The Haylo Effect Podcast

The Science of Productivity: Harnessing Flow States for Maximum Impact

• Trish Hewitt • Season 2 • Episode 7

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Have you ever looked up from your work to find hours have passed in what felt like minutes? That magical state of total immersion, what psychologists call "flow", might be the key to unlocking your greatest potential and reclaiming your life from digital distraction.

In this enlightening conversation, former Hollywood executive and Academy Award winner Steven Puri shares his remarkable journey from visual effects producer to productivity expert. After working on blockbusters like Independence Day and holding executive positions at DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox, Steven discovered a common thread among high performers across creative and technical fields: their ability to harness flow states for extraordinary results without sacrificing their wellbeing.

Drawing from the groundbreaking research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Steven reveals practical strategies for entering these heightened states of productivity where "the river magnifies your effort." You'll discover why identifying your "one thing" each morning creates momentum, how understanding your chronotype can revolutionise your workday, and why protecting your attention has become an urgent battle against trillion-dollar companies designed to "steal your life."

This conversation goes beyond typical productivity advice to address a profound question: "We all have something great inside us, are we going to get it out or not?" Steven challenges us to consider whether we'll reach old age lamenting all we could have created, or whether we'll harness flow states to bring our unique gifts into the world.

Whether you're struggling with constant distractions, feeling overwhelmed by competing priorities, or simply seeking to do deeper, more meaningful work, this episode offers both inspiration and actionable techniques to transform how you work and live. The difference between finishing your day fulfilled or frustrated often comes down to one decision, are you ready to make it?

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:41 Steven Purry's Background and Career Journey

01:19 Transition to Film and Digital Effects

03:00 Success in Hollywood and Starting a Company

04:39 Failures and Lessons from Startups

05:58 Discovering Flow States

09:38 Practical Tips for Achieving Flow

13:22 The Suka Company and Its Mission

17:50 Daily Practices for Productivity

23:11 Balancing Grand Plans and Daily Focus

25:56 Understanding Procrastination

28:29 The Role of AI in Productivity

31:01 The Future of Work with AI

33:10 Achieving Flow State in Business

40:32 Chronotypes and Productivity

44:57 Final Thoughts and Resources

You can contact Steven Here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-puri/

🌐 https://www.thesukha.co/

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This video is published by Trish Hewitt of Haylo HR HR. The information in this video is for general guidance only and, although the presenter believes it was correct at the time it was recorded (September 2025), the law may have changed since then. You should always seek your own legal advice. This advice adheres to employment law within England, Scotland and Wales.

Speaker 1:

Right. So welcome back to another episode of our podcast, and today I'm delighted to be joined by another international guest and pretty much Hollywood royalty, so this is going to be a really, really cool podcast. I love that you're laughing. So today I'm joined by the amazing Stevie Curie from the Suka Company and we're going to talk a little bit more about productivity and hopefully give our listeners something actionable that they can take away. But before we do that, you've had the most amazing career and you're a very interesting and lovely person, so can you tell us a little bit more about you and also why the Suka Company? Why did you go with that name?

Speaker 2:

Sure Interesting. I'm a very interesting person. Let me talk about that. No, you know what. I'm a guy. I have some stuff to share. I've lived some fun stuff. So for those playing at home or in their car or at the gym, wherever you are, this, in short, is my background. So everything we talk about you can kind of, you know, see through the lens of like well, these are his experiences. Right, when I was young, my parents were both engineers at IBM. My mom was a software engineer, my dad was a hardware engineer and you know it's like your mom's Olympic skater. You probably learned ice skate when you were little. I learned to code, right, super fun.

Speaker 2:

And I went to USC in Los Angeles, which had a great but still does have a great cinema TV school. So a lot of your friends, you know, are aspiring filmmakers in the dorm. You know they want to be Spielberg or Lucas or Scorsese or whatever. So you go to Tuesday night movies. You have a lot of film conversations. It was really a great experience for me, which led to when I was in LA about to graduate from school, is when film went digital, like computers got powerful enough to then manipulate film, make images, nonlinear editing like the avids and stuff, pro tools for sound, all that kind of sort of came up and I happened to be there at that lucky moment when it was like they needed people who spoke engineering, which I did because I was a little junior software engineer and also spoke creative, which I did, thanks to a lot of friends that we talked a lot about movies. So my career kind of took off.

Speaker 2:

My first real thing out of college was I started producing digital visual effects for films, the computer generated parts of movies. I did about 14 and got to work with really talented directors, because at that point if the studio is giving you 5, 10, 15 million dollars to do visual effects, it's because you've had a few hits already, you know. So I got to work with jim and cameron on true lies uh. Mel gibson on braveheart, david fincher on seven, uh, carla and brian upon carlina's way a lot of things like that, right. So super fun. Ended up doing the digital effects for independence day, which was cool because we won the academy award for the visual effects. You know, a rising tide lifts all boats. There are a lot of people contributing to that. I was one of them, but it definitely helped my career. I set up a company with roland and dean, the director, producer, writer of independent stakes. We got along really well and we wanted to work together more. So I ran the company for four years. We sold it After raising $15 million. We sold it for 90, which was great.

