Mailman Podcast

People keep saying they need more time. More time to get more done, more time to spend with family, more time to go on a hike, more time to watch that new web series.

But actually, we don’t need more time.

What we need instead is to organize time better.

The ability to see what’s essential and what’s not essential and doing them based on that priority order. That’s the skill we all need to learn and implement. If we’re able to do this well, we’ll not feel the lack of time because there’s plenty of it if we use it right.

This is what Manish Vakil believes and practices daily. He’s so particular about how he spends his time that he sits and decides his schedule for the next day, the day before. That’s probably the reason he’s able to get a lot of important work done in a day.

He also uses several other time management techniques like time blocking and clustering meetings together, and even quite a few apps that help him guard and guide his time. I talked to him in-depth about how he does it exactly and what all tools he uses.

Besides, we also talk about how he started his 1st business at 21, the concept of ‘children’s gym,’ his ideal & typical day, and why he says ‘no’ to 99% of things that come to him.

Let’s hear from him directly.

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You can follow Manish on LinkedIn. He occasionally posts there. His email is [email protected], you can reach him there, and he'll be happy to help in any way he can.

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Just imagine, you have just successfully sold your startup that you worked on for years to a company like Google. What would you do next? 

Maybe go on a trip to the Bahamas?

Or start an investment firm? 

Or just chill around for a while and do nothing?

Brenden Mulligan, the person who sold his startup “LaunchKit” to Google, did none of those. Instead, he decided to go all-in on his love for building products. Over the next year of selling his company to Google, he built ten products in 12 months.

Not all of them succeeded; the goal for Brenden was not to make successful products. It was, instead, to rebuild his muscle of taking an idea, building on it, and taking it in front of people as soon as possible. That too, all on his own! Taking no external help or hiring people. 

It sounds insane and a hectic undertaking. Doesn’t it?

But that’s just the kind of person Brenden is. A true serial builder. Taking ideas from 0 to 1 and doing it multiple times over and over again. That’s just what Brenden loves to do. It was his way of taking a break after some grueling years of running a startup and selling it.

I had the pleasure to get an insight into Brenden’s builder head. He talks to me about how he began his career journey, the many products he built along the way, and how he ended up at Google. 

Besides, he also told me about how he spends his day, what he does to get creative, and why he always indulges in more than one project.

Let’s listen from the man himself.

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Brenden is pretty active on Twitter (@mulligan). If you’re a podcaster, you can sign up on PodPage, and you’ll get an email from him, on which you can reply and start a conversation with him.

If you’re interested in buying and selling stocks and are interested in finance, you can sign up on CommonStock and start discussing investing and stocks with other brilliant people.

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Maintaining a sane calendar is hard, especially if you’re someone who likes helping people a lot but struggles to identify who deserves your time and who doesn’t.

I struggle with this a lot. Whoever asks for my help, I say ‘yes’ to hop on a call and later regret finding them under-prepared. I just fail to qualify who deserves my time and help.

This was until I heard from Paul McKellar something that he does to fix it. He has an exciting yet straightforward way of qualifying who is serious enough in their ask and who isn’t. 

Here's what he does –

"Whenever I get a request for help, I just ask them to follow up after some time. It can even be a small follow-up. Most never get back, which eliminates more than 50% of the requests. They were probably not serious or ready enough for my help. 

"But the ones who do follow up are the ones who have done their homework and are now ready for my help. I help most of them. Asking for a follow-up is just my way of qualifying if they’re serious enough and ready to receive my help."

As simple as asking for a follow-up can do wonders in getting you to help the people who are serious enough to receive it. It’ll also save you a ton of frustration and time that you’d otherwise spend trying to help those who aren’t ready or prepared for it yet.

It has solved my problem; now, I can help people without wasting my time.

I had a great time talking to Paul about rolling funds, how to find creative people, the delusion of founders, being a part of the Square founding team, his two-letter Twitter handle, and a lot more.

Let’s hear from Paul himself.

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You can follow Paul McKellar on Twitter (@pm) and Instagram (@pm). Twitter is where he is most active.

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Zach Phillips is a husband, father of 2, runs a film-making studio and an internet startup. Besides all this, he also manages to find time to write every day and has been doing so for the past 40+ days (at the time of interview).

The question is, how does he manage so many things without driving himself crazy?

When I asked Zach, he gave a very self-contradictory answer and explained precisely how it plays out for him. Well, he’s a storyteller; he can grab your attention, hold it, and then lead you to a place he wants to take you.

Find out in this episode, how does he manage to do many things by not overcommitting to them?

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You can follow Zach on Twitter. If you’re not on Twitter, you can see his blog – that’s where his blog is, and that’s where he is. (Definitely check out his exciting blog!)

Also, do subscribe to his newsletter, where every weekend he sends all the things he wrote in the week, some updates, and sometimes, pictures of his kids.

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Meetings are highly unproductive. Most meetings just go on for an eternity without anything coming out of them. Half the people speak, the other half sit and listen.

Some speak with authority, while others shrink. 

Some are too loud, some too vulnerable to even voice their opinion.

How do we have productive meetings then?

Is that even a possibility? Or just a utopian dream?

I had almost given up on the idea of productive meetings when I heard this unconventional meeting hack from Adam Suzor –

“CONTROVERSY”

Yeah, controversy!

How does Adam harnesses the superpower of controversy to drive very productive team meetings is beyond wizardry. Find out more in this episode as I speak with him in this episode.

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Don't forget to check out connect with Adam on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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"It's impossible to work in the mornings," says Brett when asked about how he spends his day.

It isn't that Brett is not productive in the earlier part of the day but mornings are when his three kids are home. In his opinion, working before the kids leave for school is calling for frustration for the rest of the day.

Yet, in the end, when asked about what would he do if he had 1 extra hour in the day, he held up the coffee mug on his table with pictures of his 3 kids and wife and said, “I’ll rock with them!”.

For most parents, this is how time management works. The kids, their requirements, and then planning their workday around that.

But in the case of Brett, he's not just a father of 3 but the CEO of ~15 person marketing company AND launching another startup. So besides running a family, he's also responsible for running and growing a business and starting a new one too.

If you're thinking Brett would be struggling to manage all of those things? I’m afraid, you're wrong.

That's what blew me away! Frankly, at the end of my conversation with him, I felt it would actually be easy for him to manage all those things with the several concepts, principles, and tools that he uses to guard and make the most of his time.

One key learning that I took away from him is how he reflects back on the tasks that he didn't accomplish by the assigned deadline. He re-analyzes if those tasks were really important enough or could they just be delegated or completely ignored. Instead of, you know, feeling guilty and crying wet tears over them. I mean that’s what I do at least. Unlike Brett, who does this whole re-analysis to help him make better time allocation decisions in the future.

That's just one of the many useful techniques, concepts, tools he shared in our entire conversation. It's almost like a mini-productivity course if you read it through.

Let's dive straight in!

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Don't forget to check out Markitors and Terkel.

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