Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash

Transforming Stress: The Distraction Epidemic & How to Achieve Flow with Steven Puri

• Dr. Ashish Kumar • Season 1 • Episode 28

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In this episode of Transforming Stress, Dr. Ash Kumar and Steven Puri discuss the pervasive issue of distraction in modern life, exploring the concept of flow states and how to achieve them. They delve into techniques for managing time effectively, the importance of environment in productivity, and strategies for overcoming procrastination. The conversation also touches on the challenges of remote work, the impact of screen time, and the significance of focus in achieving personal and professional goals. Steven shares insights from his experiences in the film industry and entrepreneurship, particularly in healthcare, emphasizing the need for healthcare professionals to adapt and innovate in their careers. The episode concludes with actionable takeaways for listeners to implement in their daily lives.

Takeaways

  • We are living in a distraction epidemic.
  • Creating a flow state can enhance productivity.
  • Flow is achieved when you align your work with your skills.
  • Time blocking can help manage tasks effectively.
  • Body doubling can increase accountability and focus.
  • Understanding your chronotype can optimize your work schedule.
  • Screen time has detrimental effects on mental health.
  • Procrastination often stems from feeling overwhelmed.
  • The environment plays a crucial role in productivity.
  • Healthcare professionals are increasingly moving into entrepreneurship.
  • How to focus better in a noisy, remote-first world
  • Why flow is key to both performance and happiness
  • Simple techniques to increase focus and accountability
  • How to make your environment work for—not against—you
  • The importance of adapting work styles to your biological rhythm
  • How to rethink success and stress in high-pressure industries


🎯 Who This Episode Is For

  • Remote professionals and entrepreneurs seeking better focus
  • Healthcare professionals navigating transitions into innovation
  • High-achievers dealing with burnout or procrastination
  • Creatives, founders, and performers looking to reclaim their time
  • Anyone looking to build a sustainable, distraction-free work life

✨ Memorable Quotes

🗣️ “You can work for less time and do more.”
 🗣️ “You can only see those three tasks.”
 🗣️ “Time blocking is a powerful technique.”

 

🔗 Connect with Steven Puri

🔗 Connect with Dr. Ash


Keywords

distraction, flow state, productivity, time management, entrepreneurship, healthcare, burnout, remote work, focus, mental health


 


 

Ready to transform stress into strength? The journey starts here. 

SPEAKER_00

Hello friends and a very warm welcome to trans. I read stress if you're now Dr. Ash work. India, United India, and the United States. To help you transform your stress into a health tool for growth each week, it would be a practical tool and life-changing insights from including the boiling frog to help you manage your stress, find balance, and live a life of purpose. Please join us every Friday at 5 p.m. and let's start turning stress into strength together. Now let's dive into today's episode.

SPEAKER_02

Good evening, friends. Welcome to the Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash podcast. Welcome from Scotland, UK. And for the healthcare professionals, today I've got a indeed uh very special and peculiar guest, uh, Stephen Puri.

SPEAKER_01

You'll be very like being called peculiar. This is good. Okay, it starts good.

SPEAKER_02

So you would be when I got your when I got your invite, and I when I when I saw the senior film executive in 3D Studios, DreamWorks, Sony, 20th Century Fox, and the experience with the movies like uh Transformers, Eagle's Eye, I thought it was not real. It was something like a Hollywood movie. I could not uh make sense of it. Then when I saw that you are a CEO of the Sukha company, which which uh promotes wellness in remote workers, focus, we are living in a very distraction epidemic. And also healthcare. Now we are doing remote work, we are doing telemedicine, we are doing hospital at home. We could make sense of it. Then um I also uh, Stephen, I'm taking my life in an entrepreneurial direction. Uh my podcast is now in 2027 Countries, Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash. I've written the boiling frog book, which is about the chronic stress management. Um, but we'll we'll come back to that because I want to do a little bit more justice to the amount of uh non-linearity of the career path you have taken, which is very entrepreneurial, which is very adventurous, and there are a lot of learning lessons for especially for the healthcare professionals. Now, in the last decade, there are more and more healthcare professionals who are moving into the entrepreneurial space. Also, we are seeing that with the advent of with the advent of AI, and healthcare, healthcare is shifting, and it will and it will continue to continue to do so. So uh welcome, welcome to the Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash podcast, and we will talk about your other uh other great work you have done during during our further discussion, Stephen.

SPEAKER_01

I am happy to be here, and I think we have the same microphone. Yes, yes. It looks I thought so, yeah. I recognize that and so went. It is great to be there. For those of you who are listening at home or in the car, the thing that uh Dr. Ash mentioned is I am very passionate about helping people who have something to do with their lives to learn how to block distractions, to focus, to do that thing. And there are enough companies in the world right now that their entire business model is just to steal your life, to make sure they have your attention and you don't actually achieve what you are capable of achieving. So this is uh why I talked to Dr. Ash. I said, if if the lessons that I have from watching high performers in film as well as in tech are helpful to your audience, let's do an episode. So we're here today. I'm very honored Dr. Ash would have me on, and I hope that by the end of this you picked up some actionable things that help you do something great with your life.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Stephen. Um I mean, Steven, this is a huge problem. We are living seriously in a distraction epidemic. Today I was looking at a study that people spend on an average globally six and a half to seven hours screen time, and the screen time exceeds the sleep time. And that is really, really crazy to think and I'm I've I've also been a culprit of that, and it is really indeed shocking. Um tell me, Dr.

SPEAKER_01

Ash, what distracts you when you have to do something, what are the distractions that stop you from doing it?

