Execution and reflection - Daniel Svonava

00:00

There are big moments of reflection in big moments of your life. You're changing. You're thinking about leaving a job. You're trying to decide what to do next. Those are the big reflection moments. We need to practice that and long walk in the forest or even a weekend or whatever helps there. But there is like a small version of that that almost happens all the time and it's like a real time version of the loop and just listening to how that moment feels. I think you can tap into that as well, right? So, it's like a mini retreat that happens every three seconds when we ran and then there's like the big retreat that's like, "Which job am I going to take next?" I think that these are connected and the commonality there is the opening yourself up to those feelings basically and reflections.

00:54

You are as close to the mountains as you can possibly be while staying in civilization. How has that choice affected your work?

01:09

Yeah, that's an interesting one and it didn't happen by itself, right? So, I moved to Switzerland about 12 years ago when I moved from Slovakia, which is where I'm originally from. I went for just the biggest city, right? So, economic opportunity. I did some internships and then my own company and then I went back to Google. All of that was just easier, living in a big city, which in Switzerland still means it's like a small city globally, right? So, that's where I started and that felt very utilitarian and reasonable. And then over time, I realized that actually yeah, you need this balance in life I guess. Also, efficiency in the spare time, right? So, I always like to go into the nature and do stuff there.

02:08

If the nature is very far, you just do it less often and then you have to try harder to get there and organize it. And then it doesn't happen as much and you are miserable, right? So, basically, this principle of just removing obstacles, right? Every three years, I move one village south from Zurich and I did that five times until I basically hit the sweet spot of access to the free time activities, let's say, and then still being able to be in the city in half an hour. Also, there is like a third part of the Venn diagram, which is capital efficiency, because in Switzerland, different cantons have different income tax and the one I'm in is basically the really efficient one, let's put it that way.

02:59

There's a sweet contradiction here, because on the one hand, you're spending your days on a keyboard, but on the other hand, you're finding efficiency by being closer to nature or being outside. Is that contradiction evident to you day to day? Does it give you anything that you particularly want?

03:25

Yeah, I think I alternate between two modes and I think most people do or should, right? You have the mode of producing some output, right? So, that's when you are at the keyboard, you're talking to people, you are trying to get your ideas out there. That's the output, right? But then there is the reflection, actually taking a step back and thinking about stuff. For me, that second part, it really sucks to do that over a keyboard, because the keyboard is a medium of creation and it asks you to put stuff in there. Maybe I'm not good at multitasking, but I find that it's better to separate those two moments. The forest is just a distraction-free place to do our thinking.

04:19

Yeah, it makes me think of the two ideals in that scenario, this crazed executor on the keyboard and this wild, thoughtful individual out in the mountains and how in some ways what you're doing in that scenario is trying to find the ideals, that the truest versions of both of those things.

04:45

Yes, you put it exactly right. So, when I make something, I call it the episodes of manic creation. So, it just needs to get out of my head and then there is room for a new thing to form and the cycle continues.

05:04

If we take this one step further, so I can see that behind you, on the one hand, you have a bike signifying perhaps the outdoors and that wild part and that's over your right shoulder. Over your left shoulder, you have wine glasses upside down, perhaps representing the other side too. Is there something here? It feels like almost the same thing again.

05:32

Yeah, I mean the yin yang people weren't just throwing pebbles into the wind. Those guys thought about this for a while and it's not like I'm sitting here doing apartment design to embody these principles, right? Actually, I think you're the first one who reflect on that. It's actually interesting. So, people usually talk about one of those things, but not really both, right? They self-identify into one of those two pools and then we spend a little bit of time at the start of each call, talking about either the sports or the hedonism or whatever you want to call it. It's just a cool way to see where people go and then be able to connect with them. So, you are very meta. You are staying on the reflective layer here.

