Stop Measuring Hours. Start Measuring Impact. A Leadership Conversation With Steven Puri

Workforce Alchemy

#Leadership #HighPerformance #RemoteWork  About This Episode  In this episode of The Mason Duchatschek Show, Mason Duchatschek sits down with Stephen Puri, a rare leader who has built teams and products at the highest levels of both Hollywood and the startup world.  Stephen Puri brings real world credibility to this conversation. He worked as a studio executive and film producer on major motion pictures including Independence Day and Die Hard, and held leadership roles at DreamWorks, Sony, and Fox. These environments demand extreme coordination, creative excellence, and performance under pressure, making his perspective on leadership and collaboration especially valuable.  Stephen shares why many leaders misunderstand remote work, even though Hollywood has relied on distributed collaboration for decades. They explore why productivity should be measured by impact rather than hours, how leaders must intentionally declare mission and culture, and why hiring for engagement matters more than ever.  A major focus of the conversation is flow state. Stephen explains how focus, creativity, and performance dramatically increase when distractions are eliminated and the environment is designed correctly. He also shares how music, including binaural beats, can be used as a practical trigger for deep work and sustained performance.  This conversation is packed with practical insights for business owners, executives, and leaders who want more focus, better teams, and meaningful results without burnout.  Topics Covered  • Why Hollywood mastered remote collaboration long before it was mainstream • The biggest misconceptions leaders have about remote work • Why culture must be declared, not assumed • Measuring work by results instead of hours • How flow states dramatically improve productivity and creativity • The hidden cost of distractions on performance • How music can be used to induce focus and flow • Simple triggers leaders can use to create peak performance • One priority that can unlock personal and professional growth  This Episode Is Brought to You By Workforce Alchemy  Helping leaders avoid hiring disasters, stop payroll waste caused by disengagement, and eliminate people-related profit leaks hidden inside everyday operations.  Learn more at https://www.WorkforceAlchemy.com  Watch and Listen  Full podcast episodes and articles: https://workforcealchemy.com/podcast-magazine/  Connect With Workforce Alchemy  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/  X https://x.com/WorkAlchemist  Rumble https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy  Dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist  #FlowState #LeadershipDevelopment #RemoteLeadership #BusinessGrowth #WorkplaceCulture

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the Mason Dukacek Show. This episode is brought to you by Workforce Alchemy,

00:11helping leaders improve hiring, engagement, and retention while uncovering people-related

00:17profit leaks hidden in everyday operations. From Hollywood to high performance, my guest today

00:24has built and led teams in some of the most demanding environments on the planet.

00:28Stephen Puri helped produce the visual effects for Independence Day. He led development on

00:35blockbuster franchises like Die Hard and Wolverine. He raised over $20 million in venture capital and

00:43founded three startups along the way. Experiences that taught him how high-pressure teams actually

00:50function in an innovative way. So I just can't wait to have him on here. Stephen, welcome to the show.

00:54Mason, thank you for having me. And I hope that this is an entertaining and also informative

01:00episode. Maybe some actual insights. Let us see what the day brings.

01:04Well, it's all right. I also want to plug your company because I really appreciate you being

01:08here.

01:08Who says no to that? Tell me about it.

01:10Hey, you're the founder and CEO of the Suka Company. And I think that at the very end,

01:18we'll tell people how to reach out to you if they want to learn more about you and the company and

01:21you do. So with that, if you don't mind, I know we're on a tight schedule. You got other commitments

01:25you got to hit. So let's kind of jump right at it. I know that you've led highly creative

01:30distributed teams long before that remote work was even a thing.

01:35Before the pandemic, like Zoom into a verb.

01:39Yeah. So what did Hollywood teach you about collaborating with people when they aren't in

01:44the same room?

01:45Okay. Really good question. I'm glad you started there. So here's the funny thing.

01:48Let me begin by saying this. For those who are playing along in their car or listening

01:52at home or at the gym, whatever. The reason this episode may be interesting, as opposed

01:56to many of the other great ones Mason has done, is I am one of the few people who has

02:00been a senior executive at Motion Picture Studios, worked in film, a very creative and technical

02:05world, and also run startups, a very technical and creative world, and seen what high performers

02:11do that's sustainable, both leading teams as well as being individual contributors,

02:15ICs. Okay. So here's the funny thing you touched on, Mason, which is people think of remote work

02:20as this thing that really blew up in the pandemic. Everyone suddenly had to be separate and we

02:26couldn't be under the same fluorescent lights for 10 hours a day, right? So for film, that

02:30is not new. For a hundred years, film has been doing remote, hybrid, and in person. And I'll

02:35give you an example. Every film begins with writers working at home, going to their writing

02:41partners, living room and writing, going to coffee shops and writing. And at some point,

02:45one of those ideas gets some traction. People start to be interested, starts to attract a little

02:49money. You open a small production office. There's like a production designer hired, a location scout,

02:55a costumer, right? So one or two days a week, y'all go into the little office, talk about where should

03:00we shoot this? What kind of clothes do they wear? What should the thing look like? And then the rest of

03:04the week, everyone goes out on location scouts, on, you know, to costume houses, things like that.

