You're procrastinating 80% of your time (here's how I fixed it)

I'm going to be honest. I'm pissed off.

I'm annoyed that nobody told me what I'm

about to tell you earlier in my career.

And it all makes sense now. It makes

sense as to why some people through

history have been so unbelievably

productive while other people don't seem

to make much progress at all. And it

comes down to this idea that I'm about

to tell you, which is called signal

versus noise. And I'm going to show you

how to implement it into your life. Oh,

and also there's this essay that I read

called Do Things That Don't Scale. I

read it like a decade ago and it's

changed my life so much. So many of you

are building things and you need to know

this essay. So stay with me. Stay with

me guys. Okay? We can do this. Just give

me 10 minutes of your time max. Okay.

Okay. I have to tell you this probably

to share it with you but also probably

because I've just learned something

about productivity, entrepreneurship,

building success which I can't get out

of my head. I just had Kevin Olirri on

the podcast who's a shark from Shark

Tank USA and he punched me in the face

with a point that he made about his

experience with Steve Jobs and how Steve

Jobs has this ability to understand what

the signal is versus the noise.

I used to work for Steve Jobs in the

early '90s making all of his educational

software. There's a concept that he

understood that very few people focused

on back then in the early '90s of signal

to noise ratio. His vision of signal was

the top three to five things you have to

get done in the next 18 hours. You're

going to get those three things or five

things done that you have deemed

critical for your mission. They must get

done today. Anything that stops you from

doing that is the noise.

So this signal to noise ratio to be

successful for Steve Jobs was 8020. 80

signal 20 noise. And as he was saying

it, I realized that it's like very much

the missing piece in my life at the

moment. Because as a creative and as

someone who has so many ideas, sometimes

I think I waste my energy pursuing

things that are not the signal are not

the most important thing to get done

today. And I think we can probably all

relate to the fact that sometimes we

wake up in the morning with one

particular plan and then our emails

happen and WhatsApp happens and we end

up drifting off into the noise and we've

lost a day which is taken away from the

signal because life is a zero- sum game.

there is a finite amount of things that

we can be doing. And it just made me

think, [ __ ] do you know what I should

do? What I should do is I should

organize everything that I have to do

today, every task that comes in into one

of two columns. The signal column, which

is the most important things, the things

that I woke up this morning focused on,

and a noise column. And so that's what

I've done. I've just, as you can see

over there on my laptop, I've basically

organized my tasks today into one of two

columns. There's a signal column and

there's a noise column. And everything

that comes onto my desk today and all

the things that I have buzzing around in

my head and on my to-do list are now

going to fall into one of those two

columns. Things that I have to do,

things that I have to get done today

because they're the most important stuff

to move me towards my goals, and things

that are noise. And the noise column are

things that I'm going to delegate to

other people. I've actually used this

clip that I'm about to show you of

Johnny Ives saying this over and over

and over and over again. Run the clip.

You can achieve so much when you truly

focus. And one of the things that Steve

would say, um, because I think he was

concerned that I wasn't, um, he would

say, um, how many things have you said

no to? And I would, honestly, I I would

have these sacrificial things cuz I I

mean, wanted to be very honest about it.

And so I say, oh, I said no to this and

no to that. and um he but he he knew

that I wasn't vaguely interested in

doing those things anyway. Um so there

was no real sacrifice. What what focus

means is saying no to something that you

with every bone in your body you think

is a phenomenal idea

and you wake up thinking about it but

you say no to it because you're focusing

on something else. in my calendar. I'm

going to have a signal and noise session

every morning to figure out what the

most important things to accomplish

today are. Let's try this together and

let's um stay in touch via via the

comment section. When you wake up

tomorrow, first thing you do when you

wake up tomorrow morning is create two

columns on a piece of paper or on

whatever tool you use and put the most

important things you want to accomplish

that day into the signal column and then

everything else into the noise column.

Let's see how we get on.

[Music]

I was just saying to Jamaima in there

that I have this new idea for us to

figure out how to make a really really

retentive podcast episode. We take the

episode unlisted link, we put it in

directio circle and from that we're

going to get the retention graph back

and then we're going to do the edit

based on that. And this this is the

first episode where we really like we

really do it that way. And the reason I

say this is because going forward in the

future, if we find this to be useful, we

can we'll we'll we can change our

processes. You see what I'm saying? And

Jamaima's response to me was I could see

in her face there was concern that it

would take too long and it would be too

manual based on our current process

because our current process runs like a

military operation. So adding something

into that process that would be a bit

clunky, a bit manual, and that we

haven't figured out, I could see was a

bit of a concern. As I saw that concern

in her face, Paul Graham's 2013 essay

sprung to mind and it's called do things

that don't scale.

