Remote Work Productivity: How to Focus, Avoid Distractions, and Get More Done (with Steven Puri)

John Ball (: 00:00

As professional speakers, many of us are working remotely and remote work was supposed to give us freedom. Instead, many of us feel distracted, drained and quietly frustrated that we're busy all day, but rarely finishing the work that actually matters. In this episode, you're going to learn how to work with more focus, less friction and far more intention.

without burning yourself out or turning your life into a productivity bootcamp. My guest today is Stephen Puri, a former film executive, technologist and founder of Sookha,

meaningful work in a world designed to steal their attention. Stephen has worked in Hollywood, tech and high performance creative environments.

So he understands how focus flow and leadership actually work when the pressure is real. We talk about why remote work often fails, how distraction is engineered, how to protect your attention and why doing less can sometimes move your life forward faster. If you want to do meaningful work without losing yourself in the noise, this one is for you.

John Ball (: 01:39

Stephen Puri, welcome to Present Influence.

Steven Puri (: 01:43

boy, I hope this is an engaging and possibly helpful episode.

John Ball (: 01:48

I'm pretty sure it's going to be and I can't wait to dive into the topic of remote work because for myself and pretty much all of my listeners, maybe not all, but the vast majority of listeners to this show are working remotely. So this is going to be a great topic before we really dive in. What's the something about this topic that maybe is a little different or counter to what most people might have heard that you teach or that you hold by when it comes to remote work?

Steven Puri (: 02:13

I believe strongly that most of the tension in that tug of war around return to office, you must be under these fluorescent lights with me, or hey man, I trust you to work remotely, that is really around hiring. It is not about surveillance, it's not about how do you check in, do you do standups, how many TPS reports do you file a week, is fundamentally a hiring win or a hiring problem.

John Ball (: 02:39

Remote work, working by yourself, even as an entrepreneur, is challenging enough in itself, especially if, like myself, you came from a background where you were working for a company or for other people. Your background was definitely more sort of corporate entertainment business. you working remotely in that environment or is this something that you moved more into when you moved out of there?

Steven Puri (: 02:50

yeah.

Okay, so what our esteemed host is alluding to is I worked in film, in motion pictures for a number of years, and to some extent television, but mainly film. And here's the thing that most people don't understand about film. Film has had remote work for 100 years. It's not called that. Every film naturally goes through a lifespan of

remote work. It's writers working from their homes, their writing partners, living room, going to coffee shops. And hopefully one of those ideas gets some traction, gets a little money. Then you open a small production office where a couple days a week you have meetings with costumers. Hey, what are they going to wear? Location scouts, where can we shoot this? Oh, there are tax incentives in UK right now. And then the rest of the week, everyone goes off and does their work. The costumer goes to costume houses. The location scout goes to Montana, whatever.

Then it is RTO, it is your onset day and night together for months on end. And then it goes back to picture editors and sound editors working. You come in and out and at the end it's remote again. So you would never in film say, Steven, I see you're in the remote period of your film. I would look askance at you. John, what are you talking about? But if you were to say to me, you're in development, I'd say, yes, we are. you're in.

pre-production, you're in prep. Yes, yes, you're in post-production. Absolutely. you're in photography, yes. And that is the code for, you're in remote period, you're in hybrid period, you're in RTO. And the interesting thing about film, and this is one of the lessons I kind of bring over to this modern world is, for film, it is established how leaders lead through each of those periods and how individual contributors contribute, because you've been doing it for years.

You know, for a lot of the world, was a shock to the system in the pandemic of, my God, we can't beat together. And Zoom is a verb. you know, like a lot of scary things happened. But that is, that is one of the interesting things I saw is there are ways to manage that well. And a lot of it comes down to hiring properly.

John Ball (: 05:11

Well, that's good to understand, although many of listeners to this show are going to be working for themselves, maybe having some contract worker in addition to that. I I certainly have bits and pieces here and there, but I had no idea that the film world was kind of, I guess it makes sense as you explained that things were more remote in terms of lot of how you work there. Why did you move into focusing on this as a way of helping other people?

Steven Puri (: 05:29

Mm-hmm.

John Ball (: 05:37

sounds like you had years of experience with doing this. So where did you recognize that there was things that you could help other people work more effectively with working remotely themselves?

Steven Puri (: 05:39

Mm-hmm.

You

know, I will be very blunt with you. My life has been a series of Forrest Gump like happy accidents that have fallen into my lap, right? So let us not discount the amount of luck in my career path. How I got into film as an engineer was film was becoming digital. And I happened to bridge that gap between creative speak and engineering speak. So my career took off and it was a great way to meet a lot of top

list directors. Then when I decided to get back into engineering, I was working on a startup. A good buddy of mine who was an engineer at Groupon had asked me to co-found a company with him. And he wanted to do like a mindful to-do list. And I said, honestly, I don't have some secrets on. Like that doesn't light me up. But I'll help you. I love you. And I will help you get there going. But it's not like singing my song. And in the course of doing that, as life sometimes does,

I became very interested in all of the mental tips and techniques that I had learned in film and how applicable they were in the modern world outside film, especially like in tech. so I run a community now for remote workers that helps them get into a flow state, helps them do like concentrated as Cal Newport would say, deep work. And most of the community, they are designers, they're writers, they're engineers, they're people of knowledge, work to do, and they want to do it.

in a more concentrated, healthy way. So that's kind of that transition, which happened very organically and randomly.