03:09Writers go back and, you know, spend a couple of days redoing a rewrite to try and get Brad Pitt to,

03:13you know, star in it or something. So you're kind of a hybrid world then. And then you're on set. It

03:18is RTO, right? It is all day, all night, months on end, working together, same location. Then it goes

03:24back to hybrid with sound editors, picture editors, you know, working in dark rooms. Then it goes back

03:30to remote and you're waiting for release. So that arc of remote to hybrid to in-person to hybrid to

03:35remote has been film for decades. So leaders know how to lead through each of those periods

03:41and ICs know how to contribute because it's a natural part of how movies are made. It was not

03:45suddenly during the pandemic, you know, you were separated. And that's one of the things I thought

03:49was very interesting is it's not, it's not new science. It's sort of invented science there.

03:54So what do you think's the biggest misconception that leaders still have about remote work?

03:59Well, I'll tell you, I've got a chance to experiment with this now after the pandemic and

04:03the rest of the world has gotten to experiment with it. What are some of the misconceptions

04:07you think leaders still have?

04:08So I'll tell you this, there's a platform I run, Suko, which is a flow state app. It helps

04:12you get into a deep work state to do meaningful work quickly, right? Okay. So by virtue of that,

04:18we attract a lot of engineers, a lot of developers, a lot of designers, a lot of writers and bloggers

04:24and authors, because they're all people who generally work remotely, do knowledge work, right?

04:28So you get enough developers, engineers from a company, and usually the engineering manager

04:33will reach out to me and go, Hey man, like five of my guys, you know, use your platform.

04:37I was thinking of getting a site license because we all could use it, right? So you end up talking

04:41to them a lot. I'm going to tell you, when you dig down on the conversations with them,

04:45one of the deepest things with remote that they're worried about is simply, Hey man,

04:50Tuesday at three, I can't see Mason. How do I know what he's doing? Do I need a surveillance tool?

04:56You know, like they sort of probe around, like how do they overcome that? And it's fear. It is fear

05:01talking. So here's the funny thing about that kind of fear. If you are a leader,

05:06there are many things you have to do. Some are managerial summer. Hey man, make sure your TPS

05:11reports are turned in Friday mornings. Who does an office space? I love it. You know,

05:16you know, and by the way, I believe you have my stapler. So that said, truly as a leader,

05:22there are two big things that you do. You declare a mission. We are here to cure cancer. We are here to

05:28develop, you know, batteries that'll power the world. We're here to make great romantic comedies,

05:33right? Whatever that is, you declare a mission. The second thing is you declare a culture. This is

05:37how we treat each other. This is how we treat our customers. And this is how we treat our competitors.

05:42If you do those two things well, you attract the right people into your organization. Because I know

05:49that if I'm here going, we're here to cure cancer, and this is how we're going to operate.

05:53And Mason's grandmother, you know, like died of cancer. And he came here because I declared a

05:58mission. I don't have to wonder what Mason is doing Tuesday at three. He's moving the ball down

06:02the field. You know what I mean? I love what you said about that, because there was, I read a lot

06:06of books and I listened to a lot of podcasts myself. And I was listening to some stuff by Alex

06:11Harmozy, and he's got a couple of books out that I really like. But one of his videos, he's very blunt,

06:17but you talk about rules and trust. And he says, if you have dumb rules, this is Alex Harmozy talking

06:22about me. He says, if you've got dumb rules, you've got dumb people. If you don't have dumb

06:26people, you won't have the need for dumb rules. Yeah. That is exactly correct. If you hire someone

06:32who's surfing in D during the day and they've had six jobs in seven years, they're not engaged with

06:37any of these missions. They're just looking for the next job, maybe get a $10,000 bump in their

06:41annual comp. So you got to be aware of that as a leader. I'm going to give you a quote right back to

06:48you from your office space reference. It's not that they're lazy. They just don't care.

06:54Don't get me going on office space, man. Laura, my wife and I, we can quote most of that movie.

06:58It's not good. Not proud of it, but I will laugh. Okay. So back on track though, here's another

07:03aspect of what you were asking about, where you're probing, right? So if you think about one thing,

07:07which is, hey man, hire well, how do I hire well? Be clear about your mission. Be clear about your

07:12culture, right? You'll attract the right kind of person, right? There's another part of that,

07:17which is you have to move from like my dad's generation mentality, which is how do you measure

07:22work? If your output is measured by the effect of what you do and not where you did it or how long

07:29it took, you have a different kind of organization. There's a different kind of energy among the team

07:34members. See what I'm saying? Like, to be honest, it's kind of a brain breaker for my dad's generation

07:39to say, if someone came in and said, I took two hours yesterday and I actually went for a walk.

07:48And on that walk, I thought deeply about, there's this one feature that our competitor is killing

07:52us on. Instead of copying it, what if we did this thing to leapfrog them, right? And everyone in that

07:57meeting, the stand up, the staff meeting, whatever, it kind of looks and goes, oh man, like we should

08:02leave here and just do what Mason said. How quickly could we build that, right? That's what you want.

08:06But if you hear that through the lens of like, you went for a walk for two hours yesterday

08:12and I paid you to be on a walk, like, you know what I mean? Like my dad works at IBM for 37 years.

08:19Like that's unheard of. You had to be under the fluorescent lights in the government looking

08:24hallway with, you know, sheets of paper stapled to your cork board in your office, showing what

08:30you were doing. You know what I mean? Like that sort of thing. So that's what I mean by work should be

08:34measured by the effect of what you're doing. If you say that thing in staffing, people are like,

08:38everybody go to your desk. Like we should build that right now. Like that's amazing.

