Time Management Is Chaos Management, and Upbuild's Tips and Tricks for Productivity

This is an automated transcript and may contain minor errors.

Hello everyone. And welcome back to Upbuilding the Self. This is Michael Sloyer and I am here with Hari Prasada and Vipin. It's great to be with you guys today. Great to be with you. Thank you, Michael. So for our topic today, we're going to be talking about time management and productivity.

This is one of the topics that I'm most excited to because if I think about the possibility of. Binging 10 hours of a Netflix show or binging 10 hours of time management and productivity podcasts, I would absolutely choose the podcast. This is a topic which I've never studied formally, but I could say that I've invested hundreds, maybe thousands of hours into hearing other people talk about this.

So it's really exciting for us at Upbill to be able to bring this. Do our podcast audience and hopefully share our very unique lens on it. So that's the framing for our conversation. And Hari, it would be great if you could get us started by sharing what's so important about talking about time management and productivity.

Hari Prasada: Oh, goodness, Michael. That was excellent. It got me reflecting on how many hours I've poured into this subject as well. And it's kind of a black hole, but there's a good side to it. Hopefully I've come out with some things that are meaningful. And I think I have, why is this so important? Why is this something that attracts me as well in such a powerful way?

because time is the most valuable thing. There is nothing more valuable than time. There's an ancient Indian saying that you cannot buy back a single moment for anything. There is no price you can pay to buy back a single moment. And there's a term that I keep as a meditation with me day in and day out constantly.

In Sanskrit it's avyarta kalatvam. Kala is time. Avyarta kalatvam. It means making the most of every moment. Artha is value. Getting the most value out of every single moment. And I am so passionate about this. So, If we want to be who we are, if we want to be the real self wasting time is not gonna get you there.

Now, this is probably something which is universal. I think every human being can relate to this in some way, but there's also a unique angle that we're coming from, which we can speak. And more depth about that this really is for the purpose of uncovering who we are, not so we can make ourselves look good or achieve more for the sake of achievement.

Beautiful. Thank you. And Vipin, what would you share?

Vipin: I appreciated everything that you said, Hari Prasada. The only thing that I, I think it would reinforce what you said that I wanted to add was there's this adage that you are what you eat. that we put into our body then becomes ourselves and our organs.

And I think very similarly, we could say how we spend our time is who we are. And so that to me is why this is important. We. Are a function of how we choose to spend our time and like how you mentioned, who are we ultimately and who are we trying to become and how we spend our time is an integral part of that.

Hari Prasada: Yeah, thank you both. I'm already feeling the gravity of this topic, which is very different than how I approach this topic. 10 or 15 years ago when I was going through all those podcasts, it was much more about success and productivity for productivity sake.

And here we're already putting a stake in the ground that this is really about not only becoming the best version of ourselves, but becoming the most authentic and realist version of ourselves. So Hari, you mentioned the unique lens that we have at UpBuild on this topic. What is that? We have only one interest to become the self, to become who we actually are at the core and to remove the layers of ego.

The identities of who we think we should be, that we're constantly trying to project, constantly trying to prove and defend, get them out of the way. So when we talk about time management, what we mean is what will make us more effective in the use of our time to get to who we are. And remove those layers of ego of who we're not and who we are, I've spoken about this and written about this a lot, but who we are is a servant of every living being every living being as part of a higher reality.

So when you think about service. What will equip me to better serve others? How will I have more time and space? Or how will I be able to focus on what's most important? How will I be able to focus period? All of this is necessary. It is so important. So we can't lose sight of that identity as a servant even as we engage in all of these productivity hacks and techniques that might be out there.

That's the thing you said. That's exactly it. The why is the key behind all of this? Why we're engaged in this topic is what gives it its meaning and what will give it an effect that is different from just the Going out there and trying to be super successful. And so why is time management so hard for so many people?

It seems like we do a lot of coaching and this is a topic I can say. Certainly with my clients and very recently I've seen this. Even with people I've been working with for a long time, this seems to be the thing that repeats itself in terms of what people bring to their conversations. They want to get more efficient at doing the things they want to get done.

They want to squeeze in more stuff. They want to. Not procrastinate, not be lazy. And no matter how much focus or energy they put towards it, it seems like this is a topic that repeats itself. And I've heard similar things from you guys as well. Why do you think that is?