06:31

I can see how it makes an impact on your daily work if you like that meeting of two places, the crosspollination of two different ideals. It must enable that creative mind and then that executor in some way. I'm sure there's a spark in between the two, but how has pursuing those two ideals informed your choice of work?

07:02

So here is where I think we get into the framework a little bit, because I think they're stages of realizing some of these things and doing the reflection, right? I think the first step is you do your studies and you get into a job. And then for a while, you are on the surface level, so people tell you to do things and then you do them and maybe you try to improve yourself and doing those things. But then at some point, you reflect and you realize, "What is the game that you are actually playing?" You actually realize, "Okay, what are the incentives in this system? Who wants to achieve what? How am I doing that?" So, you start to just see the game and I think saying something like you unplug from the matrix, I think that's a bit too dramatic, right?

07:56

It doesn't quite happen in that same step function. I think it's more gradual but it should take a few years probably. And then you realize, "Okay..." You start to play the office politics if you are the type that wants to get promoted or you close yourself in the box and you hate the people who do that, right? So, that's the other side of it. So, I think that happens and that's the first step, but just realize what's happening around you and what do you want to do about that, right?

08:31

It sounds like just recognizing the truth of the situation. How does that relate to the two different pulls in different directions?

08:41

I mean that is the executor, right? So, I mean just in general, you can split the work into individual contribution, where you are the one who makes the output or the reflective mode, which is let's call it leadership or vision or direction or figuring out what to do, right? I think people end up being in one of those categories. I think the best ones can alternate between the two, right? I think that for some people, they just never realized that okay, I'm doing this intentionally. This is the best place for me and I'm really good at this. I want to do this. It just happens to them. But if you reflect, then you can use it.

09:29

For example, if you are in management, you can jump into the individual contributor mindsets to talk to people who are in there and you can connect better. You can talk about those details that they cared about. That's really helpful for recruiting, for example, because you can talk eye to eye with potential candidates and convince them to join your startup, which is a risky thing to do. And then on the other hand, being able to switch to the bird's eye view basically helps talk to investors and sell the story and do all of that, right? So, yeah.

10:11

If the true advantage is being able to embody both of these things, do you have to realize it first or can you look back and think, "Oh, that's why I'm successful here because I'm doing both"?

10:31

I think you don't have to realize it for it to happen sometimes, right? So, if you are empathetic and you naturally can do the best thing in the situation, then sometimes, it will just happen, right? And then somehow you'll maybe look back and try to reflect like, "Why did that meeting go so well? What did I do differently?" If you do enough of the reflection, you'll hopefully put the pieces together, but if you want to increase the chance that it's happening, then I think you have to be intentional about it. You actually have to think, "Okay, I'm going to talk to this person. Where are they in their head and then how do I get to where I need to be to match that basically?"

11:19

When were you first intentional?

11:25

So, there is unsatisfying answer, which is there are different levels of intention as well. So, for example, my first real job out of university was basically the only job, because now I'm the founder, so that one big job that I had was YouTube. I was actually interviewed for both the PM role and the engineering role and then they told me, "Okay, Daniel, we need more engineers. So, you are an engineer now." I think the first four years of the job, I was in the executeer mode. Okay, I was a tech lead. I maybe had a small team to work with but I was just maximizing the output basically. That was actually fun. So, that's really fun to do at Google, because you can have a lot of output and a lot of wheels are spinning when you press the buttons. It's really satisfying.

12:25

But then I started to reflect on these things and be a bit more intentional about what I'm doing there and that's where the story started to crack for me a little bit, because I couldn't fully do that. I couldn't basically say here is what we should do and then you have to do those 10 trips per year here to Mountain View if you are based in Europe. So, you get sick of flying in the airplane and you have to get more into the politics and all of that stuff, right? So, I think the first four years were great and they give you awesome environment to just maximize output, and then my the last three years were slowly realizing that it's hard to be both and it's hard to be the one who sets the direction. And then I just left.

13:25

Was that the first time you had that, that feeling?