John Ball (: 07:17

No, I love that you said about how much luck was involved. I was having a conversation with one of my private clients earlier today about exactly that, how many people who do kind of make you have various successes, who underplay the element of luck in that. It's like, no, I did it all by myself. Yeah, but there's always some luck involved, It's like being in the right place at the right time with the right people, all that kind of thing.

Steven Puri (: 07:42

Yeah It is Yeah, and and you see it

in the micro you see it in our lives and you see it in the macro, you know, for example, like there were other ideas like uber like airbnb that had been floated three five seven years earlier and they didn't have the luck that airbnb and uber did which is They were launching in a recession so suddenly that proposition was like

You want someone to ride around the back of my car for money? then I turned into, well, how much do pay me? I'm out of work. You want someone to sleep on my sofa? how much would they pay? Had they launched three years later, three years earlier, they wouldn't have had those macroeconomic tailwinds. So there's luck on every level of that scale.

John Ball (: 08:27

I do think it's important to acknowledge that. I think lucky to a degree is something we create for ourselves. I think we probably sometimes need to get over ourselves a bit and like, no, I did it all by myself. Sometimes the stars aligned, know, sometimes things just worked out and you got lucky. Let me ask you though, for yourself and for people who are in your community, what are the kinds of things that come up as challenges

Steven Puri (: 08:34

agreed.

Yeah.

John Ball (: 08:54

for working remotely.

Steven Puri (: 08:56

Well, you're speaking to my heart now. So you're gonna get a little bit of the soap box. I'm gonna climb up on the soap box and I'll be back in a minute, right? So Laura, wifey, and I both having lived in SF, lived in Los Angeles, have a bunch of friends that work in tech, either work right now or have worked at one of the Facebook, the meta companies, ⁓ Twitter and TikTok. And so when you're working from home, yes, they're the obvious

John Ball (: 09:03

Go for it, Stephen.

Steven Puri (: 09:24

daily distractions like, I could throw in a little laundry right now. I could do the dishes, the dog needs to be played with, whatever. There are those things where you can procrastinate by saying like, well, I'll just get this done. When reality you're putting off like the thing that you need to do. Right. And when you couple that with the digital distractions where, you know, 10 years ago, these trillion dollar companies kind of obfuscated their business model.

And now they're straight up. They're like, our business model is steal your life. And we're very good at it. You know, they have the money to pay the best behavioral economist and behavioral psychologist, put them on staff, the best engineers, the best designers. And they used to go in front of Congress and be like, oh, ha ha, you know, we just connect grandmothers with photos of their grandkids. And you know, now they're straight up in their quarterly filings going, this is how much of everyone's life we stole this quarter. We're going to employ these techniques to steal more next quarter. And it's

Amazing when you think about that conversation if mark zuckerberg were to call you up and go john I'd really like your life I'm gonna sell it to these advertisers and I will keep the money But i'm gonna give you some dancing cat videos, It sounds ludicrous, right? But that is exactly Exactly. So how many do I get are they calico? I love calico, right? So that

John Ball (: 10:37

It's a deal I love dancing cat videos

the

Steven Puri (: 10:48

That sounds so ridiculous at that level, but when you couple it with the fact that every single notification sound, every rounded corner on a button and every color chosen has been A-B tested extensively to make sure it is the most attractive for you to get on that slide. And once you're on that slide, TikTok don't want to let you out. That threads is going to keep finding the way and YouTube is going to have an recommender engine where it goes, watch one more. John, we know you love videos about

You know golf whatever do you want to see like tiger woods greatest hits or we love you. You love cooking videos Here's like today's hottest thing. So When you ask what are the challenges i'll tell you this I run a community of people who work remotely And I talk to so many of them every week about hey, can you help me with this? you help me with that and i'll tell you I am not immune to it I am like, you know right here I am as susceptible to these

problems and for me they manifested as one in the morning. I would be like oh John tomorrow at nine I'm gonna get going on whatever and at 9 15 I'd still be like checking emails 9 30 I'd still be like scrolling through the news you know sort of thing and the effect of my procrastination morning would show up at the end of the day or I'm like ah I didn't get stuff done I really needed to write that one blog post I didn't get quite done and that cold start thing is a lot about being overwhelmed.

You know, saying like, I don't know how to get through all the stuff I have to do today, or I haven't prioritized that sort of thing. And then during the day getting in, you know, pick up my phone, like hitting something that would be, I'd be coding or I'd be writing a blog post. And I have that moment where it's kind of hard, like maybe the build was failing or I read the first paragraph. like, this sucks. Like the muses are not singing today. And you know, you're trained to get the dopamine right out of your phone. So, you know, with a SUCA, the platform you created.

I just hit play in the morning and it shows me a QR code and I shoot it on my phone and I put my phone down and if I pick up my phone, my smart assistant, my computer, like my little AI assistant says, hey Stephen, do you need to be on your phone right now? Is that helping you? And it's just like those little things that allow you to say, okay, who do I wanna be? Do I wanna be the guy who's done early and feels great or do I wanna be the guy who's like, oh Laura, okay, after dinner I've gotta get back to work today to finish stuff. And I hate being that guy. Have you ever, what distracts you, John?