Vipin: Time, Hari Prasada said this earlier, it's our most important resource.

It's also our scarcest resource. So we have a lot more things that we're trying to do in a limited amount of time. And so that creates this problem for everybody. And I think it's that simple. It's a supply and a demand problem. We have the demand for our time is much higher than the supply that we have.

And so that creates a challenge for everybody.

Hari Prasada: I would add that our minds do not cooperate with us, and that is a big issue here. So, we want so many things, but then when we try to execute on them, we find that we're not able to do it. So, there are external forces that get in the way, and there are internal forces that get in the way.

And the mind, of the two, the mind is perhaps, the most challenging piece. So again, people want to understand how do I focus? How do I prioritize? How do I do this? How do I do that? Because implied in that is my mind doesn't quite get it or doesn't quite allow me to do it the way that I would like.

Vipin: Mind is not following my instructions.

Hari Prasada: Yes. So the mind, the very thing that wants us to do many of those things is also the same thing that's getting in the way of us doing those things. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. so we've talked about understanding the why and even deeper that the identity that we can rely on is as a servant of all living beings and making sure that we're connected to that identity and to the why behind our use of time.

What are some of the philosophies or guiding principles behind time management that would flow from that overarching goal of being connected to that identity? I think. What's really crucial is knowing yourself. And then from there, you start to understand, okay, well, how will I use my time in the best way?

But if I don't know myself, then what is the question of how I would use my time? It doesn't make any sense. I'm trying to do things because somebody else did them where somebody else said, this is good. How is that going to fulfill me? How is that going to serve me or anybody else? And unfortunately, our world is made up of this crazy hall of mirrors where we look at people doing things and we think, Oh, yeah.

That's cool. I want to be like that. And half the time, we're not even thinking that it's just going on. We're being programmed in that way. Unknowingly, I see something. I like it. And I start angling towards it without even deciding that I'm going to do that. So I have to actually do the work of getting to know myself.

And then time management will naturally make sense. It's not easy. But it will make sense. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Whatever you're using your time on is getting you further away from who you are. And the whole point is lost.

Vipin: And then, if you think about time management, how we spend our time, what is it a function of? It's a function of what we are choosing to do and how long it takes us to do those things. It's a simple math equation. And that's it. The things that I'm doing times the amount of time it takes me to do those things equals the time.

So, when you think about managing time, if I'm trying to actually be better about how I spend my time, I have only two strategies. One is to try to squeeze some of the time it takes me to do those same things. doing all the same things, but just try to become more efficient with those things. And the second is to look at what it is I'm choosing to do.

And the second is really about prioritization. And to me, the major guiding principle, the only guiding principle from, you know, once you actually understood who you are, what's important. That directly implies what do I want to focus on? And time management to me is all about prioritization. That's it.

Because if you think about these two parts of the equation, if you were doing. X, whatever X happens to be, and you were trying to become more efficient doing X. How much time can you squeeze out of that? Maybe you get 10 percent faster. Maybe you get 20 percent faster at doing that thing, but it's incremental where there is a huge.

Opportunity is what are you deciding to put in those slots? What are you focused on? And any radical prioritization or reprioritization changes how you spend your time dramatically. And so, to me, when I think of time management, I think. immediately of prioritization and how am I prioritizing what's important to me and how does it align with what Hari Prasad was just saying, who I am.

Hari Prasada: And Vipin, I'm going to add a third thing to the mix here, sequencing, which actually goes along with prioritization. So the sequence in which we do things matters for a couple of reasons. One, because of the Stephen Covey principle, talk about time management, he has really good stuff to say on this subject.

The Stephen Covey principle of putting your big rocks in first, so that when you put the smaller things in, they fit around it. As opposed to you put the smaller rocks in and then it's like, oh, I have no room for the big rocks, right? So you have to put in your big rocks first. As he would say, first things first, first things first.

And that's why, for example, my meditation practice is most important to happen in the morning as the foundation of my day. And when that is not possible for me, then I feel, ah, things get thrown off. It's not always possible. And there are good reasons for that, but generally speaking, what I need. Is that foundation and then it changes my consciousness.