08:41Who cares if you're like, yeah, I was playing catch with my dog yesterday. I thought about it

08:46at 3 a.m. God bless if that's how ideas happen for you. I don't need to stare at you.

08:51I'm loving this conversation because it's, I've had the luxury of working for myself for a long time.

08:56And I can't tell you how many times I've conditioned myself that if I roll over in the middle of the night

09:00with an idea that I grab my phone and I won't remember it in the morning.

09:05So important. I love that. Yes. Capture it.

09:08No, I won't remember it in the morning, but if I type it in, it's like, wow. And I, I literally get ideas

09:13I wake up with. I also get ideas when I'm running, like some of my best ideas when I'm running, or you

09:18talk about a flow, flow state. Like I'm a huge fan. I've been to a huge fan of Tony Robbins. I've been

09:23to his events and he talks about getting in your flow state that you talk about. And I get in my flow.

09:28I can access a flow state quickly when I'm running or when I'm cycling. And if I'm with other people

09:33who are of like mind and we're cycling or we're running and we're all in a flow state in the peak

09:37state, then there's collaboration and there's synergy and good things come as a result. And I,

09:43I contrast that with the things that I can learn and the things that I can do and the problems I

09:48can solve in a flow state surrounded by good people doing good things at the same time with me,

09:52with you have to be sitting at your desk and clock in and clock out. That makes me laugh to think

09:57that there are people out there that still think you have to be chained to your desk and come up

10:01with this idea. And it's like the beatings will continue until morale improves.

10:07Completely agree. Okay. So there are two things we're going to immediately pick up on what you

10:11said, right? The second one is going to be flow states, which are totally in the zeitgeist. I get

10:15asked to talk about them the past year or two all the time, right? We're going to talk about that

10:18and let it rip stuff. But first I want to pick up on something. It's actually a little offbeat from what you

10:23said. And this relates to a great, there's a, there are a number of great books on this. There's

10:27one in particular that I'm going to quote at the end. And it is this thing where you said,

10:31oh, I go out for a run and I have the idea, right? Here's something that I experienced early in my

10:35career, right? I left Virginia, went to the university of Southern California in LA, right?

10:40Fantastic cinema TV school. First job at a school. I think it was even a senior when I was kind of

10:45working this job and still finishing school. It's at an ad agency that did trailers for movies.

10:50It was two guys who had both left the studio system, very well respected and set up their

10:54own company to be a vendor to the studios to market movies, right? So I'm this young,

11:00like 1920 year old idiot and working for these two guys who are in the thirties, forties who

11:04are just like very highly respected. And my job at this point in time was I was the guy where the

11:10movies would come in from the studios, the rough cuts, usually on a tape. And I would assign them to

11:15a writer producer. I go, Hey Mason, like we got in this Will Ferrell comedy from Sony.

11:20You did a good job of that Will Ferrell comedy last year here. Why don't you take this home,

11:23watch it and write a trailer, right? So Jeff, who's one of the two principals of the company

11:28comes to my office, right? So he's like 15, 20 years old than I am. I'm like, Hey Jeff,

11:32you know? And for the purpose of the story, he calls me Stevie. He's the only person in my life

11:35who's ever called me Stevie. He does it to this day. We're still friends. So just go with it,

11:39but don't call me Stevie. So he comes in, he goes, Stevie. I'm like, yes. He's like,

11:44you know, Bart. And I'm like, there's a guy in the vault that delivers tapes named Bart. Yeah.

11:49That guy, I met him. He's like, yeah, yeah. That part. You ever, you ever give him a trailer to

11:54write Bart, the guy who like picks up tapes from Hollywood and drives to the right. He's like,

11:59yeah, yeah, yeah. I have an instinct about him. Stevie. I was like, Jeff, man, your name's on the

12:03door. You know what? Let me find something for him. So I did Jeff leaves. I found like a Warner

12:08Brothers beat title that had like a month deadline. So if he comes back in for a couple of days,

12:11he's like, I hate this. I can give it to a pro. He's like, I'll knock it out tonight. Right.

12:15So Jeff comes to my office two days later. He goes, Stevie. So how's Bart doing? I was like,

12:20Jeff, I just gave him that movie like a day or two ago. Like, I'm going to give him a little bit

12:23of time to, you know, work on it. It's his first trailer. He's like, okay. Uh, so what else did

12:29you give him? Jeff, he's never ridden a trailer in his life. I'm not going to give him like two at the

12:33same time. He's going to blow his brains out. And Jeff, to his credit, taught me something when I was like 19,

12:3820 years old that I've seen proven truth thousands of times since.

12:41He goes, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie, let me explain to you how creativity works. It's never about the

12:47thing. He's like, if you give Bart one movie to focus on, he is going to concentrate on that with

12:53little beads of sweat coming down his temples. And he's going to write the most obvious B version

12:59of that trailer. You have to give him something else because when he's thinking about the other

13:04thing is when the part of his mind that does the really interesting, like, Ooh, I don't know,

13:08chocolate and peanut butter. What if those were together? That happens in the

13:11other part of your mind. You have to give him something else to focus on, man. Have I seen

13:16that true through screenwriters, directors, engineers, designers, like, Oh my Lord. And

13:22he just laid it out that way. He was like, Stevie, it's always about the other thing. I'm like,

13:26okay, Jeff. So there is a great book on this told, not from the gruff Jeff Calnan school,

13:33but from the neuroscience called the net and the butterfly by, uh, Olivia Fox, Gabon and Judah

13:41Pollack. Um, and it talks about the executive mode network and the default mode network where the

13:46default mode is like your original kind of way your brain is thinking, which is like the little

13:49child. That's like, Oh, Hey, what's this pen? What does it taste like? Should I put on my head?

