IT Leaders

00;00;00;15 - 00;00;20;08
Jason Johnson
I wanted to ad hoc things here real quick. I said this to Dell earlier, and it kind of struck me. It's applicable to my actual talk. But if I told you guys, like, I was going to park for you after this, and I was going to have my first brain surgery ever, like, how would that make you feel?

00;00;20;11 - 00;00;42;20
Jason Johnson
I got a guy laughing down here, Dell said. Where are your 12 years of experience? Right? And yet sometime in the next couple of weeks, somebody in this room, or definitely somebody in Fort Wayne is going to promote an individual contributor to a manager overnight. They're going to congratulate them and send them on their way. And it's just as close to brain surgery.

00;00;42;20 - 00;01;02;16
Jason Johnson
Or, you know, we're all in the psychologist business, psychology, business, whether we want to be or not. As as me saying I'm going to go be a brain surgeon, just wrap your head around that. Like, what are you doing to help accelerate those leaders and make sure that they have the right tools to be successful? I'm a big believer in, mentorship and coaching.

00;01;02;19 - 00;01;17;26
Jason Johnson
I, I'll share a story real quick with you. I had a coach. My very first coach. Mentor was a very impactful to my life. And, when I was in my early Sweetwater career, we had about 7 or 8 employees. That worked for me at the time. I was talking to resources. Like, show me your plans.

00;01;17;26 - 00;01;33;12
Jason Johnson
Show me your plans for next week. Show me your plans for the next couple of months. I'd love to see how you're planning. And he was trying to get me to Smart goals. But, I said, oh, I don't plan. And he said, why? I said, oh, because I worked for this founder named Chuck. And he comes in on Monday morning and we all have a meeting, and he decides what we're going to do for the week.

00;01;33;12 - 00;01;45;13
Jason Johnson
And that's kind of how we run the company. And so I can't plan because he doesn't plan. He doesn't tell me what he's going to talk about on Monday. We just kind of figure it out. He goes, really? And I said, yeah. And he goes, so you don't get plans, any of the people that work for you? Nope.

00;01;45;13 - 00;02;05;05
Jason Johnson
Don't. He says okay. He says, can we agree for a minute that for like that the Chuck's going to come in and blow up like 30% of your week? And me being really immature person was like, oh, 30%. That's crazy. He's probably 5% max, maybe 10% on the worst week. And he looks at me, he goes, you're telling me you're not willing to plan 95% of the tasks in your week?

00;02;05;07 - 00;02;23;03
Jason Johnson
Because some guy might change 5% of it? And I remember it was just one of those coaching unlock moments where I looked at him. I said, well, Pat, you know, you make me feel like a real big idiot when you say it like that. You got to get a coach. You got to have a mentor. So a little bit about me if you don't know me.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;45;28
Jason Johnson
I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Graduated Homestead High School information systems degree. I it's actually where main focus is in networking. So I'm a big packet capture guy. Left for the U.S. Navy. When I graduated high school, did a whole bunch of things in flight weapons systems and information technology and a bunch of cool stuff, and then joined Sweetwater in 2013.

00;02;45;28 - 00;03;06;10
Jason Johnson
And that's been a wild ride. Today is actually my 12th anniversary there. And, when I. Well, thanks. So what that looks like is when I started, there was I was a six person in it, and I started on the help desk. Our first year, we did $230 million with business. And, this year, the 186 people in it, 1.7 billion.

00;03;06;11 - 00;03;25;09
Jason Johnson
There's not a system in that building that we haven't replaced ripped out multiple times over those years. The growth has just been a very, very, very wild ride. Personally, my wife Kelsey, my daughter Riley, and my son Logan, are the most important things in the entire world to me, as I'm sure your family is to you.

00;03;25;11 - 00;03;41;15
Jason Johnson
In the last couple years, I've become a private pilot. And that's been hugely inspirational for me. It's kind of the mash up of of, calmness in the air in combination with a whole bunch of planning and avionics and geeky tech stuff at the same time. And I'm a geek through and through. I have a 42 rack in my basement, big home lab.

00;03;41;15 - 00;04;08;19
Jason Johnson
I got multiple Kubernetes clusters. My wife always complains that our printer never works. And I go live it at home for sure. A couple pictures, actually. These were taken from early January up in the plane. So one of the most beautiful things I love about going up in the plane is, when it's crazy and when it's overcast and and and gray down here all the time, there's a really thin layer, and you get to go up there and realize that the world is full, much more of sun than it is from from greatness.

