Shadowing Practice: The 3-Step System for Simplifying Your Work and Life - Learn English Speaking with Video

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when people are faced with problems

and complexity our instinct is to add instead of subtract as

a result we have a tendency to to make our work and our lives more and more complex

and less and less effective and fulfilling.

Even when what we add is new technology that promises to make us more productive, it often only seems to bog us down and give us even more to do.

My guest says that to fight this drift toward complexity, especially in the modern age, you gotta be ruthless about cutting out the superfluous and focusing on what's most important.

His name is Jim VandeHei, and he's the co -founder and CEO of Axios and the co -author of Simplify.

Today in the show, Jim explains how to simplify your work and personal life using a three -step process, confront, delete, and amplify.

We discuss how to identify the slop we're all inundated with, and he's not just talking about what's generated by AI, rules of thumb for what to say no to, why you should spend more time developing your strengths than fixing your weaknesses,

and the importance of getting clear on what you want out of life, both personally and professionally.

After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom .is slash simplify.

All right.

Jim Fandeheye, welcome back to the show.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me back.

You got a new book out.

It's called Simplify.

It's all about how to simplify your work and your life.

There are lots of books out there about simplifying.

Why do you think the world needed another one?

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think there's a lot of people who've written about how do you bring more efficiency to your life.

The reason that I think this book is timely, the reason that we did it,

is I think that artificial intelligence is going to make the need for simplicity maybe 100 times more important.

I'm seeing it every single day of my life, every single day in the work that we do here at Axios,

that basically we've hit a point where everything is becoming so complex at work, so complex outside of work,

that if you don't have a system to figure out how to simplify what you're focusing on, stop doing the dumb things you shouldn't be doing

and amplify the things you both want to do and that you're good at doing, I do think inertia and complexity just take over kind of like awful cancers.

They spread.

How are you seeing AI increase the amount of complexity in our lives?

Because the idea, the selling point is AI is supposed to simplify our lives.

I think with time, AI might simplify our lives.

I think in the short term, it is the greatest complexity creation machine ever created.

And let me say why.

Because think about it at work.

Like, yes, if you really know how to use it with great expertise

and you're one of the 1 % where it's a true force multiplier, it probably saves you time.

What is actually happening on the ground is now everybody can do better presentations.

Everybody can write more detailed memos.

So everybody is.

So suddenly we are all getting lit up with more presentations, with more emails, with more context,

with more ideas at a time where we have less time to actually focus on it.

So unless you're really careful and you think about this almost like a system or an operating system or a mindset,

you're just going to end up in a bigger complexity trap than you were already caught in pre -AI.

Yeah, I've seen it in my own work.

So we get a lot of PR emails from people who want to be on the podcast.

And I'd say in the past year, the amount of those emails that we've gotten have increased probably 10x.

And I think it's AI.

It's all AI.

And again, that's one example across one small part of your workday.

For most of us, we're getting hit with that from a hundred different directions.

You add that up and you end up wasting

so much time like the reason we wrote this book I

am not somebody I think we talked about this a couple

years ago I have no sort of egotistical scratch to itch

in terms of writing books you know I've reached the point

in life I'm 55 I've had some successes I've won the lottery with my family

so like I'm playing with house money

and I want to like spend my time like how do you be useful to others

and I think this book is useful I love

that word useful I think about it with content I think about it with time allocation.

I just want to be useful, and I think the book is useful.

Like when we write a book, it's because we've done something that we put into practice and

that I've seen have a transformative effect on me or my company.

And we rolled out Simplify this idea two years ago at our company, and the results are truly astronomical.

Like we went, I went back and looked, our budget two years ago was to have about 750 people and to do way less revenue than we're doing right now.

We have 425 people, I believe, and the average revenue per person is up 75%.

And I truly attribute that to the simplify mentality.

And what I mean by that is we went through the company

and we literally ruthlessly looked at what are the things that we do that we can just stop doing?

And then what are the things that we do uniquely well that we can amplify the hell out of it?

And to do that, we created this three -step process, which is just confront, delete, amplify.

Confront is what are we doing?

Why are we doing it?

Delete is make, delete, and know the most powerful words in your arsenal and just stop doing stuff.

Kill anything that's not adding value, anything that creates friction, anything that is just done because we've always done it

that way so that you can get to amplify the things that you actually do exceptionally well.

One of the cool things that we did is we make every single employee, rank and file, anybody who's just starting or has been here forever, now we're doing it on a monthly basis,

write down in order of importance the three things that you need to do to crush your job this month.

One, two, three.

Then write down the three things that you do that you think are dumb or that shouldn't be done. In order.

One, two, three.

And then the three things you think could be automated using AI.

Almost no person does that.

Almost no company does it, but the minute you do it, you can then sit down with your manager and figure out, are these actually the three things I should be doing?

And then the three things you're talking about killing, at least your manager has to confront like, why are we doing them?

In most cases, what we find is people are just doing them out of habit.

They're doing it because we always did it.

And they didn't really want to raise their hand and say that this is stupid or wasting me time.