SPEAKER_02

Well, the distractions are messages on the phone, hanging on the phone, and sometimes I feel that wanting to look at the email. Uh of course, sometimes the emails might be work-related, but I I have been thinking that I'm doing doing it a little bit more than than usual. So I would love to know all the kind of techniques people can apply as they go through their time, as they go through the day to minimize these distractions.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So the biggest idea that I'm gonna share, and you know this, Dr. Ash, but I I want the people at at home to uh understand this, which is you can work for less time and do more if you understand how to create a flow state environment for yourself. And I'm gonna talk for a moment about flow states. Some of you know this, some don't, but just to make sure we're on equal footing, there was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihaj Chinsen Bihai, who actually died, I think about four years ago, uh this month or next month. And he had a very strong thesis. He said high performers in different areas, athletes, artists, inventors, scientists, they all get into this highly concentrated state where they do the work that makes them famous, the work that moves the world forward. And he said, I want to go study this, understand why they talk about it in similar ways. And then, you know, like Prometheus, bring the fire down from the mountain and offer it to the rest of us, the people who want to do something with their lives. And it's amazing what he did. When he was done with his research, he wrote the seminal book called Flow. And he said, I called this flow because it's the best metaphor I can think of. Because it's like all of us are on the water paddling, trying to move our boats forward. But when you align your boat with the current, it magnifies your effort. You go further with the same amount of effort. And he said, That is what I've found. Many of the people he interviewed use different terms for it. You know, being in the zone. Like there's a, you know, Michael Jordan, who is a arguably the best basketball player of all time. He said, uh, you know, when I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball. You know, when I'm in those moments in the NBA finals where it has to happen, this has to go in to win. There is no scoreboard, there is no timer, there are no people in the stands. The world is reduced down to this extreme concentration of what actually has to happen. The only thing that has to happen is the ball goes through the hoop. And uh, you know, Picasso had uh his own quote, which I always mangle a bit, but he said essentially, Oh, I was up all night and I forgot to go to the bathroom, I forgot to eat, I don't think I drank water. But hey, look, you know, I I almost finished Guernica. You know, and to be lost in that state where you do the work that moves your career life forward, that's something that I have studied a lot. You know, I've I built a website to help people get into that state because it is kind of magical. Have you ever experienced a flow state, Dr. Ash? Yes, I have. Yes. How how did you get there? How did the very first time did you know what it was?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I think you lose the sense of time.

SPEAKER_01

True.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. You are so much you lose the sense of time, you focused. Like just now I'm getting in flow with you. I get I get into flow when I'm having some kind of uh uh juicy conversation where I'm learning, which is intellectually stimulating. Whatever I'm tired in, I might be completely exhausted, but I might immediately I'll get in flow. If the area, if the area is of interest to me, this is so true.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So let's pick up on that because I maybe I'm not as evolved as you, but the first time the first time I experienced a flow state, I had never heard the term flow state. I was on a flight from Austin, Texas, which is where I am on this side of the Atlantic, right? And I was flying to San Francisco. On the flight, I said, Oh, I'm gonna pull up my laptop and work on some designs for this uh idea I wanted to show my team the next day. We took off out of Austin, the Wi-Fi was broken, and we landed about 10 minutes later. And I thought, an engine has fallen off. Like something bad happened because we just took off. We must be in Dallas, and they're not telling us what's wrong. I looked down, two hours and 40 minutes had gone by. I had no conception of the time. But my designs were done. I didn't have the stress of, well, let me hurry to the hotel. I'll pick up some food in the lobby and I'll work in the hotel room finishing the, you know, I was done. I could call up a friend in an SF and say, Hey, do you want to have dinner tonight? And I thought this is this remarkable experience where I was solely focused on the work. Like you said, it was something that I thought was meaningful. The way you get energy from engaging in interesting conversations, this is meaningful to you. That was one of the things Mihai wrote. He said, When I've looked at these amazing inventors, you know, doctors, the artists, the athletes, they all seem to get into flow when they think the thing they're doing is meaningful. When they're doing something that they have skills that apply. So it's not Picasso playing basketball and it's not Michael Jordan painting, you know? They have to do it at a level that challenges them. So to use that same, you know, analogy, it's not Michael Jordan playing an exhibition with eighth graders. It is Michael Jordan in the NBA finals at that level when the world falls away, and he does the things that end up in a highlights reel 20 years later, right? And he said, it's also interesting that it seems they all need to have some feedback loop as they do this, right? It is not doing it in a vacuum. Like when you said being part of this stimulating conversation gets you into a flow state, because you're continually getting feedback from the audience, from the person you're talking with, right? And like with Michael Jordan, like there's a scoreboard with Picasso. You can look at the work that he's done. There, there are measurable ways of saying, what have I done, as opposed to pouring energy into a black box. So this I found so interesting that Mihai spent a lot of time looking at this and saying, there are common things to all of these people's experiences, and they're not extraordinary. They're not like, oh, it's only because I'm nine feet tall that I can do this. No, it is if you want it, there are simple techniques, and you just have to want to manage your life better, get in control of your workday. So, anyway, back to you, Dr. Ash.