00;04;08;19 - 00;04;23;22
Jason Johnson
So hey, a friend, my presentation really is going to be focused on what doors are closing, what are you delegating and how are you preparing to open the next door. So.

00;04;23;24 - 00;04;46;07
Jason Johnson
Everybody wants gross, but have you ever considered yourself on Promotable. So anybody know what that means? What makes you, promotable to valuable in your current role, to valuable in your current role? Right. Don't get trapped. You know, you got to move upstream. You got to treat. You got to treat the actual problem instead of the symptoms.

00;04;46;07 - 00;05;05;00
Jason Johnson
Everybody knows that classic IT person is like, oh, we'll just reboot it again, right? Keep moving on. That stuff catches up with you, you know, how are you looking at lead measures versus lag measures? So does everybody understand lead measures over lag measures? Right. Lag measure is when I step on the scale in the morning. Lead measure.

00;05;05;02 - 00;05;24;09
Jason Johnson
How many calories am I taking in every day. Right. What are the actions that I'm going to take are going to output that. And the other reminder here before we move on this slide, is that we all have 168 hours, no matter how busy you are or anything else, how much money you have, etc. we all have the same amount of hours and every single week as each other.

00;05;24;12 - 00;05;30;17
Jason Johnson
It's the it's the even playing field.

00;05;30;19 - 00;05;55;23
Jason Johnson
There's, there's a lot of pride in firefighting that may feel like they have a firefighting culture at work. It's fascinating. Bell raised his hands. And it it it's common. It. Do you know why it's common? You're here. You're it's a hero's mentality. Exactly right. No one no one gets credit for the server that never failed because you had a monitoring alarm go off at 2:00 in the morning and somebody woke up for it.

00;05;55;26 - 00;06;20;26
Jason Johnson
It's incredible. I, I would say like in my career, I've met people that are addicted to it. It's all they know. It's that resonate with anybody. See some rescuer. One of the hardest things for me was, like two truths. I'm I like I like to think upstream so much that, like, you know, when there was an outage, I'm the guy who, like, looked at it, actually had this happen.

00;06;20;26 - 00;06;38;05
Jason Johnson
I had a mentor that was working at the time to help me level set it, but a team had been up until like 2:00 in the morning that working on this problem. The next day everybody wakes up their heroes. Right? And I went to check their backlog and they had this deprioritized card that had been in existence for like six months that would have prevented that issue.

00;06;38;12 - 00;06;58;09
Jason Johnson
And my brain was like, you can't be heroes, you can't be an arsonist. And the firefighter, right? It doesn't work like that. Well, there can be two truths there, right? You can be a hero because you state of fixing it. And you also can be somewhat at fault because you didn't prioritize it or move upstream to fix it.

00;06;58;09 - 00;07;20;12
Jason Johnson
And sometimes that just happens. But, you know, I would be thinking about the two truths aspect. So I want to give you some, some ideas to talk about here. Time multipliers. So anybody know what that means? Start thinking in time multipliers. What am I going to do today that's going to gain me more time in the future?

00;07;20;12 - 00;07;38;18
Jason Johnson
I think there's a great x CD's get out there that's like engineers will spend this much time to save them, you know, this much time over the whole. But I think about that all the time. Like what are the things, that I can do that will save me time and sometimes that will save me 10s but allow me to remain focused.

00;07;38;18 - 00;07;55;25
Jason Johnson
So I wrote some of them. Now a keyboard shortcut. How many of you have a custom keyboard shortcut? Your program for something, right? Sounds silly. Male rules I have hundreds and hundreds of male rules. My apps teams get so mad at me because my mailbox will get messed up and I'll be like, they're like, we know it's one of your rules.

00;07;55;25 - 00;08;11;15
Jason Johnson
I'm like, I don't think so. I've gone through them. They're like, how do you know you have hundreds of them? Like, how are you just filtering out the noise? How are you? Automating away that hey, I'm going to file this in a folder. I'm going to do this like, that's a huge, huge, huge lift. I created a Power Automate relatively recently.

00;08;11;16 - 00;08;26;22
Jason Johnson
That's pretty cool. It's just a folder in my inbox. It says unsubscribe. And when I hit it, Power Automate picks it up and responds back to the person says, I have no interest in your service. It's a little bit nicer than this, but I have no interest in your service. Please remove me from your list right now. Everywhere I'm on the go, file it an unsubscribe folder.

