203: The Little Lies You Tell Yourself, with Jason Snell

Mike Schmitz

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co host, Mister David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. Today's a special episode because Jason Snell's back.

David Sparks

Welcome back, Jason. Hey, guys. Where are my royalties? Yeah, where are they? Indeed?

Where are they? So those who don't know this show started when Jason and I. It started kind of out of a group of meetings Jason and I had while we were talking about quitting our jobs. And then it went for, we called it free agents. I think it was about 50 episodes.

We did that. That's right. And you've done 150 since then, so it's fine. Yeah. And.

But, you know, we kind of, like, exhausted the free agent thing, and I still wanted to talk about focus. Jason needed to move on, and Mike came in, but it's. It's kind of nice to have you back, Jason. Yeah, it's good to be back. Happy to be here.

Jason Snell

Thank you for having me. Well, and we're not just back here to rimmin this. We're also here because you've been doing a retreat practice, and we wanted to talk about that today. So I guess let's just jump straight into it, Jason. You know, as folks who used to listen to free agents will know, Jason was the editor at the Macworld magazine for many years and had a big fancy job and then went out on his own and started being a guy who published for himself at six colors.

David Sparks

And, you know, your job and your career changed, and at some point, you decided to start giving that some thought with a retreat. What happened there? Yeah. So, yeah, I went out on my own. It's coming up ten years.

Jason Snell

And I was circling around, as is detailed painfully in detail in the first 50 episodes of this podcast. When it was free agents, I circled around that for more than a year, probably a couple of years, where I was thinking of leaving, and I was unhappy in my job and started off on my own in the fall of 2014. But, you know, I not only talking to lots of friends, including you, David, but, you know, I had a plan and things didn't go according to plan. But I think this is the story of a lot of small businesses and independent people, is you spend a lot of time thinking about starting your business because you're kind of terrified and you got to figure it out, and you went out on your own and then changed and then dropped half of your business at one point. There is this sort of real, ideally, oversight.

I'm thinking about this, how do I want to do it? If you're responsible about it, and that makes sense, and you're building your business, you're like, I'm the chief executive officer and bottle washer. Kind of like, I have to do everything, soup to nuts. I got to figure this out. I got to make it work.

I'm independent. And then time passes. And what I found is six, seven years later, is I had settled into a routine, which was good, but I think it is a real common tendency for people to devote a lot of time to the setup and to making sure everything is fine tuned and running smoothly. And you get your business up and running, and you have that feeling of relief of like, okay, I got it running. Now I can just do the thing that I wanted to do.

And after a few years, I got to the point where I thought, there are a lot of things I'm doing I don't want to do. Where is this business going? What am I doing? And when you're in that grind of, you know, and I was enjoying that grind of day to day, doing what I wanted to do, it's so easy to just do that and put your head down and do the job and not think about where you're going, what you're doing, what your long term plans are, because you did that for setup, but it's something different later on where you don't have a structure. And so in sort of 2021, I think, might have been 2020, I was doing various versions of this.

2020, 2021. I talked to you about it specifically. You mentioned that you had this whole PDF on your website about the personal retreat, and I thought that was a really great idea of, like, what if I follow the sparky personal retreat schedule and go somewhere away from my job, away from my day to day, and think big picture thoughts? Think not about what's the, you know, do I need to post a podcast? Do I need to edit something?

Do I need to write something? Do I need to schedule something? Instead, think about where am I? Where do I want to be? What do I not want to do?

What do I love doing? And that's what kicked it off for me. It's that sort of second phase that probably happened a little too late, but it was fine. I wasn't standing on a cliff's edge, but it was definitely the sense that I needed to actually, having done the startup part of my independent job and my independent phase of my life, I now needed to do the maintenance phase, right? I couldn't just.

You can't. Your assumptions when you're doing the startup phase are not going to be right. And if you don't re examine every so often, you will end up in a weird place where it's not where you want to be. And I came to that realization probably during the pandemic. And then at some point I finally realized, having seen your PDF's about personal retreats, I was like, that is what I need to do if I'm going to make this work.

Casey. Yeah. And I think when you're working for somebody, a lot of times that kind of big picture management stuff is handled by somebody else. So you look at your job is to go in and do the job that they're paying you for, not necessarily doing all the big picture stuff. And I think it is very easy to do the big picture stuff when you first go out on your own.

David Sparks

But like you said, I think it's very, also easy to fall into the maker role as you're working on your own and the manager kind of gets pushed to the back of the room and before you know it, yeah, I. Was making, to put it in the terms of my old job, I was making content decisions, which I'm very comfortable making. I ended up as editorial director for IDG's consumer division. And making content decisions was just, I mean, that was what I did all day, is make content decisions or be the content person in the room when business decisions were being made. But my job was to represent a certain mindset.

Jason Snell

And when you go out on your own, yeah, it's really easy to slip back into the, well, I've got the content machine humming, I'm gonna make content decisions. It's not like I wasn't making decisions, but what I wasn't doing is really making sort of strategic CEO decisions. I was really making just my comfort zone content decisions. And you had that moment where you realize, you know, there's no one else who's gonna tap you on the shoulder and say, you shouldn't be doing this kind of work anymore. It's, it's all me.

I have to do all of those decisions. And when am I going to do that? And the answer is, not when I'm in the fight day to day, just doing my regular stuff. I have to step out. I have to get perspective.

And that's why I became a real believer in this idea of a personal retreat, for sure. Yeah. I mean, Ian Bird was the one who inspired me originally because he did that. And he made the point that when you work, when you try to do management stuff in the same space that you do the maker stuff. It's very hard, you know, getting yourself away from your usual workspace to try and put on your manager hat is.

David Sparks

Makes it much easier. And you've been doing it like you've been going off site for these, right? Yeah. So the way I've done it, and I did a slight adaptation, I'll just mention if people look at the. At the personal retreat PDF's, you were much more holistic.

Jason Snell

You're sort of like taking stock of your life. Yeah, I'm a hippie. I decided. We talked about this on free agents a lot. It's like the hippie feels.

But I decided to focus on my business. So I didn't write up my roles of husband, parent, things like that. I really focused on my business, but otherwise, I pretty much took it straight from you. We have friends who own a house in Sonoma, which is about an hour from where I live. It's up in the wine country and it's an investment property.

It's an Airbnb, basically. I think it's just a verbo. But yeah, you get. They rented out and what's really nice about that is you wouldn't believe this, but midweek winter is not a very popular time for people to go to Airbnbs. So I actually got.

For the cost of, they had me pay for their cleaners, but nothing else. They actually just let us stay there for a couple of days. So I did that. So, yeah, if you know somebody with an Airbnb, check it out. I also.

I did one where I went to San Diego and went for a couple of days to San Diego and had an Airbnb there. And then the other a couple of times. This doesn't have to be super large scale. I have some friends who have a business in my town, and they were going on vacation and they said, you're welcome to use our office. It's their office.

It's just them. And they were both going to Australia where his family lives, and they said, we're gone for three weeks. Come in. I mean, I only took two days, but. So I've done a couple of the off sites there where it's literally five minutes from my house.