SPEAKER_02

No, there are a couple of things I will say to what what you just said. One thing is when people do skills which match their strengths, they are living in their highest values, and I also feel that they are able to choose their environment. Now, in the healthcare, we have got 50 to 60 percent burnout. In the United States, there are studies for last six, seven years. That is a that is the percentage of burnout. Yeah, if you just Google, you will be able to see that is the it's around 60 percent and it's year after year study last six years, similar in the United Kingdom. Now, as somebody is going through the day, and I've created I have created uh the antidote to antidote to the boiling frog, which is the jacuzzi effect. Now, in the jacuzzi effect, there are two people who are sitting, there are two frogs who are sitting in the jacuzzi, they are having conversations. You and me are having a coaching conversation, you and me are have having a growth conversation just now. Yes, and that is that is both inspiring, enlightening, and giving us a lot of a lot of incredible insights. Now tell me if people are working in the environments which are much more much more challenging, then how do we how do they achieve the flow state?

SPEAKER_01

Well, let's talk about that because challenging environments can be challenging for multiple reasons. So let's lay out one kind of challenge, which is the ability to be uh not distracted by a teammate or your boss, right? There are some professions, there are some jobs where you know what, you're sitting there and your boss comes by every 10 minutes and asks you some question, right? We know from research, it takes 15 to 23 minutes to get into a flow state. From when you sit down and say, okay, let me write my blog post, let me, you know, do my charting, let me create this thing, let me paint this, design this, whatever. 15 to 23 minutes from the time you sit down to do that is when you actually get to that place where the world falls away. Now, if someone comes by every five or 10 minutes, you keep getting interrupted, and then you start your clock again, right? So you are right. In an environment like that, it is very hard. I have seen some people in my community in Suka, there are like 30,000 people. There are some people who talk about working in an office and using, you know, Suka running in the background to play music and this. And one thing they do to provide some uh shield is they'll put on headphones, like over-the-ear headphones, which signal to other people, I can't hear you. And it it stops some people from interrupting you with the simple things that they could actually answer on their own. Where's the TPS report from yesterday? Like they can probably find it. But when you're just sitting there and if they're lazy, they're like, hey, Dr. Ash, where's uh, you know, what time is it? You know, what's the weather like? You're right, and with the headphones on, they're like, ah, he can't hear me, and they'll move on to someone else. So there are things you can do, but you are right. There are some environments that are just challenged to do that, right? By the same token. If you are, for example, working from home and you do have the ability to say, I can create the environment around me right here, then what you look at is you say, Well, how well do I know my chronotype? And I don't know if everyone here you know is familiar with that. I know you are, but chronotype is the sense of you know, chronos time. What time of day are you best suited to do different things? Like you may have a job where there are some things you do that are creative, you have to write something or create something new. There are other times that are administrative. I have to return emails, return slacks or teams messages. You know, there are collaborative times when you have to actually interact with people in meetings, right? So as you become more aware of that, you start to see your patterns. You're like, you know what, at this time of day, I'm really good at this and really bad at that. So I know what I should do then. And I'll give you an example actually from film. There's a famous screenwriter, million plus per script, Ron Bass. He wrote My Best Friend's Wedding, he wrote Rain Man, he wrote all these movies, right? Where you have the top actors in Hollywood, they have a stack of scripts on their desk with offers and checks on them, and they choose to do his movies. The words that he writes, they say that that role. I will spend my springtime saying these words for this character he created, right? Now he was famous because he would not talk to his family in the morning. He told his children, children, I'm not the dad who's gonna say, Hey, what do you want for breakfast? Who wants pancakes? You know, like who did their homework? He's like, when I talk to you in the morning, after that point, I can't hear my characters in my head. So I can't write dialogue. So he would get up three, four, five in the morning and write his dialogue, write his character work for a couple of hours while his kids were sleeping or they were getting ready. Of course, at one or two million dollars of script, his children are like, Dad, you know, you do what you need to do. Like it's okay, we can make our pancakes, right? But he was very aware of his chronotype. I need this because I can't write. After I've started having conversations, I can't write dialogue with another person. But in the afternoon, he was like, I'm very good at collaborative stuff. Hey, let's have you know Dr. Ash over and Steven over and let's think through the third act because something's wrong there, and we'll collaborate on figuring out what's wrong and solving it, right? So you can apply that in your life as you start to track what you do. And you don't need, you don't need an app like mine, you don't need anything. You just need a piece of paper and a pencil. And for a week or two, write down, like, you know what, these hours in the morning, I did this. How did you feel? After lunch, I did this, how did you feel? And then look at it when you have five days or 10 days of data and look for the patterns. So I share these, I know there's a lot more we'll talk about, and I know that was a mouthful, but it is one way of it of addressing challenging environments by creating barriers to people interrupting you, to, you know, trying to work from home and do things like that. You were about to say something a moment ago. I know you're smiling. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I was going on a different tangent, but again in a similar, similar area. Is uh today I was working with my virtual secretary uh in the Philippines, and uh we work uh sometimes we we will work asynchronously, uh uh other times we we will work as a body double. And I think exactly I was telling her that look at Stevens. I think you uh to improve your performance, to improve your productivity, what are the products we can use from the suka.co, especially because we are moving into the hybrid space. Stephen, one thing I would tell you, just to give you a background, yes. In the UK, I was a co-founder of the UK Hospital at Home Society. We are providing secondary-level hospital care in patients' own home environment. In the future, there will be more and more care which will be delivered in the patient's own home environment. This means the doctors are driving in the driving in their own cars and they are they are listening to music, they are in the zone, then they, in spite of being in the hospital walls, now they are in a different environment, and the game changes. The game changes because you have your autonomy, you have got the environment in your car around you, then you go to patients' home, you are a privileged guest. It's a game changer.