00;08;26;24 - 00;08;46;05
Jason Johnson
Leave it alone. I can't tell you how much time I think that has saved me, as all of our mailboxes are full of salespeople, you know, hitting us up over every little thing with those tiny little things. I have another power automate. I recently did, I produce a weekly report to the CEO. So anybody else have a weekly report that's due to their boss?

00;08;46;08 - 00;09;06;01
Jason Johnson
Right. Power automate wakes up on Monday, creates a draft email for me, puts the subject line perfectly right. Lays in the bolts exactly how I want them. Sends me an email telling me my emails in the draft folder. So when I wake up on Monday morning, I'm like, oh, that's right, I can start automatically just adding stuff to that email as I go along through the week and then press Send on Friday.

00;09;06;03 - 00;09;25;19
Jason Johnson
That Power Automate took me forever to figure out, embarrassing amount of time when Aaron says I'm the dumbest person on it, we give, Wonderlic score. I say we give a Wonderlic test to everybody, and I have the lowest score out of everybody. I'm pretty proud of that. I say that all the time. Like I am literally the smart, least smart person out of all of you.

00;09;25;21 - 00;09;49;09
Jason Johnson
I hope we don't hire anybody lower than me. Delegation. I don't I don't know how many of you think you're doing delegation right, but the vast majority of people do it wrong. I know I do it wrong all the time. It's been a probably one of the hardest skills I've had to pick up. Who feels like they're a really great delegator?

00;09;49;11 - 00;10;11;22
Jason Johnson
Nobody. Go ahead. And I just started my job. Yeah. So I think it's really. It's up to delegate in you grown up in the company. So if you're being and, we pass in 2013. Right. Six people, 283 million sales of 1.7 billion headroom slides that and it's really hard for you to do that because it's a snowball effect.

00;10;11;22 - 00;10;32;12
Jason Johnson
Right? You just keep getting these responsibilities. You understand everything probably about how your, operations. So for you and your position I'd say is very, very difficult. I'm 90 days in their happens already. Delegate it. The team's already brought it. So I'm picking and choosing what I want to figure out what I want to do. Yeah, even the rest of the team.

00;10;32;14 - 00;10;47;25
Jason Johnson
So it's anyway being great. Deliver is easy when you're in. And he was. Yeah. No, that's a it's a fair point. You know, one of the biases I have I don't know if you guys do, but oftentimes there is something somebody comes to me and they say, hey, we have this really old script. Nobody knows anything about.

00;10;47;25 - 00;11;00;03
Jason Johnson
It pops in my head. I go, I should have documented that. I should have wrote some. I you should have wrote some training around that I could delegated. If I wrote some training around it, I'll just jump in there and fix it.

00;11;00;05 - 00;11;23;03

But now I go to batch. The animation is the same thing. The delegation also requires all of this work up front. Yep. And then it's fast. But for some reason we're much more willing to say, I'm going to write 14 tests so that I never have to write these two words again. There we are to say, I'm going to sit down and write delegation, write this documentation so that I can delegated.

00;11;23;06 - 00;11;28;20

It's exactly the same process. What I'm very willing to do when we're ferrying up. Yeah.

00;11;28;22 - 00;11;49;05
Jason Johnson
The other piece of it is what about just going and saying, hey, I know there's no documentation about that. Let me tell you everything I know in the next three minutes. I'm right here. If you need something, don't feel don't feel bad about, reach it out. Draft the documentation. I'll QA it for you. I can. In all those cases, I did less work than the person I gave the work to.

00;11;49;08 - 00;12;14;17
Jason Johnson
Guy. Because you see, for me, the, the forcing myself to delegate has help. So I, I find that the best way for me to delegate is to overcommit on the things that I know I'm supposed to be great interacting with other executives or those kind of things, the things of my new job that my old job at then and I just I have to because I just don't have enough time.

00;12;14;22 - 00;12;31;22
Jason Johnson
Yeah. Because I heard was the over. Yeah, for sure I love it. You said something in there to leading the witness a little bit, but the things that you're supposed to do as technologists, as people who come from a technical background, it's really easy to get stuck in that trap of going, well, I'm a leader. I know I need to be working with other peers in the business.

