Focused - 45: Like Going Back to High School

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

David's home workspace gets invaded by teenagers, Jason reprises his old commute and learns to appreciate the ability to work from anyplace, and a listener reminds us of a classic technique: making promises that your future self has to keep.

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 David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason. Hi, David. How are you?

Good. Ready to come back for another month and talk about being a free agent. Yes, that's right. We are doing our fortnightly podcast, and we want to behind-the-scenes things. fortnightly podcast and we we one of behind the scenes things we we set our time and we plan it all out and we actually do these in a block of two so we have a free agents day and that's a that's a fun day and then uh and then we go away for a month and i think in terms of time management i think that's one of the ways that we've found that we can put this show together so uh it's always fun to have Free Agents Day. One of the reasons the show can exist, frankly, is that we can lump it together like that.

Yeah, we spend half a day building it, and then I spend some time editing it, you spend some prep time beforehand, and yeah, it all works out. So I'm just curious, as you go through the month, because I take notes for these shows, do you just have something on the side you write stuff down on? How do you figure out what you're going to talk about when we get to these content shows like this one?

Yeah, I try to have a place where I write things down if a thought occurs to me, whether it's in reminders or in notes. Or if we've got the document for the next regular show up, I will pop it in there. But I definitely try to write down as things are happening to me and occurring to me that I have that moment of that's a free agents discussion or at least mention. And I try to write that down. I assume you do the same thing. Yeah, I want to get better at writing because I seem to only write down things that go wrong. I want to start writing down things that go right, too, because sometimes things go right, down things that go wrong. I want to start writing down things that go right too, because sometimes things go right too. So I had something happen this month that is something, a topic you covered

earlier on the show, but finally got around to hitting me this month. You know, since my wife has now in the working stiff, you know, she's going to work every day. When she was home, it was kind of an insulation between me and the daily grind of the house. But I'm doing more stuff around the house now, cooking a few more dinners, driving kids a little more often, and all that is fine. I can make it work. But I found myself the other day frustrated because my daughter came in the room and said, hey, I need you to take me to the movies right now. And it was like all her friends were there and she had planned this, but she hadn't told me. And I remembered you talking about this last year, I believe, where you had a similar experience.

And I took your advice, honestly. I just kind of bit my tongue for a second and I looked at my computer. I said, okay, I have a call in 30 minutes. I can get you there and I can get back. But I used the drive to the movies to talk to her about, hey, you know, I am happy to help you when I can get you there and I can get back. But I use the drive to the movies to talk to her about, hey, you know, I am happy to help you and I can, but you know, you got to give me more warning. And, and I understand there's emergencies and if there's an emergency, I will drop everything and help you. But going to a pre-planned movie event is not an emergency. So you got to do a

better job of telling me. So I've been working on setting boundaries and expectations with my kids, because I'm home and sometimes they need me. Have you made any progress on that? Well, in some areas, I have made a lot of progress, which is mostly that my daughter has a driver's license now. So she's not a problem anymore. But, but yeah, what you say is exactly what I experienced this idea of being assumed that I'm a utility that can be called on on a moment's notice. And, you know, what I ended up the deal we made, and it did before she got her driver's license, the deal we made that resolved the issue was me saying, you need to, if you expect me to pick you up or take you somewhere, you need to tell me in advance. Like if it's that afternoon, you need to, if you expect me to pick you up or take you somewhere, you need to tell me

in advance. Like if it's that afternoon, you need to tell me that morning before you go to school or the night before. Um, and occasionally she would like text me in the middle of the day. Um, and that was not ideal, but it was better, but we did. She, for the most part, she would check in with me in the morning and say, I'm going to need you to take me to this place at this time. And I would look at my calendar and I would say whether I could do that or not, because, you know, that's the other part of it is I may not be able to. And I had a couple of those where she said, can you do this? And I said, no, I'm in San Francisco that day.

Oh, sorry. That's not my life doesn't revolve around driving you around. Now that she has her driver's license, it's not as big a deal. But, you know, boundaries is as much as we talk about, like, how our partners understand, how our children understand. There are moments when you realize that that understanding only carries so far. And in fact, breaking news, I can reveal this. Literally yesterday afternoon, this happened to me where this is spring break week. As we record this, my kids are off. My daughter is traveling. She's on a big school trip, but my son is home. And I thought he was aware of the fact that I am working out here.