SPEAKER_01

That is so I appreciate how thoughtful you are about these sorts of things. And when you when I was first introduced to your podcast with this idea of transforming stress, and basically what you're saying is like, how do you get control of your life and your emotions as opposed to being controlled by them? And I think that's a really powerful idea. And I hope you know the people who are listening appreciate that there is another path. If they have problems, like I've had problems, I'll give you one example. I have a cold start problem in the morning. And this is how it manifests. Oh, Dr. Ash, tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. I'm gonna get started. This is the thing I'm gonna work on. But then tomorrow at 9 and 9.15, I'm still returning some emails. And then maybe 9:15, 9.30, I'm you know, checking my phone again and looking at the news, and I don't get going until 9:30 or something, right? Now, the effect of that is felt at the end of the day. When I'm like, oh, I didn't get the important stuff done. I was busy all day, and I'll get up early tomorrow morning and finish today's work tomorrow before I start tomorrow's work, which is the lie we tell ourselves each night, and they just like dominoes go through the week, right? So I had this problem and I was getting so frustrated with myself because I I said there's there's no one to blame but myself, right? And what I learned, you know, the I did the you know the six whys, like, well, why do I feel bad at the end of the day? Because at the start of the day, I actually didn't get going. Well, why did I not get going? I was procrastinating. Why did I procrastinate? And I learned it was because I felt overwhelmed. Well, why do I feel overwhelmed? What exactly? And it came down to two things for me. They're both related to my task list. I either had so many things on there that all needed to get done that it was daunting. It was like almost paralyzing to go, I can't do 17 things today. You know, or there was something on there that was uh so big, it was almost a goal. It'd be like, you know. Write my book, write my sequel to Boiling the Frog, you know? I'm not going to do that between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Zoom, right? So if you can't make a dent in it, it's sort of that same paralysis. So I'll tell you two things that I did that were really simple. You can do this for free. Our app does it for you, which is when you have a task list, which is important to prioritize and say what am I going to do? You can talk to your smart assistant and prioritize which three are really important today. Maybe one big one and two medium or small ones, right? As soon as you hit play in our website and the music begins, you know, everything goes, the assistant hides the other 14 things. You can only see those three. And then suddenly it's less daunting because you're just like, oh, yeah, I can get that done. That's reasonable, right? It helps me. Then with our members, our members are 77% more likely to finish all three than before when they would see more, they'd finish two. And it stopped you also. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02

That sounded very exciting. I'm definitely going to get your app. I needed that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and it's it's also, and I have I'm medically diagnosed with ADD, right? Not so much presenting as hyperactivity, but definitely the attention deficit, which means I used to believe that I could multitask. Or I would, in my task list, jump around, do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that, you know, and then you don't actually end up finishing anything. You just keep nudging things along. Monotasking is really powerful. I mean, obviously, Count Newport, James Clear, tons of people have written about the power of monotasking. And that's something that's super helpful when you realize, oh, I can context switch. I can go from monotask on one thing, store what I'm doing, my status on that in my brain, go to another thing, load back into my brain the status of where I was with that, work on that as a monotask for a while, and then switch back and forth. And what you realize is, oh, I'm spending all the time monotasking, but then I'm also burning brain energy, context switching. And little things like this, you start to learn and you go, I actually could get in control of my days instead of being controlled by them, which is one of the things I loved about, you know, when you created this, just that sense of like, how do you transform this?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Steven, one more thing about the screen time. Screen time going up so high. Any strategies you can uh suggest to the readers? First of all, uh, people should understand that this amount of screen time is not healthy for the brain, it's not healthy for the eyes, it is not healthy for the attention span. So, what do you have any strategies for that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm gonna say one thing first before I talk about strategies, because you have touched upon something that I feel passionately about. You and I met when we've spoken before, you know, I'm having my first child this fall.

SPEAKER_02

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01

Very excited about this. We just saw the OBGYN yesterday and got a new ultrasound. It's just adorable. It has led me for the first time in my life to think about what is the world that I'm handing off to my children, right? And I know that I look at my parents' generation and smoking, and I think to myself, how dad, how could you smoke for 37 years? Like, and you've had friends die of lung cancer, you've had friends with emphysema, like all of this stuff, you developed high blood pressure, all these things. How could you do it? And you know, my dad's generation says, Well, all the movie stars are doing it, and they all look cool, and you know, it's in the films, and you know, the the tobacco industry put out these studies how tobacco is healthy for you, right? So you have to understand in that time we thought tobacco was a great thing, you know. Now we know it kind of killed a lot of my friends. I hope my children's generation looks at our generation and feels the same thing about social media. Dan, how could you and your friends spend all this time wasting your lives?

SPEAKER_02

Like you timeless scrolling and double tapping.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And it's really hard because the financial incentives are very clear. If you and I were great behavioral psychologists, or we were uh designers or engineers, the best paycheck you and I could get, Dr. Ash, is to go to work for a trillion-dollar company whose business model is steal your life. Period, full stop. So they can pay the top dollar and the exchange is it's like Mark Zuckerberg calling up and saying, Hey, Dr. Ash, I'd like to uh have your life and I'm gonna sell it to these advertisers and I'm gonna keep the money. But I'll give you some cat videos. Is that cool? Is that is that a good trade for your life? Because I'd I'd like your life. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a lot of money. I need another $300 million yacht. And I'll give you a Logan Paul video going around the suicide forest. How about that? Or maybe, you know, I'll give you some videos that make you upset about politics because I know you'll watch them when you're angry. Is that is that cool? Can I still have your life? And that sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, please go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