What do things that don't scale means

doing things very manually for your

early customers.

So, let me give you an example. When

Airbnb, the founders of Airbnb, and I've

interviewed uh Brian Chesy from Airbnb

launched Airbnb, they noticed that their

users were uploading really, really bad

images of their Airbnbs to the website

and that was impacting the customer's

experience. So to figure out if this was

an important part of the customer

experience, the founders of Airbnb

manually went knocking on doors of their

users when they only had a couple of

users. And they said to those users,

"Can we come in and take professional

photos for you?"

I would go there and I'd be like, "Wow,

the photos are terrible. This is

actually a really nice house." And the

host like, "Well, I can't figure out how

to get photos onto my computer." And so

I went home with Joe and we borrowed a

camera from one of our friends and we

knocked on the door. I'm here, the

photographer. and they're like, "Wow,

this is a small company. The founders

also photographing my home."

Now, the founders of Airbnb knocking

doortodoor is not scalable. You're not

going to be able to do that with the

hundreds of millions of users that they

now have. At the start, it wasn't

scalable. It was so unbelievably

important that they did something that

wasn't scalable and later they could

figure out how to make it scalable. But

if they had obsessed over it being

scalable from day one, they never would

have done it. They never would have then

got the feedback from doing it and they

never would have had the hundred billion

dollar success that was Airbnb. Mark

Zuckerberg at Facebook manually pitched

users at Harvard to join Facebook in the

early days. It wasn't scalable. You

can't scale that. And when I say scale,

I mean you can't automate that process

of Mark Zuckerberg manually pitching the

three billion users that Facebook now

has. But in doing so, he got from zero

to one. He learned what he needed to

learn and then he figured out how to

scale. And another example is one of the

most famous companies in the world

called Stripe, which is probably worth

hundreds of billions of dollars now.

It's a payment company. And in the early

days, the founders Patrick and John

Collinsson would literally go to their

customers offices onto their computers

and install the software for them.

Absolutely didn't scale. You can't do

that for a billion people. And this is

really the point because so many

founders, they understand that they want

to reach a billion people. They want to

be the next Airbnb, the next Meta, the

next Stripe. So they think that they

have to behave like Stripe, Meta and

Airbnb behave now. They think they have

to think in scale. And this is where

they make the critical mistake because

all of those companies I just named,

none of them at the start were thinking

in terms of scale. Whenever you feel

like

something that is unscalable is going to

stand in the way of your team or you

figuring out the answer to a very

important question. You have to come

back to this phrase, which is do things

that do not scale.

Hey guys, it's me, Will. I edit these

videos, the one you're watching right

now here on Behind the Diary with Alex

on our team. Now, my goal is to sneak in

to every single one of these videos to

ask you guys to subscribe because the

more of you that subscribe, the better

these videos get, the bigger the channel

gets. But a few weeks ago, he said that

if this gets bigger than the main

channel, he will make me a millionaire.

So, do me a favor. If you want to see

Steve lose a million pounds, click

subscribe. These videos get better. It's

currently half 12 at midnight. Please

subscribe. I really want to get this

edit out. So, please, please subscribe.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Bye.

LA is now my new home and it's my home

because we want to build the business

out here. So, here's the context. Flight

Story is expanding into America. Our

first studio is actually in Boston where

Kirsten Holmes, who signed to Flight

Story, records her show. Our next

location is here in Los Angeles. And I

think our next location will be in New

York City, which will be our commercial

office. Isn't this crazy? Look, I'm

moving to America. That's the only

suitcase I took. Other than this is why

I wear black every day because if you

just wear the same outfit every day, you

can pack super light. People always take

the piss out of me cuz I think they

think I think I'm Steve Jobs. It wasn't

a choice I ever made. It's just life

gradually pushed me in the direction of

the path of least resistance. And that

ended up being just wearing the same

outfit every single day. But we could

run the maths on screen. Like if you

just saved 20 minutes a day on choosing

what to wear and then you saved one hour

a week on let's say things like travel

and packing.