But what I'm doing is I'm packing up all the stuff that I need, putting in a bag, driving to the other location, and I'm in a different place all day. It's not my office. You know, I. It's not my refrigerator. Like, it's just I'm in a completely different space.

So it didn't even need to be an overnight for me. It just needed to be out of my own head, is what I always kind of say. And that includes the routine. I just need to be. Cause the goal, for me at least the goal is to get a perspective that is not my usual perspective.

I need a larger perspective. I need to step out of my role day to day. And being in a completely different location without distractions is a huge benefit. And then I also took a page from my corporate training people. IDG complain, though I will, about my last few years there.

They had a fantastic commitment to training. And I went to, over the years, a dozen maybe different training things, including half of them where they flew us to, like Boston, to the corporate headquarters to do it. And they would always have like the big marker pens and those sticky note paper things that you can hang on a wall. And I actually bought those pens and I bought the sticky notes, and I did that as part of the process, too. So I was writing with hand, which I never do, with a big pen on giant sheets of paper.

And then when I fill them, I'm peeling them off and sticking them to the wall so I can look at them and refer to them. And that was something that I lifted from my IDG training people and was, again, just totally different from the way I normally work and I found very valuable. There's something really satisfying about pulling off one of those big stickies and putting it on the wall. It is. I mean, and at the end, I mean, you have them, I end up taking pictures of them and also writing them down.

And we can talk about sort of what happens at the end of this process, but it is super satisfying. And I don't know. I mean, look, a lot of. I'm sure you guys have talked about this a lot. A lot of things about productivity are about tricking your brain into behaving differently.

And it's like, it's why I always used to go to Starbucks or write my Macworld column every week because it wasn't my house. And then my brain is like, well, gee, you came all this way. I guess you gotta do your work now because otherwise, why are we here? And I almost shame myself into it. Well, standing in front of that post it, giant post it with a big smelly ink, you know, one of those permanent markers, writing by hand, following David's sort of a list of things to think about for his personal retreat.

I'm completely out of my comfort zone at that point, which is good. That's what I want. It's a completely different thing. And you're right, putting that stuff down is satisfying. Tacking it up so that you can refer to it the rest of the day or days is incredibly, I'd say, energizing, but it's also almost threatening in the sense of like, don't forget, you can't ignore this.

Right. Which is part of it, too, is it's so easy to have those rough edges in your job and your business where you're like, yeah, okay. And I'm a major conflict avoider, so it's really kind of nice to, it's almost like keeping yourself honest. You write down stuff truthfully, and then you hang it on a wall somewhere and you can't avoid it. It's looking you right in the face for the whole time.

Yeah. And it really does take time. I think that's another thing people think about. They're like, well, I could just sit home and think about this for an hour, and I could answer these questions, and it's not enough. You got to kind of live with them for a while and look at them up on the sticky board or down on a piece of paper or whatever, because with time, you get further, I think, inflection on it.

David Sparks

And a lot of times what you first write down isn't what you end up really going with at the end. Yeah, exactly. It is reflection. It is. Um, again, here in my office where I am right now, I have endless distractions, including my job.

Jason Snell

I mean, my job in this case is a distraction to the larger picture. And it's always going to be easy to be like, I'm just going to shake this off and go back to doing what I'm doing instead of doing the hard thing of, uh, of thinking bigger thoughts. So super important to get out of that and, and focus on these other things and doing that in a different environment that you're not used to, where you don't have your usual distractions. If you've got digital distractions, putting yourself in do not disturb, working on paper, which is what I did, it's reducing all the things that could possibly take me away. And it's not just having me focus, it's also just forcing me because there's nothing else to do.

I'm removing my own distractions from myself. It's, um. Yeah, it's super important. I want to double click on the, the time comment that you made, David, because that really can't be overstated. And I feel like if you don't go into it with having a large enough time window for your brain to really unravel these things, you're sort of missing the point.

Mike Schmitz

Like, I have my own process that I follow, and one of the things I teach people is these three questions. What should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? They're purposely vague because your brain will come up with some really interesting things to put there if you give it enough time.

Literally this week, I was talking to somebody about this, and they're like, well, after 20 minutes, you know, I have some things for that list. And I'm like, no, you're just scratching the surface. That's the point. Like those, your brain is good at coming up with options, but that's not necessarily the stuff that you should really be focusing on. When you give it at least 2 hours, that seems to be the, the magic number in my experience.

Then you get to like a whole nother level and all the things that you thought weren't really a possibility. You give your brain permission to consider those things, and then it's kind of like, well, actually, that's kind of interesting. What if that was actually the case? Yep, I agree completely. And I definitely, that is what I focus on when I'm writing up there.

Jason Snell

Again, as I adapt David's PDF, it's what should I keep doing? What should I do more? What should I stop doing? It is the, I mean, it's a classic. We did a whole episode of free agents about it, I think, which is the, the art of, you know, it's the not do list, it's the what not to do.

It's just as important to learn what to stop doing as it is to decide what to start doing. In fact, you know, it's an opportunity cost. If you don't stop doing something, you really don't have time to start doing something else that might be more valuable. And I agree completely. It's hard, right?

I mean, I remember just this year, I did it at the end of February, and, you know, you start with a blank page and you're just thinking, uh, what do I do here? But it starts to flow as you go. You're definitely going to double back. Um, I write the way I did it is I wrote up all my roles, and for me, um, especially because of the way my business works, it's my, it's essentially my jobs. So, for example, I am, uh, the guy who runs the incomparable podcast network.

That's one job. I'm the host of the incomparable podcast that's another job. I do sixcolors.com as the manager of the, of the website. That's another job. I write for six colors.

That's a different job. I podcast the Upgrade podcast. That's a different job. I do the downstream podcast. That's a different job.

I am a panelist on Mac break weekly. That's a different job. And I found it very informative to write down all of the things that are my job because, you know, I have like eight or nine clearly different sets of responsibilities. And then for each one of those I write down, what do I, you know, basically, what do I like about this job? What do I dislike about this job?

And, you know, what should I stop doing and what should I do more of? Right? Like, it's that whole idea of. So first off, writing down your jobs is incredibly important and informative because. So, Mike, I agree, there's a lot of thought processing that has to go on.

I do suspect that some of it is just giving yourself permission to step outside those assumptions and maybe those little lies you tell yourself where you're like, it's fine, it's fine, and then give yourself permission to say, it's not fine. I don't like doing this. And if you're an indie person, only you can solve the problem of doing something you hate, right? Like, you've gotta. And wait.

Look, every job has things that you don't like that are not your favorite, but only you can, can do that. And you do kind of need, at least for me, I found it really valuable where, like, I'm doing this thing, I'm just gonna do it. I'm soldiering on. And then I get to the off site and I get the freedom to write down, I don't like this, this isn't working. And then that's a prompt for the rest of the day, which is like, well, what are we going to do about it?

And it's incredibly valuable.

David Sparks

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Jason, before the break, one of the things you were talking about was breaking the the job into component pieces. And I think that is so key here because you don't really like you. You have, you'll have an underlying feeling that something isn't right. When you have a job like yours where you're doing, you know, ten different roles and you know something's not right but you're not sure where it is and it's hard to attack it. It's only in my opinion, when you break it up into roles and you get down to those kind of component pieces, then you ask yourself the questions on each level that suddenly the real problem surfaces and that just takes time.