Speaker 2:

My late 20s. I was like, okay, what do I want to do next? Because I feel like I've sold a company and, as one thinks, in their 20s you smarter and better looking you actually are but you're like, hey, this is great, you know. So I thought you know what? Maybe I could work on making movies as opposed to just making a piece of someone else's movie. So I got on the studio ladder, got a low run, worked my way up. I became an executive vice president at dreamworks for kurtzman orsi. I was also a vice president at 20th Century Fox before the Disney acquisition.

Speaker 2:

So those were periods of time of Die Hard 5, the Wolverine, star Trek 11, transformers 1 and 2, stuff like that. There's definitely a moment at Fox where I was like, wow, I'm just going to be the guy sitting here making Die Hard 9, and this goes nowhere. And I was like, even though from the outside it's a glamorous job, like you're going to premieres, you're going to film festivals, you're on set, you know all these like writers and directors and actors, but really, at a certain point it's just you know, like you're making Ant-Man 9. And you're like, okay, is it really great? I don't know, but the studio wants to make it.

Speaker 2:

So I decided to do the only other thing I knew how to do, which was engineering. I was like maybe I should go to a startup, leave this job and try and find something. That's a meaningful problem where I think I can help solve it. And I did. Two startups raised about 3 million for each. Both failed, which was ego crushing. I was depressed. I felt shame. I'd bump into friends from the film days at dinner or the dry cleaners and they'd be like, oh, how's it go with your startup? I'm like terrible, I'd like to kill myself. It's going really badly.

Speaker 2:

But that led me to what I do now, which is I saw these parallels of how, in both fields in film, creative field and in tech high performers did very specific things to have healthy productivity. The best ones that knew how to manage their productivity and create great stuff. They often did it without sacrificing their lives and their brains and their health and all that. And there was another path to the hustle culture of you could high achieve, but you didn't have to. Oh, I was awake all night no, 4am coding or writing a script and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2:

It was more. I'm achieving a high level and that's a lot. What I do now is I created an app that's around flow states. I lecture a lot on how to be in flow, how to get the most out of your brain with the least effort, you know, which means you still have to exert. It's not like it's freebie, but it's like you can be smart about how you do it. So that's what brings me here. I'm really happy to be here. I hope I have some stuff to share that people are like oh, that's actionable, I can do something.

Speaker 1:

Tell me a little bit more about that concept of flow, and also just for our listeners, so we understand what you're talking about yes, okay.

Speaker 2:

So this is one of my favorite things to talk about, and anything I share today when trish and I are talking that's smart is probably because I have read a lot of the smart people who have written on these subjects, who've done the research right. So I'm not that smart, but I have done the research and learned. So there was a Hungarian-American psychologist, this guy, mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who had a thesis. He's like high performers, frosty disciplines, athletes, artists, inventors. They describe these concentrated states. They get into where they do the work that makes them famous or changes the world. They describe them in very similar ways. There's something to that. I want to go up Mount Olympus like Prometheus and bring back fire and give it to everyone. Here's how they do it.

Speaker 2:

So he did this research and at the end of it he wrote a book called Flow, which is the seminal work on this. It is where we get the term flow states, and he basically said this he goes. You know, I chose this word because it was the most beautiful metaphor for what I found, which is we are all on the water trying to paddle our little boats forward, but when you align yourself with the current, the river magnifies your effort, and that's what these people figured out how to do and it's achievable. It's not a secret, it's not, you're born with it, it is just you start to learn how to get into these states where you look up and you go my God, I've been working for three hours. I kind of did everything I needed to do today and the flow state itself, and let's talk about what that is for a moment. It is a concentrated period where Mihaly said very often you lose track of time, you're not watching the clock, you are doing something that you think is meaningful. It's very hard to be in a concentrated, meaningful state if you're doing something like stapling papers or something you know, vacuuming right. He said you have to have skills that apply. You have to be challenged as you do it.

Speaker 2:

You know there's that great Michael Jordan quote where he calls it being in the zone. He's like when I'm in the zone, it's me and the ball, and what he's saying is the world kind of falls away, like my distractions are gone. I'm not really looking at the stands, I'm not really looking at the scoreboard. It's reduced down to what has to happen is this ball goes there right, and he would do that at a level. That's extraordinary. You hear that with artists too. Like there's a famous Picasso quote. I always mangle.

Speaker 2:

It was like I stayed up all night, I forgot to eat and drink and go to the bathroom, but hey look, I created Guernica over X number of nights and it's sort of an interesting thing where you lose track of time. You think you're doing something meaningful, you have some feedback. Mihaly said it's important that as you do it, it's not like you feel like you're pouring energy into a black box. So at some point Jordan does look at the scoreboard. He's like, okay, this is working. Picasso does stand back and go. Okay, this is my vision for this now in paint and canvas, and the things that he found about how you get into that state I just described and there's more to it, but this is a short podcast Are the things he said hey, if you want to access this, it's doable. Here's kind of what they do to get there. And I thought that was fascinating and I'll end with this.

