Taking Your Time - Time Hacks, Tips, and Principles

In this episode of Time Hacks, join host Jacques as he interviews Gregg Pollack, a successful entrepreneur turned psychology enthusiast and professional cuddlist.Gregg founded several companies, helping to launch the startup community in Orlando and leading into his journey into psychology. Code School which was acquired by Pluralsight for $36 million, Envy which builds web applications, and Starter Studio which is Orlando's first tech business accelerator.Gregg shares his story of personal growth and self-discovery, from building companies to delving into the world of psychology and unlearning societal conditioning.Throughout the conversation, Gregg emphasizes the importance of attending workshops and therapy sessions to facilitate personal growth. Gregg also shares his insights on healing childhood trauma, understanding the brain's mechanisms, and building loving relationships by acknowledging and expressing emotions authentically.

On this episode of Time Hacks, we dive into the world of Luis Garcia, a fractional executive and technology enthusiast. Luis shares their journey from a successful career at Fullsale University to pursuing their goals of creating their own organization and working in technology.We explore Luis's work as a fractional executive, partnering with tech startups to tackle various problems that they may not have the time or experience to handle. Most of their clients are software developers working on SaaS products using gaming technologies. We also delve into Luis's expertise in VR, where they believe that current predictions of mass adoption are too optimistic. They discuss a new technology that takes a different approach to VR by enhancing the user's surroundings, leading to a more immersive experience and potential for wider adoption.Luis also shares their time management strategies and productivity hacks. They emphasize the importance of planning, from yearly goal setting to quarterly milestones, and weekly staff meetings. They even involve their co-founder and spouse in their weekly planning meetings to ensure alignment. We also discover Luis's routine of writing a letter to themselves, reflecting on the past year, and setting goals for the next.In addition to their professional life, Luis discusses their personal routines and habits. We learn about their morning routine, from waking up at 6:15 am to enjoying a cup of coffee while watching the news. They share how running becomes a time for deep thinking, listening to podcasts, and finding inspiration. And of course, we can't ignore their love for VR, as they've created their own VR room for an immersive experience.Join us on this episode of Time Hacks as we explore Luis Garcia's journey, from fractional executive to VR enthusiast, and uncover their time management strategies and productivity hacks.

On this episode of Time Hacks, Jacques talks with Matt Dupree, AI enthusiast and CEO of AI Startup Atlas, about AI and machine learning. They discuss concerns around AI adoption and usage, specifically the potential for companies to swap out human customer service representatives for AI chatbots. They also dive into the work of OpenAI and how they're using unstructured data to train their models. Matt shares his experience in founding his own company, Atlas, which aims to change the way people use software by creating a map of the software to generate user directions, similar to Google Maps. They also discuss time management strategies, including a trick called "reverse procrastination" and maximizing productivity by tackling unpleasant tasks early in the day.

Mason Dorner is the co-founder and chief ads officer at Ascenditt, and he helps e-commerce and SAAS founders build billion dollar brands. He's worked at all kinds of companies from unicorns startups, valued at over a billion to large brands, such as Disney.

Ken Laroe is an award-winning sustainability, professional and eco-entrepreneur. Ken has dedicated his life to environmental activism and building businesses as he actively works to address the existential threat to humanity, the climate crisis.

The Missing Link Book on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/Missing-Links-Launching-Performing-Company/dp/1637351364/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=Gallaher Edge Company Website - At Gallaher Edge, we work with busy executives to help you get your arms around the challenges in your organization. We work with you from the inside out, helping your executive team have conversations you didn't even know you needed to have.https://www.gallaheredge.comThe Evolve Leader Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-evolved-leader/id1261417912

Marc Statz3D Artist - Photographer - Creative Director at Second Wavehttps://secondwave.digital/https://www.marcstatz.com/You can check my personal youtube here if you'd like!https://www.youtube.com/rSOLVEditing/As well as the team I lead for a couple years:https://www.youtube.com/FractalFiIms/