The minute you kill those things, productivity soars, but it's not just productivity because who really gives a shit? that's kind of the business advantage,

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your personal satisfaction soars because you stop doing the chores you don't want to do, and you have more time to do the things that you want to do.

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And that's why I think that this mindset,

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this idea of simplify and doing like twice as much with half the work is so important at this very specific moment,

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because I just can't envision a time in my lifetime and therefore anybody's lifetime where we've had more stuff,

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more choices, more things that distract us.

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And the one thing that is crystal clear from the science, the more decisions you have to make, the crappier decisions you make.

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Yeah, I want to get more into the framework because you have some great examples from it and some brass tack things.

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But just sticking on this idea of complexity, even before AI, things had a tendency to get complex.

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Like why does that happen.

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I imagine most people don't start an initiative or in business or an organization thinking, I want to make this the most complex, confusing thing.

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Why does complexity nonetheless creep in?

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Yeah, I don't think people do it out of laziness.

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They don't do it out of stupidity.

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It's just a defect in our species that we just have this tendency to complexify, to make things more complicated,

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particularly the longer that we do it.

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It's why every organization ultimately becomes a bureaucracy.

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It's why every government, the bigger it gets, the worse it functions.

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The reason that the more stuff you have in your closet, the harder it is to decide what to wear.

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It's just something about us that we assume more is better.

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And we often equate action with like smart activity.

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And it's a bad human habit.

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And that's one of the things I've discovered starting

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and running companies is that if you don't have a system to defeat the worst of your habits, you'll never defeat it.

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The first book we did was smart brevity about how to write smarter and quicker and in a more efficient way.

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And it ended up being revolutionary for people who did it.

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But it was because you had to see that there's this bad habit, long -winded writing that wasn't helpful.

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And you had to have a corrective measure, smart brevity, which was the measure that we outlined in that book.

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And that's the way that I look at simplify.

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In some ways, simplify is smart brevity on steroids applied to every aspect of your life.

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I think you highlight this study, this tendency for us to add instead of subtract.

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I think there's a study

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that you highlight in the book where researchers gave people this puzzle where the solution was you had to take something away, but everyone always just wanted to add something.

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We don't default to subtract.

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We always default to add.

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It probably goes back to our hunter -gatherer instincts, that we just think We need more, and more is better.

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More is survival.

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But the evidence is so clear that all of us get, you know, what they call sort of cognition fatigue, this idea that the more decisions you make,

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the worse the decisions will be ultimately, because we only can make so many sharp decisions with our brain not feeling exhausted, even if we realize it or not.

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It's the reason it seems silly, but like it is the reason that Jensen Wang or Rachel Maddow

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or Barack Obama

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or Mark Zuckerberg why all of them have very limited clothing

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choices like all of them have talked publicly about they limit the number of clothes

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or colors that they have so they can reduce the amount of decisions

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that they have to make in the morning and it seems small

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but I do a version of this with I really there's

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only one brand of shirt I have one brand of jean it mainly

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because like the more I have I lock up I realized

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this like a decade ago I would sit there probably realize that 20 years ago when you had that craft beer explosion, like I love the hell out of beer.

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But when I go and stare at this refrigerator full of like 400 beers, I just lock up.

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There's too many decisions.

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There's too many choices.

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Right.

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And so you've got to figure out a way to reduce the number of choices.

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You've got to delete things.

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You've got to increase your capacity to say no and realize

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that every little bit

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that you do in your life where you take away frees up time to do stuff that's actually rewarding

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and brings us benefit.

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And ultimately, that's what all of us want.

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You have a whole chapter dedicated to slop.

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You don't just mean AI slop.

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What's your definition of slop?

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And what are examples of slop that creep into our working lives?

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If anybody's listening to this and you take the time just to think about your day, take one day and dissect it, your day is like 60 to 70 % slop.

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And what I mean is just like stuff that gets dumped on your plate that you probably shouldn't be dealing with, don't want to deal with, someone else could deal with it.

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And a lot of it, again, it's not done intentionally.

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We talk in the book about make work

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or Stuart Butterfield from Slack had that great term about sort of like human -like activity.

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Like it seems like you're doing work, but you're just making work.

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And every time you make work, someone else has to do that work.

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And most work at work is just stuff you're doing

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because someone else set something in motion that maybe never should have been put in motion.

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So there's AI slop, which is just a bunch of words that were added because AI is very good at word.

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That's one thing.

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But the other slop that I think is even more insidious is just like the work slop

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that gets piled out of bad habit and inertia.

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Habit and inertia.

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Those things are so powerful.

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Even at my company run by me, who's obsessed with this, if I'm not doing like a monthly

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or even more frequent kind of inventory about what are people doing and why are you doing it, we revert to habit.

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We revert to inertia.

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The number of times that people say, well, I do this because like five years ago, you said we should do this.

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And I'm like, yeah, I changed my mind like four years ago.

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I didn't realize this is still cooked into the system.

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And that's true at every company.

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And that's why this isn't like a shame on you.

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You are dumb.

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You made things complex.

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Like we all make things complex.

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You just have to admit it.

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Like we all have this tendency, but if you don't do something about that, that complexity is just going to strangle you.