13:31

The one midway through or the leaving.

13:37

It strikes me that the way that you explain this is part of your character, not necessarily just part of your work. I wonder before your working journey if this realization was- if it popped up.

14:02

Yeah, I mean, I think I was doing things a bit more intuitively. So, before Google, I had my first startup and even had to call the two engineers building a cool product and then getting screwed on commercials basically by much more experienced businesspeople, which was an awesome lesson by the way. So, what I did back then, I wanted to push my own path and really see what makes the most sense and then do that, instead of following some broader plan of somebody else. But I think I was more intuitive about it because it was very fast paced. That's another thing that makes it really hard to reflect, right?

14:51

If you live week to week and this is especially tough for founders, I think, because they have to live week to week because things change, you have new information coming in. If you are always in that mode, it's very hard to have enough capacity to reflect basically. The corporate job is awesome for that, because they just leave you alone in a way, right? The whole part of your brain is just sitting there spinning and then I think this is why people then decade into their career, there is enough time there to reflect on these things and realize, "Oh, wait a minute. What is this?"

15:33

It sounds like one of the hardest questions to answer in life. How can I be in the moment, but also have an eye on what might be coming down the pipe?

15:42

Yeah, yeah, and then for me, that's the forest or doing activities that I really have to focus on them in the moment and I can't think about work and the day today. So, it used to be rock climbing and now I am paragliding, flying the handkerchief. When you do that, you better just really think about the moment. Yeah, that helps a lot to clear the head and just take a step back.

16:20

Have you watched Bill Gurley's Runnin' Down a Dream YouTube video, his lecture?

16:25

Not necessarily.

16:28

I'll share it with you and put it in the notes of the episode. He talks about different people through history and how they've run down their dream. There's a part to it or a realization that he comes to. He looks at the guy who started Shake Shack and Bob Dylan and other people. One of his realizations is that these people in order to run down their dream, they moved to the epicenter of their dream. They went to wherever the location was. So, for the guy who started Shake Shack, he went to the location. I think it was New York, but he goes to, let's say, New York to be in the centre of the restaurant industry.

17:19

So, he's in the epicenter of it. And as you were talking, it seemed to me like in some ways, what you're doing is exactly the same thing but just a different version. Instead of there being an epicenter of a restaurant industry or something, you are proactively changing your epicenter and your location in order to tackle a problem that you feel is so worth tackling, that you're willing to design your life in a way that means that you sit in the middle of these two things.

17:57

That's well put. These things are difficult by themselves. If we can make them a bit easier by having the right environment and the right people around us, we should.

18:12

So, it's a no brainer, isn't it? Why not change your environment around you to... It's almost like the simplest thing in the book, but yet we forget it is. What environment should we create around us in this moment in order to then enable us to do the work that we feel is right? It's almost as if you can look objectively at yourself as a machine and say, "Okay, well, if that machine lived in this environment, its output would likely be X, because its inputs were X."

18:42

Yeah. It comes with the sacrifice as well, right? Let's not forget that moving to New York to pursue your dream means you are leaving a bunch of stuff behind, right? So, it's almost the act of making space for the new thing by just leaving some stuff behind that is almost as important as where you are going, I think. If your head stays full and if your people around you stay the same, then there isn't the room for the new ones. It doesn't matter where you land eventually, but I think that's the hero's journey, right? You need to go towards the adventure basically.

19:31

What sacrifices have been most beneficial to you?

19:39

So, for me, it's easier to make those sacrifices. I think that it's cost to a sacrifice. If you're not too attached to things for people, it's just easier to make them. So, I can sit here and say, "Sacrifice this and that." For some people, it's just much more difficult, right? And then it's about the trade-off of just again the reflection. What do you want to do? Yeah, I think for me, the key moment I think was in the university where most people go and party and just settled for some idea, right?