John Ball (: 13:16

Where do I even begin? So many things. I do definitely get distracted by WhatsApp to the point where I mostly have to mute group chats. I tend to put most of my... I have my phone on silent, no vibrator or anything because it's the only way I don't keep checking my phone throughout the day and in periods of deep work.

Steven Puri (: 13:18

podcast guests they distract me.

Right? yeah.

Great.

I love that.

John Ball (: 13:41

in periods of deep work, goes down flat. But I know that I am the kind of person I'll go on YouTube. I'm going to LinkedIn as an example, I'll go on LinkedIn, I'm going to post something, I need to check something from somebody's profile or something like that. And before I know it, I'm scrolling through the newsfeed. What did I even come here for? And I have to go back through the whole mental process. But it could just as easily happen with YouTube, especially like YouTube shorts are the worst. They're absolutely I love them.

Steven Puri (: 13:58

Yeah

Right?

John Ball (: 14:10

but it's mostly junk and it just keeps you caught in that loop. So I'm pretty good at pulling back from these things, but they still work. I could be better, definitely.

Steven Puri (: 14:13

Yeah.

100 % agree

with you and the fact that in studying how to keep people in the feed, the designers looked at casino gambling and looked at the theory of like variable rewards where they realized that if they served you in your LinkedIn feed, your YouTube, whatever it is, if they served you good content and then good content and good content, it's actually less addictive than if they put in some content they knew you wouldn't like.

because the variation of the quality makes you more excited to scroll and see what's the next thing. What's the next thing? And that was fascinating. When I learned about that, I was like, that is fascinating to say they know what you want, but they mix in things you don't. So you get the high and the low, you get the roller coaster emotion and it releases more dopamine. That's criminal, criminal. So yes, there are a lot of things. I'm saying, I think you and I talked about this when we were talking about before.

John Ball (: 15:10

scary

Steven Puri (: 15:19

I'm having a son in six weeks and a day, right? And I pray that his generation looks at our generation with social media the way I look at my dad's generation with smoking. know? Where I'm like, dad, three of your friends died of lung cancer. You have emphysema. How could you do this to yourself? And dad's like, the movie stars were doing it. You don't understand, it was a different time. You the Marlboro man was cool and...

John Ball (: 15:23

Amazing. Congratulations.

Right.

Steven Puri (: 15:47

Tobacco companies are putting out studies how healthy tobacco was and he's like we didn't know and I really hope my kids look at our generation go How did you waste your life scrolling and double tapping like what you get done? You're watching Kim Kardashian You know like sell her underwear line as if it's content and like you're watching videos on plane aviation that has no effect on your life, but you just kept scrolling and we're like

John Ball (: 16:04

You

Steven Puri (: 16:14

I know it sounds terrible and we didn't do as much as we could have, but man, those skims videos were great. Kim Kardashian's just amazing.

John Ball (: 16:22

I tell you something, and this is kind of a sidebar, but it's not. One of the worst times for me is when I'm most tired, which is like late at night. And so, like, yes, I might be by myself. I'll just put a few huge, I don't go watch anything for long, a few YouTube videos, maybe a few shorts and stuff like that.

Steven Puri (: 16:31

Yeah, totally with you.

John Ball (: 16:41

And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes we just get into that leap of it. And then before you know it, it's 1230, one o'clock and you know, I'm up at seven and I'm not going to get enough, not going to get enough sleep. I know I'm getting better at just stopping that because that does affect, that affects me into the next day.

Steven Puri (: 16:59

How do you enforce that discipline? How do you find the willpower to do that?

John Ball (: 17:04

I have, it's weird. It's just having things that are programmed to, I guess, trigger points, queues, if you like. So I have, I have the lights that we have programmable lights at home. So I have them programmed to go off at a particular time. And that's my queue to, all right, it's bedtime. Let's shut everything down and go to bed. so it's not hard in force, but it's really like kind of what you're saying with your,

a system that comes up and says that. I've used, I've used like browser guards before as well to help with, those sorts of things. It doesn't block you, but it, it adds a bit of friction. And I think anything that adds a bit of, you brings you into conscious awareness and doesn't just allow you to keep rolling through on automatic, probably helps. And so it is those moments of like, all right, something clicks, conscious awareness kicks in.

Steven Puri (: 17:35

which are great, right? Like, freedom makes a really good one, and yeah.

Yeah.

John Ball (: 17:54

I can

make a different decision, not 100 % of the time, but more often. I would like it to be more and I work on it being more because I know I feel better rested and I feel better focused.

Steven Puri (: 18:06

John, I agree with you. The way when we were designing Suga, the way I thought of it was, if I had my best friend sitting next to me during the day, what would they say? And you know, when I did reach for my phone in the middle of coding something just because it got hard and my build was failing, my friend would be like, oh, come on, man, like, don't pick up your phone because like, if you don't, we'll get this done sooner and we can go to dinner or something. it would just be like a friend being like, do you really need to do that? And you're like, you know what, you're, no, I don't need to, you know? And.