How much of your life would you save?

Will Alex run the numbers? And listen,

some of you get tremendous amount of

value from picking your outfits and

fashion and all those kinds of things.

So knock yourself out. But if it's not

giving you tremendous value, if it's not

giving you more value than the time you

would save would give you, then maybe

that's a simple optimization, which is

just simplifying your wardrobe a little

bit.

Can I here in LA flying out to cans in

the south of France for the creativity

festival that takes place every single

year. Every marketeteer, every big

creator, every media owner flies out

there for this one festival. And I'm

going to show you behind the scenes. And

there's three lessons you're going to

learn. The first is about failure and

experimentation and why this is my

absolute religion and why it needs to be

yours. The single button which big

creators press every single day and why

you need to press that button too. And

lastly, this framework called value for

strangers which I preach to everybody,

but it seems that almost nobody

understands.

[Music]

Um, why do I do these things? I do these

things for multitude of reasons. Reason

number one is it's a great opportunity

to meet so many of you guys that listen

to the show. I have moments all the time

when I meet fans that stay with me

forever. So I'm hoping to have some of

those moments today. Reason number two

is it helps the business. So we make

lots of contacts with platforms and

partners that can help us build Flight

Story. But also again in the sake of

radical transparency, we get quite big

fees for coming out here. This trip will

make Flight Story about £200,000 because

of coming out here. That money goes into

the business. I think sometimes when

people hear that you're making 200k from

doing some talks, people think that the

money goes straight into your pocket,

but I'm building a business here. So,

the money doesn't um come to me.

Short-term sacrifice for long-term game

because we're going to try and build a

multi-billion dollar company. So, where

is the team?

Good luck.

Very good to see you. Big fan of yours

and been following your for many years.

Can I take a selfie with you?

Thank you.

Thank you so much. My pleas. Nice to

meet you. I want to welcome Steven

Bartlett.

So the biggest risk in innovation that

everybody is taking right now is not

taking enough risk. What we all know for

sure is that the world is changing. If

you're 40 years old now, by the age of

60, you'll experience a year's worth of

today's change in roughly 11 days.

Logically, in order for you to keep up

with that rate of change, your rate of

experimentation needs to basically match

that rate of change. You have to get

really, really comfortable as an

organization or as a creator or an

individual with failure. When Jeff Bezos

wrote his shareholder letter in 2015, he

said, "In order for us to be successful,

we have to be the best place on earth to

fail."

I've made billions of dollars of

failures at amazon.com. They don't

matter. What really matters is companies

that don't continue to experiment,

companies that don't embrace failure.

They eventually get in a desperate

position. The only thing they can do is

make a kind of hail Mary bat at the very

end of their corporate existence.

So in our company, how do we do that

practically? We have a failure and

experimentation team whose KPI as they

report to me every single week is the

amount of experiments we've ran. Notice

I'm not saying how many of them went

well or really how many of them failed.

It's purely the input which is the

controllable which is how many

experiments have we ran. And our job is

to ramp up the amount of experiments

we're running because the very nature of

it being an experiment means we don't

know how it's going to go. Every success

we've had, every breakthrough that we've

had that's completely changed our

trajectory as a as a business, as a

podcast, as a media company, has come at

the expense of nine things that went

really badly. And Amazon, again, they

said it's the one in 10 that pays for

the graveyard. None of you know about

Firef. You probably don't know about

Endless.com. All of these things cost

Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars,

but you probably know AWS, which will

make them hundred billion this year. the

game here to find the correct answer

before your competitors, no matter what

industry you're in, is to fail quicker

than them because failure is feedback.

Feedback is knowledge and knowledge is

power.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

What you're about to see is something I

encounter all the time. A girl comes up

to me and says she wants to start a

podcast because people told her to. That

is not a good enough reason. If you're

thinking from first principles, you'd

start with questions, not conclusions.

You'd ask yourself, "What do I have to

say? Who is it for? Why does it matter?

And what's the best platform to

communicate it? Only once you've

answered those questions can you

reasonably arrive at the conclusion that

a podcast is the answer. That's what we

mean by reasoning upwards from first

principles. But too many people do the

opposite. They reason downwards from a

trend or a suggestion. They start with

an answer like I'm going to start a

podcast and then they scramble to figure

out what they're going to say, who it's

for, and why it matters. That is

backwards. If you start with the wrong

answer, even the best execution won't

save you.