00;12;31;22 - 00;12;49;25
Jason Johnson
I know I need to be involved in this project, but somebody just asked me to fix the script, right? You're back to that hero's mentality. I can do that. It's tangible. It feels good. Building relationships, depending on who you are as a human being, can can be a forced trade, right. And we've really just talked about like task delegation.

00;12;49;25 - 00;13;12;18
Jason Johnson
We haven't even really talked about like ownership, delegation, which is a whole nother level of saying like, you own this. Go ahead, Mark, issue is it's about a transfer forward. I realized when deep work, I mean free for decisions, I want to be in an position or power to make a decision, but also it's really good for your team to show you trust in them.

00;13;12;18 - 00;13;38;12
Jason Johnson
Make a decision process and their mistakes are okay. You know, you're a coach through that. There's a different coach next time, but it gives them the opportunity to develop their skills, do a little bit more and then take some of your play. So personally. Yeah, yeah I think two schools might be willing to share so I can Bezos what wins or or stealing from those before we oversee.

00;13;38;12 - 00;14;00;24
Jason Johnson
Right. Or but growth. Are we steering from this. Yeah. Well, we do that we don't often have think about that way. Right. But we lessons are doing that. Yeah. The two things that I hear the most common are the first one is not going to do it the way I want them to do it. So I'm not going to delegate it or, you know, I delegated to them, but I didn't get the right follow up.

00;14;00;24 - 00;14;24;05
Jason Johnson
I didn't get the right you know, they didn't tell me when it was done. And I wanted to know when it was done, like there's some sense of loss of control, in that process. Right. And that's the easiest answer in the world. You just, you delegate it that you delegate it that way. Right? Like, hey, I'd like to spend a little time on a whiteboard with you and let's talk about how you know you're going to do it or you're going to or you're going to architect it if you think that it's that way or, you know what?

00;14;24;08 - 00;14;43;10
Jason Johnson
I'd like you to check in with me about this every day. I'd like an email. At the end of the day, here's how you can work with me. Best. Right. Clever. I you just covered it because I think one of the challenges about delegating is releasing the appropriate level of authority, and that comes through clear communications of the expectations on the way.

00;14;43;15 - 00;15;06;03
Jason Johnson
So once you have that, then you should feel free to deliberate because you you had that conversation. Absolutely. I believe if you become a great delegator, you'll be like top 10% of all leaders. Like just with that one single skill. Huge, huge, huge. Mark, there's an emotional component to that deal. You and I, both sides of the equation to that we often don't address.

00;15;06;06 - 00;15;27;23
Jason Johnson
Yeah, right. It's hard feel like though it's often hard for the person to take it because they feel risk. Yeah. So addressing it I think can get that get that out in the open. And so some of it role. Yeah. Even to your point the like have you ever not delegated something because you were actually really technically excited about it.

00;15;27;26 - 00;15;45;00
Jason Johnson
Like you actually wanted to do it yourself, right? What a frustrating feeling to be like. Oh, we've had projects that have happened as we've grown our teams where I have been like, I've been thinking about that for like five years. I'm so glad we get to do it. And then you get this, you get FOMO, basically, right? You're just like, hey, I want to be in that.

00;15;45;03 - 00;15;58;19
Jason Johnson
You can get vulnerable with the person and say, I really want to be close to this one. Here's, I would really love to be a thought partner with you on it. I would really love to own part of this, you know, conversation with you. But as a coach, as a, as someone on the sidelines, you're playing football, right?

00;15;58;26 - 00;16;09;03
Jason Johnson
Quarterbacks in charge when they're out on the field, coaches on the sidelines. You don't see the coach run out to the middle of the field. Call timeout every once in a while. But it's about all you got.

00;16;09;06 - 00;16;13;10
Jason Johnson
What are some other good stuff about delegation that you guys have learned? Actually.

00;16;13;13 - 00;16;31;06

Something that I had to realize is back when I'm delegating, I need to be really clear about what's important to be on the outcomes on, you know, this is on delegating to you. This is what I expect. And that's usually some sort of deadline, some sort of communication back to me. But I needed to stay away from the how because that's really doing for me.

00;16;31;06 - 00;16;49;14

Manager. I don't want to micromanage them. And I also want to give them some room to be creative and grow. And it figures picked up themselves. But if I forget to communicate, hey, this is what I expected in terms of communication and and deadline, I get really anxious. And that's what I started. Started by myself again, like, hey, have you done that?