Here are links to the products mentioned in the castFisher Space Pen - Non-Reflective Military Matte Black M4B- Cap-O-Matic - Gift Boxed $18Grocery deliveryInstacart.com $9.99 or Kroger.comEntryway BowlLOL MART Food Storage Root Carving Natural Wood Crafts Serving Tray $16Dry erase boardDry Erase Lapboards | 9 x 12 inch Large Whiteboard Set | for Teacher, Student, Children, Classroom | Reusable Durable Portable Double $10 for 3Grady's Cold Brew Coffee, Single Can with 4 (2oz.) Bean Bags, 12 Total Servings $7GLAD ForceFlex Protection Series Tall Kitchen Trash Bags, 13 Gal, Unscented OdorShield, 90 Ct (Package May Vary) $17https://www.dropbox.com/individual/plans-comparisonFREE - signatures, backup, sync, search $10No Tie Shoelaces System with Elastic Laces - One Size Fits All Adult and Kids Shoes $8.50Bar Keepers Friend Powder Cleanser 12 Oz - Multipurpose Cleaner & Stain Remover - Bathroom, Kitchen & Outdoor Use - for Stainless Steel, $8Closure Stick Chip Bag Sealer 30 Pcs Chip Bag Sealer - Chip Clips Bag Clips Food Clips,Kitchen Reusable Plastic Storage Sealing Sticks Grip Closers $15

Sometimes getting things done faster means doing it at a different time. Here are seven ways that you can change the time you do things for a better result.

Today, we're going to be walking through three stoic practices that will help you take control of your life and your time. Don't spend another minute wasting your time on negative emotions.

In today's episode, we're going to get extremely tactical and talk about how to achieve inbox zero, an empty inbox, which is a concept first pioneered by Merlin Mann. Welcome to the taking your time podcast. Hello time hackers today, we're going to get tactical and practical with our inboxes. And there is a term for this it's called inbox zero. And it was this idea that came about the mid two thousands by this. Guy named Merlin Mann. And back in the mid two thousands, it was a problem, but it wasn't nearly as much of a problem as it is today. There's really no traffic cop when it comes to email. So there's no cost for spammers or marketers or anyone to really send as much email as they can to achieve their goals. There's really nothing. You know, Prevent chain emails. There's some spam technology. Out there, but of course. Spammers get more sophisticated. What we're going to do today is really talk about four different ways that you can tackle this problem of getting to inbox zero. And it's really about making sure that this becomes a daily practice. It's actually very reasonable to do. It seems really hard. And you might need to do a little bit of what I call email bankruptcy. And I'll talk about that, but it is manageable. You have to set aside time every single day, but there's four things. That you can do, and we'll go over each of those four things here in the podcast today. Before we go into that, I think it's important to understand that. The ability to have a high velocity with your email. And that means in and out doesn't necessarily correlate to greater productivity. In fact, slack did some research and it showed that 53% of what they call hyper connectors that are those that are receiving 50 to a hundred emails a day. They find access to information. Challenging. But here's the crazy part. They find it challenging at a 10% higher rate. Than moderate email users. That means they get more email than their counterparts, but they find it more difficult to get information. This correlation is not always causation, but I think there is some logic here in that getting more email doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to make it easier for you to get access to the communication that you want. It may not even be an email. You may need to find some other channel to get that piece of information you're looking for.

