Q&A With John Zeratsky, co-writer of 'Sprint' & 'Make Time'.

During the webinar, loads of questions popped up for Jake and John but unfortunately we weren't able to get to all of them in time. In his unending kindness, John took the time to tend to some burning questions that arose during the webinar.

Q: What is your take on this enveloping outside pressure to be extra productive during quarantine? In times like these when our hand is forced, which will undoubtedly affect our state of mind, it can be pretty challenging to stay productive. How do you 'make time' in times of crisis?

J: This is a time where a heavy dose of reflection and self-forgiveness is required. If you feel okay, and you think a project might help you manage the chaos, then go for it. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed or traumatized by the crisis, it’s more important to deal with that—and not beat yourself up because you’re not living up to the expectations that you’ve created for yourself. Fortunately, they are your expectations, so you can change them!

Personally, I find calm and stability in focused work. A few tactics that have helped me stay sane and focused are:

• Creating my own, new schedule after all of my routines were wiped away.
• Giving each day a highlight and designing my day around work that actually matters most.
• Creating barriers around the news and other 'infinity pools', especially since we’re always online now and the friction to checking “just one more thing” is very low.

 Q: The tech industry is starting to take action and create mechanisms that help you avoid distractions like Android's Digital Wellbeing project. Do you think that projects like these are enough to reduce potential harm that technology is causing in our lives?

J: No. I think it’s necessary, but not sufficient. Nobody cares more about your time than you do, and if you’re waiting for someone else to fix things, you might be waiting a long time. To use an analogy from another industry: It’s really good and really important than automakers produce safe cars. But we still need to be careful and attentive drivers.

Q: How do you feel about Slack? Email is easy to set aside, but Slack is a different game and people expect you to reply much quicker.

A: You’re right. More so than email, Slack is designed for constant connection and instant response. But you can set it aside—it just takes a little more effort. I encourage all teams to create a “Contact Contract”: a set of agreements that describes how they communicate, which tools they use, and what their expected response times are. Most people don’t want to spend all day in Slack, keeping one eye peeled in case they miss something important. But everyone thinks everyone else expects it, so they do it. The solution is to have a conversation—to agree, as a team, that you don’t expect an instant response. That it’s okay to close Slack during certain projects or times of the day. Maybe you’ll agree to all set your status as “away,” to slow things down. Or you could just go back to email :-)

If you don’t have the authority to have these conversations or change these rules, I recommend figuring out the “minimum viable response time” for your team. I.e. How long can you go without responding before it causes problems? Then, schedule Slack checks into your calendar on that frequency. Even if it’s every hour, you’re going to get back so much of your time and attention by not constantly sitting in Slack. 

Q: I've been discussing the 'Make Time'-principles with a friend who isn't as flexible in his day-to-day job like other people are, and he asked me how he could use highlights when it's not "acceptable" in the job or company he's employed at. How would you do it?

A: Two ways: the first is to use the highlight method to bring attention to something he already has to do in his job. Maybe he needs to give a presentation or finish a report. He can make that his highlight, and he’ll still experience the benefits of focus and clarity. Secondly, choose something outside of work as your highlight. Jake and I wrote most of 'Make Time' while we were working at Google, and we did it at home outside of normal working hours. Many days my highlight was to finish drafting or editing a section of the book.

Q: How would you implement these principles in client service/account manager roles? 

A: It's important to lay down some ground rules when doing client work, before any work is even done. That is, the client is made aware of the principles related to how the work will be carried out and whatnot, but the account manager, product manager or what have you, is still accountable for creating and maintaining a backlog that's fit for discerning daily highlights. It's mostly a structural thing, but it can definitely go a long way in terms of the sense of accomplishment people will get out of it.

Q: What about when it's one of your bosses who's scheduling a meeting? How much can you ideally bend the rules there? 

A: It depends on your relationship with your boss. Maybe you can suggest a change, or maybe you can’t. Either way, it’s okay: You can experience big benefits with small changes. You don’t need to overhaul your life to make time for the things that matter most.

Q: Lastly, a somewhat unrelated question? Do you use the Eisenhower matrix sometimes (an importance versus urgency matrix)?

A: I don’t write it down, but I use it intuitively a lot. However, I have some critiques: for one, “now” is not always the right time for the important or urgent things. You need to consider the nature of the work. For example, responding to a client email is important and urgent, but it can wait until later in the day, freeing up precious focus time for deep work. Secondly, not everyone has someone to delegate this to.

PS: If you like what John is talking about and want to hear more, there's a link in the caption that