It changes the effect of everything else that follows when I prioritize like that. Another important piece about this, which is also related to that is times of day. If I'm going to do my meditation at night, when I've just given everything to my day and I'm exhausted, then I'm not really very present for my meditation, and if I'm falling asleep, it's even worse.

So, time of the day matters. Certain things that are done in the morning will be enlivening in a way that it's just not comparable at another time. So the sequence is really important to consider. And that is a function of prioritization.

Vipin: Yeah, I completely agree. I think of sequencing and time of day, all is related to that part of the equation.

What is it that I'm going to focus on first and when?

Hari Prasada: And there's also another thing you said, Vipin, which I found noteworthy about getting in touch with who you are and then doing things from there. What, as you were speaking, I was struck by, there are so many levels to this. Getting in touch with who we are.

It starts in very simple, basic ways. What do I like? What do I not like? What am I good at? What am I not good at? And sort of piecing together the grossest aspects of how we're showing up currently. But it goes so much deeper than that. And at the ultimate level, getting in touch with the real self. And that's when we maximize.

the use of our time in a way that blows everything else out of the water. But on the way to that, we also have to be able to know these grosser aspects of ourselves and align them. And that's really hard for some people. For other people, it's not so difficult. For most of us, It's the realm of values, which is a little bit more subtle,

What do I really stand for? What is meaningful to me? And so many of our coaching clients are struggling with this all the time. And this is an accessible point, but it's typically not an easy one. And then when you figure out what it is that I really value, well, how do I honor that?

How do I stay consistent in honoring that? And so much of our work is about that. This discussion reminds me of a podcast that the three of us did a while back on safe versus quality problems.

Where we talked about how many people come to coaching with time management as something that they're trying to work on, but often not always, but often that is just what we call a safe problem, something that people feel like is something that's easy to talk about, pretty accessible. They are experiencing it constantly in their day of this question about how to get better at time management, but usually there's a quality or deeper.

Problem underneath that safe problem, which is one of what do I actually care about? What are my values? What's truly important to me? What gives my life a lot of meaning and heart? And then even underneath that question is who am I actually underneath everything else? And when we can get some clarity around those two deeper quality problems.

that safer problem and how we approach that starts to take care of itself. Now, there still might be some work that needs to be done on the surface as well. We come from a much more solid grounded place And then, Vip and I really appreciated this distinction you made between getting better, having more efficiency at doing the things that I'm already doing and how there's only a limited gain that can be gotten when we get more efficient at the things that we're doing versus sort of the unlimited gain that we can get when we prioritize what's important to us and maybe even get rid of the other things completely.

Vipin: It goes back to what you said earlier about sequencing. It's great to work on Becoming more efficient, but you have to do that after you have the right things that you're focused on. I mean, what would it look like to be very fast and doing it on all the wrong things? You will end up only faster, further away from where you need to be.

So I think it's critical that you, we are focused on the right things and then we can try to see how could I be doing those things faster,

Hari Prasada: Are there any examples that come to mind from either your own personal lives or maybe the lives of your clients who you've worked with of actually reprioritizing stuff so completely where things just start working so much better in life.

And I start pointing myself in the right direction.

Vipin: The first example that comes to me, it's actually a personal example of. My partner, Kruthi, is not my own personal example, but she describes the environment. In her workplace, she had worked at Etsy for a very long time, and she worked there through a few different administrations of leadership.

And in the most recent one, there was a dramatic shift that took place in the leadership and in the value of the company as a result. And the thing that happened was They were always, you know, an organization is working on hundreds of things and they have all these functions. They have many priorities, even with the advent of OKRs and people trying to hone in on what's most important.

Most organizations are not able to contain themselves. There's too many things. And the new CEO who's now been there for a long time, but Josh Silverman came in and he, he used the phrase. The vital few. What are the vital few things that we are going to prioritize across this huge organization? And that message Tho those priorities became clear and that messaging was reinforced and reinforced and reinforced.

And, and ti as one of the members of that leadership team experienced both the clarity of that reprioritization and also the benefit of that. Reinforced communication both from the top and then all the way as it went through that entire organization and you saw a real shift in all of a sudden from there being many, many, many things people were working on to everything rolling up to the vital few and you also saw.