But the fact is, yesterday afternoon, he just came in and asked me to set something up for him in the other room. And this morning, he did the same thing. And I said, you know, this is my job. Like, we're not all on spring break this week. And he's like, yeah, I know. But in the moment, it did not occur to him. It's like, oh, daddy can solve this problem.

I'm going to go get him. And that's, yeah, it's always worth keeping that in mind that like setting the barriers and making it clear and communicating when it's okay and when it's not okay. It's a challenge because I feel that pressure. You and I have talked about it several times in the past i definitely feel that pressure that even if it's self-imposed it's that implication that i'm home so like if my son comes home and we're having issues with him finishing his homework or being diligent with his homework um and then my wife doesn't get home from work until 5 30 or 6. There is this moment where I feel like, and this doesn't really happen so much anymore

because we've kind of talked it through, but there is, I think lingering there is the idea that when he's home, that means he's being supervised to a certain degree and I can help him with his homework or check his homework. And what I said was, I'm happy to do things like open the door for him and give him a reminder to do his homework. And, you know, what I said was, I'm happy to do things like open the door for him and give him a reminder to do his homework. But in terms of stopping my job at 3.30 every day in order to do a comprehensive homework review, it's not going to happen because I'm working. And that is hard for everybody to get their mind around. And look, if I had nothing going on at 3.30 every weekday, then that would be interesting. But I could see using that time to do that work

with him. And if it became like desperately important that I do that, I would do it. But, you know, I wasn't expected to come home from San Francisco and reach our house at 3.30 so I could let my son in and help him with his homework, right? And I'm still working. So, just because I'm here, it makes my availability more, but it does not actually mean that now I am always available. Yeah. And honestly, if you had nothing to do at 3.30 every day, you'd have a much bigger problem on your hands. I know. Or it would be super awesome. It would be the best, right? Like I can just knock off at 3.30 and just be a parent the rest of the

afternoon. I would, you know, that wouldn't be so bad necessarily, but that's not the reality of it. I think just kind of looking at this problem as a free agent, a couple things I would say is we all carry this pressure inside of us. I think it's more common than not as a free agent, because you do like, I like the lifestyle. I do not want to lose it. So I feel this constant pressure to be doing work. And it's something that we've talked about throughout the show. So you're carrying this inside of you. And then somebody asks you to do something that pulls you out of the zone when you're working, you zone when you're focused and getting work done. And it's really easy to overreact.

And I think if you're in that position, I don't think I did, but I was a little short and I don't like it when I talk to my kids that way. And I think it's a good reminder to say, okay, just take a breath when that happens and make sure at a time when you are in the right mindset, you can have the conversation. It's interesting because I had the conversation with my wife when she went to work because she was very worried that the house would fall apart. I said, it'll be fine. I said, the only request is that you let me know in advance when you need me to do something. And this morning she sent me a bunch of calendar invites for picking up at school in late May and early June. And we're recording this in mid April. So it's like, that is great. You know, that kind of stuff, I get it in the calendar. Then when, you know, people want to set meetings with me, I know I can't do it in that afternoon. So that's great. And I just didn't do that very well with my kids. It's really on me

more than anybody else. And something to be thinking about if you're going to try to live this life. I will have not seen it yet, but she'll give me a heads up saying, oh, I put this on your calendar. There's this thing that's going on. And then we do our own negotiation sometimes in the morning where it's like, when are you getting home? For me, it's a lot of like, I've got a podcast that night. I've got a podcast at six, so I can make dinner before or I can make dinner after. There's some of that who's making dinner,'s the dinner uh plan because of timing issues like sometimes i have to do uh dinner because she gets home late and the kids want to eat early sometimes she does dinner because i've got a podcast or something like that and she can get home and do it uh it varies but we try to set that out in advance because it you know it's the usual