Jason Snell

I'm going to go back to what I said about how you have to step outside yourself. You have to see yourself from another perspective. So when you're doing the job, you're just doing the job right. And it is so easy to think of it as this is my job now. Probably most people don't have as many different jobs as I do.

And I've said to people, when I describe this, they're like, geez, Jason, that's a lot of jobs. I'm like, you know what? If I could make my living doing one of them or two of them, I would, but that's not reality. So I've got to wear eight different hats and they're all pretty distinct. But day to day, I don't think about it that way.

I just, I go from task to task to task and I'm doing my tasks and this is my job, unitary job. But it's super valuable to step outside that and say, what are these different jobs that you do? And because they're all different and they all have different reasons for existing and they are like, I'll give you an example. I was doing a lot of work in the six colors management bucket, which was dealing with sponsors and dealing with the copy from the sponsorship and posting the sponsors in WordPress and getting it all timed out onto the site and all of that. And that was a whole bunch of stuff that I hated and it was in my, I don't want to do this anymore.

And I had some similar stuff for some incomparable stuff that I was doing and some upgrade stuff that I was doing that was like, and this was, this led to, in my very first one of these offsites, a really powerful realization, which is that when you're starting out as an independent person, things, you feel uncomfortable because you're doing something new and you're starting something new. And as a result you anything you can do, you do. So I started and I said, I can take the ad traffic and I can post the ads and I can do all of this work because someone has to do it and this is a one person company. So it's me, I will do it all. And then time goes by and I have had this conversation with lots of other people who are in my same position.

Time goes by and you realize, okay, why am I doing this? Is it because only I can do it? Is it because this is the unique thing I bring to my business or is it because I've been doing it since the beginning when there was no one else to do it? And so I took it on. And for me, that was a real moment of clarity, which is what do I do that's unique and it's, you know, for my business, it is my perspective about technology, my knowledge as a podcast host.

Like, I've got a set of skills that are very specific, that allow me to make a living on the Internet, doing traffic for who's on what week as a sponsor, putting their text in WordPress and going back and forth and getting it all timed up to go on the site is not just as an example, is not a unique skill at all and not why I'm here. And so one of the things that came out of me writing all my jobs down at my first personal retreat was realizing, and my wife, who does a lot of work on the company, too, was there. And we actually went through her list as well. And we came out of that with a major to do item being to get help, to get a person or people. We ended up with one person who could be our essentially part time assistant who could do a lot of these tasks, because they weren't tasks.

My wife had been part time. She went to full time. She was still doing this with her weekend. So she had a lot of stuff she wanted to offload that I had already offloaded to her. Right.

And then I had a bunch of stuff that I had taken on myself that was totally not why I'm here. So that was a huge thing that came out of the. Out of the first retreat was literally identifying the stuff that we didn't like, that we didn't need to do and get someone else to do it, which, you know, it was obvious that should have happened years before, but we had never taken the steps. We'd never really identified it until that moment where we came out with a specific list. I mean, in the end, Lauren and I went to lunch, and by the end of it, I had on a notepad, I had a list of tasks.

And literally, when we got home, I got in touch with a friend of a friend of ours who does this, our friend Kathy Campbell, who does the unicorn sidekick, and basically said, do you have somebody we could use to do all of these tasks? And she said, I have the perfect person for you. And we've been working with her ever since, so. But it all started with that moment of writing down everything I do. What are those roles and.

And identifying the parts of it that I don't, you know, I don't want to do and I don't need to. Do, which actually, that, I think adds another dimension to the maker versus manager model that we've talked about a lot on this show that I wanted to call out because I think I can relate a little bit to what you're talking about, Jason, with all the different jobs and each podcast is the job. Each place that you do writing is a, is a job. And you have the maker, which is the person who is actually doing the work. And then the manager, I feel like, can even be associated with the day to day where it's really just thinking about how does this job get done?

Mike Schmitz

But what you're talking about is almost like a third level. So you've got the maker and the manager, but both of those still are focused on the day to day work. And you got to get into a totally separate mode, which is like a CEO or visionary, which is where you ask the key question that you mentioned there is why. Why is this job getting done at all? Or why am I the one that has to be doing this job?

And then you can maybe find some interesting ways to solve those problems. And uh, alternatively, but unless you make the break from the day to day, you're never going to get to, to that mode without a crisis. I think. I mean, maybe you get to a point where things are just completely breaking and you feel completely overwhelmed and you're like, something's got to change. That can kind of force you into that mode.

But it's better if you've got some sort of system or routine where you can kind of force yourself into that before you actually need that. I'm just completely drowning here. I need some air. And if you're working at a regular job and you're completely drowning, you go to your boss and you say, help. But you're your own boss and you have to play that other role.

Jason Snell

Which is why, like you said, being the CEO, essentially. And I know it can sound really highfalutin, being the highfalutin to be the CEO or the visionary or something like that. But in some cases, all I'm really talking about is, for example, taking a step back, looking at your business and saying, oh, this doesn't make sense. Right? Like, it's.

For me, these moments were revelations, but not like quantum leap, mind blowing revelations. They were really common sense when I turned to a different perspective and looked at it and thought, I have. Because here's another thing that I think indie creators especially struggle with, which is you're only one person, so your opportunity costs are a huge deal because you cannot work more than a human can work. And so as a CEO, you're like, oh, why is Jason doing putting the ads into WordPress? Just to hammer on that one again, why is that happening?

He's not the right person to do that, it's a waste of his time, and he's better off doing one of the many other tasks that the corporation could have him do where he can provide unique value. So that's a really basic business kind of thing, which is, are we using our people or person well and do we need to have help? But I had to step outside myself to do that. And again, I do think this is a recurring problem with independent people where they start taking on tasks because they can do them and never think about whether they should, which is very Jurassic Park. I know, but it's that idea, which is just because I did this, because I was the only person who could do it, I should not keep doing it ten years later.

Right? Like, it doesn't make sense. If your business is going well enough that you can afford, if your business is going well, you're better off taking that time and either recharging or doing other productive revenue generating work, not doing something that you should just pay somebody to do for you. And that was just a, it's a big step to even, like, pay outside people to do work for you that you do yourself because you're like, I can do that. And it costs nothing, which is a lie because it actually costs your time and energy, which is very bad.

And I could not let that go until I went on the personal retreat and stepped outside myself. And as the CEO said, oh, yeah, this happens time and again when I do these retreats is I look at something that I've agonized over personally and then I step outside that role and I'm the boss and I'm thinking big picture. And I think, oh, it's obvious, this is dumb. Don't do that anymore. But I couldn't.

I never, as a worker, I never give myself permission to do that because I'm like, no, no, no, I can do it. I'll buckle down. I'll do it. And as the boss, you're like, no, stop. And it's all me.

But it's two totally different perspectives with the corporate background. I'm curious, before we move on from the topic, have you ever done anything with an.org chart for Snell Industries? Like, do you have yourself at the top? And then you've identified people who are going to fill those different roles for the specific jobs that really should be done. So for mine, it's less that and it's more finding particular items to find other people to do.