This reflect, I mean, I don't think this wasn't the only thing, but you saw a dramatic increase in the value of the company over the next couple of years as they really made progress, substantive progress on these vital few things that they had identified. So that to me is that, I mean, that exists at an organizational level that exists at an individual level.

The same thing is true. Think about yourself as a person, a manager, a leader. What are the vital few things? That are important to me this year.

Hari Prasada: I would say that when you asked this question, Michael, I was thinking, what are not examples of this?

Because practically everything that we do has some relationship with this issue.

I think about my own meditation practice, as I mentioned earlier, that's the core of my being. It's really what has transformed me more than anything and which I have come to see over time Needs the appropriate time and space more than ever.

When I was a monk, that was a given that was provided for in a way that before and after it's up to me, I am left to my own devices and I have many more constraints.

And now I continue to refine that more and more and more. It's an obsession in a good way. It's something I'm super happy to be obsessed with constantly refining and figuring out how do I create more time and space?

How do I create other habits? That support this habit. How am I seeing the impact of this in the rest of my life now? I'm taking one thing that is The core practice that makes me who I am today and is the basis around this work that we're trying to offer to other people and which can bring us to self realization.

But this is true of anything that I deem valuable, that I want to make sure that I have the adequate time and space and relationship with it and that I'm prioritizing it effectively amidst self realization. Other things. And that's what I want to make sure anyone that comes to upbuild or is listening to this podcast can do for themselves, really see what will have the biggest impact on me.

And how do I prioritize and build a relationship with and build habits that support it, build accountability. There's so much that can be done here. There's so much. And all of my coaching clients have to go into this in some way.

Thank you both. So from each of these examples, which are, they're highly consistent with that first things first, or the big rocks first of Vipin, you shared the vital few from Josh at Etsy. And Hari, this idea of having a core practice, a core individual practice.

And for you, that's meditation. And of course at Upbuild, can we highly suggest that that is everyone's core practice? And depending on where people at it, it may be different. And so regardless, when you get a sense of who am I at my core, and then also what are the values that are deeply important to me, we can start to come up with some of these things for ourselves.

What will be our core practice that everything else will emanate from and flow from and what are our vital few things that we're trying to prioritize?

Vipin: Yeah, I just wanted to add something related and maybe this is a separate podcast that we need to do on One on one meetings because that's another topic that comes up in coaching sessions all of the time, which is how do I do my one on ones more effectively?

And one of the things that I have been encouraging, or at least the way I would describe the purpose of a one on one is to align on prioritization where we're talking about the vital few things across an organization or then across My scope, personally, coming in every week with the person that I'm working closest with and aligning on, hey, this is what I'm focused on.

These are my priorities. This is what has changed. Here's what I'm dropping off. Here's what I'm adding. And making sure that we're in alignment. Because that's what drives everything forward. So that prioritization carries over to my relationship with my boss, my direct reports, and being aligned. We all are clear on what it is, what are the vital few things.

Week to week, day to day, week to week, month to month that we're each focused on. So that we're all moving in a cohesive direction.

Hari Prasada: Management is also chaos management. It's managing all of the entropy and all of the variables and all of the excess of possibilities. We can talk more about that in a few minutes, but it's really trying to manage the chaos of life and streamline it in a way that will best serve.

So when people come to us for coaching, and I'm thinking of A couple of people, one person who was being groomed to be a leader high up in organization and another person who was more junior but was groomed to be a leader in more middle management and The need for effective strategies to manage time and to prioritize and to be organized is so important.

I'm thinking even of a person who is a founder of an extraordinarily successful company and who asks questions to this day, like, hey, Does anybody have any tried and true method of prioritization or building a to do list? The seemingly most basic things. Because the chaos is so great and nobody has any miracle cure to stop the chaos.

Nobody has that. And no matter how many podcasts or articles you listen to or read or books or what have you, there is no sealed solution to this. It's a matter of seeing, okay, I'm up against chaos. How do I align myself with what matters most and have tools and relationships that will support me in continuing to do so and enhance my dedication, my focus, my presence, and allow me to give my best.

All right. As I shared in the opening, I listened to hundreds of hours of time management podcasts, and I've never heard anyone talk about time management as chaos management, such a powerful way of thinking about it.