What you said about the nudge, like it's a virtual block, it's like a nudge. Like that sense, like when we were writing the comp, couldn't, okay, back up. We offer a free Chrome extension. Anyone can use it, right? And you can choose, we give you about 20 websites that are obvious time wasters when you're working, right? You can toggle them on and off, but most people leave them on. And some people add more. Like I know in the football season here,

people at nfl.com and espn.com, they're like, please keep me off these during the day. And all it is is when you open that, if it's open more than five seconds, like if you're scrolling through browser tabs, it's like, it's fine, you opened it and you moved on trying to find your tab, but if you haven't opened more than five seconds, you just get a little pop-up that goes, is this helping you? And then you get to choose, who do I wanna be? Because I think it comes down to intention, and this is a word you mentioned before when we were talking off camera.

before we get our microphones working, but that sense of, if you're operating from intention, life is different, you know? And there's a thesis that I have, like a fundamental belief I have, which is why I'm so passionate about, you know, the community of remote workers we have, you know, the focus tool and all that, is I believe that we all have something great inside us. And the question of this lifetime is,

Are you going to get it out or not? As we talked about, there are a lot of really smart people, very wealthy people who are pulling on that rope and that tug of war for your life to make sure you don't. They are very comfortable with you ending up 80 years old on the sofa scrolling and double tapping. And then when you have that moment during the day of like, what's my intention? Like, what is it I think I can be? If you stick to that, if you keep your eye on the prize, maybe you get that out. Maybe you don't.

die with that inside you, which I think is criminal. It's a tragedy.

John Ball (: 20:30

Yeah,

definitely. Let me ask you this, because I think I don't think this is exclusive to speakers and coaches and expert business owners, but it's certainly very relevant, which is that one of the ways that I think I myself and many people who I work with do find ourselves

Steven Puri (: 20:42

Sure.

John Ball (: 20:50

kind of procrastinating is a kind of active procrastination. Like we sometimes will fall into like, we'll just be creating content or creating stuff, but not doing enough of the things that move the needle. And I wonder if that's something that comes up with people you work with. And if you have some thoughts around how to combat that.

Steven Puri (: 21:04

Right. Well put.

Yeah.

Okay, so yes, I've thought about this and let me mention that if there's anything intelligent that I say in the course of our conversation, I want to credit the fact that really smart people have come before and have done deep research. I just happen to have read a lot of that and I can regurgitate it in very hopefully comprehensible ways. Okay, so I want to be very respectful of those who come before. So this idea of intention, for us millennia,

People have talked about understanding your intentions, setting your day off on the right foot sort of thing, right? Now, definitely now there's this proliferation of to-do lists, task managers, capture the 17 things you can do today, Which then creates the problem of, as you said, well, which of the 17 do I start with, right? Because it's really easy to go, I can just, it's really fun to create this content. I'll create some videos and you're like.

John Ball (: 21:53

Mm-hmm.

Steven Puri (: 22:06

Did they move the needle? Was that the thing that at the end of the day changed your life or changed the world around you? Maybe not, but you can be busy. I got a lot done today, but I didn't do the thing. So here's an example of applying that technique where many people, even the Mark Twain quote about eat the frog where he was sort of saying like, begin with the thing you don't want to do, the big thing, because then the data gets easier from there, right? And people have said,

If you have more than three things you think you're going to do today, you're fooling yourself. Right? So what we did is this, and this speaks to, again, my fallibility is I noticed that when I would start the day, part of why I procrastinate is there would be the 17 things, like, you know, your example of like, well, I could create some content. I could do this. I do need to sort of do this. Right. But the three things that really would move me or my company forward. They were clear to me, but I just, what they were lost in the.

John Ball (: 22:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Puri (: 23:02

in the forest, you know? So what we did is when you start work in in Sookha, you can choose the three things that are actually most important. And as soon as you hit play and like the focus music begins and your smart assistant welcomes on it, we hide everything else. All you can see are those three things. And here's the funny thing. Once we did this couple of months ago, back in the spring,

our members are 77 % more likely to finish all three than back when they could see there's 17 things they wouldn't finish all three, they'd finish one or two. And that is the only, it's not like the tasks changed, the people didn't change. It was simply the thing of saying, oh, as I'm working, I look up, go, it's those three things. Yeah, those are actually the right ones I should work on and not the little stuff that's down the list where I can kind of cherry pick it when I'm procrastinating, as you said. So I think that's really important.

John Ball (: 23:52

Right, it's the Overwhelming.

Steven Puri (: 23:55

prioritizing.

John Ball (: 23:56

Yeah, definitely. I've used tools like Todoist and list building tools, but great tool to a point because as you say, there's a point where you just look at it. I use it now as a reminder of what needs, what's the, what are the kinds of things like, it's like a lock box. What are kinds of things I pull from that into my daily activity? So I use more of a productivity planning kind of tool.

Steven Puri (: 24:02

Great tool.

I love that you said,

we integrated with Todoist for that exact reason. We had a bunch of members who said, I store everything there so I don't have to remember it. And all I wanted to do is when I start my Suka session in the morning, be able to look at that and go this one, this one, this one, and just pull them in as tasks for exactly what you said.

John Ball (: 24:38

Yeah. Do you recommend other things like sometimes I'll do like Sunday evening, I'll try and plan out what do I want to accomplish this week and then pull pull tasks from that.

Steven Puri (: 24:45

You and I are the same person. That's exactly what I do. It bugs my wife. She's like,

what are you doing? I'm like, just give me five minutes before I go to bed. It's better if I set my mind clear on the week rather than try and do it Monday morning. Totally way through on that. What else? Come on, you got more. Come on, what else you got?

John Ball (: 24:56

Yeah.