Speaker 2:

The first time I experienced a flow state was before I knew the term flow state. I was on a flight from Austin to San Francisco where I was going to, on the flight, do some designs to show my team the next morning an idea I had, and the flight took off from Austin and it landed like 10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, and I thought an engine fell off. There's some horrible emergency. They're not telling us we're landing in Dallas, texas, we didn't make it anywhere, and they're going to tell us when we're on the ground that we're safe. Luke Gromen, I looked down two hours and 40 minutes had gone by. I had no concept we had crossed most of the United States. I don't know if the drink cart came by, but my designs were done. It helped that the wifi was out on that plane so I wasn't getting Slack messages, whatsapps there are no emails to check no doom scrolling.

Speaker 2:

All the little things that I realized were holding me back from that experience being I don't have to race to the hotel, grab a sandwich out of the hotel lobby convenience store and eat in the room. As I finish, I'm done. I went to dinner with a buddy of mine. It was really nice to be like, oh, this feels kind of good. Later I realized I had gotten into a flow state. So that's a lot. What I offer is here's some ideas on how to be in flow states, and I even built an app that gives you a lot of these things the conditions precedent to be there, cause I think people need this. The world is very distracted.

Speaker 1:

That was the first thing I thought about when you were saying that was distractions Cause when I'm working I've got my Slack going off, my emails going off, my WhatsApp, my kids are snapping and it's so hard to get into that state where you can kind of the world falls away. Like you said, how can people practically and, I guess, purposefully go in and out of a flow state? Because for me, a bit like you described, it just kind of happens and I'm like, oh well, that was great, but I've no idea how I did that. But how do we turn off the distractions of the world and be able to, like purposefully, go in and out when we want to?

Speaker 2:

okay. So let's start with why. Because what I've noticed in you know, seven years of talking about this live and you know, on podcasts and stuff, is that almost everyone nods their head. They're like, oh, oh, I need that. Oh, my goodness, yes, and not many actually get there. And I'll tell you the ones that get there, this is their why.

Speaker 2:

They are sick of having the end of the day feeling of like oh man, I was busy all day but I didn't get the big things done and I guess I'll get up early tomorrow and try and finish today's stuff tomorrow morning before I begin tomorrow's work. And you know that's just a lie that you tell yourself and then tomorrow night you tell yourself the same. It's just like dominoes during the week of like not finishing and carry around this feeling that eventually wears you down. And I felt worn down. But that was something I experienced where I was like I suck what down? That was something I experienced where I was like I suck what is it that every day I'm making a deal with myself to try and finish tomorrow morning or come back after dinner when I'm tired and then be like well, I'll get through whatever I need to do. And so I think the why is really important. Because if you don't understand what the problem is, if you don't feel the pain of the problem, why solve it? Honestly, just do whatever you're doing. If you don't care, if you don't feel the pain of the problem, why solve it? Honestly, just do whatever you're doing if you don't care. If you do relate to that, if you do say, like man, I was busy all day but I didn't get what I needed done, then there's a conversation about how to fix that. And you asked me why I named my company this weird name, the Suka Company. Right, the answer to that involves not only my wife and yoga and Bali, but also reveals a bit this thing that I'm going for to help people get there right.

Speaker 2:

So when I had my failed startup and I had that moment of depression, I was like, oh my God, all my friends think I'm an idiot. I left film to go do this thing and it crashed and burned. I'm worthless, I'm dumb. And I went to New York. I lived there for two years. A friend said hey, come help me at this commercial real estate deal, get out of LA, get your mind off all this stuff. So I went to New York, kind of to run in and just hide. In yoga. I met Laura we're all to my left ended up chatting. Three months later we went to dinner. We are now married, right, been together 10 years, love it. We have a daily yoga practice. It's a really nice time for me of the physical and the spiritual sort of together, right, and many people get that in different ways. That turned out to be ours and I have wonderful associations with it.

Speaker 2:

So when we had our honeymoon we went to Bali. It's a great place to go do yoga and go hang out on the beach and be like with each other, right. So on our way there, I had a working version of what's now Suka with a working title, right, an early version. It had some bugs and stuff, but we had members using it. So I said to Laura you know what? And had some bugs and stuff, but we had members using it. So I said to Laura you know what? I dream of?

Speaker 2:

Having a name for this thing that's not descriptive, like Flow State app or Distraction Blocker. Same way, amazon is not like bookstore, nike is not like we sell shoes. They're just powerful, interesting names. I hope over the next, like 10 days, my unconscious mind or the universe or whatever just bubbles up Like here's a name that means something Laura's like I wish that for you. You're like good luck, steven.

Speaker 2:

So the first day I was like I think what would seed my brain for the next 10 days is do you mind if I talk to a couple of our members in these early days, like five, 10 minutes, and just go like hey, trish, what's your favorite thing? What feature do you love? Like, do you love the flow, music, or the assistant, the task list, whatever it's doing? She's like go for it, I'm going to go to the pool. So I did that, spoke to three people five, 10 minutes. The third one I was wrapping up when. You're like Trish, thanks for your time. This is really great.