So I really appreciate that framing. It speaks to my experience very deeply, and I can imagine everyone who's listening as well. Thank you. It comes from the inspiration of speaking to you both. It really comes like that. And it is my own experience that when I think about how I approach time management and why it is, you mentioned safe problems versus quality problems, why it's a quality problem for me.

It's something which is truly a significant struggle that makes me feel very vulnerable. It's not just something I'm excited about it, but it's also a pain point. And part of my excitement is because there is so much pain around it that I have dedicated myself to addressing and helping and I've made a lot of strides.

So that's exciting. And there's a lot more to go and I'm excited about getting better at that. So. The experience that I have is that there's so much chaos in my own life. And just because you do this kind of work, it doesn't make it easy. I don't have that sense of ease. I want that, but I don't have it.

What I have are tools. And again, relationships, people that help me. And frankly, I look to you both because I think, my goodness, you are so amazing at managing the chaos of life. And I get a lot, and I even have specific things that both of you have helped me on. And also our other partner Rasanath and my wife Radha Bhakti have helped me with so that I can get better and feel at least like I'm more equipped.

And there's more peace of mind. I'm doing what I can. I'm doing the best I can so I can rest in my sincerity. And that's all I can do. What else can I do? Life is chaotic.

Thank you for that. I feel your sincerity and also your smile is so wonderful as you're sharing all of this. So, you've teased now a couple of times these tools or tips or tricks.

And it would be great if we could start to share some of ours And also hopefully we can tie them back to what we're talking about on a deeper level of understanding what's truly important to us and who we are. So, Vipin, What are some tips or tricks that you find helpful for time management?

Vipin: When I think about this question, really the hacks that come to me are all productivity hacks. So they're dependent on if you know your vital few, if you know what's important to you, then all of a sudden it becomes about how are you going to actually invest in moving those things forward. And the thing that I've found to be The most beneficial thing for me to move those things forward.

One of the most beneficial things is a six hour flight without wifi. This is not necessarily a cost effective hack, but I need transatlantic flight and then being on an airplane for seven, eight hours, in the last five years, I would say those chunks of time when I'm flying between New York and London or New York and San Francisco.

have been the most productive chunks of time that I have experienced. And so then to replicate, getting closer to replicating that, I think having large chunks of time on my calendar that are dedicated to deep work are, it's fundamental. Something that I speak about with clients all of the time, where are most often what people are doing that after their work day, it's like, okay, I go home.

I finish all of my back to back zooms, and then I'm with my family. And then my time to do that deep work is from nine to 12 midnight. Going back to what Hari Prasada says, what can you do at that time? What kind of energy do you have? So I think those chunks of time and then literally to mimic the transatlantic flight, although you can get Wi Fi on those, but I never signed up for that, is to turn off your Wi Fi.

I had a friend named Henrik. He had set up his router to turn off every night. at 10 p. m. It just, it turns off, which means Netflix doesn't work anymore, which means his internet browsing doesn't work, his email doesn't work, all of it just shuts off. And he was doing it because he wanted to make sure, it was so easy to just leak into late night, But sing around on the internet, wasting time.

And so he was trying to get better about getting to sleep, but also productivity, making sure that he's not playing video games late into the night. And I think the same thing we could, you could do that in the middle of our day. Imagine why do we all just leave all of our browsers, our tabs, browser tabs, open email is open, I'm constantly getting distracted by notifications.

So for me, it goes back to trying to replicate. A six hour flight, assuming that I've identified my vital few, which I spent a lot of time doing is what I invest in my coaching and our work together at UpBuild. That to me is my biggest hack.

Hari Prasada: Excellent. I love it. That image of the six hour flight is very striking.

And also I appreciate what you shared about your friend and turning off the wifi. And. His angle might have been to get to sleep earlier, but that is also a productivity hack because the earlier we get to sleep, the better we sleep, the earlier we can wake up and have our prime time to to do deep work.

So going to sleep earlier is also a huge part of being productive the next day. Actually your morning, your morning routine really starts the night before.

Vipin: Well, and also, I mean, it was a priority. It goes back to what are your priorities? It was a priority for him.

And it also has an importance beyond productivity. It's not just so that we could be more productive the next morning, but there's a value in and of itself of being fully rested, clear headed, clear eyed. So whatever it is I'm spending my time on, I'm able to give more to it.