I got more. So do you already know what you're going to do on the day before you get there? Or do you decide on the day what tasks you're going to complete that day?

Steven Puri (: 25:10

Okay, I'll tell you, I have adopted, this is probably now by being around thousands of people who are trying to be productive and like nice people. I have cherry picked some things people told me they do that work and I made it my own. So this is gonna sound a little nutso, go with me on this one, don't judge. The night before, what I'll do is two things now and I find that any more than this is over planning, any less than this, I go into the day not well planned. One, I choose my three things.

Tomorrow the things are gonna change my life or move Suka forward or help someone. These three, only three, right? Second thing is I look at my schedule and I set an alarm in my phone for two minutes before every meeting because I want to be on time for everything. I wanna show everyone that respect. So I need two minutes usually when it's like you're in the Zoom, whatever to say, John, it's been great talking with you. You know what, I've been living AM and I need to wrap up now so I can be on time.

I'll tell you how that came to me. A good buddy of mine who was at CAA, you the big talent agency. So he, when I got back into the startup world, about a year later, he said, I see what you're doing. I want to do that. And I have an idea. So I helped him raise about $3 million to that company. And he said, listen, would you be open to maybe coming over for three months and just like shadowing me? Because he said, he's like a Harvard JD. He worked at Morgan Stanley, huge company.

worked at CAA, thousands of people. He's like, I've never actually run a 12 person company. So I was like, sure, I'll come over for a couple months and just like help you get your feet wet, show you how to kind of run things that way. One of things he wanted to do was because he's very familiar with talent, like he represented Spike Lee and like all these like big directors like that. So suddenly he's working with all these, we would call influencers, right? Who are not always punctual. And he had this idea that we were gonna do a 9 a.m. staff meeting. And I said,

Billy, that's never gonna happen. That's like herding cats. And he said, watch this. So he told everyone, hey, listen, Monday we're starting the company, blah, blah, blah. These 12 influencer actor types have to be there at 9 a.m. We're gonna set up the week schedule for content. And of course, at 9 a.m., most of them are out there, maybe two out of 12. The next morning, at 8.58, he locked the door to the conference room.

and did not unlock it during the staff meeting. So anyone who showed up late was left out. Wednesday, every one of them was there before nine. He's like, they don't want to be left out. And I don't want anyone to feel disrespected around, well, we're just sitting here until nine, 10, until someone gets here, because they're more bored than ever. We can't start without him. He's like, that's not the company I want to work on. And I was like, you know what, dude, I've learned something from you. That's a great tip. And he's like, it's just respecting other people's time.

John Ball (: 28:01

I like that. I do like that. And I know it's me thinking that influences with the people that get up before they've gone to bed so they can get a head start on the day. But it's good to know that they're fallible like the rest of us. But that maybe brings me to a question like, do you think ritual is important in having a good productive day?

Steven Puri (: 28:09

He he.

Mmm.

Yeah. And you can call it ritual. I call it habit. Obviously, know, clear like Charles Duhig so many people have written really smart stuff about like when you just get in that habit. I do understand now things I didn't in my twenties around decision fatigue, around the power of habit, things like that. And I'll give you some concrete examples very concisely. When I first heard about, know, like Steve Jobs always wearing kind of the same outfit or Zuckerberg with the same outfit, this sort of thing. I was like, okay, whatever.

And now I do understand like you wake up in the morning with a certain number of units of brain energy and you can expend some of those on like a slightly different breakfast every day or going to a different place every day or wearing different clothes every day, this sort of thing. And when you say, you know what, I need to conserve those, like I need to jealously guard those so I can spend them on that brainstorm with John around that new feature. You really do say, no, I'm just, I'm gonna wear a t-shirt and jeans and I don't have to think about it. Right. And it's the same thing with habit.

When you say, you know what, I want to make sure I have the best practices for my brain, for my spirit, my energy. You do adopt habits, where you want to call them rituals, habits, rituals, sometimes it's kind of charged around like, you know, are we doing the goat sacrifice? We're not doing that today, right? We talked about this. Um, lazy exactly as soon as the cameras are off. Whoa. Uh, so the, power of habit and

John Ball (: 29:37

later later

Steven Puri (: 29:47

You know what, if you want, let me expound on some people I saw very closely in film with that sense of like how they developed habits that served their brain, right? So for example, when I was working with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin around Independence Day, they had a habit of going to this villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Apparently it's a beautiful white marble villa in the hills. And that is where they wrote.

They developed this thing where there was a room, guess, Dean said, like the light comes in over the pool in the morning. He's like, in that room, we go as a ritual every morning. Actually, he did use the word ritual, you're right. And he said, the light comes in such a way we don't think about our agents. We don't think about who's gonna be cast or what the studio notes will be or what budget. We just think about what's the movie we'd want to see. When they were gonna have to write this, Roland told his assistant, hey, know, go rent the villa. We need to go do that thing.

and she came back and she's like, it's rented. I mean, it her vacation rental, right? Roland bought the villa that weekend. It was that important to him that they had these mornings in that room to write this, bought a $5 million villa where the current renters went, God only knows, right? And when they came back six weeks later, they had written the film that became at the time, the third highest grossing movie in film history. Cause that was their habit. And I saw the same thing with when I was at DreamWorks.

