Are you trapped in the cycle of reactiveness?

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The clock read 2:17 am.

Ever since he turned 43, Tim’s bladder could no longer handle stretches over 4 hours.

As he tip-toed back from the bathroom, he saw the notification flash on his phone.

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it. DON’T DO IT,” he reminded himself.

He’d been trying to keep his phone out his bedroom for years — but who has a physical alarm?

He crept over to peek. He saw the 4-letter word and grabbed the phone.

MUSK.

He quietly mouthed “YES” and did little fist pump. (He did own 20 shares, after all.)

With energy coursing through his veins, he felt frisky and couldn’t resist.

He opened up his work email.

7 new emails. Not bad, considering he had last checked at 11:15 pm.

• Tim archived three newsletters.
• He replied “sounds good” to another.
• He labeled two PDFs as “To Read.”

And sent one last message to clarify an indemnification clause.

With his Inbox back at zero, he felt a brief burst of excitement.

“Tim-Box Zero strikes again,” he said to himself.

He then tossed and turned in his bed — finally getting back to sleep 2 hours later at 4:20 am.

***

Tim’s a 43 year-old manager at a Big Four accounting firm. He’s got a few nicknames:

His colleagues call him Tim-Box Zero because he’s got folders, apps, TextExpanders and hacks to always keep those emails at bay.

(We call him $10 Tim, because he constantly falls into the trap of low-value busywork. He gets seduced by quick dopamine hits — forgoing long-term investments in developing his career, building up his skill-base and becoming a more attentive father.)

$10 Tim is at a career crossroads. He’s senior enough to not have to worry about bills, vacations and his daughter’s fancy Montessori.

But he’s also stuck on the hamster wheel. Every day feels like Groundhog Day.

Sure, he could put his head down and get promoted in 7 years to partner (but he’d be 50!).

Yet he’s got a nagging sensation that “that’s not it”.

Thankfully, there’s a glimmer of hope. An escape hatch from the multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheets and mind-numbing Data Rooms.

He’s got an interview this afternoon. It’s for an Accounting Lead role at Stripe (the pre-IPO Unicorn). It’s Tim’s first interview in nearly a decade.

***

$10 Tim is feeling sluggish as he walks down the stairs for breakfast.

When he sees his wife Cathy, he tries to give her a big high 5. “Did you see my main man Musk came through? Omakase sushi dinner tonight?”

Cathy knew that Tim was a great accountant. But schemes to make money online were his Achilles heel.

$10 Tim rode the first Crypto wave with great success — only to tap out during the two year Crypto Winter of 2018.

$10 Tim day traded meme stocks during the pandemic, yet barely broke even.

In 2022, $10 Tim shelled thousands of dollars into online writing courses (“Babe, I really need to build my personal brand”). Yet he only posted two Atomic Essays (to little fanfare) before giving up.

(And Cathy did the quick math. 20 shares of Twitter was a touch over $1,000 of proceeds.)

“That’s great news, hon,” she said. “But eye on the prize. Remember you have the Stripe interview this afternoon.”

Tim sat down to eat with his 8-year old daughter Ellie.

“Daddy, do you know what the world’s most dangerous animal is?” she asked playfully.

“Shark,” he answered confidently.

“Nope. Guess again.”

“Lion?”

“Nope. I’ll give you a clue. It has wings.”

“A vulture?” Tim had lost interest in the game. He popped into his email and archived two messages. He then opened Twitter and burst out laughing. The Elon Musk and Bill Gates Memes were unbelievable.

“Dad!” Ellie yelled. “You’re not even paying attention to me.”

“Sorry,” he blurted out. “Daddy just had to respond to an important email.”

“Liar, liar pants on fire. You’re on Twitter. Twitter is NOT your work.”

Tim had already forgotten their game, “Shark?”

“You already said that! It’s mosquitoes. But who cares, you literally have the attention span of a 4-year old.”

And she stormed away.

Tim had to run to his first Zoom call.

“I really hope you can focus for more than 5 minutes during your interview,” forewarned Cathy.

***

That zinger landed hard.

Because there was some truth to it.

$10 Tim was quietly suffering from Time Confetti.