Today, we're going to talk to Anna Eskamani, State Representative for District 47 of the Florida legislature and learn what it means to run a campaign while keeping a full-time job and how your government can save time for its citizens at scale. Anna is a bold fighter for Florida families and every day people. Born and raised in Orlando, she's the daughter of working class immigrants who came to this country in search of the American Dream. Anna went to public schools in Orange County and then to the University of Central Florida where she earned dual degrees as an undergrad and graduate student. She is now getting her PhD in Public Affairs, works in the nonprofit sector, and is proud to be the State House Representative for District 47 in the Florida Legislature. A bridge builder, Anna ran for office for the first time in 2018, flipping her legislative seat and making history as the first Iranian-American elected to any public office in Florida. In 2020 she won her re-election by an overwhelming majority and has been championing critical issues like economic justice, environmental protection, equality for all, funding for public schools and support of arts and culture. She's been a leading voice in carrying Florida through the COVID19 pandemic too, using her own salary to help families in need. A track record of kind sacrifice, endless hard work, and iron-clad values, Anna is known across the state and nation as a leader who is unbothered, unbossed, and committed to the people of Florida.

Today, we sit with Jenell Pizarro, a pioneer in software engineering diversity, as she breaks down how she went from bartender to coder in the male-dominated tech industry that often lacked inclusiveness. In this episode you'll learn tips on how to make time for the extras in life and other aspects of time management.

Time is not the enemy but it can be your ally. Discover a new perspective of time and how you can take control of it.

Chris Brown graduated from Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts in technical design and production and has spent the last 11 years as the production manager, general manager, and now executive director at the Orlando Repertory theater, a theater for young audiences. He has worked on numerous festivals and theaters throughout his journey including a detour building the permanent Times Square Ball installation.

 HumanIPO - Turn your fans into shareholders

Today is bring your kid to work day at the podcast where I interview my son Kristof to get his perspective on time.

Every week, there are a few key phrases that really helped me get by get through the week in a way that helps me avoid distractions and really get to the heart of what matters.

My guest Jason Byrne, Chief Technology Officer at Echelon Fitness teaches us how to get a faster smarter workout and how to prioritize what matters.

Today I'll be interviewing Rajiv Menon, CEO and founder of Informulate. Listen in to hear about why you should have a win book and how to game-ify your time-tracking to take it to the next level. Welcome to the taking your time podcast.

My favorite Maxim is that done is better than perfect. What do I mean by that? That getting things done is better than trying to achieve something, perfectly, that you don't get done. Looking at the outcomes of New Year's resolutions is a great case study for seeing how successful the general public is at being able to execute and accomplish many of their goals.

Today, we're going to do an interview with Dennis Mortensen. He is the CEO and founder of a company called x.ai that builds a artificially intelligent virtual assistant by the name of Amy saving people time all over the world.

It's hard to avoid in this demanding lifestyle that we have in the modern age, that sleep is this thing that sort of always comes up. We never have enough of it at the same time we wished we could get by with much less of it. We talk about it every day. We talk about the importance of getting a good night's rest and yet we don't. And yet we get less time than our ancestors did over a, a typical night doctors recommend eight hours of sleep a day, but that ends up equating to one third of your life. So for many people, there's this temptation. To maybe push a little bit on how late we can stay up or how early we can wake up and, and get a little bit more out of our days.

Now here in the U.S. there was a survey done by Red Robin found in that study that 70% of parents would like to find more ways to spend time with their kids. So clearly this is something that many of you out there desire to have more time, more quality time with the family and more different ways to spend time with the family. Kids and parents that's a common use case, but also a lot of these tips will apply even if you don't have kids. They can apply with spending more time with your spouse. They can apply to spending more time with your parents. Even if you're an adult and that is still a desirable thing. I may say kids, but really these tips here are for everyone. 

So this really comes from the fear of missing out, which I think is the source of all of this. The fear of missing out on events and information that you think will make your life better creates this anxiety that compels you to want to participate more and more, whether that's, you know, making sure you're being invited to parties or that you're on top of all the latest gossip and this sort of translates into the digital world. The insidious thing that happens on your phone is that you get sucked into these other sorts of time-consuming things. And these apps are really just designed to soak up all of the time, the spare time that you have. So of many of the topics of this podcast, this is probably one of the most critical; it has had a huge impact on me really understanding this. You know, the bottom line here is don't let your FOMO turn into FOMN. And that doesn't roll off the tongue. Your notifications are really not that important. Now it could be FOMO that's causing you to pick up that phone every time there's a notification; obviously, it's the notification itself that triggers that in the first place. 