Speaker 2:

And the guy stopped me. He goes, stephen, you asked the wrong questions. I was like okay, so I'll take the bait. What's the right question? He said you should have asked me why I pay you. I was like it's like 30 cents a day. I don't know what that is in euros, but less 20 cents. I said why do you pay me? He's like I find I have two days now At three o'clock I can be playing with my kids. They're two and four or at six, I can feel like where the hell did the day go? And the difference is that morning did I hit play in your app. So I pay you because my kids are not going to be two and four forever. Okay, dude, I don't know that well, that's pretty powerful, okay. So I was like thank you.

Speaker 2:

I talked to Laura at dinner. I was like I spoke to this guy today who's more articulate about what I'm doing than I am, and I told her this and she's like that's really good. So at bedtime she's like brushing her teeth and getting ready to go to bed and she said you know, in yoga we hear all these Sanskrit terms around karma and dharma your duty and prana, your life force. She's like that dude described to you, sukha. He said I want to feel in control of my life. I want to feel I'm in my lane doing what I'm meant to do and I can do it with ease. She's like that's what you should call your app, because it's not about the steps on the path. It's not about, oh, it has music, oh, it has a distraction blocker. She's like it's where the path leads. So we called it the happiness company, the suka company who was random dude that you didn't know very well he's still a member.

Speaker 2:

I see him in there every now and then. It's pretty cool. Yeah, he uses it a ton. He's usually on the. We have a little leaderboard so you can see, like you know, who's been doing it. It's really duolingo or something who's been doing really well today and he's all fun on there.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, super helpful, nice guy so you talked a little bit well, a little bit there about kind of yoga and how that kind of sets your day up. Are there particular people can do to set their day up right so that they can get into a flow state?

Speaker 2:

yes, obviously no. You know the answer is yes, so let me elaborate on that I'm hoping so.

Speaker 2:

There is one simple thing for which you do not need any app, any music, anything right, and then I'll elaborate on other things you can do. But one thing you can do is, each morning, think of the one thing you can do that will move your life, your career, your team forward. Just have that thing, because when you open the door to your house and that first step out, that is the step toward your future. It means you're not metaphorically sitting on the sofa scrolling anymore, you're not puttering around doing random stuff, like you have intentionally said. You know what it is to move my life forward, and maybe it's writing a great blog post, maybe it's revising your website, maybe it is designing a feature for what you're doing, maybe it is working on your book, whatever that thing is. So if you only do one thing, if you only remember one thing from this entire time that Trish and I are talking today, it's know what that thing is first thing in the morning and keep your eye on the prize. Now, if you want to get into a flow state, if you have that thing, you go. You know I'm going to do today is I'm going to write that blog post. I'm going to do that where that thing is right. Then there are some things you can do to help get into a flow state. Let's talk about a couple of them. One is there is a ton of research now.

Speaker 2:

After Mihaly did his great coming back with fire thing, a bunch of people have researched what helps people fall in musically. For most people, music that is 60 to 90 beats per minute, certain key signatures, ambient, non-vocal melodic music helps you fall in. We all have the friend who listens to 90s gangster rap or heavy metal or some weird thing. That gets them in and, god bless, right. But for most people in the middle of the curve that's what helps and there are different versions of that. There are lo-fi beats, there's some more upbeat stuff, down tempo things like that. In our app because I luckily have a bunch of film composer friends who have time on their hands they wrote like a thousand hours of music that basically fits that. So you can kind of choose a playlist like more global beats, or more like upbeat, like sonic caffeine, we call it, or ambient atmosphere, which is more like super you chill, like trans, almost like ambient hotel music. So you can have a bunch of those options. But that oral environment starts to train your brain to go oh I know, I hear this, I know we're doing that, we're going into this flow state.

Speaker 2:

Another thing you do is block your distractions and be honest with yourself what they are, like you already in this episode said hey, here's one. My hand, I get the slacks, I get the thing, I get the right. So find ways to deal with that. One thing is I had a phone box, a little box, it's something like a pretty little bamboo box and I could put my phone in there and a little charging cable and leave it there. And the act of having to open it up to check my phone always stopped me because it gave me that little moment of like okay, steven, do you really want to do this? Because you know you're going to open it for a minute, which really means 15 or 20 or more, right?

Speaker 2:

So deal with your phone, like, for example, in Suka in our platform, when you start your session and the music starts, there's a QR code that comes up. You can tap it with your camera phone. Put your phone down. If I pick up my phone, my little smart assistant says Stephen, do you really need to be on your phone? And you just get that little nudge where you get to choose who do I want to be? Do I want to be the three o'clock play with my kids guy? Do I want to be the six o'clock grumpy with the world guy? All right, super simple. So, know those kinds of things about yourself Because, again, like going back to the Michael Jordan quote or my high stuff Like there is an element of know how to get those distractions out of your metaphorical field of view, right? Also, another one with flow is we talked about know what it is you want to do and you can you don't need anybody's app write it down on a piece of paper and just keep it.

Speaker 2:

A friend of mine has three index cards every day that she writes in Sharpie what are those three things and she just tapes them at the bottom of her monitor. It sounds super crude and old school, but it keeps her on track and she's a happier person because she does that. Now I tease her. She wastes a lot of index cards, she's like, but I waste less time. So I'm like I don't, I don't know. I hope you're recycling. Let's just say that. Um, so anyway, I don't want to talk too much.