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It's going to make it

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so hard for you to do the stuff you want to do at work

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and do the stuff you want to do outside of work.

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Yeah, so meetings can be slop, reports can be slop.

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You have this great example from AT &T where this guy comes in as CEO

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and he realized that there were like thousands of company policies or something.

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And he just started going through them and saying, all right, what can we cut?

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And the reason why they accumulated, like you said, you know, someone 10 years ago said, well, we need to create this policy for this reason.

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And it just stayed forever on the books.

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You know, it stayed as a rule or operating procedure, even if it wasn't useful anymore.

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Yeah, the guy's name is John Stanky, CEO of AT &T, one of the oldest companies, Mobile, in the U .S.,

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a workforce that's well over 100 ,000 people and he came in

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and he's become a simplified zealot and he realized they have 8 ,000,

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8 ,000 different policy declarations that are like official to the company.

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He said he couldn't name 10 of them and he became militant about like, I wanna kill all of these.

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And he's got it down to 400 and he's trying to get it down to single digits.

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And what Stanky calls it is quote unquote, the Borg.

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And the Borg is just all of this stuff that gets encrusted

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and all the barnacles that get built up inside of a company that become bloat.

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And all they do is they prevent people from doing the fun,

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electrifying work that they should be doing that makes them enjoy their work and makes the company more profitable.

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And what Stanky's admitting is kind of what I'm admitting or what Mark Zuckerberg at Meta admitted.

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Like they basically went through this, they called it the year of efficiency, but when we talked to him, talked to his team for the book, they talk about it in kind of the same simplified mindset what they realized is

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that every time that they reduced a and reduced managers managing managers,

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their productivity went up and their internal satisfaction scores for employees went up.

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Well, why?

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Because they stopped doing the things that deep down, maybe subconsciously, people realized they shouldn't be doing

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and they were focusing on the stuff that they want to do

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and their stock price bounced up and they became a better company.

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Yeah, and in your personal life, slop accumulates.

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Clothes, like you mentioned, you buy clothes and then you haven't worn something in three years, but it's still in your closet it.

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And you're like, I got to get rid of this.

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Or, you know, just stuff you do with your family.

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A lot of families feel really rushed and harried and they never take a look at their calendar to ask, why are we doing this thing?

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Do we really need to do this activity?

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Probably not.

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Yeah.

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And I think like in the book, like I talk a little bit about this.

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I do it and I'd recommend anyone else do this.

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Nobody ever even steps back to say, I'm going to take 20 minutes today and I'm going to think, what do I actually even want out of life?

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Like when I'm on my deathbed, like what do I want to be able to say I accomplished

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or I achieved or I became

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and write it down like what are the three things you want out of life

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and then use that as a filter for okay

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when I do have free time am I achieving these things

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or am I just becoming a prisoner to habit

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or a prisoner to what everyone else wants to do

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or just I don't know I'll just do this

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because I've not put any thought into it

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and I do think the principles of simplify work even better

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at home we walk through how you could do this with your diet, how you could do it with your wardrobe.

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But I do think it's just this mentality of taking the time of like, why do we do this?

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Is this the best way to spend our time?

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All these things that I buy in the household, aren't there ways that I could just automate this

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so I'm not having to spend any time thinking about this cereal versus that cereal?

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Like there's technology that does this for free.

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All of us have access to it through Uber Eats or whatever other app that we're using.

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We might not take advantage of it, and it might seem small or trivial, but if you do five, six, seven, eight of these things,

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you suddenly have more time to do the things that you actually want to do.

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And that's really the spirit of the book, is trying how do we liberate ourselves to do all the things that you have to do to be a responsible human,

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but free ourselves up to spend way more time doing the things that bring us joy and reward and that's not selfish.

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I think everyone else around us benefits when we're happy and we're doing stuff that makes us feel energized.

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Let's talk about this process to kind of drill down a little bit more.

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So the simplify process, like you said, just three words, confront, delete, amplify.

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With confront, you argue that a lot of people just don't even get to this point.

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And I think people listening are probably thinking, well, yeah, this makes sense.

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If you get rid of the stuff that you don't need to do, your life will be better.

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But why do most people not even get to that point?

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Because life's busy.

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Like we're all busy.

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Like the average person's getting, I think what is 150 emails a day, 130 texts a day.

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That doesn't even account for your Tinder alerts and all the other people like calling you and wanting your time.

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So I don't think most people reckon with how much our brain is getting counted with incoming stuff all day,

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every day, which gives us less time to spend any time reflecting on like, okay, like I'm a prisoner to all of these alerts

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and all of these updates and all of these emails and all of these texts, but just what should I be doing?

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What do I want to do?

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That's why confront is the first thing.

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Just take the time at work, at home, with your diet, with your exercise, like what, just confront, like what is it that I'm doing?

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And is this actually the thing I should be doing?

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Like just doing that has a radical shift, right?

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I always look back and we wrote Smart Brevity, like one of the big aha moments And the thing

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that really seemed to resonate with readers and then people

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when I did a speaking tour on this is no one even stopped to think about before you ever write anything, just take one minute to why am I writing this?

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What do I want this person to take away?

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Could I just articulate that in one nice, crisp sentence?