An.org chart I don't think would be as helpful for me in other ways. The main chart is literally we have one major employee, and that's me. And the list of jobs that I do is sort of like an.org chart. And then everything else is sort of like get helpers to help with stuff. I should mention.

I mean, I keep talking about how I use Amanda to do the ad traffic on six colors and things like that. I had many other perspectives like that. If I did an.org chart, for example, I would have. I used to produce and edit a bunch of other incomparable podcasts, which are fun. They're not really big revenue generators, but they're fun.

And they have membership support that provides a little bit of money. And I had a similar revelation, which is I shouldn't do that anymore, and I got people to do that so I could do an.org chart. But I really have mostly just figured, here's a task, find someone to do the task and then walk away. Before we move on from this topic, there's one other item I wanted to mention because, I mean, obviously writing things up on the sticky notes is super valuable. Generating action items at the end of the event is super important.

I think David suggests that you set a calendar event for a. Is it like a week out and a month out, something like that, where you hold yourself? Yeah. Responsible to look at the list, but I usually come back pretty energized. And after maybe a day of getting caught up with what I missed, I will start looking at that action item list and putting into practice.

But it's a really nice to have a reminder a week later because obviously, if you step away from your job for a little while, you're going to have to catch up. Um, you don't have, you're going to be busier than usual when you get back because you've made this time away. So waiting a month or a week is, I found, really valuable. Is that action item, a deadline a week out to look at those action items and deal with it. But one other little quirk that I did that is an adaptation of David's personal retreat that I want to mention here because I found it incredibly valuable, is I kind of enjoy the idea, having been on many corporate retreats of guest speakers.

And so I have people I know who are in a similar situation to me, but obviously have their own businesses as guest speakers in my offsite. So I will bring them in via Zoom and I have them come in. I try to have at least two. I try to have a kickoff person. So instead of me just staring at the whiteboard, I will have a kickoff person who will talk to me a little bit or I will just have my roles listed and we'll talk.

And I'll tell you, it's great because it provides some accountability. I have to talk to them. They have generally a perspective that is, they will understand some aspects of what it is to be me, but they don't know anything about my business internally, and they've got their own business and they've got their own perspective. And I have found it incredibly valuable to spend an hour talking to someone about my problems, essentially, and my issues, because not only are they keeping me honest, I have to have this conversation with them. I can't just kind of shine it on.

I can't avoid the conflict. But they are going to have outside views that are like, why? What are you doing? That I may know in my heart are true, but I'm not willing to admit to myself or maybe I haven't even thought about it. And I just.

I can't say enough about how valuable that has been to bring in, you know, Mike Hurley, Stephen Hackett, CGP Gray, Dan Morin, Lex Friedman. Like, people who, you know, they're my friends and I don't. When I talk to them, we're usually talking about stuff we want to talk about when we do this. We're not talking about stuff we want to talk about. We're talking about stuff that is important and it's business and it's strategy, but it's not the stuff I usually talk about with my friends.

And so I feel like I'm on an island or I'm talking to Lauren about it, but it's just us. And it's incredibly nice to just give yourself permission if your friends are willing to talk to them a little bit about what you're doing. And I realized, like, I could do that anytime, but I don't. And so when I scheduled that offsite day, I literally went two weeks before, three weeks before to CGP Grey, and I was like, hey, gray, February 29, would you be available to do this? And he said, let's book it.

And we put the time in and I got. And he's a very busy guy. I got an hour of his time to chat and it was incredibly valuable. So I'll make that recommendation. If people are thinking about this, try to get some people, you know, who will sort of get what you do but are also coming at it from a totally different angle and scheduling some time to talk to them about this instead of just catching up.

How are the kids? Did you see, this thing that Apple did is I found it incredibly valuable because it takes me even further out of my perspective by bringing in another person's perspective, and they can interrogate me and have me explain why I do what I do. And boy, does a lot of nonsense fall out when you have to explain why you do what you do so highly recommend it. Yeah, I'm thinking that's something I may need to steal from you, but I think I would do it. When I get to the hard questions part, I would first do the roles identification and everything first.

Yeah, that's generally what I do sometimes. I've had scheduling issues where the kickoff has been early and it's been like. But generally I try to have the keynote speaker come after I've done the first round where I've written up all my roles, because that's when you. Then you explain them to them and you are already getting the inkling that weird things are happening. And they will cut to the chase usually, and be like, why do you do it this way?

And it's almost like therapy, but it's good. It's good. It's business therapy. So what exactly are you sharing with them? Do you have any sort of agenda for this?

Mike Schmitz

Like, are there any specific numbers that you're sharing? Is there a specific section of the retreat where you're just saying, this is what I was thinking for the course forward. What do you think about this? Or what's the context that they have for these calls when they're giving you this type of advice? I don't share details with them because I don't even have the details really, until I get there and go through the process.

Jason Snell

It's more so I can give you this detail. I asked Gray to do this and he said, that's great. What I said is it's a way. Well, let's see. I'm about to have my annual Jason offsite, and I'm trying to think about some bigger tactical thoughts when I can.

It's a way for me to block a day or two out and think bigger thoughts. I usually ask a couple of people to come, and he said, okay, what should I know about it? And this is all I said. I said, this process is an annual with a six month later follow up thing I've done for a few years now, where I give myself permission to take a step back and view my business and job from a higher level, since if I don't do it, nobody will. Guest speakers help me get even further outside my own perspective, which I found valuable.

I imagine we'll talk about what my current range of tasks are and suspect you will have questions about the details and what it all means. Even asking the questions is valuable because it identifies issues I maybe am not thinking about enough. In the past, these sessions have left led to choosing to offload parts of my job to other people, restructure my membership plans, and other things like that. I'm not going in with a big list of those things. What I hope to do is come out of the process with the list of to dos things to think about more or to implement.

So it's really just sort of like, I will come to you in the moment with my list of things, and I expect you to ask me a lot of questions about things that strike you essentially as why are you doing this? Or what do you think about this? That's it. I really try to keep it as open as that. So really I'm summarizing what I've written on those big sheets of paper at the beginning of the call, and then we just sort of see where it leads.

David Sparks

Going back. One of the things I do, Jason, that's not in my PDF is I have a freeform document and every deliverable that I make, whether it's a field guide video, or a blog post or a newsletter or whatever, I have documented all the steps of each process. Oh, yeah. And then what I do is I color the boxes. What are the, you know, if it's blue, it's something that only I can do.

And then when I go to the retreat, I look at those boxes again and say, well, is there something in here that is not blue that I'm doing? And can I get somebody else to do that for me? But again, it's the idea of breaking it down to components, and you don't do that holistically. You don't say, well, I just need some help with the newsletter. What you say is, no, I need someone to do a second edit to run it through Grammarly.

Once they get my thumbs up, they need to get it uploaded to the newsletter thing and set the publication. Then suddenly you really have a list. Yeah, it's remarkable just to talk about that transformation, when you say, I'm going to take this to someone else, and I know depending on where you are as an indie person, you might be like, well, that's just a pipe dream. I can't do that. It's like, I get it.