13:54You know, like that. And then you eventually develop the adult, the executes action. I must drive to work.

13:59I must make the sandwich. I must, you know, mow the lawn. And the executive mode network kind of

14:05like it becomes the adult. And when the executive mode network is busy with running, doing dishes,

14:12houring, and he's worked for you. That's when the default mode network goes, daddy's not watching.

14:17I can go, you know, put peanut butter on my head and see if that's cool. Or, you know,

14:21what does his cell phone taste like? And that's where that idea comes from where you're like,

14:24what a brilliant ad campaign. Point one of two, what you said about running

14:29strikes a nerve with me. And I have remembered that through every assignment I've had to give

14:35creatively to someone to say, Hey, I want you to come with a great idea on this and this and go

14:40let them both sort of percolate. Bart, by the way, is a writer producer at Fox now. Jeff picked him

14:46well, somehow had that sense of him. And he now has a very successful career writing promos in

14:52Hollywood. Okay. So let's go to point two, which is you brought flow states, which is like,

14:58tickle me Elmo. Like I love talking about flow states, right? It's real. That is a real thing.

15:03It's a real thing. And I know there's a, there is a portion of your audience flow masters. I got this.

15:08I know everything about it. And I love you people. There's another portion I'm going to guess.

15:12They're like, I know it's kind of becoming popular. It's in the zeitgeist, but I'm not exactly

15:16sure what we're talking about. So is it fair if I set this table just for 30 seconds? Absolutely.

15:21Okay. So here's the deal. Probably the only guy with a harder name to spell than Mason's,

15:26right? Hungarian American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Google it sometime.

15:31It's impossible to spell unless you're Czech or Hungarian. So he had a thesis. He said,

15:37if you talk to high performers in very different disciplines, they can be athletes, artists,

15:42scientists, inventors, whatever. When they talk about the concentrated states,

15:46they get into where they do the thing that makes them famous, the thing that changes the world.

15:50They talk about those states in very similar ways, even though they're in very different

15:54disciplines. And he was like, what's up with that? He did the research, talked to all the people,

15:58wrote a book called Flow. It is the seminal work on this. It is from whence we get the term flow state.

16:04And he said the greatest thing. I love this. He said, I chose this word flow because it was the

16:10most beautiful metaphor for what I found. We are all on the river paddling ourselves forward.

16:16But if you align your boat with the current, it carries you. It magnifies your efforts. You go

16:21further and faster. And that is what these high performers have figured out how to do and do it

16:26repeatedly. It's amazing. You talk about that because you and I operate in different circles.

16:31Like I've been backstage with some, some big bands. I grew up in the 80s. I love the hard rock bands.

16:36I'm, I'm, I'm a closet headbanger, but I've had the opportunity to be backstage before some of

16:44these bands have gone on and they get, for lack of a better word, pumped up before a show, just

16:50like an athlete does before they go play. And I remember reading, I think it was Tony Robbins

16:55was talking about like a guy like Michael Jordan. I'm totally dating myself then, but when he was in

16:58his prime, that guy, he goes out and he scores 50 points one night and next night he scores 25.

17:02Did he lose half of his ability in 24 hours? No, he did. One day he was in the flow and letting it

17:08rip and everything was going like, you know, he has a state great quote about it. And by the way,

17:14Mihai acknowledges this. He says, listen, I'm calling it flow, but a lot of people to whom I'm

17:18spoken, they have their own word for it. And that great Michael Jordan quote about when I'm in the

17:24zone, it's me in the ball is a very eloquent way of saying what Mihai says in his book, which is

17:28distractions fall away. Like in those moments when I'm in flow, the stands don't exist. The

17:33scoreboard doesn't exist to a certain extent. The defenders don't exist because truly, if I

17:38control the ball, that is all that is necessary to win. And Mihai said, you know, you can call it

17:43being in the zone like Michael Jordan. Picasso had his way of talking about it. Einstein is where

17:47like many people that we have talking about that state where it's just like you do the thing.

17:51And Mihai is like, here, here are the characteristics. Distractions fall away. You generally lose track

17:56of time. You don't have a great sense of like, did half an hour go by or two hours? Don't know.

18:00You do your best work in a compressed amount of time. Like you're working very efficiently.

18:04And he said, when you're done, you feel elated. You feel uplifted, like a sense of joy

18:09rather than a sense of depletion. It's not like, God, I need a rest. I'm dead. It's like, you sort

18:13of go, wow, that was great. So if you want to talk about retaining people on your team, or you want

18:19to talk about managing your own burnout, yeah, flow states are an amazing tool. And a lot of people are

18:23getting hip to them now, which is kind of cool because I run a flow state app.

18:28What's amazing to me is that you can conjure that up in a blink of an eye when you know how.