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Just that mentality shift of taking the time has such an effect on us.

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So just taking the time to confront what are you doing, why are you doing it, which then opens you up to this concept of delete,

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just like what can you get rid of?

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Can I stop doing a meeting?

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Can I block a bunch of these emails?

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Can I stop like buying 600 different brands?

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Can I stop doing these things at work that I know I shouldn't be doing, but I keep doing them because I just assume I want to do them and I'm embarrassed to talk to my manager?

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In the book, we talk about this study by Microsoft

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that the average worker spends at least 25 % of their week doing stuff they shouldn't be doing.

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Think about that.

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They do the math.

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That's three months a year.

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That's 2 .5 years, a decade.

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Imagine if you had that time back and you use

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that time for stuff you should be doing or wanted to be doing.

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Not only would you not be doing stuff that you found to be a drag, you'd be doing things that bring you more satisfaction, probably more salary, maybe more promotions.

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Like that's a lot.

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And to me, that feels worth it.

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That feels like, okay, if that's the payback, I'm going to confront.

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I'm going to look at the things I can delete so that I can amplify the things that I want to do.

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So with this confront, I mean, this is something I think would be useful.

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Maybe you just set aside time like once a week, look through your schedule from the past week and think, what was the stuff that I did that I probably don't need to be doing anymore?

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But it sounds like too, like you in the book, you do this as a continual process.

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Like it seems like every time you're doing something, you're confronting it.

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And it's like, do I need to do this.

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You don't have to be a maniac about it like I am, but I would argue you should be doing this weekly at least.

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Again, I'm not saying that you've got to go off and meditate and become a monk.

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You just have to spend like five or 10 minutes even just looking at your schedule.

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Do I need to be doing these meetings?

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Do I need to?

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Could that meeting be a phone call?

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Could that meeting be an email?

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What are the things that I'm doing this week that I don't need to do?

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What are the things I'm doing at home, even looking at your personal schedule.

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I just always did that.

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Like, what do you need to be doing that?

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Because maybe that's an hour you could be working out or reading or doing stuff that you find brings you enjoyment.

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It's more just getting into that habit.

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Like this all flowed from like, I do take it further, right?

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I have what I call my happiness matrix, which is I kind of know the things that I care deeply about, whether it's my family, my kids,

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my work, my hobbies like hunting and fishing my health my workouts my faith

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and i i know if i feel off it's usually

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because i've not actually confronted like am i spending enough time on the things

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that matter most and that always has helped me reset to make sure

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that i am doing that like a good example is like i made the decision years ago

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that like i think the one of the most important things

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to me is not to actually have a wide circle of

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friends like i want to have deep deep relationships in individual relationships with my children, my wife, my parents, my siblings, and a very small number of friends.

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Well, to do that, I had to delete a lot.

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And that meant I live in DC.

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I run a media company.

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You could imagine the social stuff that I could be doing.

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I almost never do anything socially for work in DC.

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I take that time instead to allocate it towards those family members in my kids

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so that I can amplify the time I'm spending on the thing that by the time I get to my deathbed, I want to be able to say, I was a really great dad.

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I was a really great husband.

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I was a really good sibling and a really good son and a really good friend to a small group of people.

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That matters profoundly to me.

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But I took the time to think that, oh, that's one of the most important things.

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I confronted that.

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That required me to delete a lot of things in my life so that I could amplify the things that matter.

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I've done that in my own life.

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Mine was early on in my career, I would do speaking engagements where I have to travel.

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And at first, it's always great to get invited to speak.

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She's like, oh, wow, I feel important.

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But then I realized I live in Tulsa.

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There's no direct flights to a lot of places.

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So for me to go to some place like Washington, it's basically three days because like one day is for traveling there.

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Then one day is the event.

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And then the next day is the travel back.

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And I'm like, I don't want to do this.

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My kids are young.

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I want to spend time with them.

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I can't get that back.

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So I don't do speaking anymore.

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But that's a great example, right?

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I mean, one, it's admirable that you did it.

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But two, you go back to when you initially made that decision as someone who also does some speaking, you have it in your head that,

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well, that's what somebody who does when they have a podcast or they have an idea or they run a media company, you do speaking.

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But no one ever takes the time to like, well, do I have to do speaking?

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And what is the cost of me doing speaking?

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And the cost is usually time and exhaustion.

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And only then can you decide, oh, I'm going to make the hard decision of deleting that

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so that I can then spend that time doing the stuff that I want to do.

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I just think most people are like a piece of wood floating along a river

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and going where the current takes it

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because there's just too much going on we don't have time to evaluate like

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if there's one big takeaway from this book is like take

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more control of your calendar take more control of your mind

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and i guarantee you if you do you're going to be a happier more satisfied person

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if you don't you might still be a happy and satisfied person

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but most likely you're kind of going to be a prisoner to complexity

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and habit we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

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and now back to the show so Speaking of the delete,

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do you have any rules of thumb on what you say no to or use the delete key on?

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I mean, I'm pretty ruthless about my schedule.

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Like, and again, like it's small things and you could say, Jim, you're the CEO, so you get to do what you want.

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But I think most people can do this.