Speaker 1:

Let's, let's go back to you, but these are some ideas and there are more we can talk about so you, you talked about the importance of having one thing that you can kind of move ahead, or one thing that moves you forward in the day. Yep, would you say it's important that people have a grand plan. So they have a. This is the overall, what I'm trying to get to. So then they've got little incremental steps, or the incremental thing that you do as you walk out the door, or is it all just about being in the moment? What would you say?

Speaker 2:

you know, this is what I've found from talking to tons of members in my super community as well as just, you know, reading the polls is we are so distracted now it is easy to lose a view of the prize. Slack is easy to wake up and instantly just be busy because you have an inbox full of emails, you have a Slack or a Teams or whatever you use in your company, full of little chat messages. I mean, slack is basically just my message dressed up in business clothing. It's like if it were really just business, you wouldn't be able to send animated GIFs of yak. If it were really just business, you wouldn't be able to send like animated gifs of yak. It's funny because you know, slack was made by tiny spec, which is a game company where all their games failed, but their internal messaging tool they were like this is actually kind of cool. Maybe we make this as a product, even though we don't really have a games company anymore. It would be best and that's how slack came was gamers that made a messaging tool. So I say this to say it is super easy, as soon as you get up, to succumb to all of the things that make you busy and not the things that actually make you do things productive. So one thing to remember is there's no gold medal for Inbox Zero, returning all your Slacks, no one's like great job, right? What you want is you want to do that thing today where, if you're a solopreneur, entrepreneur, you're like, oh my God, my metrics changed. Or if you work as part of a team, you walk into the staff meeting and you go. You know what? Actually, I did some deep thought. What if we did this? And everyone goes? Man, that would change the trajectory of our company. You don't walk into the staff meeting and be like returned all my emails, what do you think? Pretty good, right? Cool start, cool start.

Speaker 2:

So, as you do have intention going into your day, it begins with what is the thing you need to do, and sometimes you can say up to three. You know there's a lot of research going like more than three things. You're tricking yourself. I say, for somebody who feels distracted, start with one, just in the morning. Just write down. You know what I need to do. I need to write that blog post. I need to build that feature. I need to do the thing, need to write that blog post, I need to build that feature. I need to do the thing, whatever, right it's, find my taxes. Sometimes that's the important thing is you kind of just file your taxes and it drags on day after day because you procrastinate.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk about procrastination, shall we? Because that's a bad one, right? So we can blame social media and all the distractions and all the bings and bongs and push notifications on the phone, right, but ultimately they're there just to grab you in the moment when it's easier to procrastinate than to do something else. Now, procrastination, when you are available to be procrastinate, to be distracted, right. Often happens because you're overwhelmed, like I knew for myself.

Speaker 2:

That end of day frustration of like actually started at 9 am, and I'll tell you how. The dominance started falling at 9 am because I would say, hey, trish, tomorrow morning at 9 am I got to get going. I have to go work on this new part of the website, but at 9.15, I'd be returning emails or slacks, or at 9.30, I would be scrolling the news just to be on top of it or whatever, and I get going late and I was procrastinating and I looked at that and I said why it starts here. That pain at the end of the day is actually beginning of the day problem. Why does it start here? And I realized either I was looking at my task list and I was like there's so many things on here that do need to get done. I don't. There's 17 things. I don't know where to start.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's like paralysis. Or there's something on there that's so big where I'm like, oh, I'm not gonna write my book today. You know, I'm not gonna get dent in this. It's almost like a goal more than a task, and it's one of the things that when we're building Sukhoi, we're like I want to have my smart assistant say hey, you know what, just pick three things. And as soon as you hit play and the music starts, I'm going to hide the other 14. I don't want you to get paralyzed and try and multitask or get discouraged.

Speaker 2:

And when I look up and I see like, oh, here are the three things I need to do it's a common productivity technique. It just makes it more doable I'm like, yeah, I can get through that by three. Yeah, awesome. Or there's something on there that's too big. Help me break this down. You know what? Don't write your book today. How about you just outline chapter three? You can do that in half an hour. So that's another technique to use to sort of say so that's another technique to use to sort of say let me get my day. Everything begins with the first step. Let me know what the task is and let me stop procrastinating and do it.

Speaker 2:

So back to you, I feel like a news anchor Back to you in the studio Trey.

Speaker 1:

I'm here in Peterborough. You know everyone is talking about AI pretty much all the time.

Speaker 2:

What is this AI? I hear it everywhere at the grocery store. What is AI?

Speaker 1:

I'm not sure what it is. How would you say, or what would you say is AI's role in terms of productivity? Do you think it will help us amplify focus? Do you think it makes us lazier? Do you think it makes us take more risk? I mean, I know that's a question that's probably specific to the individual who's dealing with said AI, but I suppose generally, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So I do think a couple of things. One right now, a lot of people use AI to mean LLMs. Right, that's the thing that a lot of us are playing with the clods and the chat, gbts and all that. Llms to be super blunt, what they are is they are glorified autocomplete. That is simply what it does. They have huge data sets to kind of figure out what word or idea comes most frequently after this other word or idea. They'll write blog posts for you, they'll write books for you, they'll write code for you, they'll write sonnets, they'll write whatever you want. But this is basically what they're doing. It's like, hey, man, here are trillion tokens trying to figure out the patterns, and when people ask you just look and say when Trish is saying to me today is really, what's the probability? The next word is Rainy, 12%. What's the probability? The next word is and sometimes it can feel magical because they're just going hey, the probability of what I looked at was this. So, that said, that's one kind of AI, right?