Jason Snell

But what I'm saying is at some point, if your business is going okay, you are limited by your time and your time is more valuable. If it's the thing that you do that is unique, it's more valuable than whatever you want to offload. And so I had that moment, like I said, with the editors, I had that moment a few months ago where I have been sometimes what you write up there is things you've been remiss about that also comes out of these things. It's not just the stuff that I do, it's the stuff that I should do and I know I should do, and I never do it because there's, I don't have the time, I don't have the inclination. It just never happens.

And it's a kind of a being irresponsible about something that is part of people ask me sometimes about, like, memberships and things like that, and they're like, oh, you know, do you do maintenance on your memberships? Do you, you know, do you send emails to the incomparable members? And I'm like, no. Do you communicate with people who are no longer members and give them offers to come back? No.

And I realized, oh, well, these are things that I don't want to do, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to start doing, but I recognize are valuable. And so incomparable membership is a good example where I basically went to a friend of mine who was starting his own business. See, this is how this works. Sometimes he quit his job and was starting his own business doing content stuff. And I said, would you like a job that is doing the member newsletter every quarter?

I mean, it's not even a big, not a huge amount of money, but, and it's not a big task, but it's like a task that should happen that I am never going to do. And literally, I mean, we had a couple back and forths about the content of the newsletter and all of that, but really, literally all I had to do was ask. And, and now there's a part of my business that should have happened ten years ago, probably is now happening, and it's just because I had to identify it and make a note of it and make the effort to hand it off. And I know handing things off is effort, right? But, like, the payback is enormous when you do that.

Well. And going back to, you know, old timey free agents, our advice was just the opposite. When you quit your job, we told everybody, don't spend a penny, you don't have to, because when you're first getting started, you know, just survival is job 100%. But you're coming back here after having done it ten years and saying, well, you know, eventually, hopefully, you get in a position where you do have to spend some money. And I totally agree.

David Sparks

I struggle with it as well. I mean, I also have control issues, which is another problem. Yeah. But just my last quarterly review I did in January ended up in me spending quite a bit of money to get someone to deal with all my customer support email. And I'm so happy I did it and I should have done it years ago, but it just takes a while to get there.

And you gotta, you got to know that you can rely on having enough revenue, but also you have to be willing to give it up. Yeah, it is. Control is a huge issue, too. I do think the way that I've dealt with it is, yeah, I mean, when you start out, it's very unlikely that you're as a new free agent that you have filled the all of the time. Right.

Jason Snell

You're struggling to take jobs. And then there's the balancing thing that happens. And I know we talked about this on free agents, where you say yes to work that you shouldn't have said yes to because you're like, but I'm starting out, I need to. And then you have to start saying, saying no to that work because it's the wrong kind of work. Or, or another thing that can happen at these, uh, at these off sites that's valuable is, um, having, coming into it with awareness of where your money comes from, because I will say that that's also.

And sometimes it's kind of cold to do it that way. But it is important to say, like, where does my money come from? For example, the, when I talked about, like, editing those incomparable, uh, spin off shows, network shows, I don't make any money at that. I literally was editing it for free and producing those shows for free, and the hosts were getting some member support, but I was just doing it for free and I thought, I can't, like, not only is this burning me up, but it's like, this is time. I do not have to work on something with little to no return.

So we use member support was there to support the shows, so we use the member support to pay for the producers and editors to make the show happen. That was why it was there to begin with, and that was off my plate. Similarly, I can analyze anything I do and say, well, how much money does this bring in? And then gauge it. And it's not just like, all about the money, right?

Some of it is about what I want to do, whether it's strategically or that it brings me joy. It's not a always ruthlessly go to the thing that brings in the most money, but it sure is helpful to. To have that moment of saying, I am doing, you know, whatever it is, 5 hours a week of work that generates zero income and your business does reach the point where the limit is your human body. And getting stuff that does not need to be you out either gives you rest or it gives you more time to work. And it's super important even though.

And that's what got me over my control issues was, I know they're not going to do it like me, but I shouldn't be doing that job anymore because I have other things that I could be applying my skills to instead. And so, yeah, something like support emails, something like ad traffic is. It's just, it's something that you have to do when your business has gone on a little bit and you realize that the issue, because over time, the issue becomes your time. At the start, it's not at the start, it's I will do everything because that's how I survive. And it's.

It's I. In talking to other people who do what we do, this is a thing that I've identified that I found that a lot of people haven't, which is that moment of saying you need to come out of startup mentality, indie startup mentality, and enter, um, time management, your time management. Because I, you know, I guarantee that a lot of independent creators have been doing it for five years or more, have tasks they're doing that are not a thing that makes them unique. There was a business book that I read because I was assigned it by my CEO at the time called good to great. I have not read a lot of business books, but the perspective that I liked out of that book was find out what you do the best in the world is basically the way they put it.

And then that's the thing that matters, I would say for indie creators. What do you do? Literally, why are you out there? Why are people paying you? Like, what are they paying you to do?

And then that's always your priority. And ad traffic and customer support, you can do them, but unless you don't have the money to pay for it and you don't have the work that can replace it, you should not do that anymore. And that was a huge revelation for me, that I found that I think a lot of people are in that same boat, which is they're just doing stuff because they've always done it, and not because it makes sense.

Mike Schmitz

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One other thing I want to call out from way back at the beginning, because you mentioned the Airbnb that you found at the beginning of the week in the winter, which wasn't very expensive. So, like, as we're talking about personal retreats, and before we move on from this, I want to make sure we mentioned that the key takeaway, I think here you mentioned earlier, is to get off site, and if you get creative, you can find ways to do this that are not going to break the bank. Yeah, you don't have to go to Hawaii. Exactly. You don't have to do that.

David Sparks

Wait, you could do this in Hawaii. You totally could. And if you want to do that. But what I would say is, the problem is then you're going to want to go to the beach. And that's not as like having a nice dinner or a nice lunch is a perk of this.

Jason Snell

Like, when I worked at our downtown friend's downtown office, it meant, like, I got to go over to the deli and got them to make me a sandwich for lunch. And I usually make my own sandwich, so there's some fun stuff. But yeah, midweek rental nearby. So I mentioned CGP Grey. He does a thing.

He's a youtuber. He does the Cortex podcast here at relay. He does these things that we have come to call graycations, but it's basically, it's not for this kind of thing. It's more like for him to really intensely focus on writing a script for his YouTube videos, but he's going somewhere nearby and getting a hotel room and locking himself in it, essentially to focus. And I would say, like, yeah, if you can go an hour away and rent an Airbnb midweek for fairly cheap and just drive there and be there for one night even, or maybe two nights.

That is. That's a good way to go, I would say. I mean, yeah, obviously, if you've got, if you're lucky enough to have a friend who has an office and they're going to go to Australia, I mean, what are the chances? But do that. I also looked at, like, co working facilities.

There's a lot of places that co working facilities will let you rent an office and for a day, and you literally come in the morning and they say you're in that office and you go in there and you close the door. I mean, it can be that simple. It doesn't have to be super expensive. But, yeah, you may find if you've got, like, maybe you've got a friend who's going on vacation and they want you to feed their cat and you say, you know what? Do you mind if I, if I stay there, you know, and do my little personal offsite for the day?

And they're like, I don't care. I'm going to be in Hawaii. You're the sucker who's feeding my cat. And, uh, you can do that. So there's lots of opportunities for stuff like that.