18:34Well, let's talk about it. Let's talk about that, right? So you're probably, you're more of an

18:38expert than me, but I, I know that I can listen to certain songs in a certain way and I get a

18:43feeling and it's awesome.

18:45Mason, you're just throwing softballs right down the middle. Okay. Let's talk about music in a second.

18:49Let's talk about music in a second. Let me frame it this way, which is,

18:52anything smart that I share here, I want to acknowledge is because me highly, the ground

18:59work and really smart people dug into different portions of that and did amazing research. Like

19:04you said, people just dug down on music and like the oral, AU oral environment about how you can

19:09flow. Other people dealt with distractions. Other people have gone deep on, you know, what kind of

19:14works you have, like the Newports and the Nears and the Cotlers. Like, so let us acknowledge we stand

19:19on the shoulders of giants. We're very fortunate, right? Okay. So that said, Mihai said, okay, this is

19:24kind of the flow state. And I gave a sort of reductive, you know, description of what it is. He said,

19:28yeah, there's some kind of conditions precedent that seem to help people drop in. Now the research shows

19:34that it takes your brain 15 to 23 minutes to drop into that state. Now what's important is if you get

19:41interrupted, it takes you another 15 or 23 to get back. So if in the middle of it, I'm slacking you

19:47like, Hey Mason, do you have the report on the so-and-so? And you're like, hello and get that for

19:51you. You got to dig it out of the Google drive and send it. I just destroyed your flow state and I just

19:55didn't destroy it. I stole the next 15 to 23 minutes of your time. So you can get back into that. It's

20:00almost like I forced you to land the plane and now you're like, okay, I got to take off again to get

20:03back to 600 miles an hour, right? I totally guard my flow state. It drives my, it drives my

20:09friends and family crazy because I won't answer my phone. I will turn my phone off. I will shut

20:16my stuff off. Okay. This is too beautiful. I'm taking you everywhere. We're going to talk

20:20together. This is great. Okay. I'm going to take Tokyo next month. You want to go? Okay. So here's a

20:25question for you. So you brought up music before I even could, but that is one of the, you know,

20:30the core pieces here of oral environment has helped people. What kind of music helps you?

20:35It depends on the mood that I want to be in. For example, it's like normally I'm pretty high

20:42energy anyway, but I've noticed, give me a little bit of disturbed. Give me a little bit. Oh yeah.

20:48Oh yeah. Okay. You are the outlier that I talk about because here's the deal. A lot of the research

20:53shows the sweet spot for most people is 60 to 90 beats per minute ambient non-vocal. So people

20:59aren't spending brain cycles singing along with black pink or whatever, right? That it's long

21:04melodic stretches, right? Certain key signatures, like this whole thing. And as much as people

21:09have, um, the researchers have said like, here's the sweet spot for most people. They always quote

21:13like, and then there's the outlier who really needs like nineties gangster rap or needs, you

21:18know, like I'm going to give a shout out to one of my favorite bands. And I, and full disclosure,

21:23I've become friends with them, but a band out of last. We all love NSYNC. I get it.

21:26A band called otherwise, and they've got a song called coming. You know, them,

21:31they're great dudes. They've got a song called coming for the throne. And you listen to the words

21:36of that. When I was in high school, it was eye of the tiger. Cause Rocky was out again, dating

21:41myself, but the new version of eye of the tiger for me coming for the throne by other band.

21:46Otherwise you just listen to the words of that. It's okay. I just saved it on this screen over

21:51here. When we are done, you're going to love to you. I'm going to go enjoy that on YouTube.

21:55I found the video. Oh, you're going to love it. So back to actionable stuff. So people who are

22:01listening in their cars, at work, at home, wherever, get something out of this. Okay. So

22:05music, this is a big one. And as we were constructing Suka, which is a flow state app to

22:10help people get into flow state more reliably, right? We looked at all the research and I happen

22:14to have shocker, a bunch of friends who are film composers, shocker with a bunch of time on their

22:19hands. Cause film is not as, you know, same business. It was 10, 15 years ago. Hey guys,

22:23could you go write like a thousand hours of music like this? Like 10, 15 minute long pieces.

22:27They're all kind of in this genre. Got that organized it into playlists. It would be all

22:31helpful. Like upbeat. We put into a place called sonic caffeine, the down-tempo stuff, ambient

22:36atmosphere, you know, like lo-fi beats. You ever screw around with binaural beats?

22:41Okay. So for those playing along at home, binaural beats, and this is more recent phenomenon. This is

22:48not like back in Mozart's time. Okay. Right. So binaural beats, and there's a lot of debate around

22:52this. Binaural beats are based on the idea that if you feed each of your ears, each channel,

22:58a sound that is slightly offset by a certain number of cycles per second, like Hertz, it stimulates the

23:03brain as the brain tries to reconcile the two things. So if it's off by like 36 Hertz or 40 Hertz

23:08or 50 Hertz, it supposedly will stimulate more alpha or beta or gamma, delta, you know, sort of like

23:12brainwaves. And some people swear by it. Some people are like, oh my God, yeah, like 36 is

23:17really great for, you know, creativity, and 50 is really great for, you know, flow states and,

23:22you know, focus and things like that. And I've tried it. I'll be super honest. I thought I felt

23:26something different. We had people on the platform asking about this. We launched, we got some binaural,

23:31put it up there. I also don't know if it was kind of the placebo effect of I was expecting to feel

23:35something. So I was like, of course I felt something, you know what I mean? So I'm going to leave that

23:39one open. If people have religion for it, it's there because the important thing is,

23:42it's not actually whether there's absolute truth. It's more what works for you, you know?