Speaker 2:

Large language models, which right now are the most popular thing in the consciousness Are they valuable? Hell yeah, are these valuable? There's another thing called OAT, which is about actual learning, where there's another school of thought, which is what if you took an engine and started from zero not from a data set of every image in the world labeled with this is a car, this is a tree? What if you started with nothing and let it make mistakes like a child and learn and do reinforcement, learning right and do that? It's another school. Maybe that becomes a thing in five years where it's like, oh, that LLM stuff was so stupid, we did it that way, right? You know a window technology kind of like. Remember fax machines? For a few years they were super valuable. Right Now no one has one, but it was super valuable for that period of time, until data became so liquid. It was like, well, I don't need to just send you a photo of the page, I can just send you the data on the page, right? So, that said, let's return to your question. I do think that LMs now, and probably the evolution of different kinds of generative AI, are super helpful and they will get rid of a lot of jobs. Period, full stop. I'm not like, oh no, we're all going to have awesome jobs, just like we have now no Massive revolution in how we are going to do work right and how we will end up getting paid and be able to have money to then pay for the things that we need food, shelter, travel, education. That's going to change a lot in the next 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Now, my hope is this and this is where we go into Stephen just saying crazy stuff is there's an element of we, as people, want certain things. If you were to go to Usain Bolt and say, usain, hey, we made this robot. It actually runs faster than you do, so why don't you just sit here and we'll have the robot run? That would suck for the spectators. It would suck for Usain, right? But if you were to say, hey, we used AI to actually look at how you run and look at your foot, we made a shoe that maybe you shave half a second off your time in this application of AI. Are you interested in that? I think Usain would be like, oh yeah, I would love to have a better shoe. And the spectators would be like, oh my God, maybe he breaks the world record today.

Speaker 2:

So there's a way to magnify your effort through AI, as opposed to be replaced. Some jobs will go away. Wrote jobs, where AI can do it very well, will absolutely go away, but hopefully the larger thing of understanding, as you're saying, how to be human and to thrill and to create new things in the world. That will still be something that is human, even though the tools to create will be ai. You know like in my company we have very few engineers, developers now, because the coding assistants are really good. You know. They create a lot of B-level code, but in terms of being able to get a prototype and then start to modify it before you refine and optimize the code, it's way faster than before, than even two years ago. So it's kind of where I am with that.

Speaker 1:

And Usain Bolt. If you want to come on the podcast, hold on, I suppose. My next question, then, is around businesses in general. So we've established that it's really cool flow state where people can be really productive and stuff as like businesses or business leaders. How can we help people get into that state and do we want them in that state? So if people are in a state where they're just like everything else is closed off, is that what we want? And if it is get them.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you, I have a very strong thesis that we all have something great inside us and the question of this lifetime is are you going to get it out or not? And there are trillion dollar companies working very hard to make sure you don't. Their entire business model is steal your life period full stop. So because these companies have so much money, they can hire the best designers, the best engineers, developers, the best behavioral psychologists and economists to really optimize that. So on one side of that tug of war for your life, there are trillion dollar companies paying the smartest people on earth to keep you scrolling and double tapping and sharing, and on the other side of that rope is you? Who's going to win? So if you are someone who is doing the work on your own or as part of a team, or if you are a leader of a team, you have to ask yourself what do you believe you're capable of, what do you believe the capabilities are of? What do you believe the capabilities are of the people reporting to you? And if you also believe there's something great like I have either hired well as a leader or I have developed myself as a contributor where I can write amazing blogs, I can create great apps, I can go lead companies, I can become mayor of this city, whatever that thing is. If you believe in yourself and you're like hell, no, I am not going to die with the great thing still inside me Then you better find the tools that help you win that tug of war. Because let me tell you, mark and Evan and Elon they absolutely want to look you in the eye and say, hey, man or girl, can I have your life? Because I'm going to sell it to this advertiser over here and I'm going to keep the money, but I'll give you some really fun dancing cat videos. Is that a cool trade for your life? Because when you ended up, 80 years old the grumpy guy or girl on the sofa scrolling and double tapping well, I could have been somebody, I could have written that book, I could have been mayor, I could have created that company. I had that idea. No one wants to be around you. So you choose now. Is that your future? And if you don't make a choice, that will by default become your future. And they're good, they're really good.

Speaker 2:

Laura and I have a bunch of friends who either work at any meta company now or have worked at twitter or tiktok. And let me tell you, if you understood the way in which they talked about this, it it would sicken you Because for them, time on site, time on app are there metrics to go? Oh, okay, so if I get one more 10th of a second of time and app across a billion users, my children will be so wealthy that they'll never need to work. Cool, let me work really hard on this. Whereas what they're talking about is that I'm on site telling app. That's your life. They're talking about the seconds of your life. No matter how wealthy you get, it's the one thing you can't buy more of. So it all begins with that. Whether you are a leader or you are an individual contributor, you have to ask yourself do I have something great? Do I believe I have something great inside me? And if you do get up in the morning, take action toward that, because if not, you're going to lose that tug of war and you're going to be that person on the sofa talking about how they could have been somebody, and I think that's criminal.

