurley has his one week of, of, uh, busy and one week that's a little less busy, um, that opens him with this. I think, I think making space in your time for, uh, project planning is good. It can be part of something else. I used to back at IDG, I called this the walk in the woods approach that sometimes I would take a work from home or I would get people together at somebody's house. And it was just like, get out of the routine and talk about stuff you don't normally think about. It could be like when I walk the dog. Sometimes when I walk the dog, that's the goal is just to think about the bigger picture stuff when I'm not sitting,

you know, doing my routine stuff. But you've got to plan that too. If, you know. You need a routine for the non-routine. Yeah, breaking out of your routine has got to be part of your routine. Well, you know, and I think a recurring theme on this show will be that as an independent, you have not only the power to start being independent, but you have the power to constantly be re-evaluating what you're doing and how you're doing it. And that is one of the, the reasons why I love this lifestyle so very much.

So whether you've had the same routine for, for years or whether you're just getting started there's no reason why you can't start questioning a few things right now. Yeah, I agree. All right. So we covered routines. Just in closing, let us know what you think of the show. We're, you know,

we're still figuring out our routine. Yeah. So, you know, we'll take some feedback on the show format if you'd like. Let us know if there's any topics

you think we should cover or people we should be talking to here on the free agents. Yeah. So we'll have to do this again sometime. I'll put it in my calendar

and schedule it as a routine. We're going to do it on Mike Hurley's week off. You know, his 49-day week off. Yeah, then he'll be available. See you next time. Bye, everybody. You can check out the show notes or send us feedback by visiting relay.fm slash freeagents and follow us on Twitter at freeagentsfm.