20:24

For me, it was being hungry and constantly challenging. Every year when I look back at what I was doing previous year, there was a huge shift, right? That kept me going. I think it's just really being deliberate about people you spend your time with and projects you work on and all of that. Yeah, just saying no to people as well. That's helpful.

20:58

But that's the challenge, isn't it? It's almost less who do you choose to work with and what you choose to work on, but more which projects do you sacrifice? Which people do you sacrifice?

21:11

Yeah. You probably start by spreading yourself too thin and I still definitely suffer from that. I really love startups and I love to help people and I just try to do that as much as possible, and then I see other founders being way more focused on their company. Not evaluating every single call and not taking it if it's not obviously contributing to the main thing that you're right now working on, right? It's definitely a bit more broad than that. Yeah, then you just mess it up a few times. You say yes a few too many times and you disappoint people and that feels bad. And then you remember those moments the next time somebody asks you and your filter just goes up a little bit. I think then over time, it comes to a good place, but yeah.

22:16

Is there an optimal level because we want to be focused enough to go deep on projects and find the successes of committing to something, but we also want to be inspired by ideas that are at the intersection of projects? So, by its nature, you can't just be doing one.

22:42

Yeah, I mean that goes back to the whole attention economy, right? How do we stop just consuming stuff out there? And then maybe one step that is actually talking to people, but you can definitely overdo that also, right? How to first of all choose where to really go deep and then actually be able to do that? Maybe the good starting point is realizing where is your good natural place to be, because I think some people are just broader by definition and then they could be, let's say, journalists, right? So, lots of stories and a new input all the time.

23:27

If that feels more natural, then you should be somewhere in that area, because you'll be just doing better. There are some people who just want to specialize as much as possible and then improve things, make that little dent in the circle of human potential, just plop it out a bit more. So, I think figuring out where is your natural place, I think that's a good one and then just exploring around there. So, just trying a bit more or a bit less and switching it up.

24:02

How did a younger Daniel explore and make those discoveries all the way back?

24:15

So, I think I have maybe some version of ADHD and not officially recognized. Lots of the founders that I talk to seem to have similar symptoms and there are different types of this, but there is the one which is you are super broad and then when you focus, you hyperfocus and you don't pay attention. You don't eat and time doesn't exist. And then then you pop out again and new direction. So, I'm a bit like this naturally. For me, so I definitely had those periods of going down. And then when I came back for air, it was usually I was permitted by my environment to go to just whatever felt interesting. You earned it when you go deep. It's like a cycle, going deep and being interested.

25:24

If you show that you can execute in some way and this goes back to high school, right? If I got interested into something and then I got really deep and people around me recognized that, then the next time I came up and I was like, "Oh, there's this new thing, let's try that," they let me because first of all, it's just annoying to fight me and then secondly, they knew that if they let me, I think it's going to be something new and fun. So, that's why I almost got kicked out of school for some subjects, but they didn't kick me out because I was doing the Math Olympiad and stuff like this. In university, basically, when I joined a subject that I really liked, I pitched the main lecturer of the subject that I wanted to help them improve it and I was like a teaching assistant.

26:26

I was writing lectures as I was taking the class basically, because it was super fun and the person just wanted to do less work. So, they just let me, but then that opened another door and another door. Luckily, I can keep doing that right now with the startup. We can explore things and go deep and people trust us with a little bit of money. Clients seem intrigued, so that's something like that.

27:02

Every time you go around in one of those loops, you're striking upon this inclination that you have, this interest that you have. It's like this constant conversation between you, the depths of you, your inclinations in the world, the environment that you're in. It almost feels like they're hammering back and forth. Each time they do so, you're learning more about yourself. You're learning more about the environment. It's almost like by having such a feedback loop between the two, your growth is accelerating there as opposed to if you modeled along in all of them.

27:48

Yes. Yes, I think it really helps because people take you, I think, more seriously if they see that the previous thing you cared about, something cool happens with that, right? Now, you seem really, really into this new thing and I think that maybe inspires them to come along and see where that's going, right?