Alex Kurtzman, Bob Orsi, when they got in the crunch. And for those who don't know who they are, writers of Transformers 1 and 2, Star Trek 11, Mission Impossible 3, like Zorro, tons of stuff, the island, and great guys. So we were on the little Amblin area of the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood. Across the street, don't languish him, there is the Universal Hilton. I'm just gonna say it is not a $5 million glamorous property, right?

It's where you stay with your kids the night before you go on the rides. That's what it is, right? When they got in crunch time, they had their assistant rent a room there and they would go there and write every day. And I thought they were like, they're getting paid one to $2 million a script. Like they could easily afford going to a book or going anywhere and writing. And I realized for them, it was a ritual or as you'd say habit to went back to they had met in school.

John Ball (: 31:58

Yeah.

Steven Puri (: 32:06

And I think that kind of hotel room where sitting on the edge of the bed with the laptop and Bob at the little desk on his laptop, it evoked dorm room. That was their ritual of, these young scrappy writers, someday people are gonna recognize us, we have to do a great job on this so we get hired. And that was the mindset they needed to get back into through that habit, that ritual of, okay, well now we're gonna go finish Transformers 2. And I admit that they getting paid more than when they were scrappy writers. So huge fan of understanding your own rituals and rights.

John Ball (: 32:35

I that great, great stories to illustrate that as well. Amazing. Let me ask you, I don't know if you've ever had any kind of connection or involvement with that, the personal development world at any point. Hopefully you've been spared. it's not, it's not all bad. But, one of the things like when I first, when I first got into personal development, when I, when I was, I'm talking like early 2000s, probably really.

Steven Puri (: 32:46

⁓ Do tell.

You

Mm-hmm.

John Ball (: 33:03

And it was a whole new world. was a big discovery for me. I discovered coaching and all this great, some things that really transformed my life. But there's good and bad. But one of the things that I found at the time was being taught and still come across it from time to time is having to transform ourselves essentially into what often gets categorized as the sort of type A overachiever sort of person always.

always on the hustle, always going for it, always have to be active, burning up all your hours and ⁓ giving everything to the max all the time. And they got to a point where that was like, I'm not that. And I can never, I can't ever be that. But as I think about everything we're talking about here, everything that you're saying would make so much sense to me. I was thinking, how much

Steven Puri (: 33:31

Hmm?

Hmm?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John Ball (: 33:54

time do we really get back when we have more focus, less distraction that we can actually achieve more probably in far less time because I think many of us spend a lot of our days just trying to get stuff done but not actually getting it done.

Steven Puri (: 33:59

Thank you.

Yeah, okay,

so I'm gonna tell you another story I know stories are fun ways to illustrate answers, right? So My company has a weird ass name The Suka company, right people ask me about all the time. I'll tell you where that came from We had a working version of this an early version with early beta testers members using it

And Laura, the wife I mentioned before, right? We had met in yoga. It's a part of our daily life. We have a daily yoga practice and I love the spiritual and the physical part of that. For an hour a day, just like being lost and that sort of thing. So when we got married for our honeymoon, we went to Bali, which is a great place to go when you do yoga and you wanna be with your new wife. So on the way there, I was talking with Laura and I said, you know what? The next 10 days, no one from work is gonna bug me.

to sign the purchase order for the staplers. Like they all are like, Puri's on vacation. He's all assigned, but leave him alone, right? I said, maybe the universe will help me find a name for this. Cause I keep coming up with awful names, you know, flow state app, distraction blocker app, whatever, And Laura said, you know, I wish that for you. So when we got there, I said, you know, what would help my unconscious mind is if I seeded it today, do you mind if I have like two or three quick zooms, like 10 minutes with current numbers and just ask them, what's your favorite part?

And then maybe over 10 days, something pops up that's really cool. Like the way Amazon is not called like bookstore online, know, like Nike is like a cool word when you think about victory and you know, the goddess of victory, it's not called shoe place, you know. Laura's like, I'm going to the pool. Enjoy your Zooms. I'll see you at dinner. Right. So three people said, you know, I'll spend 10 minutes with you. And I asked that simple question. Hey, what's your favorite feature? it, you know, the music we have, the timers, the

the task list thing we talked about, the smart assistant, the blockers for your phone, all that. And the third guy, we were gonna hang up and being respectful, I was like, know what, John, it's been eight minutes, I wanna say thank you, I wanna be respectful of your time and let you go, I really appreciate what you told me. And the guy cut me off. He said, Stephen, you asked the wrong questions. And I'm like, okay, guy, I don't know that well. Right, tell me.

John Ball (: 36:18

Direct, yes.

Steven Puri (: 36:23

I'll take the bait. What's the right question? He said, you should have asked me why I pay you. I was like, dude, we charge like $10 a month. It's like 30 cents a day. I didn't think that's a big deal. Like I don't collect a paycheck for this. do it because think Tony and I do it for free because we love it. Okay, great. Why do you pay me? He said, the past year or so, I find I have two kinds of days. At three o'clock, I'm playing with my kids. They're currently two and four. Or it's six o'clock.

I'm down myself and I'm like, I didn't get the big thing done. I was busy all day. I'll get up early tomorrow and try to finish up. He goes, I found the difference is did I hit play in your app in the morning? So I pay you because my kids are not paid two and four forever.