00;16;49;16 - 00;17;06;13

But also I don't want to be annoying and ask you, have you done that? And just be clear up with expectations. Just as a flutter tone for actually transferring the ownership instead of, trying to transfer the time. So maintaining state.

00;17;06;15 - 00;17;07;06
Jason Johnson
Yeah.

00;17;07;09 - 00;17;33;16

Yeah. I think another key piece of the delegation is how much and improves that ontology for your team. I think that's something that I had to recognize. I think somebody said that, you know, there's a feeling, Doug, I think you mentioned there's a risk involved in that. That how do we, hand off that risk to you and allow that person like Ashley or, say, come up with their own solution, Harlequins, tackle it and get a breath.

00;17;33;18 - 00;17;38;08

So I think it's a great opportunity to build the confidence of our team.

00;17;38;11 - 00;17;55;27
Jason Johnson
Absolutely. I love what Doug said earlier. I'm going to use that. But you know, bad news early is good news, right? And delegation. I know every person in this room probably delegated something in their person they gave it to came up to, five minutes before it was due and explained that they were struggling with a problem for the last three weeks straight.

00;17;55;27 - 00;18;14;18
Jason Johnson
And you're going, oh geez, I wish you would have let me know. I could have helped, right? There's a little bit of discomfort in the idea that you're ultimately responsible for it. If it goes well, you get no credit, and if it goes poorly, you get all the blame. Right? But that's just kind of part of the gig.

00;18;14;18 - 00;18;43;16
Jason Johnson
I think accepting that psychologically can help with some of those anxieties. We got anything else on delegation? I think we delegates you you might have been doing it for five years, right, or whatever. And now this person is expected to do it after attending and discussion, you know, back again. So, I mean, documentation is an important and it also making sure that the, the employee understands that, they do it this way.

00;18;43;16 - 00;19;02;20
Jason Johnson
But if you identify anything that could optimize this process, I could optimize the work and make it easier, having a, you know, openness and that dialog with you to, to say, hey, this is what I'm seeing after doing this process for two months. Yeah. I think that's also very healthy. Yeah. I'm. So is it in a mission mindset?

00;19;02;26 - 00;19;10;25
Jason Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. A process improvement mindset. Yeah.

00;19;10;28 - 00;19;30;13
Jason Johnson
Great. So this is the next thing. I love this one. I'll ask you guys, I've done this with probably 100 people easily who have come to me and they said, like, I just don't have enough time in my day. I don't know where it's all going. You know, I'm frustrated. I'm not getting any of my goals done.

00;19;30;16 - 00;19;40;10
Jason Johnson
But the number one thing I say is like, let's write out your goals on a whiteboard, okay? We write on a girls and write blog whiteboard. And then I'm going to I'm going to look at your calendar.

00;19;40;12 - 00;20;01;13
Jason Johnson
I'm gonna say your calendar says you're involved in these ten projects. Your goals say you're involved in this. Do you want to get these ten projects done right? Like are you actually inspecting where you're spending your time? Are you auditing yourself? Calendar alignment is really, really, really hard. We have the things we want and we tend to just kind of drift away from them.

00;20;01;15 - 00;20;25;01
Jason Johnson
Over time, it's probably the number one thing I dig into when I, when I work in a mentorship coaching relationship with somebody who experienced this, how many you think your calendar will reflect where you actually want to be this year? Good for you, Bob. It's I'm saying to you, man. Yeah, he very impactful. What is on the out there?

00;20;25;02 - 00;20;52;29
Jason Johnson
It's hard, isn't it? Very, it's hard because you have to say no. It forces you to say no to things. Who else will help with this? Like forcing you to block what you need, right? Or make time to put it like our. Yeah, totally. Who else has got some good lessons on this?

00;20;53;02 - 00;21;13;20
Jason Johnson
All right, I'll give you one. So this is something I do about every three months. This is an Excel workbook I lay out the week. I did this last time in September. Lay out everything in 15 minute increments. How many of you have actually done a real lifetime study on yourself? Okay, go ahead. Not probably to. You're all a detail plan.

00;21;13;22 - 00;21;34;13
Jason Johnson
I like to go back me to look at a week or month and see where time is spent, to make sure that got the right things. Oh, my. Yeah. There's a, there's like a, there's an old saying, right, that we underestimate what we can get done in an hour or a day. And we way overestimate what we can get done in a year.