That is a tragedy because I have a strong thesis, like Mihai had his, I have mine, which is that we all have something great inside us. And the question of this lifetime is are you going to get it out or not? Are you going to write that book? Are you going to create that company? Are you going to cure cancer? Or are you going to be the guy or the girl on the sofa, 80 years old, saying, Oh, you know, I could have been somebody, I could have done that, and you're just scrolling and double tapping and scrolling, you know? And I want the people who say I have something to do. I refuse to die with this inside me. I want to give them a tool to fight the companies that are stealing their lives. Because it's a hard tug of war when on one side of the rope you have trillion dollar companies with the smartest people, and the other side, it's you alone. So this said, um I do think that when you when you ask me about screen time in social media, there are some techniques. And you know, anything smart that I say, Dr. Ash, please attribute it to someone that I've read or known, or I mean, there have been so many great thinkers that have spent their lives looking at these ideas around distraction, around productivity, around focus, right? So, yes. Sometimes you can develop the willpower, the discipline to say no and not pick up your phone. I am guilty. I will tell you this. One of the patterns I noticed is that when I'm working on something, maybe I'm coding a new feature or I'm trying to write a blog post. And when I hit that moment that it gets hard, I don't know what the next paragraph is. Oh, it should be, oh, why won't my build, you know, compile? I would almost muscle memory without even thinking about it with my brain, my muscles would just reach for my phone and be like, well, you know, let's just quickly check my WhatsApps. Like you said, let me check my emails and see. Maybe my cousin wrote to me, maybe you know, I got that refund I was looking for. What is it? I'll just look. And that is never a minute. That's never 10 minutes. You know, and you open YouTube to watch one video, and YouTube is very good at saying, Oh, I know the other video you want to watch. Here, just click right here and then give me another 10 minutes, right? So it's hard to develop that willpower. I didn't have it. I just still don't have it. But I'll tell you what I did. I realized that if I had a friend that in that moment I reached my phone, said to me, Steven, who do you want to be? Like, do you want to be the 80-year-old guy who's like, I could have been somebody, could have done something? Or do you want to be someone who's like, hey man, my my kids are actually proud. When they talk about what did their father do, they're happy to say, This is what my father did with his life. Because no one's proud to say, oh my, my dad scrolled a lot. He liked a lot of cat videos. And when you in the app we built, this is what I did as a digital version of that, is what there's a smart assistant. When you start your session, you get a little QR code, I tap it with my phone, the phone camera, I put my phone down. And when I have that moment when I hit the hard thing coding or the blog post, and I go to reach my phone, when I do that, my smart assistant says, Stephen, do you need to be on your phone? And sometimes that's all I need to just remind me, who do I want to be? So I think it's sometimes using tech, and by the way, you don't have to use the thing I built. There are a lot of great apps out there that help you do that, either by blocking things, you know, locking them up, or doing some sort of a nudge, which is more gently, which is what I do. But find one because it's hard to develop that willpower. I can't tell you how to do it because I haven't done it. I had to build a tool to help me. So there's that.

SPEAKER_02

No, that's like those are really incredible insights, and they are very sad. And it is even more sad and shocking that we do it ourselves, and sometimes it's just like uh it's just a you know, spiral that you get sucked into that. Now, question is that why are we doing it? Let's do a dive there. We are going doing this to get some dopamine. Yes. So the thing is to where to get where find better ways to get dopamine rather than have maybe three goals. That these are the three goals. If I complete, that is the dopamine, that is the kind of dopamine I want, rather than uh checking text or email or or maybe have protected times that this is a protected time. Once every four hours, three hours, I will check the check the right.

SPEAKER_01

So time time blocking, which you just brought up, is another technique maybe we should just mention, you know, for the those playing at home, which is when you understand your chronotype. And maybe Dr. Ash says, you know what? I'm working on the boiling the frog sequel. I write best in the morning, but then I'm gonna spend this time with patients, or this time with hospital administration, or this time with other medical professionals, and you know, you block out your day. When you have those moments of self-awareness, then you can say, I'm gonna time block this. For example, I block out 9 to 11 every morning. That's why we're not talking early in the morning, because I know that time is when I'm most clear. So you can't book a meeting with me. No Zooms can be scheduled there. If my teammates slack me, they know I'm not going to respond until 11 when I say, okay, I had my time to focus. Let's do, you know, returning the emails and sort of things before lunch. So I love that you you time block that way. Um, I don't do it, but I'm gonna start doing it now. Yes, start doing it. Do you I have a question for you? Do you time box when you have to work on something, whether it's you know medical or whether it's you know for your book or some of the knowledge you share? Do you time box and say, okay, I'm gonna give myself 45 minutes for this, or I'm gonna give myself an hour or something? Do you do that?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I was doing it a few years back, not not so much now. When I was writing the book, I was doing it.

SPEAKER_01

Did you find it was effective?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, of course. It definitely increases the focus.