23:50It's funny you say that because like for me, my go-to is usually to get a bit more wound up in

23:55high energy, which I'm usually pretty much anyway. So the harder rock does it for me. But I'm not

24:01oblivious to the fact that I could, if I want to mellow out or tone down, that I could pick something

24:05like a Seals and Crofts or America or something kind of folk, something the opposite of what I normally

24:10listen to. So it's almost like I'm in an elevator where I can push the buttons on whatever floor I

24:14want to go to. I can do the same thing with music to put me in those kinds of states. And I can

24:19literally think about what state do I need to be in to be this? If I'm going to go on speaking

24:24engagement and I'm going to go in front of an audience, I don't, I know a lot of people get

24:29nervous. I get excited. It's like, I feel the opportunity to share and to give. And instead of

24:36feeling a sense of fear, like, oh, I'm so nervous. I've got to talk to all these thousands of people

24:41or whatever. It's like, no, I get to help all of these people. I can't wait to share what I've got

24:45because I know that the things that I've learned that I can prepare, that I've prepared to bring

24:49to this audience are going to do good things. And now all of a sudden, it's not about the fear of

24:54doing bad. It's the fear of not bringing my best to help these people the most. And so I am very in

25:00tune to the flow states and the things that you're talking about. I'm a huge fan. So what do you

25:05think are some of the focus killers? Cause like I protect my state, like no one's business.

25:09Okay. So you already brought up that, you know, your phone is a black hole of distraction,

25:14computer to a television. Like I turn, I refuse. Okay. I love this, but let's start with phone for

25:21a minute. One of the things that's really interesting. There's a great Hooperman lab that

25:24talks about this, which is the phone is amazing because it is a source of zero effort dopamine,

25:32which hasn't really existed in history, history to get that dopamine rush. You had to at least lift

25:38a finger to do something right. And now it's like, just open your death app of choice. I'm going to

25:44waste my day in Instagram, Tik TOK, whatever. I'm going to go rage tweeted people. I'm just saying,

25:50right? So it's curious when you think about that, I will tell you, this is me being slightly vulnerable

25:55phone. My hand would instinctively reach my phone. Like if I was coding and I, the build kept failing

26:02and I was getting frustrated without really thinking consciously, my hand would reach my phone. Like,

26:06Oh, let's just check WhatsApp real quick and see if anyone replied. Cause that'd be fun to see if

26:10like, Oh, Eric wrote back or something. I'm writing a blog post. And you know, when you read the first

26:13two paragraphs over and you're like, Oh, I'm going to have to rewrite this. This is just obvious and

26:17sucky, right? My hand would reach my phone. I wouldn't even think about it, but I'd find myself in

26:22WhatsApp. And it's never short because then that leads to, you know, opening Tik TOK or Instagram

26:26or checking or someone sent you a link to some video and make that thing. Boom, man, that's not

26:31one minute. That's five. Then it's 10. And it's just accretively stealing your day. And how do you,

26:38how do you combat that? Like, suppose, suppose you as a leader, suppose you as a person believe

26:43what I believe. I believe that all of us have something great inside. And the question of this

26:48lifetime is, are you going to get it out or not? So if you're a leader, you can define leadership as

26:54I've assembled a team of people who have the greatness that we require here. And my job is

27:00to elicit that, to help them to release their greatness, whether it's as a copywriter, an

27:05engineer, a designer, whatever it may be. Right. And that's an interesting way. I think to think about

27:11leadership as opposed to like, we're goal-based and it is to say, Mason, you have inside you to be

27:16like one of the generation's great graphic artists. We need that here. I'm going to encourage and prod

27:23and do what is necessary, like a great coach of the Chicago Bulls to go back to, you know,

27:27your, your reference. So when you think about that, you go, ah, okay. So that is a way of conceiving of

27:34leadership. And if you were thinking about it for yourself, you're like, am I going to go to my

27:37grade with that still inside me? Like, well, I released that thing. It could be, you have the idea for a

27:42restaurant. You have the next great American novel inside you. You have a great app. You have

27:47a company to build, whatever the thing is you have to release. Are you going to do it? Because

27:50here's the problem. If you look at the stock market, the trillion dollar companies, most of

27:55their business models is steal your life. Full stop. That is how they exist. And it used to be,

28:00you know, 10 years, 10 years ago, you know, Zuckerberg would have to testify in Congress and he would be

28:05like, oh, shucks seeing embarrassing, you know, Facebook is just here to show like grandmothers videos of

28:11their grandkids and, you know, this whole BS. And now there's no embarrassment. You listen to a

28:17quarterly earnings call and they're like, we have hired the best engineers, the best designers,

28:22the best behavioral psychologists and economists. We're deploying these techniques. And this is how

28:27much of everyone's life we stole the past quarter. We call it shareholder value. And by the way, next

28:32quarter, we have some new techniques designed by these same people to steal more of their lives,

28:36which is shareholder value. It's as if Zuckerberg called you up and was like, Mason, hey man,

28:41can I have your life? Cause I'm going to sell it to these advertisers and I'll keep the money,