Hari Prasada: Well, I was afraid of this question.

I was sharing with you earlier that this is like opening up Pandora's box in a good way. It's, it's a good box, but it can take on such a life of its own. And in the context of this episode, I think we want to keep it very brief. But this really got me thinking late last night, just before I went to sleep.

I was noting down feverishly all of these things that I couldn't stop myself from because I just started reflecting based on this prompt on how much has served me and how much have I been able to, uh, offer to others that they said was really helpful for them as well. And yeah, I feel gratitude for these things.

They've been definitely being able to silence your phone, silence notifications, turn off even badges. They put these badges or these like counting of the number of messages that you have in an app on your phone, they put it in red for a reason because they want your attention to be drawn and they want your mind to have the amygdala flare, the red color.

Oh my goodness. I have messages. I better respond. I better respond or If I'm not going to respond, I just carry that energy. I'm going to have to respond. I'm going to have to respond. I'm going to have to respond, turn that stuff off,

Otherwise, we're just being torn in all different kinds of directions. And what you said about time for deep work. I mean, I'm struggling with that so much. I want to see what more I can do. I have thoughts, but I also have guilt around taking time for deep work when there's so many other things going on.

And I really struggle with that, but I've seen that as so effective. When I have a block of hours, I am able to do so much more because there's not the start, stop energy. Some people, the attention span, and this is why pomodoros is very helpful for those of you who don't know what a pomodoro is, it's using a timer and typically the default would be like 25 minutes of working on something, doing something very concentratedly and no distractions allowed, and then five minutes of a rest period to do something that will be rejuvenating.

That's helpful because our attention spans have a hard time wrapping their mind around going into stuff for longer than that. So you give a care and that's been helpful to me as well. But I found more and more that actually I want a three hour block where I can just go deep and turn off all distractions, everything else.

And then I come out with something. I feel much more fulfilled. So I can share much more about prioritization and about little methods that have been helpful to me, like, for example, Michael, in your annual optimization emails, which I find very helpful in this way. Hotkeys is something that was a revelation to me.

I never thought that that would be something so helpful, but I tried it out, and now I'm full on advocate of using hotkeys, which are basically shortcuts on your keyboard, and you're laptop or your computer so that you can do things without having to really think about it. You don't have to move your mouse in this way and that.

Thank you, Hari. And I'm glad the hotkeys was helpful. I didn't realize that actually. Yeah, I've been waiting for the opportunity to share with you.

What I would share from my side is something that I heard from, or is a principle that I actually got from Tim Ferriss a number of years ago, which is that we should do our best to make one decision today to limit thousands of people. decisions in the future. he was getting a lot of requests from people who write books to write their forward or the introduction to their book and he was having to make too many decisions about which people to say yes to and which people to say no to.

So he wrote a blog post that he would read no book that was written in the last five years, I think it was. I don't, I don't remember the exact number, but that way he eliminated all possibility of reading a book and therefore writing an introduction. I found this to be one of the most helpful things.

And then I would combine that with my other technique, which is to use my inbox as my to do list, So whenever. There's something that I need to do. And we were having a program, a small class just before recording this podcast. Hari, you had mentioned a to do item at the end of that class.

So I immediately sent myself an email that I need to do this task. And then I, because I don't like things taking up space in my inbox, I then snoozed it because I'm not going to be able to take care of it today. I then snoozed it to a day where I know that I'll have some free space. So. I use my inbox as my to do list and I'm constantly using the snooze feature to put things so that things will come back at the right time when I'll actually be able to take care of them, which gives me peace of mind that, that nothing's going to slip through the cracks.

And we often talk about trust as the number one, most important thing for efficiency, because when there's trust, things can just move very fast. Then one of the key elements of trust is reliability. That's one of the elements of trust where I index a lot on and I appreciate receiving that element of trust from other people.

So it's something that I try very hard in my life to be so when I have this whole system of inbox and snoozing it creates assurance for me that I will be reliable things will get done at the right time and Therefore I can have trust in my relationships in my life And then combining that with the principle of make one decision today, which will limit the number of decisions later on, I will decide that I will do something, let's say I'm trying to watch A series of videos and take notes on these series of videos.