thing or sometimes she'll text me and say can you you know can you cook the chicken or or whatever and like yesterday i put the chicken in at four o'clock or something like that um and that was convenient because that meant that was the thing i could do and then she was going to pick it up but she needed the chicken done by the time she got home and you know it's a communication and taking advantage of the fact that i am home and popping out for five minutes to put the chicken in is not a problem but i need to know like i tell my kids this too it's like the last thing you want to do is surprise me if you can help it and this is a good skill in life like people hate surprises i mean i know we're like oh surprise party yay but a lot of times

you would be amazed at how much better people react to things and not not all people everybody reacts differently but a lot of people if you prepare them this is going to happen and this is what's going to happen when it happens yeah and then then the thing happens and they're like all right i was prepared for this whereas if you surprise somebody and say oh this thing is happening then they get really upset upset. Like, oh, what do you mean? What's going on? And it's just like, I think that's a good life skill. Like if you can lay groundwork and explain what's going to happen, it's that classic approach of explain what's going to happen, watch it happen, and explain what just happened. And that makes people much less uneasy.

Yeah, just straying into parenting when my kids were little, it was funny because getting them to bed was always hard. It's hard for any kid having too much fun. And the workflow I ended up with was I say, okay, in 10 minutes, you have to go to bed. But then I would set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes. I wouldn't like look at my watch because for some reason in my kid's mind, the kitchen timer was like the voice of God or something like it was inarguable when the kitchen timer would go off that, okay, now I have to go to bed. Whereas if I looked at my watch, they wouldn't believe me, I guess. I don't know. Whatever works, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've got a story to tell about an outing that I took. But before we do that, I should probably tell everybody about one of our sponsors on this episode. This episode of Free Agents is brought to you by Timing. You've heard about it before here. It's the automatic time tracking app for macOS. whether it comes internally or from the internet or from somebody in your house.

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it automatically tracks how much time you spend on your Mac broken down by app, website and document. Now that's a lot of data to work through. And again, you're not your job is not to process your time management data. It's to manage your time and do your job. So timing lets you use drag and drop to create rules that will automatically categorize all your time for you. It understands not all your work happens on the Mac, it'll automatically suggest to fill gaps in your timeline. So you'll never have to forget to like track a meeting, you get back to your desk and says, Oh, you were gone. Oh, yes, that was a meeting. And then you move on. It'll even, you know, it'll even do that, like automatically, you return to your Mac, and I'll say, Where were you? What were you doing? And you can log that in and then move on instead of looking back later and

going, Why was I idle for an hour? It like oh that was a meeting that was a phone call something like that i've learned a lot about the way i use my computer um every day i am i i think to myself on a weekday i think i'm not as productive as i should be and then when i'm working on the weekend i see the work percentage and i think i'm working more than i should be and that's something for me to work on but i get that data instead of it just passing in a haze where I think, wow, what did I do this morning? I can look. And the nice thing is it isn't always I didn't do anything this morning. I just clicked around on the internet for way too long instead of doing my job. A lot of times it's like, oh, yeah, I did that this morning. That's totally part of my job.

Sometimes you internalize what you're working on and then it becomes like not work and it doesn't feel like, well, I didn't, at least I don't want to talk about you, but for me personally, I do that a lot where I think, oh, I didn't really do anything this morning. And then I look back and I realize, oh no, actually I did important work that needed to be done before I do this other stuff that I consider the real work, but it was actually part of my job. Timing is very confident that you are going to love Timing too. So they offer a free trial, 14 days, totally free. Go to timingapp.com slash free agents, and you'll save 10% when you buy it after the 14 day trial is over, or perhaps immediately upon seeing it.

Whenever you like, you can buy it stop worrying about time focus on doing your best work instead thank you to timing for supporting free agents hey jason happy baseball season yeah so it is baseball season and i went to opening day which is the first time i've ever been to a baseball opening day in my life which is very exciting um you know the first game opening opening day, there's bunting, there's ceremony, there's a whole pregame thing. It was a lot of fun. But yeah, so that's, again, my life is so hard. And for fans, there's no day more optimistic than right before the opening pitch of opening day,