Okay, you're right. I asked the wrong questions. You won that round, right? So I go to dinner with Laura. like, I spoke to this dude who's like more articulate about what I'm doing than I am. I told her this, she's like, that's really good. So we're going to sleep, you the first night is yarn, your honeymoon, in our stupid little spa rose, brushing our little teeth. And Laura looks at me, she goes, you wanted the universe to speak to you. It did through that guy. He said to you, you know, in yoga, we hear all these like terms in Sanskrit, like your.

karma and your prana life force and your dharma your duty. She's like he described you sukkha He wants to be in control of his life. He wants to feel like he's in his lane doing what he's meant to do And he's doing it by being controlled. It's with three o'clock. He's with his kids and he got everything done He did it. Well as opposed to letting it sprawl and he recognizes there's that choice for him and you help him on the path you should name your company after what he said, which is He wants to feel that self-fulfillment that

happiness that in control. She said, I called the Suga company, I'm going to bed. And I looked it up, it was available for $14, my friend, and I bought the domain that day.

John Ball (: 38:14

Very, very nice to you and a great story.

Steven Puri (: 38:16

And that's what I think it is though. It's like you said, it is saying,

what do I want? At three o'clock, I want to feel on top of the world. I want to go, I did the three big things and then choose what you do with the other three hours, not at six o'clock be like, oh, I'll finish after work or I'll get up early tomorrow and try and finish today's work tomorrow before I start tomorrow's work, which is the lie you tell yourself every single day. And it's just like dominoes, you you keep sliding and that's, that's ultimately what I want for people is like,

Do the thing, man. Do not die with the great thing you have inside you. Whether you're a speaker, whether you are a writer, whether you are a designer, whether you're an engineer, whatever it is, don't be the guy or girl sitting on the sofa at 80 that's like, oh, I could have been a great speaker. I could have opened that restaurant. I had that idea for a company. I could have written that book. It feels miserable to be that way. Even if you fail, hey, man, I wrote the book. Maybe it was not a best seller.

But I got it out there. I left it on the field. I'm not gonna die with that inside me. I don't want that for anyone.

John Ball (: 39:20

Yeah, great. Great. Another great illustration. I love how you've done that cleverly also weaved into there some nice gentle reminders to be respectful to your time as well. So very nice. With that in my mind, there is one thing I feel like we must get to before we start to wrap things up, which is...

Steven Puri (: 39:36

Ooh, is this about diehard? Everyone asks me about diehard. Okay, go

for it.

John Ball (: 39:41

That would have to be bonus, think, but flow state, we haven't touched that much on it. And I know it's something that you do talk about. It's related to what you do. So what's your perspective on first of all, what that is and how we can achieve that.

Steven Puri (: 39:48

You know I love it. You know I love it.

Okay,

I know that there are members of your audience playing at home or in the car that are like Flowmasters, like I have my FlowState practice, I get it. And there are others that like, I know it's a thing, I've heard about it, what exactly is the deal? So let me just begin by setting the table and then let me expound upon that, right? So Hungarian-American psychologist, guy, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he had a thesis. He's like, high performers in these various disciplines.

Athletes and artists and inventors and scientists, they seem to go in these concentrated states where they do the thing that made them famous or that changes the world and they describe it in very similar ways. What is up with that? So, know, like Prometheus, he wanted to go up to Mount Olympus, steal a little fire, bring it down to the rest of us. So when he did his research, he wrote a book called Flow. For once we get the term flow state, I love what he said. He said,

I chose this word because it was the most beautiful metaphor for what I found, which is we are all on the river paddling ourselves forward. But if you align your boat with the current, it carries you, it magnifies your effort. You go further and faster. And that's what these people have learned how to do. So he wrote in this book, here are the characteristics of it. You you lose track of time. You're not staring at the clock. You often, you know, forget to, you know,

drink water or go to the bathroom or do distracting things. You block distractions. You don't get a sense of like, it could be in Facebook right now, or it could be scrolling LinkedIn, right? You do concentrated work, your best work, in a shorter period of time. And you feel more energy at the end. You feel a joyful sort of experience rather than a depletion. And he said, so there are some conditions precedent that these high performers use to kind of get into the state and stay there. He said,

I notice they all think what they're doing is meaningful.

They use different terms for what they're doing. Like there's the famous basketball player, Michael Jordan, he had that quote about, when I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball. All the distractions fall away. I'm not watching the stands, I'm not watching the scoreboard. In those moments when he's doing the things that 30 years later are still on highlight reels, He realizes all that is really important is that he controls the ball to go where it needs to go. And everything falls away. It's very much like,

He cites that Picasso quote, which I always mingle about, you know, I was up all night. I think I didn't go to the bathroom. I forgot to have dinner. But hey, Guernica. And that sense, which I think actually took like 14 nights of craziness, but I mean, just imagine creating a canvas that size of capture the horrors of war. It's amazing. And Mihaly said, in addition to

, this is going to affect the: 3000

And he said, it also seems like it's great to have immediate feedback, to have some sense of, you can see the effect of your action as opposed to just pouring energy into a black hole and you don't know if it's good or bad, who knows, right? So it is whether you're reading back the speech you're writing, you're saying it out loud, you're hearing it in the room. When we were building Suka, we built a live.

graph you could see when you were focused and when you picked up your phone, you get an instant sense of like, how am I doing? Like that kind of feedback loop he thought was very important. So the reason I'm so passionate about this is it is a great tool to use your flow state to do your best work in less time. And it's much easier to block out things like, well I could be scrolling through my threads or my reels or my TikTok, know, shorts, whatever,

John Ball (: 44:01

Yeah, but I think it also, one of the things that was coming up in the world whilst you were speaking there was that is a great reminder, is there some sense as well, especially for people who are trying, trying, that stage, you're trying to make it. If you're in that sort of, I'm trying to make it stage, you're probably trying to do everything all at once. And, and you're never going to get into flow that way. And so this whole thing of trying to do less and achieve more, go further with doing less is

Maybe counterintuitive because you just kind of think you have to do as much as possible, but it's a better way to get into the flow and to see progress. I find myself, yeah.