28:14

How do you know what your inclinations are?

28:26

So, I think you need to be able to listen to this, right? It's coming back to the reflection and just also not inhibiting yourself as much, right? So, just being able to see what you are curious about and where you think there is something more there and then just pulling that string and not being afraid to just go for it. That is such a cliche thing to say that you don't care what people think about you and all of that, but I think you have to be a bit shameless to just start over. Every time, you start from scratch anyway.

29:08

I was admiring your courage and bravery as you spoke about how you would be so particularly focused on one area but not another.

29:18

Yeah. I think once you go around and look a few times, you build that steel. You build that wonder and you feel comfortable being naive basically. The punishment for being wrong actually is not so severe as you might think in your head, right? There is definitely part of luck in this, right? So, I can sit here and say, "Oh, just go and try different things and it's going to work out." There is definitely a huge element of luck that I was able to get those first couple bids maybe and then that gives me a little bit of runway and leeway to also be wrong.

30:11

So, maybe the first ones you do should be slightly more conservative. Maybe that's the way to do this, right? Don't go off of the deep end immediately, but just try to just use the knowledge that you already might have and then just go one step adjacent from there maybe. And then as you go, you build a sense for bigger leaps.

30:41

When you position work in your mind, some people think about it as a duty. Other people may think about it as play. As you've been talking about it, it feels more like a loose play and a discovery and this big exploration. Is that correct and how do you create a mindset that allows you to be in that place and not see it as duty?

31:19

Well, I mean there is definitely value to the feeling of duty as well, especially if you found a thing that's worth being dutiful towards. I think there's definitely ways to misplace that feeling and being manipulated. So, when are more on the side of the game, I think you just take things more for what they are, right? You don't have this big overarching narrative in your head that maybe somebody else put it or you constructed it maybe unconsciously. But if you're in the play zone, then you just take things for what they are and you just try to make it interesting and entertaining for you and people around you hopefully. So, I think that helps.

32:20

I think this is also related to what I said earlier, which is that I started to think in these ways, at least the really initial moments in high school. Back then, I was really into game theory. So, I was this nerdy kid doing this informatics competitions and all this stuff and game theory always fascinated me because there is some mystery there, right? So, it's not just like an algorithm or data structure but there is some interaction of different parties and maybe they have imperfect information about the adversary, right? So, this was always interesting and I think that actually shaped the way I look at things even still. That's what I mean that you can date people by how they think, because for many people, this comes from whatever is interesting or whatever is the hype.

33:19

In the moment, they become reflective, right? And so, you can backdate people to cultures, time periods, or maybe what shows they were watching as a kid, because I think these things leak through into your subconscious and then inform how this all works. So, next time you talk to somebody, just think about it, right? It's like, "Okay, so I'm getting some signals from this person." Think about how those could have been formed and what maybe came together to make this person fun.

33:56

It sounds like fossils and how the silt is protected each different layer. As we look back, you can tell what age someone comes from.

34:14

Cognitive archaeology, right?

34:21

Do you think that the people around you as you came of age in that moment also feel the same? Do you have friends who are a similar age to you who also think with a game theory?

34:40

So, I think most of my peers that were really nerdy back then, a lot of them were better at it, right? It's just math, right? I think that perhaps made them specialize and then they couldn't quite maybe make the connections. So, I was always talkative enough to also explore new things and talk to new people and not too much, but a little bit at least, given my background. So, they've made it a bit easier to not just spend 20 years in that mode for example, right? I think it has been over the many years after that, that somehow through what I was doing, I came in contact with people that thought more similar to how I think, because high school is maybe some selection of people from a city, right?

35:47

Yeah, you will get like the nerdiest people from the city, for example, if you go to my high school, but it's still relatively small sites to choose from and only on a certain criteria is the choice being made, right? But as you go and especially if you are in this exploration mode as well, I think you come across people that will probably think similarly to you, because people self-selected to these groups and into these conversations. So, it has been more in the later stages closer to the present time that I actually found people that are creepily similar to me.