right? Everybody's undefeated on opening day, David. That is the truth. It's absolutely true. And the sun is shining, ideally, unless you're in some places where it's like snowing. I think the opening day was snowed out in New York City for the Yankees this year. It's pretty funny. But it was a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco. So, here's the thing. Opening day is also kind of a zoo. They charge huge amounts for parking. It's kind of hard to get in and out of the city. There's so much traffic. There's commute traffic, plus there's all the opening day traffic, which is obviously a sellout. And I was trying to think about how I was going to get in for opening day, and I realized the right thing to do was just to take the bus. So, bear with me

here. This is actually a free agent story. First off, it meant that I was doing my commute for the first time since I left my job. My commute that I did for 15 years. I used to walk out my door at 8 in the morning or 7.40 or whatever. They were timed to the various buses and walk down the street and across a freeway on ramp. It's less dangerous than it sounds to a bus pad on the freeway and get on a bus and take it into downtown San Francisco and get off at first admission, where there's now a very tall building, and walk up 2nd Street to my office. And I did that on opening day.

I walked out my front door and down the street, just like I was going to work for all those years, and I waited for the bus and I got on the same bus, used my same little card that I used to do my bus fare and ended up at first admission in San Francisco. It was really, really strange. I will just say that. And we haven't really talked about this, but it's like my first winter break after I was a freshman in college, I went back and visited a couple of my teachers in the high school and I never did that again. But it was that thing of like, oh, you know, nostalgia, I'll go back, I'll check in with everybody. And then you get that moment that's almost like, this is weird. Like, I moved past this. I should just go on with my life. And I had some of those feelings too. Like, I am reliving a perfectly fine part of my past, but it is past now.

So I had some reflections that I was doing separate from the excitement of going to a baseball game while I was doing my commute because it was everything that represents what I used to do and don't do anymore. Some of the best advice I got after I left my job of so many years from a friend was just turn the page. left my job of so many years from a friend was just turn the page you know it's forget about things that went well forget about injury sustained you you have a new thing to do now you need to turn the page and focus on that yeah and i think i feel like after after three years of this um three and a half years i have gotten to that point point. In fact, I will zoom ahead for a moment. I did end up, so the Macworld office is, the IDG office is right next to the ballpark. It's like two blocks away. So, I actually did pop in there and see my editor, Roman, who edits the columns that I write for Macworld. And I was turning in a column and I'll more about that in a second.

And I've been there a few times. I did a video for them cause they pay me. I write for them every, every week. Um, so I've gone and visited them a few times and seen people I know and stuff like that and taking people out to lunch and all of that stuff. But generally I kind of like meet them in the, in the lobby or, or the upstairs lobby on the floor that they're on. And this time, because I did actually have to turn in this story and I was talking to Roman about it and I had about a half an hour before I needed to leave. I actually went into the offices for the first time, like all the way in. I talked to the guy who used to work for me, who is the editorial director there now. He's literally in my old

office with my old furniture. It's my old whiteboard. He's at my old desk. That was really weird. But I will also say it took three and a half years before I was willing to come that far into that office. I was not comfortable going in there. And I think it says something that three and a half years later, it didn't matter to me in that way. I found it actually kind of refreshing. It's like, that is not part of my life anymore. It's a thing that I used to do,

but I have moved on from that now. And I'm here as one of your former colleagues, yes, but also one of your freelance writers who is turning in some stories. And that was a really interesting part of this journey was that I didn't just ride the bus. I went to the office. I stood inside my old office. It was very weird. Yeah, I got my old firm hired me last year. I don't think I talked about this on the show. They had a big opening statement they were giving me to give and they wanted me to give them some keynote help. So I went in and spent a day kind of coaching and helping out with keynote. So I went into the old office and saw my old furniture

with a stranger sitting at it. That was kind of weird. And it was a good experience for me to go in there and it did affirm every decision I made to leave, to tell you the truth. But it is kind of surreal to go in and see the same environment that you spent so much time at and does not be a part of it anymore yeah it's just uh it's one of those things and

and i don't know i felt like it was almost like a milestone to go back there it's the first there's the leaving and then there's the being away and you know i would go to ball games there and go past the office and go past all the old places that we used to go out to lunch and stuff like that. And it was like a little weird and a little nostalgic. And this time I feel like it was another milestone, which is it's kind of I'm past it now. It's just a different world and it's fine. Did you feel kind of a sense of relief as you walked out? I did.