All my comments are like, "You should

make a podcast." And like now I feel

inspired to. I just don't know like how

to take the first step.

Give yourself one year where you say to

yourself, "I'm going to be really,

really bad at this." And this is my

testing year. And what that will do is

it will take all the performance

pressure off you, which will mean you'll

do the necessary thing of trying enough

[ __ ] to figure out what works. What ends

up happening a lot of the time is you

think that podcasting is two people sat

at a table. If you just sort of relieve

yourself of any preconceptions about

what a podcast is, you'll probably end

up making something really interesting.

But don't even get rid of the word

podcasting. Say, I'm going to start a

YouTube channel and I'm going to do I'm

going to I'm going to give there's

something that my audience like that I

deliver on. I'm going to find the best

way to deliver that.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Nice to meet you. Of course.

What's your advice to everyone?

Um my advice to everyone is to go and

follow you.

Say uh follow Fizza Speaks. FCA speaks.

Follow Speaks. As long as she's doing,

you know, I don't know what content

you're making, but

I'm doing a quick talk on stage here for

YouTube/Google, which I'm excited about.

On my way there now,

ladies and gentlemen, Steven Barber.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. YouTube

has the best data and analytics. And for

someone like me that wants to be able to

influence what I'm doing, you need to be

informed by data and analytics. Now, in

the the back end of YouTube, there's

this like one button and you can click

into the advanced section and and see

this wonderful graph and it tells you

every single minute how many people

dropped off in that exact minute. And so

I can go through every single minute of

a 2hour, 3-hour conversation and go, "Oh

my god, yes, I asked a question about

that subject or I spoke for too long."

We've been able to learn exactly what

our audience want. The game of YouTube

for us became just listening. That

informs next week's episode. And having

that control as a creator means that

your destiny is in your own hand. And

it's no lie to say I spend two and a

half hours still to this day in YouTube

studio looking at the analytics.

Ladies and gentlemen,

thank you so much for everything. I've

been following you since the social

chain. Right now, marketing and getting

out there is a madness. I I when I speak

to people oneonone, I get business. What

is the one piece of advice that you can

give that will blow it away? I know you

said experiment. I've got that down. But

the one thing you know from experience

I always assume people aren't going to

like the answer. It's not simple or sexy

and it's kind of obvious.

Okay.

So I would only focus on LinkedIn.

I do. I get only focus. Right. So how

many times you post a day?

Once a day like consistently.

Okay. So you posted every day this week?

Yes. I posted um yesterday and got a

post coming out today.

And what type of thing did you post? Did

you post videos, photos?

So I post I posted a video.

What did you learn about

that video? I learned about how you can

That's a good question.

How many comments?

Wow. It got I think 12 12 comments.

Are you sure?

Do I need to know my analytics cuz my

head?

It's the most important thing. If you

don't have a feedback loop, you it's

you're going to feel like you're not

making any progress. I spend 2 and 1

half hours a day looking at the back end

of my YouTube videos.

2 hours a day a day.

Okay.

And this is how you improve.

Every single post is data and the

information exists in the back end of

every single platform. And that

information tells you why people

watched, what they clicked, when they

stopped watching, what they said. All of

that is information that can feed into

your next post. So you have to produce,

publish, and then pay attention and

repeat that cycle. We spent pretty much

all last I mean last night, the night

before in our WhatsApp group talking

about the analytics like we are at war

with each other about these [ __ ]

analytics

and this is how you improve. And so if

you have the consistency, which you say

you do, that the the end of your

feedback loop where where the where

there's a gap is are you learning from

what you're posting, every single thing

you post is not about you and your

business. It is value for strangers.

What's your mom called?

Alison.

Okay. Alison. So Allison will think

everything you do is valuable.

Okay?

Cuz you can post what you eat for

dinner. You go, "Oh, thank God." Right?

But

I need to understand him first. I feel

like I need to know him first. I need to

know what he

So that's who you establish your

personas, which is what we do. So we

have our four personas. And every single

time we write a post, we say, "Which one

of our personas are we serving?" But

every single thing you post from now and

forever, you need to ask yourself before

you hit the post button, is this

valuable to people? Do not give a [ __ ]

about me.