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Like a couple of things, like one, I'll almost never take a 30 minute meeting at most.

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I'll say 15, unless there's like a real something meaty that needs to be discussed.

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I don't know why I would ever need to spend that much time on a topic.

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And I have a rule of, I think I'm a nice guy.

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If you see me outside of work, I'd love to have a conversation about you and your life.

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At work, I don't do small talk.

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So if a meeting is at 10, we're not going to do updates.

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I'm not going to hear about your weekend.

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We just, we've got to do business.

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And so we can, I can get you in

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and get you out so you can go off and do the stuff you need to do at work.

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So I am very ruthless about the time that I have.

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And a lot of that is because in now being a CEO, I have to free up a lot of time just to think, right?

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My job is to make really good decisions for the future of the company and then bring people along.

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So I have to constantly delete.

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So if it's not something that's, you know, family related, if it's not something that is keeping me in like a good intellectual and spiritual place,

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if it's not something that is totally vital to the company, in all likelihood, I'm saying no to it.

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And I will say, as someone who, and this sounds boastful and I'm not, and I know I have some level of privilege because you're a CEO, but I run a company,

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I'm writing a column, I write books, and I still do some speaking, but I still find an hour every day to work out.

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And I'm militant about going fishing and hunting or being outdoors or hiking on a very regular basis for my own sanity.

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But the only reason I'm able to do all of

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that stuff is because I have been more rigorous about having a system to get rid of stuff

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that I shouldn't be doing and really putting the onus on trying to find things that do amplify what I'm good at,

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what brings me joy, and what will ultimately make me feel like I'd lived the life I wanted to live.

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As a rubric and deciding whether you should say yes or no to something, like an invitation to go to a party or whatever, you suggest asking the following three questions questions.

399

Question one, will I enjoy the company of at least one of the people at the event?

400

If the answer is no, skip the event.

401

If the answer is yes, continue to question two.

402

Question two, will I enjoy this event personally or grow professionally?

403

No, skip the event.

404

Yes, continue to question three.

405

Question three, will my attendance take away from other goals, skip work, lack of sleep, no workout?

406

Yes, skip the event.

407

No, attend the event.

408

So I think that's, I think that's really helpful.

409

Another simplifying technique you suggest is something called the handcuffs tactic.

410

What's that?

411

I mean, what I've realized in running companies,

412

like so much of it is like because people's instinct is just to keep doing more or to develop habits,

413

that you have to figure out ways to put handcuffs on situations

414

and basically limit the choices that people can make

415

or force them to think about why are they doing the things

416

that they do a great example of this was like just

417

one of the origins of smart brevity was i thought most stories were way too long -winded

418

and i basically set a mandate your stories can't be longer than x number of words

419

and unless it was a firm number people would violate that

420

and they would waste their time because they ended up wanting to write 2 ,000 words, right?

421

And so it's small, but if you don't do that, you won't get the result you want.

422

I constantly ask all of my leadership team to tell me the things that they're doing that they can kill, that we could just stop doing.

423

And I do that because if I don't do that, they'll just keep doing it

424

because they feel like they're doing the right thing for the company

425

and they're busy and they've not taken the time to confront things.

426

So you have to have these little handcuffing like one for

427

me for for diet is it took me a long time

428

to figure out kind of like what should I be eating

429

and drinking that makes me healthy

430

but my handcuffs are I just I very much limited the types of food

431

that I eat

432

so I have one of two things every single morning I have the exact same thing for lunch every day

433

and I have like a mixture of four different things at dinner

434

and it just it makes it easier make sure I'm kind

435

of eating what I know I need to eat it eliminates

436

the amount of like stress of deciding what I'm going to have

437

that night like those things start to add up little by

438

little those handcuffs yeah i eat the same thing every day

439

too hasn't changed in 10 years my dad was the same

440

way too every morning it was it was special k

441

and coffee that was it

442

and he still does it i don't love it let's talk about this amplify

443

so this is all about after you've deleted all the the slop from your work

444

or your life it's about focusing on the good stuff, the strengths, and you make a big case for.

445

instead of focusing on your weaknesses, you should be spending more time on what you're good at.

446

Why is that?

447

It's not just me making the case.

448

There's really good data on this, that basically you get a much better bang for your buck when you're focusing on the things you do well,

449

rather than trying to fix the things that are broken.

450

The Corporate Leadership Council did a study of 20 ,000 white -collar professionals, and it showed the power of Amplify, that basically if you force people to focus on their strength,

451

they become way more productive and you see much bigger gains than by attacking their weaknesses.

452

And so a lot of the delete and no is to put the emphasis on the things you're actually good at.

453

And even there, I don't think most people do that at work.

454

Like most people, could you even say, here are one, two, three in order, in hierarchy.

455

Here are the three things that I think I do best at work.

456

Just writing those down.

457

Because if you worked for me, then I'd say, well, great.

458

Then how do I make sure that you spend almost all of your time on one and two and three?

459

If those are things you're really good at, I need you doing a lot of that.

460

There's many things that I'm fine at, but I try to stop doing anything I'm fine at

461

because there's usually somebody who's better than me at doing the thing I'm fine at.