Yeah. Just asking. out i did yeah just asking yeah i mean i i think the other times when i went up up the elevator and talked to people in the lobby or met them downstairs when we went out to lunch i felt more relief i think this time there might have been a little bit of that but it was more just like i did my stuff and now i'm off to the next thing and it was just not as big a deal i feel like i'm through to the other side now with with my feelings about it so that was good i want to talk about what i was doing, though, because this is the other piece of this story. It's not just my emotional journey through my

old life, like Ghost of Christmas Past kind of thing. And a lot of podcasts talk about this, but I just wanted to point it out again as a free agent talking to other potential or current free agents. I was struck again by the power of mobility. And for me, it's an iPad, an LTE iPad I brought with a keyboard. But it could be your laptop, it could be whatever. But I was struck again by the fact that for a lot of jobs, if you're a free agent, you can do them everywhere. And we talked about it a little bit bit but as somebody who has a home office uh and i don't travel a massive amount and when i do it's usually flight to a conference and that it's a whole other world or it's a vacation like we talked about your your trip to london this was different

i had a column that i usually read on a tuesday and opening day was a tuesday and i thought well what am i going to do and i thought well i'm going to take the bus in, which means I'm going to get in two hours before the game starts. And potentially after the game, I could even, you know, I could work or I could drink beer at the game and not work, whatever. Uh, we'll see how much work I do. And so I brought my iPad LTE iPad with keyboard and I got off the bus. Uh, yeah, actually in this case, because of various, uh, other reasons, I actually brought a smaller one. Because I've got review units of all of these. And I was writing about the 9.7-inch iPad.

Sure. And so, I wanted to bring a 9.7-inch iPad with me in order to sort of like refresh what it was like. Also, it's just a, you know, it's even more compact. It's less in my bag. So, usually, I travel with a big 12.9-inch one. This time, I tried the 9.7 because i wanted to refresh myself so i transferred my sim card over because it's also a cellular model and i did that um and i ended up at a cafe that i used to stop by occasionally to get some tea or to get a cinnamon roll that's at uh first and for san francisco

people who care first and and howard so just down the street from where my bus let me off and the nice thing about that cafe is that it's really large it takes up it's very very long it takes up sort of one side of the building on the ground floor where there are lots of places to sit so i got some tea and i got a cinnamon roll and i brought out my ipad I'd already actually, because that's such a small iPad and there weren't that many people on the bus because it was like the last commute bus of the day, I actually wrote a few hundred words of my column on the bus. And then when I got to the cafe, I wrote the rest of the column. I put in my headphones

and played music from my iPhone and I sat there with my iPad and I was bringing up webpages and copying links and doing it all from inside that cafe. And I was just struck again by how amazing it is that we are able to be productive as professionals wherever we go, with exceptions, but wherever we go. And I wouldn't do it all the time like it would be harder i i would do it i i should say but it would be harder to do it all the time but i was reminded of our friend federico vatici from max stories who um especially when he sometimes he's just running around in rome where he lives but for a while when he was uh being treated for cancer he was going he had to go this doctor's appointment and that doctor's appointment he lives. But for a while when he was being treated for cancer,

he had to go to this doctor's appointment and that doctor's appointment. He was doing a lot of his work in his car on an iPad. And I was reminded of that too. And just thinking, how great is it that we are at a point now technologically where if you get your act together and you've got a system and you've got apps that you can use and you've got a system and you've got a you've got apps that you can use and you you know and you've got the discipline to not just sit there and read a book on the bus ride but actually get some work done or at the cafe like i was able to go into san francisco make it a day trip that that gave me two and a half hours that i was going to have to kill time before i could actually go to the ballpark and i never considered it killing time because I knew that I could bring a device, sit in a cafe and get two and a half hours of work in. And that's absolutely what happened. So I did, I did drink beer at the ball game because my column was already turned in. I

turned it in when I was at the offices, said to Roman, it's in, and then went and watched a baseball game and ate a hot dog and drank a beer. So, I just, I don't have a point here beyond the basic, like, isn't it great that we can do this? And to encourage people, like, I actually think there are some mental health benefits to the change of scenery. I've talked about that before. And I was, you know, that column came out of me really easily when i was in these different environments because it was that change of scenery and i was putting in my headphones and i was focusing on my task at hand and it was pretty great you know i do that here occasionally where