36:34

If we were to do some cognitive archaeology on your parents, what was this and how did that affect you?

36:50

So, I think, yeah, we have to mention the context, right? So, I was the kid of the '90s. I was 14 in the year 2000, which just now that I think about it is a weird way to report your birthday, but basically, some early teenage years in the late '90s, let's say, in Slovakia, which was like a post-Soviet vibe. But it's actually interesting now that I think about it that my father is a software engineer as well and definitely on the nerdy side, right? And then my mother is artsy, so journalist in fashion. She has a website about hair, hair salons and different hairstyles.

37:58

Sounds a bit yin and yang.

37:59

Yeah, so now that I think about it, there is definitely a little bit of both in that plan. Yeah.

38:09

One of the things that I find hardest is when you have a vision and you're using one of the sides of you that is being more creative and looking to the future, it is so easy to get pulled into a duty trap. You call it like a visionary duty trap, where you create this vision. What you want to do in an ideal world is paint it, look forward to it, and then pull all the way back to the present moment and continue to be in a state of play and a state of flow and be driven by the fun and the love, but it's so tricky.

39:04

Because when you create that vision and then you have other people who also care about that vision to you, your work can seep into almost like a pit of duty where you feel duty bound to pursue your work. Did you feel in any way that that's something you've experienced, and how do you navigate it?

39:34

So, that's interesting. I think one aspect of this is that you actually have multiple visions probably. Everybody probably does. There might be some dominant ones and secondary, but probably have some vision for your family and maybe friends and how you want to conduct yourself and how you want all that to end. That's one and then there is the professional one. Maybe you have a vision for the broader world, how the world should be and ideall you can connect all these things together, right? So, you can invest and then those build on top of each other in some way, right? So, realizing this is, I think, the first step that there might be powers of vision that maybe pull you in different directions and how better to align those, right? That's I think the big picture.

40:34

For me, I try to simplify the secondary ones, right? So, I try to have some basic standards in what I eat, but I'm not really so fussy about it or what I wear, stuff like this. In terms of personal relationships, I don't have that many. I have a girlfriend and close set of friends, but I moved countries, so I'm far from my family. There isn't that much day to day happening, so just simplifying the basic stuff, I would say. And then if there is something really difficult you are trying to achieve, don't try to do too many difficult things all at once, right? So, it's good to have one set of goal posts, right? So, for a founder for example, that would be okay, how do I see the future and then how does my company fit into that? How am I driving towards that?

41:43

And then I think there are different ways to formulate, let's say, the vision for your company and there are ways to do it in better and worse ways. I mean, the worse ways don't serve you as well. It's easier to be enslaved and stuck when you misdefine this basically. What I mean is the vision should be at the same time concrete, right? It should be easy for people to imagine it and embody it and want it. But at the same time, it has to be flexible enough so that when new information comes in, you can actually change what you are doing on the tactical level, right? You don't become enslaved in, for example, certain way of doing things right?

42:35

The vision should be okay, I want some outcome, let's say, but maybe how I get there needs to be still figured out and I'm keeping an open mind about it, right? If that story becomes too rigid and it's just so easy for that to happen. For example, when you fundraise, you say that story for million times, right? And then it basically like solidifies, justifies in your brain, right? That's not helpful, right? So, I think it's awesome to be able to articulate the vision that permits flexibility in the short term basically or medium term.

43:16

If I was someone who didn't have ambitions to build a company, I wasn't building a company, but instead I was navigating my career journey. I was, as I went through the experience, accumulating more knowledge, more experience, and therefore more leverage and ultimately more responsibility. There's a real challenge at that point where the amount of responsibility that you hold, the baggage that you're carrying on your back can begin to weigh you down and not give you the freedom and the fluidity to be able to be at play.