Okay. And a couple times every day.

Yeah. Steven, can I do are you okay with

hugs? Is that is that uncomfortable?

My team was telling me that you you ran

a master class on YouTube.

Oh really?

Yeah. Because you know how you can tell

like they were all saying to me is like,

"Oh my god, the number of people taking

notes when Steven was talking." But

that's what people leave with something.

Well, I'm so passionate about it. I

talked to everybody about why I'm so

engaged with YouTube as a creator. I

talked to everybody about the disruption

of TV. Um the percentage of my audience,

about 33 35% that are now watching on TV

and how it's disrupting multiple

industries at once. So, I'm super

passionate about it.

Yeah. Examples like you are are really

the inspiration of why we go to work.

Like our mission statement is to make it

so that you're successful because you're

doing something important and getting

your ideas out there to an audience. A

about finding that audience, but b it's

about actually creating the economic

opportunity for you so you can keep

doing it.

And that's our mission.

Sh.

I have come all the way from South

Africa. I want to say thank you for

inspiring me. Your book is like a Bible

next to my bed. I don't watch movies on

planes. I watch your podcasts. You

couldn't afford even a ticket to get in

here and I sat outside and waited.

So sweet. You okay? waited to actually

meet someone from Google and just say

that this was my dream to meet you in

person. You're so sweet. I am so

grateful. Your story is incredible and

you have been my mentor without even

realizing it. So just

are you give me a so

tears and all managed to break in. I

love that. I love that feeling.

Thank you so much. What are you doing

for the rest of the day?

Uh I could fly home right now. I don't

care. So sweet. I wish there was

something I could give you. I don't have

anything on me, but I wish there was

something. I'll give you my hat. You can

have my cap. It's a little bit sweaty,

so don't put it straight on.

[Music]

That is my dog, Pablo. And uh Pablo is

very, very sick at the moment. He spent

the last 8 weeks going in and out of the

vet. Um I'm so scared. And I think he's

going I just tried to feed him and he

throws up all of his food.

Oh my god. Since I got him all those

years ago, almost 10 years ago, I've

never in my life seen him this skinny

and this frail. He can't walk properly.

He can't hold his food down. He uh can't

control his bowels. He He's not moving

much anymore. And it's really really

sad. He's been with me for the last 10

years and he's been everywhere with me.

And Dragon's Den or the podcast or the

businesses or whatever. It's all

happened in those 10 years. and it's

it's happened in a variety of different

cities and locations and countries and

Pablo's been there with me through it

all. He's one of my oldest friends in

the world and um

got him as a baby and now I guess he's

an old man. He's helped me in the last

10 years

realize that a lot of the problems I

faced or the challenges I faced weren't

real problems and he's helped me realize

that life can be so simple. just like

watching him mess around with like a

Lucas aid bottle or splash about in the

bathtub and have so much fun with such

simple things has always made me realize

it's been this great reminder that um

life can be simple and we can find joy

in simple things and I'm like contending

with the realization that

I'm going to have to say bye and it's

not easy. Um, that's a good point.

And yeah, through the last 10 years, at

times it can be very, very lonely. And

actually on many nights, many days, the

only person that I've had through the

weekends or late at night has been has

been Pablo. You know, to be fair, I

don't have that many friends and my

friends don't live close to me. So,

especially on weekends, it's mainly just

been me and Pablo for the last 10 years

together.

I am your best friend. You need to start

realizing this because I can open

cupboards. And then when I open the

cupboards, do you know what I can do? I

can open packets of 80% beef with

wholesome fruit and veg.

He's given me um fun. He's given me so

much love. He's given me so much. So,

it's difficult. It's difficult. As I've

come to terms with the fact that I'm

probably going to lose him soon,

I um

I'm really going out of my way to

express my appreciation to him in all

the ways that I can, you know, like I'll

never properly be able to say thank you

to him.

And it's funny how like when you're

confronted with that realization that

you like deep down knew was going to

happen, how much you wish you could just

do it all over again. How much you wish

you could have all that time over again.

And how much you wish you could just you

could say thank you over and over again.

I guess that's what makes anything

valuable in life. It's valuable because

you only have a limited amount of it for

a limited amount of time.

It's all right, man.

I love you. Thank you. And I'll see you

next week.

[Music]