Vuong is a former startup founder with some successful companies under his belt. He also is currently working at a large fintech company and has worked at other big name companies like Toshiba and Sega. Throughout all this time, I've always lived vicariously through Vuong on social media and seeing all the places that he travels and all the things that he does with friends.Please listen my interview with Vuong as we talk about his startup experiences, work, and traveling the world.

So, would you buy and sell people's time if it were available on an open market? People are doing that now on a platform called Human IPO. But, of course, you can also sell your own time. But before we get into that, I want to remind you all that today is Mother's Day. Now, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, it might be too late. And for that, I'm sorry.  Now, I want you to think about this. In a survey conducted, the AARP found that 40% of young adults spend less than one day per week with their parents. As you can imagine, an adult grows up over time, and this is going to go up and down. Maybe they have young kids, so maybe for a portion of time, they'll spend a little bit more time. Still, I think overall, you're going to spend a little less time with your parents because as you grow your own family or as you accumulate other friends and responsibilities, you'll naturally have less time to be able to share. So if you put this into perspective, By the time you graduate college, you'll most likely have spent the vast majority of all the time you will ever spend with your parents. You've already spent it. It's gone. So, whether you're younger now or whether you're an adult or, perhaps, you are a mother, this is an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves to take that extra moment, spend that time value it because. It's finite. There's not an infinite amount of that time.And that reminds me. I better also carve out some time for the wife today.  So it's time for today's tip of the day tip of the week, tip of the podcast, whatever you want to call it. The advice for today is to follow the Boy Scout rule. So what is the Boy Scout rule? The Boy Scout rule is you leave a place better than you found it. Or, more specifically, when you leave a room, you leave it better than you found it. So, I'm saying it's a little bit different from the batching methodology that I talked about in a previous episode. So rather than maybe trying to clean the whole house at once. Who often gets time to do just that? Now, you may be thinking that it sounds inefficient to stop what I'm doing in a room to try to clean it every single time I'm in a room. But, if you think about it, a lot of the time you spend in your home is just traveling from room to room—moving from here to the kitchen, to the bedroom, to the living room, et cetera, et cetera. So, what you want to do is while you're in the room, do what you have to do. But the moment that you're transitioning from one room to another, take a glance. And in that movement from one room to the other, remove the things in the room that don't belong there or organize the papers a little bit before you get up. And that doesn't add much time, if at all. And so you end up slipping in a lot of cleaning and maintaining the overall organization and cleanliness of the house without having to have separate time dedicated for that.To give you some more specific examples, what this reminds me of is my wife constantly, not nagging, gently reminding me that I've left cups all over the house. And so I go end up running around and hunting for these cups every, every day. And what I now do is make sure that, hey, when I get up, if there's a cup here, I take that cup with me. I don't leave it there. So even if I think I'm going to come back, I might not. And so just doing that little thing is useful and, it just makes the day a lot more seamless. We have three little kids, and so they are just leaving stuff everywhere. And so it's a huge battle. For us to say, okay, stop playing, coming, clean this room, then go clean that room. And it creates a lot of friction. And so, sometimes I'll pick up for them. And sometimes, when I notice that they're leaving the room, I'll remind them and say, Hey, pick that thing up on your way to the kitchen. Pick that thing up on the way back to the bedroom. And so we're starting to build that habit with them.Okay. So back to buying and selling people's time. This is interesting. So, visualize this for a moment. You go to the website. Okay. And I'm sure many of you have googled for a ticker symbol for a stock to see what the current price was right. And so you go to this homepage. So it's much like the homepage of these stock market websites where you see all of the different ticker symbols, and you see the current price and whether it's trending upwards and downwards. The only difference is that these ticker symbols now are people's names. And, the price of what's going up and down is the price of an hour of their time. Before you get your undies in a knot here, I want to note that these people voluntarily do this. So they've chosen to put their time up and their likeness up on this site called Human IPO. So I think it's an extremely innovative concept. I'm not sure how I feel about doing it