28:46but I'm going to give you some dancing cat videos, bud. How about that? Is that a good deal for your

28:50life? And you end up that guy, 80 years old on the sofa, scrolling and double tapping,

28:54telling anyone who will listen how you had that idea for a company. Oh yeah, you could have written

28:58that book. Oh yeah, you were going to write that screenplay. And that's miserable, man. So you got to

29:03find that way to get out. And that's, that's, I think what you and I are getting at is like,

29:07absolutely. You need to have tools. You need to have support systems, whomever, you know,

29:13wherever it comes from, it doesn't have to come from, you know, flow states and what we do with

29:17our company, but you got to find that system works for you where you go each day. What's the one thing

29:22I could do today that takes me closer, releasing the great thing inside me. And don't forget that

29:28boundaries. I have boundaries. I have all my notifications turned off. I control my technology.

29:33My technology does not. Is that why you never write back? Because it hurts. You sound like my

29:38son. Yeah, I got ahold of you. But you know what we did? With Suka, I'm as bad with my phone as we

29:44talked about. When you start your session, when you hit play, it's a website with big play button

29:47in the middle, right? You hit play and the music begins and it blocks stuff. A QR code comes up,

29:52you can tap with your phone, put your phone down. And if you, Mason, touch your phone while you're

29:55working, a little voice, your smart assistant says, Hey Mason, I see you on your phone. Is that helping you?

30:00And you just get that one minute to decide who do I want to be? Do you want to be the guy who's

30:05done? Or do you want to be the guy who's like, Oh man, it was a long day. I was busy, but I have

30:11to get up early tomorrow and try and finish. You get to choose. That's a very powerful tool to avoid

30:16distractions and things that would... What websites get you? What's that? Be vulnerable. Just tell me

30:21what websites take time away from you doing your greatness. I spend time on YouTube. That's where I

30:26discover a lot of new music. That's me. YouTube is my bad one. But I will set aside time, blocks of

30:32time for that as a way to decompress or get exposure. But I put limits on it. It's like,

30:38I'm not, like I said, I will control my time. I refuse. People can text me and it is not going

30:43to pop up on my phone. They can email me and it's not going to pop up on my phone. When I decide that

30:47I have time to look at my messages, I will look at my messages. That's the way I roll. Because like you

30:52said earlier, if you're in a peak state and someone yanks you out of it, the next thing you

30:56know, it takes time to rebuild that. I don't have time for that nonsense. I'm just saying. I'm just

31:00saying. So here's the funny thing where you're saying for me, I'll tell you, I nodded when you

31:05said YouTube, because what happens to me is there may be actually a valuable video I need to watch.

31:09Like for example, you know, I'm not a great coder anymore. I was when I worked at IBM, but that's

31:13ages ago. Very often there's like, I don't know exactly how to use this module or this open source

31:18thing. Oh, there's a great video on it. There's some generous engineer has posted a three minute

31:23video on how to use this thing. Right. And you know, at two minutes and 50 seconds into that,

31:28YouTube's like, Hey man, you want to watch any of these videos? Cause I know you really well,

31:32Steven, you would love like each one of these videos. We're pretty good at it. I love them all.

31:36Here's a great way to, you want to make a cast iron steak. It's delicious tonight. Oh,

31:40you want to know about like how the A380 was designed. And I'm just like, I want to know all those

31:44things. It's like, click, click. For me, it's like, if you like this band, you need to try this

31:49one. And it's like, I'm just saying that that's a very similar thing. We use to fix it. We give

31:57people a free Chrome extension when they sign up. And when you, you can specify what are your

32:02distracting websites. We give you like 20, 30 of the obvious ones. You can toggle them on and off

32:06and you can add your own. If you open one for more than five seconds, you know, a little modal

32:11incentive screen that just goes, is this helping you or not? And you can choose. And it may be

32:15like, Oh no, I do need to be in YouTube right now to watch this video about a coding thing. So you

32:19can say, click. Yeah. Allow it for now. But sometimes it's just like having that friend next

32:24to you is all you need to kind of stay on track. It's like having a coach that you don't have to

32:28pay for. This is unrelated to anything you need to buy or, or, or, um, use, but rather a way of

32:34thinking about how to elicit, you know, your state, which is when I, you mentioned, I produced the

32:40digital effects for independence day, right? We won the Academy award for the visual effects.

32:44It's great. I set up a company with the director and producer. We all became friends and blah,

32:47blah, blah. Right? So here's a funny thing. I'm a young punk when this goes down, like 22 ish,

32:5123, I think, and had the opportunity to be there. And Roland and Dean, who are the director,

32:56writer, producer, they apparently had a writing habit of going to this beautiful villa in Puerto

33:01Vallarta, some white marble villa in the hills of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. That's where they wrote.

33:06And when Roland told his assistant, okay, go rent the villa. We have to go write. She came back that day

33:10and said, Oh, it's rented. It was like a vacation rental, like Airbnb before Airbnb. Right. She's

33:14like, it's rented already. It was so important. Roland calls his business, his entertainment

33:19attorney. Okay. John Dean was fantastic and said, buy the villa. And by Monday, Roland owned a villa in

33:24Puerto Vallarta. It's like 5 million bucks. I was talking to Dean. I was like, you know, maybe I come

33:31from a smaller means and this is shocking to me and no one else here, but like, wow, like what's up with

33:36that? And he goes, listen, there was a room down there where in the morning, the light comes in over the

33:40pool and we write in that room. And we never think about studio notes that are going to come

33:45about cast availabilities. We never think about, you know, box office. We write the movie we'd want

33:51to see. And that's worth it to us. And they went down there, you know, as we know now, they came

33:56back six weeks later with the script that became the third highest grossing movie in film history.