So I've decided that I'm going to do two every single day. That's one decision. I could watch one, I could watch three, I could watch five some days, but I'm making that decision now today that I will watch two. And then every single day for the next three months, which is when I need to do this by, there's no decision that I need to make.

And I find this extremely helpful because so much of our wasted time is spent on Thinking about what am I actually going to do today? And so if we can take that decision off of our plate each day, another example is how many minutes I'm going to meditate for, or which meditation I'm going to listen to on an app people waste so much time when they're trying to have a meditation practice, figuring that stuff out, if you can make that decision ahead of time, and then it becomes.

The thing that you rely on constantly, there's so much time that you get back. What you just said about the decision making process and being able to get clarity and commitment around that, it eliminates so much stress, so much anxiety, so much uncertainty and saves so much time. I really appreciate that the way Tim Ferriss framed it and the way that you expressed it now and the way you're using it.

I also found it so funny when you were talking about using your inbox as a to do list, because I have encountered people that will say exactly the opposite. Do not use your inbox as a to do list. But I can say, if you follow Michael, you will probably be very effective against the common wisdom, because Michael is one of the most Exceptionally on top of things people I have ever met in my entire life.

Amazingly, maybe the most on top of things. So I think, um, there's a case against the not using your inboxes to do list. First of all, I appreciate that acknowledgement and the other perspective makes sense as well. And I think as we're sharing all of these things, these are the things that just work for us.

But what's actually important is that The guiding principle or philosophy behind these things, and then each person is able to make their decisions about which to take on and which to leave based on what works best for them. There's one more technique that I wanted to share that I often recommend to clients, and this is the simple one.

It actually came from somebody at up build. I'm not sure many years ago, and it may have come from somebody else before that, which is this exercise of do ditch and delegate. That was Vipin. That was Vipin. Well, Vipin, if it's okay, I speak on your behalf to share about the exercise. Please. And this is for people who feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that they need to do, which is all of us. And to actually do an audit of all the things that I'm committed to and I'm taking on, you could look at your calendar to get a sense. If you look at your calendar over the last month, what are all the things that I'm doing?

And first have that full list of things, and then go through each of those items and decide, am I going to move this into the do bucket, which means I'm going to keep doing it. Does it go into the ditch bucket, which means I am not going to do it anymore because it's actually not part of my highest priorities, or is it going to go into the delegate bucket where it would actually be okay, maybe there's some quality loss, maybe there's some loss of control or discomfort that I would feel in the short term, but it's actually worth.

handing this off to somebody else because that would be best for me or maybe even there's a possibility that it would be best for that person who can take it on for their own growth. And just having these three buckets and doing this audit I find extremely useful for opening up space so that I can really focus on the big rocks or the things that are highest value add in my life.

Anything more that either of you would share around tips, tricks, or hacks?

Vipin: I would just, adding a couple of quick things. When you said the tip that you got from Tim Ferriss, it reminds me of what Clay Christensen wrote about in his book, how to build a successful life.

And he talks about the decision he made not to play basketball on Sundays, which was a very hard decision when he was in a tournament in grad school that was dependent on him. But that was also a day that he had dedicated to his spiritual life. And he struggled with that decision. But once he made that decision.

Black and white for himself. That was very hard. The first time it made all of the other decisions that he encountered about that day, easy, and that was a very striking example of the freedom that can come from approaching these things with more black and whiteness with more. Making that one decision that obviates the need for many, many, many other decisions.

So I just wanted to share that in response to what you shared, Michael. Yeah, I was also thinking about the same thing with regard to the common wisdom around using the inbox. So I was really excited to hear what you had said because If you've listened to thousands of hours of podcasts on productivity, I may have listened to 10 and I feel like the only 10 hours I've listened to is basically about not using your inbox as a to do list.

And I think the way that you've, what Hari Prasada said is so true of my experience of you. So I think the biggest thing that comes out of that is you actually have to figure out what works for you. And build your system around that. And there's not one right answer to these productivity hacks. It's actually, it requires a lot of experimentation and.

I think it all comes back to the same original principles. Like you have to know who you are, what's important to you, what are you focused on, what do you want to focus on, and then everything follows from there. Everything else is on the margins. If you get those big things right, then you will be in good spot.