44:03

I understand it, but at the same time, I think the best employees have little bit of a founder mindset as well. So, the whole thing that I said, I don't think it's specific to starting or running a company. I think that having an idea for how things should be, so for example, when I think about my time at Google, as I was doing this individual contribution work and then suddenly realizing, "Okay, there is this bigger picture here." For three years, I have been trying to and I think to some extent succeeding to shape that baggage on my back, shape that definition of, "Okay, what should my responsibilities be and what should we be driving towards and which things in my backpack help with that and which don't?"

45:02

I don't know if you have to be a bit cold to do that, right? Just putting that backpack down for a while, opening it up, and just going through what's in there, right? That could feel a bit distant from what's actually happening, right? Because you could maybe have this thing in your head, which is now, I'm just going to carry the backpack and I'm not going to disappoint anybody and that's my duty and so on.

45:35

It's almost as if one of your responsibilities is to distance yourself from the emotion of the situation maybe and to instead recognize that what you really need to do in that scenario is embody that state of play for everyone else. The coldness almost feels like... It was the first word that came to my head too and I thought I don't know if that's quite right, because it's not that you're necessarily being cold or you're not being empathetic. It's more that you're being objective in a way and you're looking at the scenario as if you were advising someone else rather than being kept up in the relationships or the emotion.

46:20

Exactly, that's the classic psychology trick, right? People ask you, "So if your brother or a friend was in this situation, what advice would you give them?" We are so good at giving advice and understanding or picking apart situations that don't involve us in a very direct way and then maybe giving advice. We definitely don't do that enough to ourselves and I'm super guilty of this as well.

46:54

Throughout this conversation, I feel like as we've gone through it, I've become more and more like I would love to experience Daniel's working life and I know that that's a falsification to a certain degree. Should we do it with you, let's say that your brother was in your situation or your partner, what advice would you be giving them at this moment in time?

47:32

Yeah, that's a good one. So, there is this tradeoff between asking people for feedback and having a hypothesis of how things should be. I think people are bad at evaluating abstract questions, right? This is what I think, and this results in me being a bit more on the hypothesis side and staying there for a bit too long. So, let's say, I think here is how this should work, this component of something, right? I just take my context and what I know. I just put it in there and here's how this should be. I tend to not ask for feedback for perhaps longer than it would be the most efficient way to do this.

48:45

So, I think if I was giving advice to myself, it would be to somehow ask questions earlier and let people speak and not just tell them, "Here is how this will be," but get more of them into it without, I think, spoiling the plan too much. I'm still trying to balance this out properly, because I have seen both extremes, people being too married to that vision, to the idea, to how things should be pursuing it, and then it's just wrong. It's just so easy to be wrong, right? But I've seen the opposite of being too reactive and just never really creating something new basically.

49:42

But I think if I'm just trying to be as objective as possible, I'm a bit too on the in-my-own-head side of things and I could be a bit more just going to people's offices and sitting there and just seeing how they work and being open to update my idea of what is happening in their head.

50:10

It's funny that that final question touched upon the point at which I think we've got to at each stage, which is where is the meeting point between these two things and how can you identify at what point you've got it right.

50:33

Yeah, I mean, so we have been talking about taking a step back the whole time and then you made me do it in the end, right? So, I think that was quite instructional. I think it's difficult to get anything right. So, you need to figure out the way to try as many times as possible and get that feedback and just build the environment around yourself in a way that permits this and minimizes damage of being wrong. And then you just get better over time and recognizing what works and what doesn't. There is no tip for how to do that better other than have a process that helps you calibrate, right? Because that process, you have decent control over, right? How do I want to conduct that exploration and just be efficient?

51:37

A final layer to this too, which is that I don't know whether you can know whether you've found the right spot in the moment. I don't know if in my own journey I've ever known at the time that I've managed to strike the right balance between my original thought and those of an advisor or the vision that I paint and making sure that adapts as it go or the enough rest and enough focus and enough breadthand enough speciality. I almost in the moment have never known whether that point is right. But when I look back with hindsight, the dust has settled and I have more clarity of how close I got but I never know in the moment whether it was right.