But you're absolutely right, Mike. The point is to get outside of your, your space. Just completely outside of your space. And all the distractions and routines, the routines that let you do your job. It's the right structure is this thing that is super valuable, but it's all meant to keep you doing your routines and keeping in your structure.

And that's why we build structures. And corporate cultures are like that, and that's why we do it. But for stuff like this, you got to fight it. And that means you got to get out of wherever you work, like, and wherever you live and any place that's going to be a distraction like that, you just got to get out. Which kind of gets back to where we started is.

David Sparks

This is hard, what we're talking about? It's not easy. Yeah, and it's kind of painful because you don't want to sit there and think about what you're doing wrong or what you should stop doing. And nobody's doing my work while I'm gone. Right.

Jason Snell

Like, as an indie, unless you've got collaborators. Like, it's super scary to be like, I'm abandoning my work for two days. It's like, yeah, you are, but, you know, do it once or twice a year. Like I said, I tend to do it once a year and then try to schedule a six month out, kind of mini follow up, checking in, trying to keep myself honest, like it's worth the time. But it is super scary because you're going to be making all those decisions you've avoided and, you know, you've avoided the ones you don't even realize you have to deal with and you aren't going to actually be able to do your job for a couple of days.

It's super scary, but you got to do it. If somebody's listening right now and they're struggling or they're thinking they should give it a try, what's your advice to them? I say, you got to do it. I mean, it is painful, like we just said, but I found especially at the start, this is also not one of those things that gets better with practice. I actually think that the more unresolved stuff you've got, the easier it is.

It's taken me three years to kind of clear out the worst of it. This year, I actually ended up thinking a lot more strategically about the future of my business. The first two years were really like garbage time. It was really like, oh, my God, there are so many things that need to change about what I do and what the business does. So I'd say it's worth it.

It can be a little bit painful, but you will. Like, you've got to have a perspective about who you are and what you do and what your jobs are, and it's very hard to do that while you're doing your jobs. And I guess what I would say again is there's no one else to do it. No one knows your business like you do, and no one is going to tap you on the shoulder and say, I want to change what your job is and we're going to bring some help in and we're going to whatever it is. And the great thing about the offsite is it is what you need it to be.

So depending on what phase of your indie life you're in, it can be the let's focus on the future of the business like I did this year, or let's focus on getting help. It can also be earlier on. It can be valuable in, like, let's focus on what to do and what not to do. What kind of work am I looking for? What should I do?

Be, you know, do more of or try to do more of? And what work do I is not worth it financially or is not worth it in terms of the opportunity cost, or I just hate it. Like, every phase of this, knowing what I know now, I would have done this from the beginning, because even though what I need keeps changing, the need to step back and analyze it and not just be in the day to day has always been there. There are always those decisions that need to be made and better. You don't make them under duress, but instead that, you actually give yourself a moment to take a breath and think like the person who's running your business, because you are that, too.

That is one of your roles that should be up there on the paper, is CEO of your business. I would add to that that even if you are not an independent creator and if you're an agent, that this stuff could be helpful, even if you're working for a multinational corporation. Oh, yeah. Getting a way to think about what your roles are and then maybe bringing that back to your superiors and talking about that. I'm so happy that you said that, because one of my other inspirations, I didn't mention this, but one of my other inspirations for this is I used to do a couple of things when I was at IDG and Macworld.

One of them was what I called the walk in the woods, which was essentially, I would take a personal day, or I would take a day off, or I would take a work from home day, and I made sure I didn't have anything to do that day. And it was get out of the office and think big thoughts. And it was not as structured as this, but it was very much like, I need to take a breath and get some fresh air and not be in the office, where it's always about what the latest priority is. And then I also started doing something. So, at Macworld, in the later years, I had a couple of direct reports, and we were basically the editorial management for Macworld, Phil and Dan.

And we would have every six months or so. And again, this is a great example. I mean, if you work at home, it's not the perfect example, but it was a great example of getting out of the space. We would go every six months or so to Dan's house and sit in his dining room in Berkeley, and Phil and I would drive to Dan's house, and we would sit in his dining room all day with our laptops, and we would do a version of this same idea. We didn't think of it as, like, quite as a retreat, but it was the same idea of getting out of your head space and the day to day and thinking about the big picture things.

So even if you are at a company, you absolutely have the ability to take the walk in the woods yourself if you're responsible for some area or maybe even take a couple of your key lieutenants, essentially, and go off somewhere. And again, it does not have to be a big funded corporate retreat. It could literally be if you're in an office, go to someone's house, and the kids are at school, and you're at the dining room table, and you're not in the usual for work, even if it's your dining room table. You have people over. That's not where you do your job.

That's good enough. I always found that really valuable, and this is like my indie iteration of that same thing. I like the term walk in the woods. I feel like there's something about getting out into nature, if you can. Yeah.

Mike Schmitz

Whether that's the woods or by a lake, whatever. And I know that's more accessible for some people than others, but don't discount it. Don't just think that you can't do that. Like, I just did my personal retreat last week, and I go to this getaway house they're called, and they're like these tiny houses that they park on, these campsites in the middle of nowhere, and they're kind of designed for people who live in the city to get out into nature. Just disconnect.

And for me, it's the perfect place to do my personal retreat. But they have, like, a cell phone lockbox. Like, you're not doing your, uh, your closing keynotes, uh, for your personal retreats from a. From a getaway house. But it's 45 minutes away.

There's a beautiful trail there. And, uh, to go back to the point about, you know, how affordable this stuff can be, the pricing for the campsites is based on how full the campsites are. So if you go on the weekends, it might be $300 a night. But if you can squeeze out a Monday or Tuesday night with the coupon codes that they always have available, I mean, I just did mine for, I think, $70. So get a little bit creative and definitely get out into the woods or buy some water if you can, because it really does just change the way that you think about things.

It's hard to explain exactly what it does, but it definitely changes things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's. I fortunate to live very close to some, you know, redwoods and also a beach, so I can do these things. But.

Jason Snell

But, yeah, I think that there is a way to get right, like, the theme of this all is just get outside of your usual. Get outside of your own head. Give yourself some space that is not in the grind, in the machine of whatever it is that you've built, which is not a bad thing. Like, the machine you built may be a beautiful machine, but you need to not be in it. You need to be on the outside.

And so, yeah, if you can go to nature and you don't have to even take a big hike, even if you're just in a cabin and stepping outside and sitting at a table or literally walking through on a trail, a flat trail, it doesn't need to be hard. It just needs to be outside of the norm so that your brain can decompress and think. And if you direct it to think about these deep thoughts, it's not a vacation, but it is giving yourself permission to think big thoughts in a place where you're not. You do not have. Your brain doesn't have, like, a foothold to grab onto and say, oh, but what about project a back at the office?

Like, you need to just have a way to say, no brain. It's not today. Yeah. In fact, in the materials, I explained that if you can just leave the tools to do the maker work at home, don't even bring the stuff with you, do everything you can to make it easier. I feel like if, like, every time you turn your computer on, you think you should be writing an article or, you know, publishing a paper or whatever, then maybe leave the computer at home, but make it as hard as possible to do actual work when you leave.

