A day of Life of Lex Friedman

Action express your priority : Mahatma Gandhi You should a a lot list yi7want to do(things you wrong about, things to work and don’t) Go for inspiration not for imitation : IRS Puja Ranawat Morning — — → Mantra : A list that i have on a sheet of paper that i go through, Jack Dorsey also have note of Do’s and Don’t that he goes through 2 or 3 times a day.

1. Rules and Constraints 2 Gratitude 3 Long Term Goal 4 Short term goal 5 Visualize the day 6 Core principles

2. Rules and Constraints : things that drain on my time so that social media so the current rule is only check social media when I post which is 2 or 3 times a day for no more than 10 minutes Other is diet and exercise so I exercise every single day no matter what. And then diet, I just have strict diet that I follow So the first part of mantra is I remind myself of those rules. It kinda sets the constraints within which the game is to be played. 2 Gratitude : I visualize and mediate on the idea that I might die today, at any moment today So I kind of try to accept the notion that today’s my last day on this Earth. Just breathe in and out and pause and meditation that I am alive 3 Long Term Goal : I list a set of goals for the next five years. A set of goal that I have. And these are ambitious big goals that I would like to achieve in the next five year’s. 4 Short term goal : by the end of 2020 I wanted to do these kinds of things. They’re just outta reach but achievable. 5 Visualize the day : learn from Michael Phelps, 6 Core principles

— — — -> Deep Work Sessions 1: 4 hours session, Zero thoughs about anything else, only one thing — — — -> social media and Guitar : Social media not more than 10 mins — — — -> Exercise : Now it’s time to face the demons in my mind, going on a long run. Intense session of body weight exercises. After the whole crazy pushups, pull up and squats challenge that did : 5 pullups and 10 pushups — — — -> Shower :you know, studying history sometimes is a really good way to force me to stop and to acknowledge how weak my mind is and how much stronger it needs to be. If I have a role in this world of making postive change, I think about the Nazi Germany and what it means to be a hero in those times. What it means to be a person that can reverse the decline into evil. I think it’s m Jack Dorsey Y Combinator is a series of lists, series of lists of what to do and a series of lists of what not to do

Number one, be yourself. Number two, be committed to excellence. Number three, be positive,” just probably one of the hardest things to do as you start building technology or as you start building a company. “ Number four, be prepared. Good luck is a product of good planning. It’s not so much that people are lucky, it’s that they’re prepared to recognize fortunate situations and act on them immediately when they occur. Number five, be detail-oriented.” Number six, be organized. Number seven, be accountable. Number eight, be near-sighted and far-sighted. Nearsighted is very very easy for us to do. Farsighted is not so much. Number nine, be fair. Number 10, be firm. Number 11, be flexible. Number 12, believe in yourself. An extra number 13, be a leader” and what that means is actually getting up there and showing and not telling. Then, he talks about what not to do. “Exhibit patience, paralyzing patience, number one. Number two, engage in delegating, massive delegating or conversely engage in too little delegating. Number three, act in a tedious, overly cautious manner. Number four, become best buddies with certain employees, playing favoritism. Number five, spend excessive amounts of time socializing with superiors or subordinates. Number six, fail to continue hard-nosed performance evaluations of long time or tenured staff members, the ones most likely to go on cruise control or to relax.” This, I see in so many startups is the folks that start early have the least pressure in the company when they should actually have the most pressure in the company. “Number seven fail to actively participate in efforts to praise and acquire new hires. Number eight, trust others to carry out your fundamental duties. Number nine, find ways to get out from under the responsibilities of your position to move accountability from yourself to others in the blame game. Number 10, promote an organizational environment that is comfortable and laid back in the misbelief that the workplace should be fun, light-hearted and free from appropriate levels of tension and urgency.” You want both, you want a contrast between fun and also having a good amount of tension.

Bill inspired me to create a number of lists of my own and I wanted to share a tool that I use on a daily basis that has been most fundamental in my own growth and my own establishment of practices. This is participatory, I’d ask you to bring out your phone right now or your computer and bring something out that you’re going to view on a daily basis, on my dock, on my iPhone, I have notes. Notes is something that I check every single day. I have a note for every single person that I encounter in the company. I have a note for every single thing that I’m doing, every person that I talk with in the company such as Sarah Friar, our CFO at Square has one specific note in my Notepad and anytime I need to talk to her about something, I write it down. Then, whenever, I see her, I go through my entire list, very, very simple memory device.

What you put in each one of these is you have a list of everything that you want to do every single day and you have a list of things that you don’t want to do. The easiest way to add to the don’ts is to notice something that you never want to do again and you just add that to it, very, very simple.

I’m just going to share some of mine, these might be a little bit personal and embarrassing, but here we are. Number one on my do list is to stay present. I think it’s so easy to get trapped in the past, it’s so easy to think about the future. The most important thing is I stay present and just reading this brings me back to the present, brings me back to this moment. Number two for me is be vulnerable. Show people my mistakes, show people my fears because they can relate because they’re going through similar things. Number three, drink only lemon water and red wine. Great red wine is a great modifier for it. Number three is six sets of twenty squats and push-ups throughout the day. I just have to do them every day. Six sets of thirty-second planks, run for three miles, meditate on this list, stand up to straight, which whenever I say I always see posture moving in the audience. Say hello to everyone, I just bought a heavy bag, so I’m training with a heavy bag, so I want to spend 10 minutes with the heavy bag every day. I want to do a video journal every single day and I want to get seven hours of sleep.

On my don’t list and again this is one of the hardest things and a lot of these are personal, so I’m not going to read all of them, one of my don’t list is don’t avoid eye contact, don’t be late, don’t set expectations for someone and not meet them, don’t eat sugar. I’m on the Paleo diet, so don’t eat wheat, lentils or dairy.

This list, while it sounds very simple has been fundamental in establishing patterns for myself. It’s something that I do check every single morning. I check throughout the day and I check right before I go to bed and I make sure that I check everything off and go through it. I’ve given it to our companies. I’ve given it to a number of students that I’ve talked to as we’ve gone to schools and recruiting. People have come back to me and said that, “This is something that works for me, it’s something that’s easy to do and something easy to remember.”

One of the most fundamental things about it that I’ve learned that I’ve taken away from it is how it gives you focus, how it gives you something that allows you to really ignore everything else that’s going on, all the other noise to allow you to focus on what’s most important. This do and don’t list for people and individuals in the company has translated to a do and don’t list for our company.

For Square, we have a do and don’t list. We have, “These are the things that we’re going to do, these are the core things, these are our bold bets and these are the things we’re saying no to for right now,” has been fundamental in allowing us to move fast, to continue to innovate and to really push the boundaries and continue to invent and question and reset everything that we think about the organization. That is why we’re all here in this room. We want to build something, we want to create something that resonates with every single person on the planet.

The Technology by Paul Buchhiet