52:25

So, when you're in that moment, sometimes it just feels a bit better and sometimes it just feels a bit too much or too little, right? I think there is some way to just be in tune a little bit more, how this actually feels and pattern match with how things felt before and just learn to recognize that, because it should feel reasonably good if you're doing the right thing, right?

53:06

So, there is this type two fun, which is even if you're doing something hard and even if that should just feel miserable, somehow there is a way to recognize and feel that this is actually the right thing to be doing and then use that to properly forward basically, right? So, if you're doing some very difficult sport and you are just miserable but somehow still enjoyed, I think in different activities, this applies as well. Yeah.

53:37

But I guess it also depends how you position that reward, because if you are going through that physical journey or you're doing something, sporting, it's not going to feel great in the moment, but in the long term, it's going to pay off. In the same way that if I eat McDonald's, it's happy days in the short term. In the long term, it's not. So, it's hard to know. You almost need to make sure that you've got the bricks in order there.

54:14

I think basically, that's why I like to run. That's another thing. Running is, on the surface, one of the more miserable activities. Everything hurts, you're out of breath, all of that. But if you have done it enough times, you also somehow feel that it's the right thing to do in that moment. At some point, it doesn't take this reflection and this talking to yourself like, "Let's go running today," because I know with my brain that this is good for me. So, I'll just make myself do it and then you really suffer the whole time and then you have to look at the Strava chart and be like, "Okay, I did something for myself," right?

54:59

That's how the beginning feels, because the body doesn't yet associate that pain that it's good. But basically, once you do it enough times, the dots connect and actually running feels miserable still. That doesn't just disappear, but also somehow you feel that this is actually good. I think that's not just for running, right? I think it's for anything. I have those moments where I'm trying to solve some difficult problem and I'm banging my head against the wall, but somehow I also feel that these are the magical moments and then somehow enjoy it at the same time.

55:46

It feels like a similar loop to before or at least the similarity between both is that every time that loop comes around, it's giving to you every time and you're having to listen to it every time. It's not happening without you. It is just checking in every time it comes around and you're taking this small bit of information every time. You're slowly building up. If you're focused on one task and then you come out of it, move onto the next thing, that loop has given you something. In the same way that if you're going running, every time you do it, it's difficult, but then it's giving you something in the loop. It almost feels like the most difficult part in both of those scenarios is being able to take the information, to listen to yourself.

56:42

There are big moments of reflection in big moments of your life. You're changing. You're thinking about leaving a job. You're trying to decide what to do next. Those are the big reflection moments. We need to practice that and long walk in the forest or even a weekend or whatever helps there. But there is like a small version of that that almost happens all the time and it's like a real time version of the loop and just listening to how that moment feels. I think you can tap into that as well, right? So, it's like a mini retreat that happens every three seconds when we run and then there's like the big retreat that's like, "Which job am I going to take next?" I think that these are connected and the commonality there is the opening yourself up to those feelings basically and reflections.

57:33

I guess it shows how unhelpful it can be at times to have big life moments where you say, "I'm going to change everything." You almost go through a state of feeling lost for a period of years, and then all of a sudden, try to find yourself, find the situation. You go on an exploration in a short period of time when actually the truth will only bear itself to you with a drip feed over a prolonged period of time.

58:08

Yeah, I think there is a reservoir that's filling up somewhere in the back of your head, right? And then if you are in tune with that, then it doesn't overflow, right? You sit from it quite often. And then there are those moments where you really need to open the floodgates and take a stock of what's happening and those are the bigger moments. I think you need a bit of both.

58:37

I won't forget the reservoir analogy and that was incredible.

58:46

Thanks a lot for that and have a great day.

58:49

All right, man. Hope to see you soon.