i will walk to starbucks and write the column and then come home just wanting even though starbucks has got people in it and it's more distracting but it's different it's a different device usually that i use i'm not using my big eye i mac when i when i do it and i got people in it and it's more distracting, but it's different. It's a different device usually that I use. I'm not using my big iMac when I do it. And I got the headphones in and I'm focused and the words pour out. And sometimes I'll try that like in my house. I'll go somewhere else in my house and stand when there are not children about. So, I don't know. It was an interesting experience about my life as it is now as a professional in a lot of different ways and how my life is different from what it was a few years ago. And in the middle of that, yeah, I also

got to see a baseball game, which was nice. Well, I think also, I mean, when you think about the context of it all, you were at the old office where you used to have to, you know, have your jobby job and go in the office and you saw the places that you guys had to go to lunch because that's what you did. And you compare that to now and the options are almost unlimited. I think that's one of the big selling points of being a free agent. There's, there's obviously lots of downsides. We talk about that on the show, but this freedom and, uh, and I have really gone up and down with that over my three years as a free agent. I mean, when I first started, I couldn't wait to get out of the house and do, you know, go to weird places to work because I could, you know, like I

famously, I go to Disneyland about once every two or three weeks because my wife loves Disneyland and she goes and meets her friends and I want to be with my wife. So I'll go take an iPad and I have places at Disneyland that I sit and do my work. And I work just fine there. And then when they have their lunch, I go meet my wife and have lunch with her. And then I'll go back to doing my work. And there's limits on that. For instance, when I go out of the office, whether I'm going to Laguna Beach or Disneyland or whatever, I turn my phones off, you know, where people don't necessarily get through to me right away. I get messages. I don't want to answer a phone call and have the steamship blowing in the background, you know, but there's a lot of work I can get done. And I think that's

true for most people. Some folks have, are like creative professionals that have really high-end computers and edit videos or do something where they need a fancy computer. But even folks like that could probably go and do some planning and manage email, get some invoicing. I mean, there's lots of stuff you can do to get yourself away. And one of the things I did that I think was really smart, um, after about a year and a half ago is I bought a bicycle with a little electric motor in it because, um, where I live, it's super hilly. You can't, you just can't ride a bike up these hills, or at least I can't, let's just put it that way. So I bought a bike with a motor on, but it can get me like five miles away and get me home. And one of my favorite things to do now is in the morning,

once I finished whatever I need to do, I get on the bike and I go somewhere and I work, you know, it might be a park, it might be a Starbucks or whatever. And like you, I'm fortunate enough to be able to work with an iPad because it has that built-in wireless connection. That makes it really easy. You could do it with a laptop and a tethered phone, but I do need an internet connection, but the iPad is so light and flexible. Because I actually have the first iPad Pro pro i bought the big one and then when

they came out with the second one last year i bought the 10.5 so i have a small one that fits in the pannier on my bicycle and i just load it up and i go and i i get work done i bill hours i um you know review contracts and and i it's just a great life i i i don't know how else to put it i encourage people who are in the house to think about that, too, in the house, in the office, to think about giving it a try, especially if you're frustrated. And maybe even, like David, making a habit of it, a rhythm of it. It can also be a way. I think this is great. I actually am going to think about doing this myself.

I think this is great. I actually am going to think about doing this myself. I like this idea of having it be integrated into your getting out of the house and getting at being active kind of thing, like ride, ride a bike a little bit and do some work and ride your bike a little bit more. Then you're getting some exercise, you're getting some fresh air and you're getting a little bit of a change of scenery altogether. And that means that also sometimes when I'm thinking about going out of the house to run or ride a bike, I think, wow, I'm blowing an hour out of my day to do this. It's a little bit easier to which you should probably do because you should exercise and get out of the house. But if you think about it going toward your working outside of the house time, like, well, what I'm doing is I'm investing 30 minutes and riding my bike to