He’d initially heard the term from Brigid Schultz’s book Overwhelmed: How to work, love and play when no one has the time. Time confetti was the fragmentation of attention. Schultz described this as:

Ellie was right. Tim couldn’t go more than 5 minutes before grabbing his phone to respond to a few emails.

He couldn’t read more than 5 pages of a book before alt-tabbing into Twitter to observe the outrage cycle du jour.

And this all came at a glaring cost.

Tim hadn’t thought strategically about his career in years.

• What kind of role would make him come alive?
• What skills did he need to thrive in a post-pandemic world?
• How could he strengthen his marriage?
• Was he a good dad?
  ​

He had no idea.

Every time he made time to think, he got seduced by a $10 task.

These tasks felt great in the moment. But they immediately gave him a dopamine hangover.

But now it was time for a reset.

The Stripe interview was his ticket out. Heck, maybe he could even snag a few pre-IPO options and a little extra cash.

He had blocked out half an hour to do some last minute prep.

***

The clock was ticking and $10 Tim was going to use a single Pomodoro cycle (i.e. 25 minutes of Deep Work) to stack the deck in his favor for his big interview.

$10 Tim opened his laptop. He had 17 browser tabs open with a smattering of links from Hacker News, Reddit, Glassdoor, HBR, First Round Review and Twitter.

Next he opened his email. His friend over at a16z had sent him 3 research reports on the Payments industry. He looked in his To Read Folder.

The research reports weren’t there.

He checked the next folder Learning.

They weren’t there either.

He searched Gmail for “Payments” and selected the PDF option. It pulled up 100 results. No dice.

He slammed his keyboard. “I wish I had a system that actually worked for me,” he exclaimed.

Tim checked his Pomodoro timer. Yikes, only 16 minutes left.

He re-opened Twitter remembering that he had seen one of these research reports in his timeline. He headed over to Advanced Search only to see a trending hashtag that he just couldn’t resist: #TwitterTakeover.

All of a sudden, the world stopped.

It was a utopia of memes.

Bezos.
Gates.
Progressives.
Conservatives.
Libertarians.
Kayne.
Drake.
Grimes.
Tesla Bulls.
Tesla Bears.
The Pope.

There was literally something for everyone.

$10 Tim couldn’t help himself.

He DM’d one to his brother-in-law. He sent another to his WhatsApp group chat. He even wanted to send one to Cathy, but knew that the optics would look bad.

And then he was jolted by the timer.

The interview was starting in 5 minutes.

***

How Tim can stop spinning his wheels and reclaim focus

Tim is stuck in the quadrant of low-value $10 Work. Yes, he's made it quite far in his career, but he's playing the game of email whack-a-mole while his biggest priorities fall by the wayside.

Tim's easiest win is setting up a system - any system - to tame all of the inputs in his life. A simple task management system (whether it's a Personal Kanban Board or Getting Things Done) will slow the flow of information so that he actually has time to think.

Next, Tim needs to retrain his focus muscle by carving out Thinking Time. A small win, 25 minutes per week would be more than enough. This would let Tim identify and re-prioritize activities that will accelerate his career.

Sign up for Supercharge Your Productivity (and get $498 in bonuses)

If you're overwhelmed by the inputs in your life and want to learn a powerful way to rethink and reset priorities, Supercharge Your Productivity is the course for you.

During our live 4-week course, you'll learn how to:

• Stay focused on the most important things in life
• Think bigger (versus making smaller things better)
• Stop putting things off until some imaginary future date
• Invest in improving your mind, career and relationships

​

Plus, if you enroll by April 28th (Noon EST) you’ll receive our two most popular courses (a bonus valued at $498): The GTD Power-Pack and The Fulfilling Path to Financial Independence.

👉 Enroll in Supercharge Your Productivity today (and get $498 in bonuses)​

***

Tomorrow, you'll meet $100 Hal (aka "Hundo Hal.") Unlike Tim, Hundo Hal is a systems geek. In fact, he's so deep into the systems that it's created a blind spot that encourages "small thinking."

If you have any questions about the course, just hit reply. Our team is standing by and will get back to you ASAP.

With gratitude,

Khe

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