462

But what is it that I do that is uniquely good and work on amplifying that.

463

And you just see such great results from doing that

464

because it's not just that you end up like doing better work and your company benefits.

465

It's like you psychologically light up.

466

You're doing the things that you know you want to do.

467

You know that you're sort of sharpening the things

468

that you're naturally gifted at and you're doing that by purging the things

469

that you're like I'm not that good at this

470

or I don't know why I do this in the first

471

place I don't know why the company does this in the first place

472

that stuff has a really negative psychological drain on us we might not realize it

473

because it becomes just habit

474

but it really does like you just think about it like how do you feel

475

when you're doing something you enjoy and you're good at versus when you're doing something that you don't like doing at all.

476

You don't feel great about it.

477

Yeah, an analogy that I like is it's like a garden.

478

Instead of spending your time pulling weeds, spend more time planting flowers because it looks nice, but also there's no room for weeds to grow.

479

I love that.

480

Yeah, it's very true.

481

But again, like to do that, you have to, it is about the thought.

482

It seems so simple because you started this thing with like, well, there's a lot of books about different aspects of simplify, but I think there's not necessarily a book that I've seen

483

that gives you like a real system in real time to apply it.

484

That's why I, and we end every chapter with very specific questions to ask yourself

485

or very specific tasks that you could do.

486

Like even this exercise in the work section, this idea of just take 10 minutes today and like, what do you want out of work?

487

When you think of work, if you think about work, most people in their adult years are going to spend 75 % of their time,

488

their waking time, like working, going to work, bitching about work, thinking about work.

489

75 % of your time.

490

Have you ever thought for 20 minutes, like, well, what do I want to get out of that?

491

Like, what would make me feel like I really, really had achievement?

492

And have you ever written those down?

493

And then have you ever taken another 15 minutes to write down, okay, if those are the three things I want,

494

what are the three things like I need to be doing now or doing in the year ahead to actually get there?

495

Oh, wow.

496

Okay.

497

Now you have a map.

498

You kind of have the steps you need to take.

499

Now you have a great frame to figure out what should I delete and what should I amplify?

500

And I just like having these written North Stars or don't have to be written, maybe just remember it.

501

As a writer, I tend to write everything, but just having that frame of like, where do I want to go?

502

What do I want to accomplish?

503

What can I stop doing.

504

It's such a beautiful, liberating exercise.

505

Yeah, that idea, the chapter on the career plan, I thought was really useful because I thought, yeah, you need to have a career plan.

506

But I think most people don't have a career plan.

507

They're not thinking five years or 10 years where they want to be.

508

Or if they do, they put off creating a career plan for themselves because I think, well, I got to go to some workshop or take some course.

509

And he's like, no, just make a list of three things you want to accomplish with your career in the next 10 years. For sure.

510

Sure.

511

I mean, give you an example.

512

When we left Politico to start Axios, like I'd obviously been doing this exercise in the back of my head.

513

And one of the things I sort of reached a point in my life where I was like, okay, I've had success.

514

Like, what do I want?

515

Well, one of the most important things to me was I

516

just want to do like really interesting things with people I genuinely enjoy.

517

And that, okay, well, I took that time.

518

I wrote that down.

519

Well, you know what that did?

520

It affected how we set up the entire company.

521

It affects like the type of people we'll hire and fire.

522

Like we had now have a culture where we really do purge people who just aren't that pleasant to work with, no matter how talented they are.

523

But I wouldn't have had that template at work had I not put the time to think,

524

okay, that is really important to me because I realized that maybe it's a flaw in me,

525

but I just, I get really drained and down by people who do the wrong thing for the wrong reason, even if they're super talented.

526

Like some people have a tolerance for it.

527

I don't.

528

And I was like, I'm in a position to do something about it.

529

Now, that might be a bigger thing because I run a company than your average person would be able to do.

530

But we all have that.

531

And I think you just need that North Star.

532

You have to have that in your mind or you're going to drift.

533

Yeah, you make this point in the book.

534

A lot of people think, well, I'm not a CEO.

535

I don't have that much control about what I do.

536

If the boss asked me to do this report that I think is dumb.

537

I got to do the report.

538

But you said that's just an excuse.

539

So if you're not a CEO or a manager, how do you apply these principles in your life at work?

540

I think very easily.

541

I think any person can write down what I said.

542

What are the three things I do in order that I think I'm best at and bring the most value?

543

And then the three I shouldn't be doing.

544

Any person can do that.

545

And I'd be shocked if any manager would recoil if that person said, hey, can I have a conversation with you.

546

I did this exercise, and I just want to make sure

547

that I am focused on the things I should be focused on.

548

I want to raise the three things that, like, I don't know if I'm that great at, and I don't actually understand why we do it so we can have a conversation about it.

549

Any person can do that.

550

If your manager doesn't engage on that, that's a big red flag.

551

You might want to be finding a new job in the next couple of years.

552

But most managers aren't.

553

They're going to want to engage on that.

554

So anybody can do it.

555

Yes, you have less control.

556

It might be your manager says, just do it.

557

And you're going to have to keep doing it.