myself, But I do find it fascinating that people are ticker symbols that you can invest in a person, and there's a lot of good things about that, and there's a lot of concerning things about that as well that I'd like to talk about.So why in the world would you buy an hour of someone's time? Like what intrinsic value could that possibly have.The thesis of the site is that you are investing in people today that you believe have a high potential in the future to achieve many more things. So you look at their achievements today, look at their track record, and much like a stock on the public stock market. Then, you try to forecast whether you believe that person will accomplish greater and better things in the future. Now, a share of stock is a percentage of a public company's equity or ownership, so the equivalent thing here is the person's time. That's what we're saying has value. It's saying, you own a percentage of their life too, in a very indirect way, because obviously life is time. As we say, life is what you choose to do with your time, and if you've sold your time, then someone else is going to decide what you're doing with that time. Now, they can't make you do anything. So it's mainly to have a conversation with that person to pick their brain, get their advice, or maybe it's just clout to say, Hey, I can call this famous person because they sold their time a long time ago, but either way. The intrinsic value here is the value of talking to that person. To me, that seems a little on the edge of this is an ethical or moral issue now? I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it's on the edge of maybe we need to consider what that means because we're not valuing an hour of their work. We are valuing an hour of a conversation with them. Or do I go back to schoolyard days? How cool are they?  Okay. Here's some data to consider. The US Bureau of labor statistics, as of 2020, and I tried to pick a category that I thought would equate the best, so I looked at professional services... the average hourly rate for someone working in professional services is $36 an hour. Now, looking through the Human IPO site, most rates were much higher than that. You're talking a 100. I saw as high as $900 for someone who was a very wealthy investor.  And so, really interesting to me that there was such a delta these are not normal people. You can almost say that you're already looking at the cream of the crop. It's not intended for someone who is, say, just out of school and thinking that they want to sell their time.These are people that have had some moderate success in some cases, a lot of success, but we're betting that they'll have even more success in the future, to the extent that hour that we're buying will appreciate. Or we'll want to redeem it. Now redeeming is using it. And so that is one interesting thing about Human IPO versus the public markets is that you can't, you can sell a share, you can buy a share, but it's not destroyed. For a person's time, however, a share of a person's time can be consumed in this scenario. You can redeem it.In general, you can think of this in a similar way to investing in public markets and the available inventory of companies there. Those publicly traded companies have passed a threshold where they've reached a scale that they've become mature investible companies. Of course, some are still a lot younger and newer than others, but in general, they're of a higher quality and a higher maturity than companies all the companies that are out there.This means the new companies, the startups, that generate what they call 100 X returns, meaning you invest a thousand dollars, get a hundred thousand dollars back at some point in the future. Those are not available on the publicly traded stock market. They only do so at the very end of that value creation curve. And that's what they call the IPO. That's where they finally list the shares out for the public quote-unquote. And so Human IPO is very similar. I feel that the types of people listed there that have a page are people who have maybe reached a level of their careers or their personal brand where they're not new anymore. Why this is important is that the people that you are investing in on Human IPO. They are generally not in the first year of their career. And so it is interesting that you can't just take a, say, random college student and say, hey, he's getting good grades has got a good head on his shoulders. I want to invest now when maybe his time is worthless, but I know he's going places. And so I don't have that opportunity on Human IPO to do that. So it would be really interesting to open that up a little more, but I think by design, they are looking at people several years into their career path but maybe early enough where there's still some runway left for growth.So, if you are interested in selling your time, this is actually how you do it:You'd go to the site.You create your listing, you have your accomplishments, create your page, and then work with Human IPO to set a pre IPO.Figure out what your current offering is going to be to the market. Now that price is the money that you're going to get for your time. You're not going to get any future earnings, as far as I know. So the appreciation as you improve your list of accomplishments, as