Steven Puri (: 44:38

At first it seems counterintuitive, you're right. And

then once you've done it, you're like, actually prioritized and I did the things that move the needle.

John Ball (: 44:46

Yeah, so I like this whole perspective on flow. And I find it very helpful. It's always good to be reminded of these things as well. And I think what I'm taking away mostly from our conversation is that we don't have to completely transform ourselves. Sometimes we just need the gentle nudges, a bit of intentionality, a removal, a reduction of distraction, and a clarity about what we are setting out to achieve.

Steven Puri (: 44:51

good, thank you. ⁓

And then...

John Ball (: 45:13

and keeping it simple as best as possible. Those are, I think, some of the biggest takeaways I'm having from our conversation today. Is there anything else, either from that or that you would want to add that you think is particularly important for people to understand about productivity and remote work?

Steven Puri (: 45:18

Yeah.

Right now.

I would love to simply hang a lantern on that idea you brought up, which is in the morning, be very clear about your intention before you dive into reading the news or checking your emails or starting to do whatever. Take one minute, breathe deeply and say, what is the thing today that will move my life forward?

And don't start until you're clear on that.

John Ball (: 45:56

Awesome.

Awesome. For those who are thinking, I like the sound of this Suica thing, I want to check out this app and what's the best way to get in contact with you or to get access to the app and the community.

Steven Puri (: 46:08

⁓ Two things

super simple if there is anything that I've said that someone has a question about it doesn't have to do with me or my app It could be about who's Cal Newport? Who's the Hungarian dude? Whatever, right? My email address is very public. It is Steven with a V at the suka which is th e s u k h a dot co for company the secret company

you're welcome to email me and say, man, can you send me a link? Like, is there a blog post I can read about Cal Newport, about flow states, whatever I will send it to. I will not send a 19 paragraph summary of my life because you don't want to read it. I don't have time to write it, right? But I do get back to all my emails in 24 hours if I'm not sick or traveling. So that is open invite. Anyone who wants to learn more, I will help. If someone wants to experiment with flow states, we made a flow state app. It is free for seven days.

You can use it 168 hours a week for free, no credit card. And if you love it, sign up. Yeah, help us pay the server bills. It's $10 a month. And it's super simple. And it's at thesuca, T-H-E, S-U-K-H-A.CO. Try it out and do something great. Like the best thing that would come out of this for me is that someone goes, you know what? I actually wrote this amazing speech and I delivered it using your app. You know, I did something to move the world.

John Ball (: 47:07

Great value.

Steven Puri (: 47:27

because you helped me to focus in a world that is so distracting.

John Ball (: 47:31

Yeah, it's a small investment for a potentially enormous ROI. yeah, definitely go and check out the Suga app and try it out. Try it. If flow states, get everybody moving forward. Yeah, definitely. This has been a really great, valuable conversation. don't think anyone who is, for me alone, even if no one else listens to this, you help me, Stevens.

Steven Puri (: 47:44

Kind of magical.

I'm glad. I hoped it would be.

We're

putting one in the win column.

John Ball (: 48:01

So we're all good there. But thank you for coming and sharing all of this. love what you're doing with productivity. What you showed today has been so helpful and long may it continue and as wish you every success with with your upcoming child. Have you been thinking of names already?

Steven Puri (: 48:15

Super excited.

We have names. Actually, we've already named our son and our daughter, hopefully in two years. Again, hashtag planners. Watch out.

John Ball (: 48:22

Fantastic.

You are well prepared. I everything goes wonderfully well and that you'll be very soon enjoying bouncing your baby boy on your knee. And I look forward to hopefully connecting with you again in the future as well. But thank you for coming and speaking. Thanks for coming. We appreciate you, Stephen. Thank you.

Steven Puri (: 48:37

That would be awesome. And thank you to everyone who listened.

John Ball (: 48:44

Most of us are not lazy or unmotivated. We're overwhelmed, distracted, and trying to think clearly inside systems that are designed to pull us apart. Now, what Stephen shared in this episode is a reminder that focus is not about discipline or guilt. It's about intention, environment, and choosing what actually matters before the world chooses for you. When people to protect their attention, they do better work.

feel calmer and stop ending the days wondering where the time went. And that shift alone can change a career and a life. If this conversation helped you think differently, make sure you subscribed and leave a review so I know what's resonating. You can also check out Stephen's work at thesuka.co, that's T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A dot C-O thesuka.co and try the app for yourself.

And if you want support, finding clarity, focus and direction in your own work, then you know where to find me. All the details are in the show notes for you as well. Hope you'll join me for the next episode where I'm going to be going through the process that I work with my private clients on to help them get unstuck or really moving, getting more bookings, rebookings and growing their own professional speaking businesses. I hope you won't miss that.