get somewhere where I'm going to work, and then I'm going to invest in returning home. I know that that's just a game that you play in your brain, but it can be useful. So it's worth thinking about, like, I'm a real believer in the change of scenery thing. I think it can do wonders for your productivity. Yeah. And that's the thing that really I would emphasize is that replanting yourself into a different location somehow magically unlocks things in your brain, where if you're stuck on something, a lot of times those problems get solved when you just put yourself somewhere else. I don't know how it works, but it works. It's funny. Our brains are strange and they file things in ways that we don't

understand consciously. And you just kind of have to go with it. I was told a long time ago that if you are thinking of doing something and then you go into another room to do it and forget what it was, the best thing to do is to return back to where you were when you thought of it and that they've done tests. And literally, if you step through a doorway, when you thought of it and that they've done tests. And literally if you step through a doorway, part of your brain's cleanup method says, ah, I'm moving on to a new task and you will forget things.

And if you step back through that doorway, your brain will essentially like recall the backup of, of the previous state and you'll suddenly remember it. And it totally is true. At least for my brain that I, I have had that where I step out of a door, and I'm like, wait, why was I coming out here? And I literally just step back through the doorway,

and I'm like, oh, yeah. So our brains are funny. But a change in scenery, it really is something worth trying if you've not tried it, just to jog things loose when you're struggling. Just another way to make people that have to go to an office every day feel bad yeah sorry sorry about that when i you know we built we built like a little cafe area and a little lounge area into my office when we when

we redid it so that people could like pick their laptops up off their desks and go to a different space and i don't know you know how many people take advantage of that but that was the whole idea there is to give yourself at least a little bit of a change of scenery or you go out to starbucks and work there for a little while and then come back as long as your boss is okay with it. That's the trick. So we have a little more to talk about on this show. But first, David, you want to tell our listeners about our other friends who sponsored the show this week? Yes.

I want to talk about our friends over at FreshBooks. And to all the free agents out there, you know how important it is to make smart decisions for your business. And our friends at FreshBooks can save you up to 192 hours with their cloud accounting software for freelancers that's ridiculously easy to use. Now, by simply tasks, by simplifying the tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time it takes for over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. And I'll tell you, getting paid is super important when you are out on your own, and managing that can be a complete pain in the neck. You know, the cloud solutions like FreshBooks are the way to solve the problem.

They've got several new features that I'd like to share with you. One of them is about email. So when you email a client an invoice in FreshBooks, they show you whether they've seen it or not, which puts an end to the guessing game. So the old days, you used to lick a stamp and you'd mail an invoice to a client. And if they didn't pay it, you didn't even know if they received it or not. Maybe something went wrong with the mail. Maybe you had a bad address. So you'd start getting angry and then you'd find out, oh, they never even opened it. Well, with FreshBooks, you know, because it tells you. And so when you call them, they can't say, well, I never got it. And you say, well, yeah, you did. You opened it on such

and such a date. So it just gives you a better way to manage that problem. And they've also got this new projects feature where you can share files and messages with your clients contractors employees see how quickly things happen when all your conversations live in one place so if you're listening to this and not using fresh books yet now is the time to try it fresh books is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of the show there's no credit card required all you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents. That's all caps with the space in the, how did you hear about a section? Now, if you are doing any kind of invoicing, if you're thinking about going out on your own and you just have a couple invoices, this is a great way to get started. Go in and download the trial, give it a shot,

because I think you're going to be really happy with FreshBooks, and that's just one big problem solved for you. We thank FreshBooks for all of their support of this show. All right. Should we do some feedback? Yeah. I feel like that's a good way to close, right? Yeah.

Dan, I think my favorite feedback of the whole month came from Dan. And you and I were talking about future promises and the problems that they cause for us. And Dan wrote in and says, I just listened to the latest episode and enjoyed the interview with David Wayne. And when he was talking about the hyperblock scheduling, oh, we got to say it again. I was reminded of an idea he's been playing with lately that's been really helpful. And he says, when to say no. You know, that's a constant issue we have. And he says, when to say no, you know, we, that's a constant issue we have. And Dan's idea was when someone asks you to do something in the future, you time lapse

it to the present. So you say, if I was being asked to do this tomorrow, would I still do it? Because it's really easy when someone says, Hey, will you have lunch with me next month? Very easy to make promises for future you, you know, but they say, well, they have lunch with me tomorrow. And then you have to really kind of the rubber meets the road. Do you really have time to do this or not? And I thought that was a great exercise. I started doing it and have immediately seen benefits because as I look into my future calendar, I haven't got a bunch of garbage in there that I put in that I really shouldn't have. I have more time for the things that I'm passionate about.