Speaker 2:

I think my children's generation will look at our generation with social media the way I look at my parents with smoking. I'm like how could you do this? Half your friends died of lung cancer. You have emphysema. And they're like, well, it was glamorous and all the movie stars were smoking in movies and it looked so cool and James Dean smoked and you know the tobacco companies did all these surveys and research that tobacco was healthy. And I look at that. I'm like, what were you thinking? And they're like there was a 60 foot Marlboro man on Sunset Boulevard. How cool is that? And I look at you know Logan Paul and Joe Rogan and Kim Kardashian and these people and I'm like, well, my children look at our generation and say how did you waste so much of your life For cat videos? I traded my life for cat videos and videos of Logan Paul going through the suicide forest. That gets me, as you can tell, that gets me going.

Speaker 1:

I can see yeah and um. I suppose what always frightens me is when I like look at time on apps, I'll spend a lot of time looking at stuff that probably isn't massively productive, or yeah yeah, what do?

Speaker 2:

what are the things that help you get on track, what are the thoughts you have where you go. Actually, you know what. Let me put my phone away. Oh, let me close Facebook, instatik, you know whatever.

Speaker 1:

I think I'm, as I've got older anyway, I've turned into a bit of a list person. So when I start my day I try and just get at least one or two things off my list. So if that thing is a thing where I need to focus, like today I was working on like a lead magnet to make sure that I get new customers and I quite enjoy doing stuff Important, Very important. But I enjoy doing stuff like that because it means I'm sat and I'm in Canva and I'm designing and I'm making things look a certain way. And I'm designing and I'm making things look a certain way.

Speaker 1:

Then I guess, regardless of the things going off, the world kind of falls away because it's something that I enjoy doing and my brain goes ooh and focuses on it. So, yeah, Did I answer your question? I'm not sure if I answered your question, but that's the thing that, the things I enjoy, and I guess that in my head I'm good at allow me to kind of switch off the noise. But in the kind of business that I run there's lots of stuff that obviously is very important and I have to do like general admin and contracts. But is it fun? Not really. So I will distract myself as much as I can before I do those things. They're not necessarily the things that I jump to and go. Oh, I'm going to spend all day writing contract clauses and looking at post-termination restrictions.

Speaker 2:

It's hard to get into flow. Doing admin stuff right. It's hard to be like I'm in the zone doing amazing work. You're like this is grudge work. Part of our day is that let's be honest, we don't all fly through the sky like Superman. Some of your day is I just need to do my taxes, but hopefully we do my. Let's talk about chronotype for a moment. Can we do this? This might be a new idea for some. Whoever at home at the gym in their car is nodding. You already know what chronotype is. Ignore the next 30 seconds. But chronotype is a concept that there are times in day when you are more adept at doing certain things. And I'll give you an example from film Ron Bass, who is a famous screenwriter.

Speaker 2:

Like a million, two million dollars a script. My best friend's wedding, rain man. Like all this stuff right. He famously didn't talk to his family in the morning. He's like I'm not the dad who's going to be like hey, who wants pancakes. You know like just do your homework. Let me drive you to school, he said, because when I start talking to you in the morning, I can no longer hear my character's voices. So I need to use that time in the morning to write dialogue.

Speaker 2:

Now, this is a dude who wrote the dialogue. They get stars who have 20 offers with, you know, checks on their desk to choose his out of that pile because they read that dialogue and they go this character, my spring I'll be saying these words. So he's that good at it and he was very aware of his chronotype. I need this time and he would get up three, four, five in the morning to write for three, four hours to do the dialogue. He knew in the afternoon he could do collaborative work. Hey, trish, let's talk about the end of the second act. I know there's a problem there. I want to bat it around some ideas. That was fine, but the dialogue had to be done that way. So I offer this stuff because, again, it's something you can do for free. You don't need anybody's app, anybody's website.

Speaker 2:

Take a piece of paper and for the next week, write down kind of kind of generally what you do at what time of day. You don't have to be like minute by minute but say, like you know, this morning from like nine to noon I kind of worked on admins, you know accounting, and how happy you felt, how well did I do this, how you know. And then sit back after you know five days or ten days or whatever and look at the pattern and go, man, you know what't. And then sit back after you know five days or 10 days or whatever and look at the pattern and go, man, you know what. Every time I come back after lunch and I try and do some creative writing like I gotta write a new blog post or revise my website it's painful, but when I do it before breakfast weirdly I had this clarity about it. Oh, and you start to understand your chronotype. There you go.

Speaker 1:

That's really interesting, by the way.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to open this. It's not a beer. It's going to sound like a beer. It's water. Okay, I'm not getting drunk at 11.30 in the morning.

Speaker 1:

Cheers. Well, I mean, it's half past five here.

Speaker 2:

It's half past five somewhere.