00;21;34;13 - 00;21;56;10
Jason Johnson
This is a great gut check with us. I hate these weeks, I really do. I hate when I force myself to do this. It's very hard because you got to get really honest. But I literally just go through and block things out. And, you can see in red here, I don't know what happened to that 15 minutes, I really don't I went back in my day, I said, oh crap, I lost, I lost that, you know, laying this over top of your calendar.

00;21;56;10 - 00;22;14;08
Jason Johnson
Did you actually attend the meetings you thought you were going to attend? Do you are you actually creating the space? What are you doing with your downtime? You know, my calendar today. My calendar has maybe one 20 minute block free. I'm probably just going to be exhausted during that 20 minutes and sit around and do nothing, or check email or or whatever else.

00;22;14;08 - 00;22;43;09
Jason Johnson
I've pulled this up before and I've been like, wow, I've been sitting here doing email for two hours. This is super, super powerful. And aligning, aligning your time with where you want to be and where you want to go and finding what are the repetitive things that maybe you're doing. I've had, I'll get to you a second, Chris, but I've had, several times that I've had someone come up and I've realized in the course of the week they've asked me 5 or 6 questions for a half hour, you know, every day about something different, about the same thing.

00;22;43;09 - 00;23;06;05
Jason Johnson
And I don't say that badly, but it's in this particular case, the person actually was struggling with something completely different, and they were trying to get touch points with me. It's like, oh, let's go spend some time with them. Let's go figure out what's going on in their world. And, and I hate to say why they're bothering me, but why I'm giving up this time to them that's not aligned with where I want to go and what's happening with the leadership and managers and projects in their world kind of down there.

00;23;06;05 - 00;23;33;20
Jason Johnson
That's not causing them to to go to the right place to ask you to reinforce, however, what good, counsel is, is that, like, took me a long time to realize that, like, obviously, you know, the CEO, the CFO know what? They're they're running their life from their calendar. And if you look around, generally, the people one layer above you and the organization are doing a lot better job at their calendar.

00;23;33;20 - 00;24;06;18
Jason Johnson
Manage with the other with I just absolutely a skill like you have to have as you move up and one of the ways you can help yourself advance is better manager out. Yeah. How many of you feel like you're. Yes. People. Yeah, I definitely do. I feel like there should be a lot more hands, most people in it to get to a leadership position because they say, yes, it's this gnarly thing that we do in it is like to say no to things, right?

00;24;06;21 - 00;24;31;10
Jason Johnson
That leads to this problem. And you're not a super person. We all are super. But at the end of the day, there's only 168 hours. Jason, do you have a belief on what your maximum on lead is at night for Senior Day, or do you feel like. I mean, this is a template, right? At this point you're aiming at do you think that, practically speaking, that's 80% or 90%?

00;24;31;13 - 00;24;48;03
Jason Johnson
Yeah. He can actually nap and occupy. What? No, I'd love to be closer to 50%. I would love to have 50% free time every day and 50% calendar time. What I tend to do is go through the cycle where that gets to an unhealthy spot. When it gets to an unhealthy spot, then I do a time study.

00;24;48;05 - 00;25;16;03
Jason Johnson
Then I sit down, I review my calendar and figure out where am I going, and then I try to rearrange everything on my calendar as best I possibly can, to try to kind of create a flow or realign against where I'm, where I'm at and, and try to get back to a 5050 balance. And it has ebbs and flows around for me personally around board meetings and just other big events where it, you know, it's a little bit more than I want it to be, meeting wise.

00;25;16;05 - 00;25;42;09
Jason Johnson
And I also find out that I get booked in a lot of our meetings that end 30 minutes or 35 minutes long, and you can't let that time evaporate away from you. And in a place like Sweetwater, it's probably the worst that's ever been for me. While I was in the government. And you had a desk and you're in classified spaces, and you had five people that worked around you and it was hard to leave, and it was hard to go, you know, it was different.

00;25;42;12 - 00;26;03;14
Jason Johnson
And at Sweetwater, we have it's I can wander out to the down by diner and grab a bag of Skittles and stand there and talk to ten people for her, you know, as long as I want. And it feels really good. So that, that that same superpower that Sweetwater has with its hype, with its hyper collaborative, environment for someone like me, can also be a Kryptonite.