Hari Prasada: Beautiful. Well, that feels like an excellent summation of what we've been speaking about. Hari, is there, as we start to bring this conversation to a close, what would you share in summary? Well, I would share something which touches upon what we've been discussing, but which I hope will really encapsulate the gravity of this.

So when I had read A book by Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death in 2006, that was the book that most impacted me to that point in time, and which continues to be one of the most significant catalysts in my own transformation, and in that book, Kierkegaard lays out a fundamental equation that he coins in different ways, but which is the same thing.

He talks about finitude versus infinitude. And what I think is very helpful here is the coining of possibility versus necessity. It means the same thing that there are infinite possibilities, but there's only so much that can and will happen because of Necessity. So there are on one pole, there's possibility on the other pole, there's necessity and there's finitude, there's infinitude or vice versa.

And there's this constant dynamic tension that lives in our hearts as a result, because we have unlimited desires. There's nobody that can say at a certain point, you know, how people say, well, when I done this, then I can die happy. That is totally false. That is so not true. That is deception because after I've done that, I still want to do something else and then something else and something else and something else and something else.

And the concept of a bucket list. It doesn't actually work because there's something about us that wants to go on eternally, unless there's some kind of disruption to that, where we become so depressed, our situation physically, mentally, or both becomes so disturbing that we say, I would rather die, but nobody actually can say that in earnest as in touch with the real self.

It's not possible. So there is this dynamic tension that I have unlimited. Desires unlimited potential possibility that I'm facing up against all the time But then when it comes down to it only so many things can and will happen so time management is so stressful because of that equation and If I want to solve for this equation, it's not going to happen by a productivity hack it's not going to happen because somebody taught me how to write an email more quickly or How to Manage my schedule in a way that is more effective that doesn't address it that may add something which is beneficial when it's under the banner of why when we're trying to serve the best we can when we're trying to become self realized and really help other people in the best way.

Yes, that's great. I love that and it always comes down to this one thing of like, how do I reconcile? With all the possibilities and then what's going to happen and the discomfort, there's an existential angst here that talk about the math equation. Every time I go to bed, there are a million things that I had wanted to do, which I couldn't do, and I knew that was going to happen.

And if I tell myself I'm okay with that, okay, for today, one day, there's not going to be another day. One day, that will be it. And I can tell myself, well, that's fine. You know, I just, I make the most of my life. I had good relationships. I was a good person. I did things that were cool, that were fun, and so on.

But deep down, I'm not satisfied with that. I have not addressed that. that equation which Kierkegaard is talking about. I have not been able to solve for the dynamic tension in my heart. And if we don't solve for that, we will always feel ill at ease, restless, and like we're missing something because we are.

We're missing something vital. So time management at the end of the day is about Reconciling with this equation, there's only one way to do that, which is go to who we are, go to the real self, realize that we are not our egos. We're not the projections of who we think we should be. We're something else.

And this is a spiritual issue. And Kierkegaard makes that abundantly clear, on the material level, you will never solve this. It is a spiritual issue. So unless we have the courage to face it in that way, it will always be lingering, looming, something we suppress, or we try to be okay with, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.

But we should know, there's something beckoning us. There's something beckoning us, and our time management issues are just a reminder of that. So not only is time management chaos management, but also at its deepest, it's a spiritual issue, and it can only be solved by spiritual inquiry and spiritual practice.

Well, I'm taking away a lot from this conversation, not only the tips and tricks and hacks that you have shared both of you, but also in a much deeper way, really needing to do the work of understanding who we are at our core and what matters to us, making sure that our Priorities reflect that putting the big rocks in first, making sure that we get the sequencing right and for most of us that will mean doing the things that are most important for us earlier in the day.

And not neglecting the things that are actually deeply important to us because of those, the hits that we get from being able to check things off the to do list. So as always, I so appreciate being in connection with both of you and the Not only the content of what we get to speak about, but just the joy and fun that we get to experience from being together.

And thank you both, as always, for your wisdom and valuable insights that I know will be very important for everyone who is listening. Thank you so much.

Vipin: Thank you, Michael. Thank you for guiding us.

Hari Prasada: And thank

Vipin: you

Hari Prasada: to everyone listening.