Speaker 1:

It's past five somewhere, so okay, it's beer o'clock I'm gonna say that's super interesting because I've been rich, you do. You guys have like read roxie nafusu stuff over there. Is she a thing? What roxie nafusu? Is she a?

Speaker 2:

I got nothing.

Speaker 1:

No, no I love that. I've got nothing, um. So she's a cool author. She talks a lot about manifestation, but the book I've been listening to, yeah, she's really cool. The book I've been listening to is about confidence and it kind of plays into what you're saying, because she was talking about the way you talk to yourself and kind of the way you kind of motivate yourself with tasks and actually, rather than thinking oh God, I really don't want to do that, and procrastinating, think about the way that you'll feel when it's done and actually just oh yes, oh my god, yeah, that's a great one yeah, she's really cool, and I was thinking from what you just said earlier this week I thought you know what.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna go to the gym, and I'm gonna go to the gym early because actually I'm better in the mornings, I've realized, and I'm gonna take my computer so that when I'm done I'm gonna work, and I was totally in a flow. I love that okay, keep going.

Speaker 1:

I'm eating this up it was great, so it's brilliant. So I took my um my noise cancelling headphones, because sometimes there's kids running about love kids but obviously I get distracted and my noise cancelling. So I've done my workout, so I'm pumped because I'm good to go. Yeah, yeah, they bring like really yummy food there. My gym's really nice, so they've got really yummy food and stuff to do. And also I just I kept working. I think I got to about one o'clock and my other half was like where are you? Are you okay? I don't, I just kind of got lost. So I guess this whole thing is about how we harness that, because I got so much done but I didn't realize that there were kind of different kind of chronotypes and ways to kind of see things like that. So, yeah, hopefully we can help other people find that space too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, true, true, true, true. And let me say this I know that I'm very passionate about these things and for that reason I created a website with a buddy of mine that makes these things available to people. We don't draw a salary. We do it just because we want people to have it, because we hope that people do something with their lives, but a lot of this you can do for free. The hardest part is not oh, I pay 30 cents a day for Steven's website to help me get into flow. Oh, I pay for Brainfm or Endel, which are great music apps, or I pay for this Trello or some task manager or something. It is that you just have an intention. In the morning, you say you know what I'm going to do something, and when the Elons and the Marks and the Evans and everyone come for your attention, you go actually, no, no, I'm not trading my life for some cat videos.

Speaker 2:

I feel like we're running out of time, which sucks because I love talking to you yeah, no, super fun and anything I can do if there are ideas that I have that can help. There's obviously a lot more prescriptive advice. I know people who are probably like we've heard enough for now, like we need to go try some of these things.

Speaker 1:

Well, how can they try them and how can they get hold of you if they want to borrow your brain?

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay. So I will say two things. One, if there's any reference I've made to Mihaly, to Cal Newport, to Deep Work, to Triggers, to whatever, and someone has a question, I'm here to help. I'm happily at a place in my life where I'm kind of in a good place, so email me. My email is steven at thesukaco for the Suka company, so T-H-E-S-U-K-H-Aco. If you're like, hey man, who's that Hungarian dude you talked about, I will send you a link. I get back to all my emails in 24 hours if I'm not sick or traveling. It won't be a long email. I'm not going to write you the story of my life when I was born, but it'll be like oh dude, you want to know about Cal Newport and time boxing? Here's a great blog post. You're welcome to do that. It's free. I just want to help. If you decide you want to try flow states and you want an app that gives you music and all that stuff, you can try what I built. It's free for seven days, no credit card, no bullshit.

Speaker 2:

One of the things I'm very proud of is, after seven days, the people who sign up. We have 94% retention month over month. Because once you experience that like that dude said where it's like yeah, three o'clock, I want to be playing with my kids. You're like, why would I have another kind of day? So I'm really proud of that. And again, it's thesukajcom. Come try it. If you dig it, drop in the group chat. Say hi, if you don't dig it, please drop in the group chat. Tell us what you don't dig, because that's how we make it better. Tony and I are in there every day and we hear what people say and we are like oh, you know, we'll fix that in the next release. That's a cool feature of this build-in. That's kind of it and.

Speaker 2:

I just I hope that. I know our world right now is very divided. There's a lot of leadership that is leading by inflaming divisions and I think that flow is a powerful way for you to reclaim your own life and just say you know what? I don't want to necessarily be influenced and be doom scrolling and be fighting with people online, but rather to rather to say, hey, let me go build something of value, let me, let me do something to get the great thing inside me out, and I sure hope you do that, because I like to see what people build. I like to see my children build thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1:

You're so cool. I love talking to you. Yeah, it's really fun. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're more than welcome and, um, if you need anything from me, obviously do let me know. But again, thank you, and thank you for getting up early, because it must be early for you there, right?

Speaker 2:

uh, no, I've already been. I like you. I went to the gym. I got up at five, went to the gym, did that, worked on the website for a while and then was like, oh, get to talk to trish now, so Probably go back to doing the website.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much for your time and I'm sure we'll speak again soon.

Speaker 2:

That'd be awesome. Okay, bye, everyone who listened. Thanks for sticking around.

Speaker 1:

See you soon.