The Future Of Less Work
00:13:26 · Anthony Trucks
[00:13:26] S1: that's a simple way of putting it for sure. And that's really as simple as it is, but as difficult as it is. Because it sounds good to go, oh, just fifteen minutes. That's fifteen minutes. And that's on top of your already hectic day. Maybe you have a husband or a wife and kids and the boss and a project in some, there's a lot that still goes on. But the reality is, if you want to have more, you have to become more, which is an expansion. There's this idea of capacity I sometimes use in the same aspect we're talking about. Because yeah, new things to do, and life doesn't all of a sudden slow down because you have a new idea. So the idea is how do I expand my capacity? And conceptually, it's like, I say I have a plug in my house, I have an outlet, there's two plugs. Let's say I'm working on four things. I have my marriage, I have my health, I have a project at work, and maybe I get the kids, I don't want to be close to them. If I only have two outlets, I can only power two at a time. So I'm doing my career stuff, maybe I'm working on my health, but then my wife and kids are getting none of me. All right, focus on my wife, but I have to, you know, take work off the plug, and I got to work on my health in my marriage, right? You have these different dances, but something's unpowered. The idea is if you can actually create an expanded capacity through what we're talking about, which is it's a stretch. It's not easy. I have a metaphor for that too. But if you think about a power plug having an extension cord that plugs into a power block, well, now you all of a sudden have six extra outlets from that one, it's expanded. I can plug the five in, four in, and still have two more.
00:14:48 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[00:14:48] S0: But where do I to get be expanded. Where do I get that power back? Right? [00:14:51] S1: Exactly. So [00:14:52] S0: I'm getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home, doing the stuff I have to do, and there goes another cycle. Right? That's where people say, have no time to learn something new or to have a deadline. I don't have time to, you know, bring in new tools here or think about, you know, other things I could be doing. [00:15:10] S1: Yeah. There's this guy named Gay Hendricks, and he says, If you fight for your limitation, you get to keep it. So in a moment that we identify as I don't have time, or it's too much, or it's too hard, I have now told myself that I can't add more. Therefore, if I can't add more, I can't have more. So you either have to give up the dream, or you have to give up the idea that that's a truth, that you don't have time, because we all have time. But the hard part is like, how do I expand that? And I will say it's like this, you ever lifted weights or worked out before? [00:15:37] S0: No, yeah.
00:15:38 · Anthony Trucks
[00:15:38] S1: Yeah. You ever started and like you found like you could, there's like a weight you couldn't pick up, and you just, it was so heavy. And eventually, you just started to lower weights, you slowly built up. And eventually that weight you couldn't pick up was a warm up weight. Like you're so much stronger now. It's the same concept, but more of a psychological play. Because the weight of the day or the weight of the stuff, is, it bogs you down and it gets heavy. But our brains are phenomenal with efficiency and effectiveness. Like it finds ways to make it easy. Why when you lift weights, the body goes, oh, at a cellular level, it goes, let's make the sarcomeres of your muscles bigger so you can handle more weight so we get stronger. The body kind of operates very similarly at a psychological level. So I have to stay in the weight room of my mind of work. And then over time, the things that I'm adding on, they are stressful and they are difficult and they're heavy, but eventually brain gets good at operating with that. It becomes a new normal. And now you feel emotionally the same as you did before you added that thing, which gives you a space to go, all right, let me add some more. And we normalize and normalize and normalize. It's a way that, here's the best example. At some point I was a college student and I was a football player, full time in division one. My wife, now my wife, a fiance at the time, she was a full time student. We're bogged down. I got football in school, her school, and then we had a baby, and he's now 21 years old. And we're 20 years old at the time. And so the dance of it is like, I had to figure it out. I was subject to a situation of, if I want to be a good dad, I don't have the ability to go, I'm trying to be a good dad, son, sorry. It's like, no, I got to add this in somehow. And the first few weeks is crazy. First month is like, what's going on? But after the first year, normal. It was just as easy as it was before. It was almost easier. Was like, oh, this is just normal what I do. Same concept is applied for all of us across life. The problem is we get to these moments and go, I don't have time. So yeah, if I own that reality, then that's going to be my reality.
00:17:31 · Anthony Trucks, Nirit Cohen
But if I give myself the opportunity to go, hey, you can be more, you can handle more, then I will subject myself to little bitty more weights of the thing to do. And over time, you build a strength to be able to handle everything you do now and be able to add more at some point also. [00:17:46] S0: Perfect. And there goes back to I am that person. Right? Basically, it's just kinda shifting there. So have you seen this extend beyond individuals doing their own work? I was trying to figure out if there was something that organizations could do to actually help people beyond just each of us taking care of our own. [00:18:15] S1: Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's always gonna be something where this is an interesting statement, which is it helps my relationship. But I also look at work as a relationship. Just was on my call with my team a moment ago. Here's a piece of language that I was given years ago. It says, you can't want more for someone than they want for themselves. [00:18:31] S0: Yeah.
00:18:32 · Anthony Trucks
[00:18:32] S1: And that's the hard thing when I have a team of people. Now I can paint the picture, I can paint the vision, I can lay all that out for what could be there. But the problem is if you don't actually want it, it doesn't just happen randomly. And so companies can for sure provide a resource that allows their team to engage in this. But what I actually have teams do is spend time letting people dream and see what a company fits into their dream so that now they actually have something that is theirs and people protect what they create. So if a company wanted to do something unique, in my opinion, it's like, hey, why don't we have like a window of time or like one of our work getaways or off sites, we spend time going, hey, this is going to be like a couple hours of personal focus for you. But then we're gonna actually have time to weave in whatever your dream is. You want to take trips and travel? You want to, I don't know, build some cool piece of art, whatever it is you want to do. Where's the company fit in? Maybe the company has the ability for you to fund this lifestyle, and then take some time off to go and take your trips and travel. You don't always have to be an entrepreneur to do this. Entrepreneurial can be the exact same thing. But the idea is if I can go, here's the thing I want, and oh, my career is a phenomenal like piece of making that happen, well now it's my desire to improve myself. It's my desire to make it all happen. And that the company can give me tools, introduce me to ideas or concepts or tools to navigate this and do it better, to shift that identity. Then you have the ability for the company to go, yeah, great, we'll supply you with that. That's not a company, in my opinion, overall can help. But it's hard to go, Hey, you all gotta change who you are and get better because we need you to do it. That's like, Ah, I don't know if we're gonna do that.
00:20:04 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[00:20:04] S0: Yeah. One of the things that I've been talking about a lot and writing about on Forbes is this idea that if AI saves a lot of time, you know, does that mean if if I can do my work in four hours instead of eight, are you giving me four more hours worth of work? Probably. Or do I benefit from the fact that I just got really better, faster, more efficient? Right? [00:20:27] S1: Yeah. [00:20:28] S0: Also talks to this idea of, can I take back some of that time? And then what do you do with it? Is it only okay if I take it back because I'm learning new things? Or is it also okay if I take it back because I'm going to spend time with my family or surf? [00:20:42] S1: Yeah. I think it's definitely based on a company. Because there are some roles where it's like, the job has to get done. If the job can get done in four hours, then you shouldn't have to give me four more, I shouldn't have four more hours of work. I shouldn't be punished for being good, right? So I think it's one way. But if some companies are structured in a way, it's like, hey, you're on the clock, you got to be here doing X, Y, and Z, that might be a different kind of way to [00:21:03] S0: look Yeah, I'm paying you for four hours, right? That's what it means, you're working for me, right?