00;26;03;17 - 00;26;08;15
Jason Johnson
Any other stories around calendar management at all? Who has a good calendar hack?

00;26;08;17 - 00;26;30;24

I just did, work, but basically all about like, productivity. And one of the things I did was color blocking on my calendar, where it's not necessarily the task itself, but it's a task thing that I assigned colors to, and I fit those particular tasks in that time block. And that's how I fill.

00;26;30;24 - 00;26;39;00
Jason Johnson
Out my schedule. And it looks like it's a driver time constraint yourself. Do you ever like, set a timer or like, say like, I'm going to go do this for only this amount of time?

00;26;39;00 - 00;26;43;00

Yeah, I talked about the Pomodoro technique with the 25 minutes on.

00;26;43;00 - 00;27;09;15
Jason Johnson
Another five minutes off. Yeah. Do you feel like that's helpful? I do, yeah. It's not able to do that. I timebox to achieve the same. Like, you know, I found for me learning and reading, that's like a really great way. If I want to learn something or research something that time boxing, that specifically is a great way not to, become distracted by the next outlook pop up or whatever.

00;27;09;18 - 00;27;33;10
Jason Johnson
Because I don't I mean, I love to learn and read, but sometimes it's a four straight for me actually sitting down and focusing on it and getting started, you know, I can be hard to go for. I was going to at NASA's next one point, we were doing the working genius was give me networking dishes.

00;27;33;13 - 00;28;08;28
Jason Johnson
G on a scale that Tommy kind of looks. Yeah, yeah, in my mind. So, but what are the thinking about, setting up an environment that removes some of those distractions? So you talk about time boxing for maybe semantics or anything else like that, and removing the things that always kind of think that, like, you know, your phone and the alerts or the notifications or not being in the same room with the computer or things like that, that will help eliminate some of those things that nick at or nibble at those times.

00;28;08;28 - 00;28;13;19
Jason Johnson
It's a set up. Yeah. As I.

00;28;13;21 - 00;28;29;06

I was block out times where I need to do specific tasks, especially if they're deep thought tasks. And one of my favorite tricks for outlook is that you can reply to an email with a meeting invite and then just delete the person off of theirs was just a really invite to yourself. And then that takes on the information.

00;28;29;10 - 00;28;39;13

You know that you need to focus on and and respond to and deep thought, whatever. And then keep setting that meeting and try it and then box it on like a calendar so that you but just another respond to it.

00;28;39;19 - 00;29;04;21
Jason Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. That's an awesome hack. Yeah. One other thing too is just knowing what types of work at different times during the day you're good at sometimes like, and if you pull at these times or these are what I can, you know, really, you know, process things and just sort of knowing what times of day differ, you know, modes you need to be in now where you where you kind of excel at those.

00;29;04;23 - 00;29;19;21
Jason Johnson
Yeah. I think, I 100% I call that a lot of times when I do my time study and I rearrange my calendar, I'm looking to create some sort of flow, and I've experimented with lots of different things. I used to think that stacking all my one on ones in one afternoon would be the best way to just flow.

00;29;19;24 - 00;29;41;22
Jason Johnson
That's a huge emotional burden. And so, you know, I do one a day about the same time across the week, those types of things where you think about what's that flow or even backed. We have a fairly large campus, like even back to can I help? Can I help figure out whatever's going on with the rooms so that I'm not leaving my office and running across the campus, and then back to my office and back and forth and back and forth?

00;29;41;25 - 00;30;01;00
Jason Johnson
For two reasons. One, because I just simply hate it. And then to just feels inefficient. And then the other reason is because every time I walk across the campus, I know somebody's going to hijack me for something. Right? Yeah. Hallway meeting on on that. And so you can try to limit that exposure and create flow, and then have a free half hour where you can wander the hallways and talk to people.

00;30;01;00 - 00;30;24;13
Jason Johnson
I'm not that downtime is, I think, some of the best use of your time as a leader to kind of make create those natural interactions with, with your team, and get into deep thought. So. Here my last thing is, have a system. And, this has been my kind of my personal journey. I don't know about you guys, but it seems like every year I'm like, I hate my to do app.

00;30;24;13 - 00;30;43;29
Jason Johnson
I'm going to throw it away. I'm going to go research what all the best to do apps are that exists. I'm going to spend all this time converting over to the new To-Do app. Like six months to a year later, I'm right back in the same boat. Does that resonate with anybody? What you. What I've learned about myself is that I really love the idea of getting really organized, and I love the idea of a better way of work.