SPEAKER_01

It's a definitely and again, you don't need any app for you need nothing. You you need it your watch, you need a your phone. Just say, you know what, by 4 30, I want to be done with this chapter. And it's weird the way your brain says, okay, now I know what the deadline is. And oh, by the way, I'm gonna tell you a funny story. I was talking with someone who was telling me how in college they would, you know, do their term papers and do all this stuff, right? And they're like, I can't time box, I can't manage my time that way. Oh, sorry. So I asked them, you just told me that you would start your term papers like a day or two before they were done. Like you had months to do it and you would crash through this thing, right? So really what you're saying is you did time box it. You just said, I'm gonna sign a time box of 36 hours at the very end of the semester. And do you recognize if you applied that same mentality to a week earlier, a month earlier, and just said, you know what? I'm gonna do eight hours on this on Saturday. You would probably produce a higher quality work, you'd be less stressed, you'd be transforming your stress, right? And that last weekend, you wouldn't be, you know, getting sick on the Monday because you hadn't slept in three days, right? And it's funny because it would say passive time box. They didn't think of it as time boxing when I was like, you're doing it, you're just doing it in a very unhealthy way. So I hope that some people try that. And by the way, time boxing for those people who are listening and are just like, what exactly are we talking about? All we're saying is for the task you're about to start, agree with yourself on what is the right amount of time. And you may be off 5 or 10%. Things happen, of course. It's organic. But it's much more effective than just doing a task. Well, I'm just gonna do this until I'm done. Because when you do it until you're done, you will spend more time. Period. It's proven. So tell yourself this is worth 30 minutes. You know what? I need to prep for the podcast tomorrow with Dr. Ash. I'm gonna spend 30 minutes reading about him, listening to some episodes, you know, doing a little research, so I'm prepared. And that's 30 minutes of time I spent. I could have spent four hours doing that, right? Sprawling around and wasting time and watching related videos. But that's a way of handling it. Anyway, back to you, Doctor.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, fantastic techniques. I'm going to start immediately from tomorrow, applying some of them. Steven, thank you for that. One of the things which really works for me, my secretary will be watching this video, is body double. Is and that is when like just now you and me are there. So I'll just sit and tell her, okay, you do this work, let me complete this work, and then we'll then I'll come back to you, few do a few things with you. So there is some kind of accountability and engagement also. It works miracles for me, actually, Stephen.

SPEAKER_01

It is so interesting you say that. I was not familiar with body doubling until body double is a great technique. It's a great technique, and it's very popular with neurodivergence.

SPEAKER_04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

That is how I learned about it. Is we have a bunch of people who have ADHD or some sort of neurodivergence, and said, Could you offer this? And what you what you do now, and you do it, you know, part of your normal life, it was very foreign to me at first. And then I found, oh, there are all these groups where you can go on Zoom and just quietly work with each other. And I researched what is this? Other people must have thought about this, examined it, written about it. And sometimes it's called, you know, social facilitation theory.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, social facilitation theory, yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the productivity boost you get when you can see someone else working while you're working, and you know that you can be seen working, it boosts your productivity a little bit. And there was a study done that's often refuted in Hawthorne, California, which is a small area near the LA airport, and with a factory where they did this test of like how did workers work? And there's a lot of debate, but they definitely worked faster when they could see each other working than when they were isolated. Now, was that because they felt supervised or not? It's hard to say, but there was something about being together socially and what you talk about, which is hey, my VA and I are going to work quietly. So let's say, let's start a session. Hey, Dr. Ash, what are you going to do? Oh, well, I'm going to complete the next chapter of my book. Okay. What are you going to do, Steven? Oh, you know, I was going to schedule these appointments, get this uh your calendar cleaned up. And then we don't talk for 45 minutes or whatever. We agree upon. And at the end we go, oh, Dr. Ash, how did you do? Well, I finished my chapter. Ah, Steven, how'd you do? And that, which is also called the coffee shop effect, by the way. Uh, you know this. So I'll tell you a funny story. When we were designing the music, the oral, AU oral uh part of Suka, we thought, you know, there's so much research on flow music. Often they say between 60 to 90 beats per minute. You know, ambient, melodic, non-vocal music, certain key signatures, help people get into flow. And admittedly, we all have the friend who listens to something as an outlier, like listens to rap or classical or, you know, heavy metal or whatever, right? But most people, that kind of music gets them to flow. So what did we do? We launched with a lot of music like that. And I have friends who are film composers who composed a lot of music that was non-vocal and sort of in that genre. Here's the funny thing we were running during the pandemic. And some people asked me, they said, you know what, this is all nice, Steven, thank you. But you know what I actually miss? You know what helps me work? I'm used to working in a coffee shop. So we found a recording, you're gonna laugh. We found a recording of a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, and we put up this two-hour playlist where you can hear like espresso machines making, you know, whatever. I don't drink coffee with you, cappuccinos, espresso, whatever. You hear people, you know, clanking their little dishes, and it made so many people happy. They had that feeling, their unconscious mind felt like there are other people here with me. Because we are social, we're we're we're community-based creatures, you know?