558

But at least you've gone through the exercise of, okay, I now know the three things that are most important to me.

559

In the time that I do control, and everybody controls at least some of their day, almost everyone does, how do I spend more time doing those three things?

560

Take that little exercise.

561

And over time, you're going to see, okay, now I ended up being much better at my job, which will put you in a much better position salary -wise or for promotions.

562

Most companies are meritocracies, but it requires some level of self -discipline

563

and some level of self -accountability and self -direction to make sure that you are at the top of the list.

564

Communication can take up a lot of people's time at work.

565

I think that's where things get most complex.

566

If I look at my work life, that is the thing that causes the most mental drag

567

because there's 20 different places people can contact me there's a discord server there's email there's this app and

568

that app how can you apply the simplified process to how

569

we communicate at work yeah i mean it's my obsession right i think people are terrible communicators

570

and i agree with you it's the biggest problem at most workplaces

571

because people aren't great communicators the difference you can make as

572

a communicator is just think about who you're communicating to like how can you serve

573

that person and what is the quickest most efficient way for you to explain what you're trying to explain

574

or ask what you're trying to ask so many emails

575

so much communications is long -winded meandering

576

because people didn't think about what is it we're trying to achieve why does it matter what's the next step

577

so most communication should be a hundred words not a thousand words most things can be solved very quickly

578

and you just need to take the time about like what

579

is the most efficient way for me to convey what needs to be conveyed.

580

Because you want to be that person that when someone gets a text or someone gets an email, that subconsciously and consciously, they want to read the text or open the email.

581

You don't want to be the person where they roll their eyes and scroll past your email because you're long -winded, because it's not clear what you're trying to say,

582

and because you're completely indirect.

583

You want to be the person like, oh, I want to open Jim's email.

584

He always tells me exactly what this is about.

585

He always explains why it matters.

586

And it's always clear what the next step is.

587

Like that is what you need to do.

588

And I think every company needs to do that.

589

Otherwise, like, God, I go into some of these companies, you know, we have a side company that does consulting for big businesses,

590

Fortune 100 companies and smaller on how to communicate more effectively.

591

And it's just awful.

592

Like a hundred different email styles, people long -winded, doesn't make sense,

593

antiquated formats, expecting people to go into an intranet,

594

which like what any person with a heartbeat and a life would want to go to an intranet to find something, right?

595

Like all these weird things that we do out of corporate habit.

596

You can tell the common string here is like, how do you defeat bad corporate and personal habit?

597

You've got to have a system.

598

Let's take this to the personal life.

599

You're really big on people having a master life plan and a life foundation?

600

What are those concepts and how do you keep that simple?

601

Yeah, it goes to

602

that idea we talked about a little bit earlier about just

603

kind of what do I want to get out of my life?

604

And then thinking about, okay, if those are the things that I want to get out of life, what do I have to do?

605

Like a good example is, okay, one of the things that Jim wants out of life is like, I love being active.

606

I love being vigorous.

607

Like I want to be able to have a long time to be able to play with my kids

608

and my kids' kids and be active and mobile in my 80s, my 90s and I've got this thing called ankylosing spondylitis.

609

So over time, my spine will want to harden into one bone and it could make things difficult.

610

And so, okay, if that's what I want and this is the obstacle I have, how do I simplify my focus so that I can still achieve what I want to achieve?

611

Well, that means I probably need to carve out an hour a day to work out

612

and make sure I maintain my flexibility.

613

It means I need to be pretty vigorous about my diet to make sure

614

that I can keep as much fat off of pressing against my spine so that if there is arthritis, I have less pain.

615

That then says, okay, if I need to do that, I've really simplified, like we've talked about with the diet, like how do I make sure that I can adhere to that each and every day?

616

And again, like you could say like Jim's neurotic or that's a little too much, but I think you have to have that.

617

You have to have this approach of what is it that I want?

618

And then how do I stack my time as best I can on the things

619

that we can control so that I can achieve the things that I want to achieve.

620

And I do think you have to work backwards.

621

Like what is it I want out of my life?

622

What is it I want out of my health?

623

What is it I want out of my relationships?

624

Then from that flows the other kind of more trivial, superficial things of how do I organize my closet?

625

Or how do I set things on auto order?

626

Or how do I stop doing things socially that I'm just doing out of habit?

627

Those other things flow from having kind of that North Star.

628

And I think you have to have a North Star for work and one for your life.

629

I think that the two kind of go hand in hand.

630

I think that I'm better at work

631

when I've got my stuff together outside of work and I'm better at home when work is not that stressful, right?

632

So I think you have to think about both of those.

633

And again, this is not a self -indulgent gospel, right?

634

It's much more about how do you just live like a really good, productive, satisfactory, joyful life.

635

And I think you've got to have that system.

636

You've got to have those stars.

637

So we've talked about how AI is making things more complex, contributing to the slop.

638

But you talk about there's ways you can use AI to simplify your life.

639

What does that look like?

640

How you've been doing it at work and in your life?

641

Yeah, I mean, I use artificial intelligence a ton for sure.

642

I use it at work and I use it at home.

643

And again, I think it requires pretty deep thought on the front end to make sure that it's not a slop creator.