Right. Like, I would bring my laptop so I could do that work, but for me, right, it's knowing yourself, too. For me, it was the whole pen and paper from IDG training thing. That was the leap that I needed to make there of spending my time not staring at a computer screen where I could just flip over to another app and do my job, but instead holding one of those big markers, staring at a piece of paper on a wall, made all the difference because it was like, I can't write a blog post or record a podcast while I'm holding this pen. And that.

That. That made a difference. Yeah. Another. Another thing you.

Mike Schmitz

You mentioned, which is, uh, worth, uh, calling out, is the fact that it's not a vacation. This is, uh, not going to be easy. In fact, this is probably the hardest thinking work you will ever do. Most of the time when I do a personal retreat, by the end of the day, I am completely exhausted, which feels weird because you did nothing but think big thoughts. Think real hard, but it is exhausting because your brain's not used to being in that mode.

Jason Snell

Yeah, it's absolutely true. Again, if you've been in the corporate world at all, I like the idea of calling it an offsite because corporate offsites, the whole idea was you go somewhere else and so you can think big thoughts. I mean, that's always been my experience is that's what the offsite is for, is to go somewhere else, get out of your room. And there are offsites that are more junkety and there are offsites that are more serious. But, like, if I'm running my off site, the point is to go and do what we've described in this episode.

But you know what corporate offsite there are? You can treat yourself right. So it's things like, it's not a vacation, but if it means, like, oh, well, I'm going to get that deli Sandwich or I'm going to bring something with me for a lunch that is not your usual lunch. Or at the end of the day, you know, if, if you're at an unusual location, maybe what's a restaurant near there? Maybe go to dinner and, and you're winding down, and maybe you're thinking, not the deep thoughts anymore, but, like, I will say, just, this is a weird aside.

I know, but, like, this is the treat yourself part, which is you, if you're ever going to do something nice for yourself, have it be a reward for doing something like this. You're in an unusual place, you've had an unusual day. It may not work out, but, like having a little treat, think of yourself as the corporate training manager for your company, and you're like, you know, those people are not like, oh, well, we're going to put them in a room for 8 hours and then send them home. And that's all there is. And there's nothing nice there.

And then they have to go back to, that's not what they're going to do. They're going to be like, well, we're going to get them a box lunch, and then we're going to go have a, have a dinner afterward. I've done it where I've had dinner with my wife afterward, and it's been like a nice, like Lil Capper where she wasn't there for the thing, but she came out when we did the Airbnb after work. She came to the Airbnb and we had dinner and we stayed the night and then left the next morning. And so it was like a little treat at the end of the hard work, and that's okay.

I sometimes think that indie creators and independent people in general do not give themselves an opportunity to treat themselves even a little for their hard work. This is a great opportunity to do that after you've spent all that time thinking real hard. Ideally for me, it's two nights. Like you. You leave, you start in the PDF, I explain it all, and the second day is the really hard work day.

David Sparks

And then like that night, that second night, like if I have the means, I'll go out to a nice meal or something and get away. Because by then you're ready to get away from the off site. Even if it's a beautiful cabin, you need to get out a little bit. And that's kind of like the treat yourself night for me.

Jason Snell

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Mike Schmitz

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David Sparks

So Jason, last time you were on these airwaves, this show was all about free agents. Now the show is all about staying focused. So we do have a fresh area to discuss with you. When you're not off doing retreats and you work from home and you've got your own kind of studio built at the house, how do you stay focused? Well, I'll tell you, it's a lot easier now that the kids don't live at home.

Jason Snell

Living at home has its own challenges. Focus. It's really interesting. Some of it is. I mentioned my wife before.

We've been married a long time. Now it's almost 30 years. We got married very young.

Setting boundaries, especially early on, has been important, especially when she worked part time. Now she's gone all day. But when she worked part time, we had rules about when the door is closed. What does it mean? When the door is open, what does it mean?

I have a little do not disturb thing that I made that I can put on the doorknob to literally be like, do not come in here. I set my door so it locks from the inside as well as the outside, so I can actually lock myself in and I'm not trapped. But it's like yet another message. Some of it was just those kind of boundaries with her and when the kids were at home with them about sort of like, when is it okay to just walk in and start talking to me? Because that's a real focus breaker.

So if I really need to focus beyond that, I'll close the door, for example, and they can, you know, they can text me. Usually at that point is what we tend to do. If the door is closed, it's a simple thing, so that that helps with my focus a little bit. And then the other thing is an understanding. Like I said, my wife works at librarian, she works at the library every day, and I'm at home.

And part of the negotiation is it's an advantage that I'm at home. But we also very important to me, and she has accepted this, that just because I'm at home doesn't mean I'm not working. And that's tricky, right? Because it's like, I accept the fact that if somebody needs to get a package or anything where it's like, well, we can take advantage of somebody being at home. It's like, yes, we can do that.

That's fine. But I also have been wary. I mean, it's talking about managing your time and taking on tasks of the whole idea of, like, well, oh, you're home, so can you run this errand and can you do this thing? And sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I say no because I'm busy and just because I'm home, it's just, I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly, but, like, this is the challenge for anybody who is at home, whether they are staying at home or whether they're working at home or whether they're only part time, is the implication of being home is, oh, you can do things while you're home. And the way I always put it is consider it that other than lunch, consider that maybe I'm locked away in my office all day working.

And we've come over ten years to get in a good place about that. But that was something where we had to set some boundaries for, is the door closed or not? But also, like, don't make assumptions. And, like, it's a big request to say, can you go in the middle of the day and do this thing? And she can see my calendar.

She knows the stuff that I've blocked off. She knows when I have a more open day and we have those conversations, and I'm happy to do some of that stuff, but I can't, you know, more of it has to just be, we have to figure it out in the evenings or on the weekends. And that, that, that's just part of the deal. So some of that. And then the other thing I found, and this is a weird one, but, like, I've also tried to be aware of changes in my environment that helped me focus.

So I have for a long time. I mentioned writing columns at Starbucks. I used to do that. I don't do that so much anymore. The pandemic sort of cured me of that.

But I have, like, an iPad stand and a keyboard. I will sometimes write at my kitchen, the countertop, the bar top, because it's a physically different location. It's a little like the off site stuff, and it gets me out of one. Again, it's not like this isn't a place that I do work, but it's not the place that I'm sitting at right now. It's a different location.

And sometimes that flips a switch in your brain, where, again, even though it's pretty minor, it's like, well, I went to all the trouble of getting out the keyboard and setting up the iPad, and I found when I am needing to write something, it is so powerful to do a place change, even if it's just to go to the iPad at the countertop or go to my daughter's bedroom, where I've set up a desk and just be in a different location. I have friends who will go to, like, a supermarket with a. With a. You know, where there are tables and chairs or a coffee shop. And I think that's very powerful.

And the other thing that works, and this is really funny, because I know that it's because I used to do this in order to block out the world. But, like, sometimes when I really need to write, I put in headphones, playing music. It's specific playlists that work for writing, but the act of putting, again, that music on speakers, not as effective as in headphones. And I think it's because I have something that I built up ten years ago or longer ago, where that was your down to business time. You put in the headphones, you shut off the world's.