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Very, very, very, very true. Very, very true. I mean, if I were to go to a new place and I'm isolated, uh, I see how my sleep gets affected. It's a very primal effect. You can immediately feel that if you go to a coffee shop or Starbucks and work there, your efficiency is more.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it it's it's really it's interesting that way. And something that uh that I realized was I had never thought about the sound of a coffee shop. What you would call in like film, you know, coffee shop voila, right? The background noises, not the spoken stuff. That that would be a thing. So then we started exploring that and asking people, like, what sounds help you get into your flow state? And some people said, Oh, I'm so glad you asked, because, you know, I don't actually listen to music. I have an association of being concentrated or in flow when I'm at my lake house, when I'm at my beach house, when I'm, you know, working from a cafe near the beach. So we put up some playlists of like surf in Cyprus, uh, a stream in Japan. We just hear a gurgling brook. Uh, there's a lake near my partner uh Tony uh up in, it's called Emerald Lake up in Canada. And you just hear like the little bit of the water in the lake and the birds chirping, and they become incredibly popular. Our audio engineer was in Nepal in Kathmandu. He came back and he said, one day it rained and it was this beautiful, lush rain. I had my audio equipment. I recorded it. I didn't really know what I was going to do with it, but I was like, here I am in the Himalayas, and this warm, beautiful rain is coming down. I have to do the thing that I know how to do, which is record, right? We put that up. All it is is two hours of rain in the Himalayas. Called it Himalayan Dream Rain. It's a playlist. It's our third most popular playlist. I share that because as you look to get into flow, the people who are listening who are like, I would like to have more control of my work life. I'd like to have tools, techniques that help me block out the world and focus, right? So sound is one of them, right? Another one is place. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story about how I saw this firsthand. As you know, I produced the digital effects for Independence Day, which is great because we won the Academy Award for Digital Effects, super cool, right? The whole thing, right? Helped every thousand people worked on it. It helped all of our careers. So Roland and Dean, the director and producer, you know, writer team, they had ridden their past couple movies at this villa in Puerto Rico, Mexico. Some beautiful white marble villa at the pool and you know all this stuff. So when they were going down to write this, Roland asked his assistant, hey, please, you know, reserve the villa for us, you know, rent the villa. She came back, she said, it's already rented, someone's already there right now. And it was a terrible moment of the office. Roland called his entertainment attorney, John Deemer, who's an amazing attorney. He said, John, buy the villa. Monday. Roland owned a $5 million villa in Puerto Rico. The people who had been renting there, I don't know where they went, but they were not there on Monday. And Roland Dean went down there. Six weeks later, they came back with the script that became the third highest grossing in film history at the time. Sorry to so much. It's so true. And I asked Dean about this, and he said, you know what, there's this room there where the light comes in in the morning. Again, know your chronotype, over the pool. And it just inspires us. There's no thought of, you know, our agents and how are we going to cast this actor? How much will this cost? Will the studio make? He's like, we get in that room and we just think like we're film students again. Like, how do we make something great? He said, That's why we go there. That's why it's this important that Roland would buy the house so we could have that room. And it doesn't have to be a five million dollar home. I'll tell you later, I was at DreamWorks. There was an executive vice president at DreamWorks for Kurtzman Norsey. And Alex, Kurtzman, and Bob Orsi are great writers, right? In that million dollar club script. When they were under pressure to finish the script, we were on the little the DreamWorks, like the Amblin compound at the University of. Studios lot. Right across the street is the Universal Hilton. Which Dr. Ash is not a glamorous property, is where like you sleep the night before you go with your kids to Universal Studios, right? But they would have their assistant rent a room there, and they would spend those last two or three weeks brinding out Transformers 2 or Star Trek 11 or whatever there. And I wondered about this because they were both wealthy. Like they could go to Point of Reactor, they could go anywhere. But I realized for them that mental association was they had met back in high school, in college. Like that was when they started writing. And I think for them, the Universal Hilton evoked dorm room. It was we are the scrappy writers who have to prove that we can do this. And you know, Kurtzman would sit on the edge of the bed with his laptop, and Bob would be at the little desk with his laptop. And that's how they got their brains in that flow state, right? So these are again just like free things you can do. You don't need an app for this, you don't need any subscription, anything. Just in your home wherever you work. Work in one place for a certain thing, and you'll find that over time, when you enter that physical space, your brain will drop in and say, Oh, this is where I write, or this is where I paint, or this is where I brainstorm ideas about how to make cold fusion, right? So anyway, back back to you.