34:00Right. And it was that interesting that that association of place generated for them a trigger

34:05of flow state of like, we're in the flow. We're not distracted by any of these things. And it's not to

34:09say you need a, you know, $5 million villa later at DreamWorks. When I was with Alex

34:15Kurtz and Bob Orsi at DreamWorks, they, when they were, for those who don't know, these are the

34:19writers of Mission Impossible 3, The Island, Zorro, Transformers 1 and 2, Star Trek 11, Ringe,

34:24just amazing, amazing guys. When they were under the gun, like, oh, you got to turn in Transformers

34:282 in two weeks. Right. We were on the little Amblin compound, you know, the DreamWorks compound

34:32at Universal Studios Hollywood and a little back portion for a lot. They would have their assistant

34:37rent-a-room at the Universal Hilton across Langersham, which is, I'm just going to say,

34:42it's not a luxury property. It's a place where you go with your kids the night before the rides

34:46because it's close to Universal, right? Okay. That's why you're there. And I was thinking,

34:49they're pulling down one, two million of script. They could, they could go to Bali if you go

34:53anywhere to write. Why that? And it hit me. It was very similar to Roland and Dean. They had met

34:59in college. And I think that sense of being in that room with like Kurtzman on the edge of the bed

35:05with his MacBook and Bob at the little desk in the room with his MacBook evoked dorm room.

35:10They got into their flow state because that was how they learned to write together as students.

35:15And it brought them back to, we're scrappy young guys. You got to prove ourselves. And we're going

35:18to do this thing, right? That's fascinating because especially in the world of remote and hybrid work,

35:23as you know, you can do whatever it is you do. You're a CPA, you're an author, you're an engineer,

35:27whatever the thing is you do, right? You can do it from a coffee shop. You can do it from your

35:30kitchen table. You can do it from your dining room, your sofa, and your living room. You can do it,

35:33you know, all over the place. And what you're missing then is that ability for your brain to

35:37start having that mental trigger of like, I'm here in the upstairs office. Got it. This is where I

35:42code. And you start to do that routinely and your brain falls in exactly like Alex and Bob,

35:46writing Transformers, exactly as Roland and Dean, you know, doing Independence Day. So it's a free

35:52technique. So I'll say, first of all, thank you. I'm sure we could talk for hours and I definitely

35:56want to do this again and pick up. Yeah, let's throw this. This is super fun. Plus, you know all this

36:01stuff. So it's great talking. Oh, I love it. And it's relevant. And I think that if there was one

36:07piece of advice, I know you got a bunch of ideas and stuff, but if there was only one piece of advice

36:11that you could give to... Absolutely. I'll say exactly what it is. What would it be? When you

36:16wake up in the morning, know the one thing, identify the one thing, what is it will move your life

36:21forward? And remember it all day because you'll get caught up in, I got to pay this bill, answer that

36:27thing, get on the Zoom call, file that thing. If it is, you're writing a book today, what I can do is

36:33I can outline chapter three. And you just remember that you start the day with going, today is about

36:37outlining chapter three. Everything else is noise. Man, I agree with you. I know you do. You've

36:44thought about this a lot. I wrote my first book I wrote in 1999 and it only took me a few days.

36:49It just, it flowed. Literally a few days, done. I avoided distractions. I got in the zone and let it rip.

36:55So if people want to know more about you between now and the next time when we get to visit...

37:00Oh, sure. Yeah.

37:01Easy to reach, learn about your company, you and what you do and how you help businesses and people.

37:05Anyone who's listening at this point, I am grateful for you. I hope there have been

37:08interesting and valuable things we've shared. Mason, thank you for inviting me on. If there's

37:12anything someone wants to know more about, my email address is very public. It's steven,

37:16S-T-E-V-E-N, at the Sukha company, T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A dot C-O for company. Email me. Who's that

37:25Hungarian dude you talked about? What's the technique I can use for this? I will happily

37:29reply to you. It does not have to be about my company. It could be just, hey man, I'd like to

37:32learn more. I'll send you a blog post on something, right?

37:35Cool. Are you on LinkedIn?

37:37Yeah, LinkedIn. I'm not as quick to reply on LinkedIn because I don't have notifications set on it.

37:41Ha ha. See that? See that? But I'm better with email. And if someone

37:45does want to try getting into a flow state, find a task you need to do because as you know, Mason,

37:50like you need to work for an hour. You need to have something meaningful to do. You can't get

37:53in a flow state in three minutes and you can try for three days free. It's obviously at the Sukha

37:58company, T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A dot C-O. Sign up, give it a shot, drop in the group chat, say hi. Hey man,

38:04I heard you on Mason's podcast. I'm here to, you know, experiment with flow states and we'll all

38:08welcome you in. It's a nice community. It's been a pleasure, man. Thank you so much for coming.

38:12It's been great. Let's do this again soon.

38:14I will look forward to episode two. Okay. Have a great afternoon.

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