The Future Of Less Work
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?
00:21:03 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[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? [00:21:08] S1: Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of, I don't know if it's more of an individual company kind of thing there, but I would say if it's something where you have the ability to do your job in those eight hours of work, can get it done in four, I believe you should be able to use a four for whatever you want. That's my opinion personally. That's how I have my team function. Like they have tasks to get done. We got to get these things going. I don't give them like, I need eight hours every day of this. I need this job to be done by this date. If we can get it all done, cool. If not, that's a problem. But the answer to that is that's their choice. Now, I don't I don't know what you do because I believe that people who are entrepreneurial, it's kind of part of their, like, natural DNA to create and build. So if they build something on the side, like, it should be on their time. But that's the thing is when when is it their time? [00:21:52] S0: Yeah. Yeah. But if we circle back to, I think, what you also said is people tend to say, I don't have time. And I think part of the response, I'm bringing this back to the the changing world of work, right, is you have... We have tools these days that you have to put in the time to learn to do things in less time. [00:22:12] S1: And once [00:22:13] S0: you do that, you free up time, and then you have to put it back in to the next thing that you couldn't do or can now do, or will be able to do tomorrow.
00:22:13 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[00:22:13] S0: you do that, you free up time, and then you have to put it back in to the next thing that you couldn't do or can now do, or will be able to do tomorrow. [00:22:23] S1: I see where you're going, a 100. Kind of the role that I take as a CEO of my company. And it's not something that I... Nobody else can do, which is I realize there's certain things I have as gaps between, you know, me and where I want to go, something I got to pick up, something I got to learn. And yeah, you're right. I have to then sometimes spend some time, which is sometimes hours or a full course or something to learn how to do that better or faster, more effective or more efficient. So I may read a book on this, which may be an eight hour book, right? And I gotta listen to the audio book, but I'm doing this instead of eat up some time. But now I go, okay, that eight hours taught me how to make this thing I do every single day for an hour to get it down to twenty minutes. So now I get forty minutes a day back, but I just spend eight hours to get that down. So the idea is yes, there's going to be dance in there, but I think that is literally how life works. I think there's a way that you come into something, it's the natural piece of almost, it's like getting a new phone. It's like, oh, I wanna get a new phone. I gotta learn a new operating system, update stuff. Yeah. But then you have a faster, better phone. So there's a little bit of that give, right? So yeah, think that's a natural part of how we do stuff.