644

It's only a couple of things where I found it to

645

be quite helpful is I put all of my health information into ChatGPT.

646

Everyone has to make a judgment on their comfortability doing that.

647

But I find it to save me a ton of time

648

when I'm thinking about supplementation

649

or I'm trying to figure out what happened with a blood result

650

or is there any latest research on spondylitis that I should be thinking about as I think about my health.

651

And so I have found it to be a massive time saver on the health side.

652

Another thing we walk through in the book is just using artificial intelligence to look at your schedule.

653

And it's very good

654

if you give it access to your Google calendar to figure out like where you're spending most of your time

655

and suggesting things that you could stop doing.

656

It's unemotional.

657

It's not there to judge you.

658

It's there to kind of just look at the data.

659

And it often does flag things that don't need to be done.

660

I think if you can really work with it, it can also save you time

661

and putting together things right like I used to spend a

662

lot of time I spent a lot of time just dreaming up new ideas

663

and then I'd be in all kinds of conversations about what

664

might this look like I've figured out how to use artificial

665

intelligence quite well to do mock -ups of new business ideas

666

and that doesn't require anyone else

667

and little by little the artificial intelligence understands my design sensibilities

668

and I can in two minutes do what it would have taken me two months to do.

669

But I do think you kind of have to organize your mind before you use AI.

670

Otherwise, if you're a disorganized mind and you're kind of cluttered

671

and then you jump into it and you've not really thought about, okay, how might this be a force multiplier for good instead of a slop creator?

672

I worry you're going to end up just creating more slop.

673

That's why I just think whether people buy the book, don't buy the book, read the book, don't read the book.

674

Like I do think if there's a takeaway would be just take time today to think about the work and life thing.

675

Like, what do you want out of both?

676

Give yourself kind of this guide that will help you make some of these decisions, whether it's using artificial intelligence or not,

677

so that you have more direction.

678

Don't be the bobber in the lake.

679

Have an anchor.

680

Well, Jim, this has been a great conversation.

681

Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

682

yeah if you go to axios .com hopefully people are familiar with us you can get it there

683

if you google simplify the book you'll be able to you'll be able to find it i write a column

684

if you happen to be a ceo i write a weekly newsletter to ceos

685

if you email me at jim at axios i'll sign you

686

up i write a lot about ai politics other topics

687

and it's fun so i appreciate you i appreciate your podcast

688

and i appreciate your time likewise it's been a pleasure my

689

guest here is jim van de hi he's the author of the book simplify it's available on amazon .com

690

and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at aom .is

691

simplify we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic well

692

that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast

693

if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate it

694

if you take one minute to give us a review on the podcast player

695

that you use to listen to the show and if you've done

696

that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who think we're something out of it.

697

As always, thank you for the continued support.

698

Until next time, this is Brett McKay.

699

Remind us how to listen to anyone podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

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341 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The 3-Step System for Simplifying Your Work and Life”. This video has 699 sentences and 9365 words to shadow. The speech runs for 46:13. The speaker talks fast, about 203 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
simplify verb	/ˈsɪmplɪfaɪ/	To make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.
slop noun	/slɑp/	Any semisolid substance; goo, paste, pulp.
confront verb	/kənˈfɹʌnt/	To stand or meet facing, especially in competition, hostility or defiance; to come face to face with.
amplify verb	/ˈæm.plə.faɪ/	To render larger, more extended, or more intense.
complexity noun	/kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/	The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
brevity noun	/ˈbɹɛvɪti/	The quality of being brief in duration.
newsletter noun	/ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/	A periodically sent publication containing current events or the like, generally on a particular topic or geared toward a limited audience.
tendency noun	/ˈtɛn.dən.si/	A likelihood of behaving in a particular way or going in a particular direction; a tending toward.
handcuffs noun	/ˈhændˌkʌfs/	A fastening consisting of two metal rings, designed to go around a person's wrists, and connected by a chain or hinge.
inertia noun	/ɪnˈɝ.ʃə/	The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass.
prisoner noun	/ˈpɹɪzənə/	A person incarcerated in a prison, while on trial or serving a sentence.
subtract verb	/səbˈtɹækt/	To remove or reduce; especially to reduce a quantity or number.
ruthless adjective	/ˈɹuːθləs/	Without pity or compassion; cruel, pitiless.
mentality noun	/mɛnˈtæləti/	A mindset; a way of thinking; a set of beliefs.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
get out of verb	To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
write down verb	To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
do out of verb	To use unfair means to deprive (someone) of (something).
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Why do you think the world needed another one?
Confront is what are we doing?
Why are we doing it?
What's your definition of slop?
Do we really need to do this activity?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if you don't do that, you won't get · if I don't do that, they'll just · if you worked for me, then I'd say
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	who've written · we've hit · I've seen
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are faced · were already caught · is just done
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who want · process, which is · people who did

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 244 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: ruthless /ˈɹuːθləs/, deathbed /ˈdɛθˌbɛd/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inertia /ɪnˈɝ.ʃə/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: complexity /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/, mentality /mɛnˈtæləti/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, communicator /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like simplify, slop, confront.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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