you get further into your career as your brand grows, you're not going to get credit for any of that. You're only going to get credit for where you are now. So, you set those hours, and you have to figure out how many hours am I currently willing to sell? I think the max is something like 500 hours. That seems extreme. To commit 500 hours to something. Especially when I feel like my hours will be worth more in the future. And if I were to sell it today, I don't know that anyone would offer me anything for it. But that's another story. So. The next thing you do after that is, if your IPO is successful and you can sell some early shares, you go out onto the market, and then people can also start selling your shares back to other people. I assume, at some point, people are going to want to redeem their hours. And so you have to be prepared for that as well. What you would do is maybe set aside a few hours throughout your week, where you could offer those slots. Essentially, you will get a request for someone who says, hey, I want to use the time that I bought, and then you have to speak with that person. It is something that you will have to commit to. While you're going to get some income today, you also have to recognize that you're not going to get credit in the future for any growth An investment in yourself and you will also end up having to use those hours as people redeem them.The closest thing that I can share from my personal experience is, back in the late 2000s, I consulted for many different companies simultaneously. And so it was interesting to be, putting a value on your time. And also sometimes that was not valued the same. So, depending on different companies and my supply, I had some clients who demanded more time than others. And so if I got new clients, I would tend to charge a little bit more because I didn't have as much available. So I wanted to make it worth my while. That feels a little bit more... not just realistic, but it seems like it's more transparent. Maybe fewer steps. Like you will buy some of my time, I will do this work immediately for that amount of time, and you're compensated for it. And I think the transaction is a bit more clear. It doesn't involve third parties. No, one's taking a cut. Other than your payment processor. The takeaway here is if you are a little bit established, have a few accomplishments under your belt, but need some immediate cash for something that you have to do, and you feel like you have the time, then Human IPO might be a good option. Or if maybe you believe that you can pick out the winners and invest in people who will bring more value in the future, that may also be a good use case for you. Otherwise, you can maybe just get a part-time job. However, something to consider is what does this say about people that we're not valuing just their work; we're valuing a conversation with them. I'd like to hear what you think about that. If you have any thoughts about buying and selling time or have any questions about things in your life that you'd like some tips on saving time, you can text me and my community number at (407) 214-4303. I will personally respond. And if you'd like to get notifications about new episodes, follow or subscribe on the platform that you were listening on.And remember, life is how you choose to spend your time. Use it wisely!https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-12-2012/how-to-parent-adult-children.htmlhttps://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm

Batching is grouping similar tasks together to be able to complete them more efficiently.If you think of a factory, it makes sense that you get better at it, more efficient if you do a repeated task or similar type of task. Instead of jumping around and trying to assemble different components, if you take a similar group of components, you can assemble those much, much quicker. And when we look at the evidence for batching, you can look to some evidence for what disruption looks like.The reason I use that as a proxy is that whether disruption is doing another task or just being interrupted by other people or other things, the idea is that when you are working on something or trying to complete a goal if you are if you do something else,  that's a context switch.That's a distraction. The research shows that the disruption cost is about 25 minutes to return to tasks. I was able to find a study by Gloria Mark at the University of California. And in that study, they had a group of students playing the role of having an HR person answering emails. They gave everyone a fact sheet of the information that they would need to respond to these emails. And then they distracted them through instant messenger, asking random questions. And so what they found is that at the end of the study, it was about measuring what happens with the quality of the work and how long it takes to complete answering all the emails. So everyone was given a similar type of inbox that they had to answer. And so what they found was and in this study was that they made more mistakes. They made a lot more mistakes. And of course, depending on what you're doing, mistakes mean you will have to do more rework to get that task done.For deaf listeners, we also offer the full version of this podcast in closed caption.