Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:40:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tulsee Doshi
[00:40:15] S1: Does Google still do the 20% thing? Because that feels like a really good place to spend time on this stuff. Is that still a thing or less so these days? [00:40:21] S0: I don't know, actually. I do feel like all my PMs are working like 150%. So there is also that. [00:40:29] S1: Okay, so you could do 100. You get your 20% out of the 150%. [00:40:33] S0: Yeah, or you could do 170%, I guess, instead. There you go. But no, I think actually one of the things we're working on is actually a two-day workshop in November where we're going to actually pull all the PMs out of their day job for two days and just actually give them the space to build and play with the tools that we have. I think... You're just giving yourself even that mind space to be like, hey, here's something I did. The other rule of thumb that I've I've heard people share and I've been starting to adopt myself is like if you have to do something twice, do you need to do it yourself? Right. Or can you outsource it? And some things, yes, obviously, like writing a strategy twice, you should probably still be writing it yourself. But there's other aspects of this where it's like actually like how replicable is this and how much can I use the models to like help me with this task?
00:41:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tulsee Doshi
[00:41:19] S1: Yeah, there's this thought I've been having that one of the most important new habits to build is to insert between stimulus and response. Say, I have a thing to do and then I'm going to go do it. You have to insert this question. Can AI do this for me? And then try. And I find that, like, I've actually built that habit much more strongly over the past few months. And it makes a huge difference. Because then you start building all these little workflows and automations. I'm doing a lot of GrokBotting. And it's just like, once you realize you should be doing that more and more, you really start to get the benefits of this versus like, I don't know what to do with it. [00:41:55] S0: And you know what I found is like you really just need one example where that works really well to change your mindset. And I think that's what happened to me, at least, is like I feel like it was hard for me to get out of my mindset of just doing what I knew how to do until I started being like, oh, actually, to your point, like set that interim period of actually can the model help me do this? And the minute you take one instance to do that and you're like, actually, this was really helpful for me. You start being like, oh, actually, now I'm going to try throwing this at the model. And now I'm going to try throwing this at the model because you're confident in what it can do for you, Grosh.
00:42:29 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tulsee Doshi
[00:42:29] S1: Yeah, yeah. That's exactly my experience. Once you see what it can do, that habit reinforced, like the neural pathways start to build of like, oh, yeah, wait, let's see if GrokBot can do this for me. Let me actually ask you a question along these lines. I had Josh Woodward on the podcast recently. I asked him the same thing. I'm curious what your answer would be. It feels like every AI assistant launching these days is... Taking all this juicy Google data, my Gmail, my Google Calendar, my Docs, you like sign up, you connect all your Google data, does all these magical things with it. There's Rockbot, there's Muse, there's Instinct, Dots now. Google does not yet have anything that people get really, I know there's Spark, I think, which is trying to be this. I'm curious just why Google hasn't launched something awesome yet versus letting everybody take all my Google data and do these magical things with it. [00:43:20] S0: Yeah, I mean, look, we want Google data to power magical experiences. [00:43:25] S1: Like, I think that is true.
00:43:25 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tulsee Doshi
[00:43:25] S1: Like, I think that is true. [00:43:26] S0: I think in terms of what awesome looks like, I think stay tuned. You know, the team is working on some amazing things. So I'm really excited about where this can go. Part of what we're trying to figure out also, I think, is like, again, where to meet users where they are and like where to build that experience and what does that look like? I like to think there are already a number of Awesome experiences that you can already have in our Google products. But I think you are right that there is more work we need to do here on this front. [00:43:53] S1: All right. That was similar to what he said, which is watch this space. [00:43:57] S0: Watch this space.
00:43:57 · Tulsee Doshi, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:43:57] S0: Watch this space. [00:43:59] S1: And the advantage you all have, similar to Apple, is once you get there, the distribution advantage is very strong and things can go really well really quickly. Okay, so coming back to this kind of workload question, something that I've been trying to talk with more guests about, this idea of just as AI allows us to do more, everyone's just doing more. And there's a lot of burnout that happens because it's just like, oh, no, I got to unblock my agent. Oh, I could be doing so much more. All these things could be happening. And, you know, there's pressure from above. Do more, do more. AI can let us do more. Is there anything you've done on your team to help people avoid burnout, not get hooked on this never ending treadmill of doing more? And I think part of it is actually we need to do more now because the competition is fierce. And there's this really rare time in history when a whole new technology enables so much more. So, you know, there's a bit of like, OK, this is actually the time to go really fast. But then there's also this tweet I think about, what's the word for a marathon and a sprint?
00:45:01 · Tulsee Doshi
[00:45:01] S0: Yeah. Marisprint. Marins. Exactly. Sprint-thon. Yeah. I think, I mean, if you ask my team, I think they would say, hello, we are working a lot. I think every single person on the team right now is putting in All of the hours across the board. And so I do think this is an area that I'm actually asking myself about. How do we create a sustainable work environment for the team? So stay tuned as I also think about this. But one thing I'll say, at least for me personally, is I think burnout comes not just from working a lot. It comes from, I think, two places. I think it comes, one, from when you feel like there is churn and chaos. I think that introduces burnout. I think the other thing that introduces burnout is work that you don't enjoy. When you feel like you were doing a lot of work and it feels like grunt work or a waste of time, I think that introduces burnout. I think when you are working on something that you're passionate about or you're excited about, yes, it is exhausting and we should figure out sustainability, but I think it also brings more joy, right? And so I think actually to our previous conversation about how these tools can help, I'm actually hopeful that if we can set this up well, these tools actually help with burnout because they actually remove some of the like grunt work or the like frustrating parts of your job and actually enable you to spend more time thinking and like more time being creative and more time doing the parts of the job that you actually want to do. And that hopefully is a bit of an unlock when it comes to burnout, especially if you're spending this many hours on the job.