00;30;43;29 - 00;30;57;26
Jason Johnson
And I love the idea of tracking all my tasks. And what I've come to learn in the last three years is you just got to freaking do it. At the end of the day, you just have to have a system. You have to keep it simple and you have to religiously use it.

00;30;57;28 - 00;31;16;24
Jason Johnson
And you will be wildly successful because you won't forget things. I never trust my brain. I trust myself the least out of anybody in my life, and I think that's the way to do it. That's the reason to delegate. That's the reason to write down everything that comes your way. But I would just hyper encourage you guys to have a system.

00;31;16;26 - 00;31;38;12
Jason Johnson
I have an app right now called Godspeed, which is pretty cool. It's very, very basic. Very inexpensive, but it's just a big. It's just a task list. That's it. Who else has got a great system? I use? Bob, what's your system? Using the count? Yeah. Yeah. No. For real. Here. You. Yeah. You need space in the calendar.

00;31;38;12 - 00;32;02;19
Jason Johnson
And if you don't, that's calendar for it. And you are going to 100%. Yep. Calendars wise one. No, because, it Austrian is. That might be. Yeah. No this is by individual right. So if I know I have a an an individual meeting coming up, I can understand when I've got going with that person. If it's an initiative, I, you know, keep my notes and stuff that way it's not perfect rain.

00;32;02;21 - 00;32;06;05
Jason Johnson
But yeah, this is whatever works for me. Yeah.

00;32;06;07 - 00;32;20;06

Let's say I use Google Calendar for my time blocking, but then I use Google Tasks because it integrates easily for my running to do list. And you can set like deadlines on those tasks. So it just shows up on there. Helder.

00;32;20;09 - 00;32;41;00
Jason Johnson
Yeah, you've got finger up there, but he has Trello for. Yeah, in seven years I think almost religiously. But if it's in my brain and I don't put it somewhere that's going to be gone tomorrow. So if I have a on at home and I'm not working, it goes on my to do list. And Trello is the only thing we use in Trello.

00;32;41;00 - 00;32;55;06
Jason Johnson
I used to be a big Trello guy. My wife and I have an entire Christmas thing in Trello, and I can hit reset and it moves all the cards, the left side, and we can organize them by who we have gifts for. Don't struggling with. We work our way all the way to wrapped in under the tree Kanban style.

00;32;55;09 - 00;32;56;25
Jason Johnson
Actually.

00;32;56;27 - 00;32;59;21

I use Microsoft to do but support.

00;32;59;24 - 00;33;01;22
Jason Johnson
To be Wunderlist. Yeah, yeah.

00;33;01;24 - 00;33;17;23

Most important thing too, that is setting the recurring tasks that I don't want to have to remember again. Is that automation? Everyone I've got to do time cards in every whatever, and setting reminders on. That's what I decide on. I can do it or back a night out to think about it. Yeah.

00;33;17;25 - 00;33;40;22
Jason Johnson
You just expand a time. All right. Anybody else? Any other last ones who just uses a notepad? I use a sophisticated notepad. That's a week and one and one place that's got a few different boxes. I'm back on paper, and it works beautifully for me. I take hundreds of pages of notes a week on paper next to my desk.

00;33;40;25 - 00;33;57;28
Jason Johnson
I never read it. I never review it. It's not my task management system. Seven times more likely to remember something if you write it down. So I have these pages and pages of crazy notes about stuff that and I, I'll even draw a checkbox next to it if I'm supposed to do it. I never look at it again.

00;33;58;00 - 00;34;19;22
Jason Johnson
I use a full focus planner. And that really well has, you know, what are my top three from this week where my top three for each day. I will keep it focused on whatever the goals I have. Is your strategy set that the day before the week of after the day morning. Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah.

00;34;19;25 - 00;34;27;09
Jason Johnson
But yeah, I think I try to do it at least the day before or the week before. The, the it usually has a.

00;34;27;09 - 00;34;28;20

Like a weekly gauge.

00;34;28;23 - 00;34;49;09
Jason Johnson
You can kind of go through, say, my upcoming week or do my top three, and then that can help set what my daily priorities are. Yeah. Great. That's all we got. Any questions comments, concerns.

00;34;49;11 - 00;34;50;12
Jason Johnson
Yeah. Thanks everybody.