Yeah, I really like the idea of, I mean, so much of what we talk about on this show, and I feel like this is probably true of anybody who talks about productivity at any point, is about ways of viewing the world. I don't want to call it life hacks. I don't want to call it tricks. I don't want to call it anything like that, but ways of viewing the world and ways of looking at your priorities through a different lens in order to get some clarity that you were lacking. And this is the idea here of saying, how important is this by asking yourself a question that you might not remember to ask yourself otherwise, when you think how important, well, this person is important, this job, they pay me, you know, all of that. And then instead,

you're like, no, no, no, let me ask myself a question. What's that answer? Isn't that interesting? And again, you might say, well, okay, in this case, it's different. But I like the idea of trying to put your dilemma in a different perspective. And so yeah, that's a cool idea. Do you ever find that sometimes something shows up on your calendar that you agreed to like a few months ago and you're like oh why did i do that david literally everything in my calendar i feel that way about and i i'm not kidding like i get up in the morning and i look at the calendar or it's the night before and i think oh boy i'm doing that i'm talking to that person i'm going there there. Why did I agree to that? But that's my productivity tool. Like I got to say is I agree to things knowing that I should do them.

It's easy for me to agree to things when I know I should do them and that it's good for me. And then the other part of me is the part of me who never shirks his responsibilities and never breaks his promises. And so when I'm that guy, I'm like, oh, why did I promise this? But I do it because I'm that guy. there's my life hack is is i agree to things because i know i should do them and that's the part of my brain that's acting that's like yes this is a thing that you should do and then the part of me who really doesn't want to do it it's too late i already agreed to it so i'm stuck and that that's my life well you know my my legal practice so for the max sparky stuff it's a very solitary life i mean i get on the microphone and podcast once in a while but uh production there has one person involved it's me you know and the best thing I can do is sit home and type and write and screencast and do that stuff.

But for the legal stuff, I have clients. You got to have these relationships. And I call it riding the circuit where once every couple weeks, probably I get in the car in the morning and I just drive around. Sometimes I go to Los Angeles. Sometimes I go to San Diego. I live kind of just in the general area of Southern California. And I swing by a bunch of clients. And I just kind of schedule these meetings, breakfast, tea, lunch, afternoon tea, you know, and usually I try to be home by dinner. And I rarely bill any of that stuff. It's usually just kind of check in meetings. I'm a lawyer that does house calls, I guess is a way. And every time I get up to do that, you know, put my tie on and start driving in traffic, I just, I yell at myself and say, why are you doing this? You know? And the fact is I'm doing it for a good reason because you've

got to have those relationships if you want to keep working with these people. And it's just part of the cost of doing business. You've got to do these meetings. But I have still not found peace with a way to be happy about. In fact, I guess I should rephrase that. When I meet with the people, I'm happy to be with them. They're all basically friends. But just the whole idea of just taking a day and doing that is still hard for me. But you got to do it. Well, I think that's pretty good, Jason. We've got a lot of stuff covered here. We've got more for next time. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. I want to've got more for next time. We'll see you in a couple weeks. I want to thank our sponsors for today,

our friends over at FreshBooks and Timing. We've got a great guest coming in in two weeks. We can't wait to share that with you. And until then, I guess we'll see you. Yeah, leave us a review on iTunes if you like the show. That's always helpful. Or wherever you listen, give us a star, make us a favorite, whatever it is that you can do to send good vibes our way. We love that.

You can always email us. Go to relay.fm slash freeagents. Click on the contact link and the email will come to us. You can visit our Facebook page, facebook.com slash groups slash freeagents group and connect with your fellow free agents. And we will be back in a fortnight with our special guest. Until then, David, it's been a pleasure as always. See you in two weeks.