SPEAKER_02

I think that is uh that is really very insightful to choose the place which can kind of uh stimulate stimulate that flow and stimul stimulate that flow. Right, Stephen, I uh really want to get into you know a couple of things. One is your experience uh with uh startups where you raise 21 million, and also your experience in the Hollywood where there's so much of risk in filmmaking, so much of investment. The reason I'm asking this question is that more and more and more and more healthcare professionals are getting into entrepreneurship. Generally now, till a decade back, physicians were just walking a very linear path. Now they want to see okay, the environment is not working for me, uh to their brain or to their chronotype, or their values are not matching, so they want to diversify. So, what kind of top tips you could give? First of all, I would love to know a little bit either about your film industry or the startups, how you manage so much of risk, and kind of uh moving into different spaces, moving into different spaces and different uh in a very, very short, in a very short span. And um what what kind of uh lessons healthcare professionals can learn from that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think there are a couple lessons that I can share, and I know that we don't have infinite time, so let me be more succinct than I normally am, right? So there is the choice of what problem you're solving, right? Which is a fundamental primary thing. The idea that I have is a solution. Make sure the problem that it solves is a very painful problem, right? So in healthcare, there may be some issues that are life-threatening where you can get people to pay.

SPEAKER_02

Let's talk about the boiling frog, because the boiling frog is a 60% burnout, uh burnout statistics all over the country. Yeah. Let's talk about this problem.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so so you talk about that, which is when you want to uh if you agree this is a problem, right? A painful problem, then if you want to raise money, an important part of raising money is painting a picture. You know, this is maybe a storytelling thing that I learned in film is you want to paint a picture of here's the problem in the world. And by the way, here's how this is going to get worse in the world as time goes by. You know, this is not naturally going to solve itself. These people have it now, but it's gonna be a much larger set of people because investors want to know that there's a market for your idea and it is a problem that demands a solution, right? So a lot of the money that I've raised has been around this technique of saying, hey, the world is changing this way, it creates this problem, this problem is going to continue to get worse. Someone's going to solve it. Why don't we take a shot? Now, as you said, venture investment is a very risky investment. Like everyone who's going to get venture dollars, there's a reason it's called venture, because you're going to take a huge bet, which by the way, is not that different from film. When you go off and, you know, Spielberg spends $150 million to make a movie and he has flops. There are movies that even Steven and Jim Cameron make that are not huge, right? And then you have, you know, some teenagers that make an indie film that make $60 million on a budget of $1 million, right? So they're both very risky ventures. And that means that the returns are often outsize. Okay, so a venture investor, suppose Dr. Ash is running his fund, he's going to make 100 investments. He knows going into it, 90% of those investments will go to zero. This company's go bankrupt. But he's hoping in that three to five percent, they're the 100x companies. They're the ones who go, I invested in Airbnb early. I was in meta early, I was in Uber early, you know, and they become those companies that, as they say, return the fund, you know. So that strange distribution, you know, the power curve, if you will, that is what you're betting on an adventure, and you're trying to convince investors when you're the entrepreneur, we're going to be in that small set. Like if this works, this is not like a 3x return, a 5x return. This is 10, 20, 50, 100x kind of return. Is there uh more on this you wanted me to talk about? Because I'm trying to be succinct. I know we don't have a ton of time.

SPEAKER_02

I think I get some ideas there. I get some ideas there. Yes. So I know we're coming to the end of the hour. Steven, what are the top nuggets you would like to share uh from your varied experience that you have literally followed your calling from your house? Yes. I've seen how you have navigated through different careers right from your uh right from your college days. I think that's huge. That is the that is the biggest lesson for me actually, because now uh you become comfort comfortable. Like as a physician, I'm very comfortable. Yes, I want to create transforming stress. Now we are already in 27 countries. Uh amazing. It's just six months. So my my vision is now I'm flying to Japan next month, um, launching the boiling frog in Japan and India.

SPEAKER_01

I love Japan.

SPEAKER_02

Japan, as you know, was very big in stress, and then I'm doing a keynote speech in India. Again, India has become the burnout nation in the world now.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So my vision is now to have transforming stress in every country of the world, boiling frog in every country of the world, because stress is, according to Gallup, 60 to 70, 60 to 70 uh percent all over the world, across all the continents, all the countries.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it it is a big problem that you're solving. And I'm glad that you're out there and getting success with uh you know boiling the frog. Does everyone know what uh boiling the frog refers to?

SPEAKER_02

The boiling bo the boiling frog is an analogy, is that when you throw a frog into hot water, it will immediately jump out. But if you throw a frog into a frog into a cold water and slowly increase the temperature, it will keep adapting, or rather maladapting till the time it loses the capacity and dies. Same is the effect of chronic stress. Some people come and they drop dead, sudden heart attack, sudden MI, stroke, chronic autoimmune diseases. The stress has always been there under the skin.

SPEAKER_01

So you go on.

SPEAKER_02

Please go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

So you asked me a question about what are my parting thoughts? What are the things that I wish to give? I would like to know from you first what are your parting thoughts?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I have learned many things from you. I would start uh uh all the time uh time management techniques which we have discussed about the time boxing, about uh possibly I I will get your get your app as well. I have to already told my team to to get that. And the top three strategies I'm going to start from tomorrow itself, and I'll tell my secretary that just let keep keep asking me till the top three have been done, and then we will create other next top three.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Okay, I will tell you my closing thought and my my hope for everyone. My closing thought is when you, those who are listening, know what is the great thing inside you. Don't let it die inside. So tomorrow morning, get up and write down one thing you can do tomorrow. Not ten things on a hundred things. Wait, write one thing you can do tomorrow, and don't go to bed until you've done that one thing. And do that the next day. And do that until that book comes out. You've painted that painting, you've created the company, you've cured cancer, you've done whatever it is that is that great thing inside you. Because that is how the world moves forward.

SPEAKER_02

That is so beautiful. Uh, for the listeners who want to uh see your work, I know there is a suka.co website, incredible, incredible resources. I was just uh seeing it today, and we are going to use some in our team, uh Steven, and highly recommend to the listeners and uh anything else, uh any other way of reaching? I I know you are on LinkedIn. I can put the LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01

I'm on LinkedIn. I don't use social media a lot because obviously I know it's a distraction, but I'll tell you, if someone is listening and they have some question about something that I shared, my email address is very public and I'm here to help. So my email address is Steven at the Suka, T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A.co. If you're wondering who is this Cal Newport, who is Mihai, what book can I read? Is there a blog post? Email me. I respond to all my emails in 24 hours if I'm not sick or traveling, and I'll email you back. It will not be a long email. I'm not going to write you the story of my life, right? But I will say, oh, you want to know about time boxing, excuse me, time boxing? Here's a great post about that. So that is available to anyone who wants help. I want you to do something great. And anyone who wants to try the app that we built, it's free for seven days, no credit card. All you need to do is find that one thing you need to do that takes half an hour, an hour. Know what that is before you start. And then sign up and hit play. See how you feel after an hour. That's the magic. If you we can get you into a flow state and move you forward in your life, I've succeeded in my life.

SPEAKER_02

That is so, so inspiring, Stephen. Really, it made my day. It was the end of the day, and to just speak with you your passion, your insp your inspiration, your kind of commitment to serve others is just kind of oozing out. And uh really, really honored and delighted to speak to you, my friend.

SPEAKER_01

Dr. Ash, I am honored that you invited me onto your pod. And I I hope that people help. And if there's anything I can do, you know I'm here.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much. And in Ireland, we say until we meet again.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, until we meet again.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Have a great night.

SPEAKER_00

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