Probably when I had little kids and I was getting away to write in, like, the evening and closing the door. But that has become a trigger for me, too. So it's. It's being aware, like, of how your brain works and where you. How you can make yourself more productive.

And it comes in the weirdest places, and everybody's gonna be different. But as a rule of thumb, that's the number one thing I would say, is, if you're not focused at your desk, can you do it somewhere else? Like, can you do it somewhere if you're at home? Can you literally take the laptop and go to the couch or sit in the kitchen or go to a coffee shop? Just change state.

Because for me, the change of state can. Can be all that's required to reboot my brain and have me focus on something. Yeah, I totally agree. Context shift can be a good thing. You know, we talk about context shifting slowing you down, but when you need to change work modes, and with someone like you who has so many roles, I think there's nothing wrong with identifying specific roles with specific contexts.

David Sparks

And it's like a shortcut for your brain to jumpstart and get going. I have to ask, have you tried to create any context with Apple Vision Pro yet? Yeah, I've done that a little bit. And in fact, what I would say is I haven't done the iPad setup recently because I've been doing that with the Vision Pro instead, and it's very similar. The software is still a little wonky, but I have written multiple articles in vision Pro with an external keyboard and rune stone as my text editor in a version.

Jason Snell

Sometimes it's just in my house, sometimes it's in an environment. Because again, that's a big context shift, and I like it. I don't know if I would choose it every time, but what I like the most about it is that ergonomically setting up the iPad with a stand and a keyboard in the kitchen or whatever, I can do it, but it's cramped and it's limited, and there's only one way to sit. And with a vision pro, I can sit on my couch, which is super comfy, and just have a keyboard in my lap. And my dog is very happy because she can come up and sit across from me and put her head down on my feet as I'm writing.

And it's very nice. And that's the thing that vision pro gets me, is a lot more ergonomic freedom to sit wherever as long as I can type on a keyboard. Yeah, I've been doing this thing where I only write in Yosemite environment and it works. I mean, my brain now I go to Yosemite and the headset and suddenly it's like. It's just like everything.

David Sparks

I get focused on writing and now I'm super curious to see what happens the next time I actually visit yosemite. Am I going to feel compelled to start writing something? Or maybe so just bring a camp chair, sit out in a meadow, just start typing away. I do want to say, for those of us who don't have the vision pros, it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive to do this, either. One of the things that I used to do, I had this whole big circuit that I would start at a coffee shop, then go to the library, then end up at a co working space, and I would work on a different project.

Mike Schmitz

Basically, whenever I arrived at the new location, be there for a couple of hours, go somewhere else. But you could literally start for free simply by going to the library. Because the library typically has pretty fast wireless Internet. You can bring your headphones, put them on. My library actually looks out over this little marina thing, so there's some nature there, too, with the windows at the.

Jason Snell

My little. Little spot up on the second floor. So again, look for ways to make this easier. You don't have to go all out and do the really fancy version at first. It's a lot more approachable, I guess, than what you might think is really the point I'm making here.

Yeah, well, I mean, like I said, one of my big ways of doing this is literally to go to a different room. Right? Like even that. And if you do it enough times, that's the other thing, is that you might do it once and be like, well, this is just a little bit weird. But what I found is over time, if you keep doing that, it becomes a cue.

Right? Like David's yosemite. It becomes a cue that your brain actually starts to say, oh, I know. Like, okay, so I live. I'm fortunate to live in northern California in the summer because our summers are gentle here.

My favorite thing is to sit in a camp chair under the redwood tree in my backyard and write. And that is a cue. But even, like, sitting at the high bar stool in my kitchen is a cue that says time to write or putting those headphones in. And the more you do it, this is. You talk about practice, right?

The more you do it, the more it becomes the cue to start some aspect of creativity. And, you know, it's not a cure all, it's still hard work. But, like, if you talk about losing momentum when you do a context shift, but the opposite is true. If you have no momentum, if you're at a standstill, it can be incredibly valuable to, you need a context shift. You need something to break you out of your staring at the screen, sitting in your chair.

So if you do it enough, I think you can train yourself into saying, oh, I'm at Starbucks, or the library or the kitchen counter. And that means it's time to get to work on this particular kind of work. Especially. Yeah, it's a great procrastination, buster. Yeah, I mean, it's so easy to just sit.

I mean, for me, it's so easy to sit at my screen sometimes, and it's like I can loop around email. Slack discord. Mastodon. Back around email slack. Oh, I can do this thing here and check this thing.

And, like, I'm not being productive. I'm being anti productive because I'm spinning my wheels because I'm not quite sure what to do next. And, you know, just standing up and being like, all right, out somewhere, literally the next room will do to break myself out of this. Yeah, it's like. It's like your brain knows it's game time when you make that switch.

David Sparks

And like you said, the more you do it, especially trying to do certain types of work in the same context every time, to me, that's real magical, because, like, if every time you sit on the couch or every time you go to the bar stool or every time you go to the library, you do a certain type of work, it's like you sit down and your brain is already engaged with that work before you even tap a key. So that's great. You may even start thinking about it as you're going there. Right? Like, it may be that is enough of a cue for your brain to start prepping for what you're gonna do.

Jason Snell

We had a Starbucks within walking distance of my house that shut down. And it made me very sad because that was such a great place for me to write my Macworld column. I was doing it every week on, like, a Tuesday afternoon and especially in the winter, where I wasn't going to be sitting in the backyard. And it was like, put my laptop in my backpack. Put the backpack on my back, walk four minutes, order a hot chocolate, sit down, headphones in, start typing.

And the words just popped right out. Because it was that whole process of context shift. You know, the context of getting ready. I might start thinking about the column as I was walking to the. To the place and ordering my little drink and then sitting down.

It was very specific, and it was kind of magical. And then they closed it. So I was like, okay, well, I guess we'll go back to the kitchen counter then. I think you gotta get a bike, Jason. Yeah.

I mean, well, there's another Starbucks I can go to, but. Yeah, you're right. I could also. It's over a freeway. It's kind of dangerous.

Anyway. Yeah, I found some other places, but the cheapest places are at my house, which is nice. All right, Jason, welcome back again. So happy to have you back. And.

David Sparks

And I'm really happy that the retreat process has been helping you. And, gang, you don't have to do this just for work. You could do it for the rest of your life, too. That's that's what me and Mike kind of preach about, but and we've got the PDF's and the links in the notes. You can go check that stuff out.

Jason, where do people go to learn more about the stuff you do? I post lots of things, including the podcast I do@sixcolors.com. Here at Relay I host upgrade and downstream and on theincompferable.com I host many things, but I don't produce and edit as much as I used to because I learned my lesson. All right, we are the Focus podcast. You can find us at Relay FM focused.

You can sign up for the deep focus ad free version of the show where you get the ad free content and additional content with each episode. We're going to be talking to Jason today about how he uses a calendar as a task manager. I can't wait to talk about that. Thank you to our sponsors, nom Nom, Squarespace, and indeed, and we'll see you next time.

203: The Little Lies You Tell Yourself, with Jason Snell

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1: Introduction

2: Deep Dive into Personal Retreats

3: Practical Tips for Organizing Personal Retreats

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