Ep 226 - Finding Flow and Focus in Remote Work with guest Steven Puri

Are you searching for practical ways to reclaim your focus and find your flow while working remotely? In this insightful episode of The Quiet And Strong Podcast, host David Hall welcomes Steven Puri—founder and CEO of The Sukha Company, tech entrepreneur, and award-winning film executive—to unpack the real-world challenges and strategies of thriving in a remote work environment.

You’ll hear Steven’s unique journey from Hollywood film production to launching his own tech startups, and how his distinctive perspective as an introvert shaped the creation of his focus-boosting platform, Sukha. Together, David and Steven discuss the myth of multitasking, the science behind flow states, and actionable methods for prioritizing what truly matters on your to-do list (hint: it starts with picking just three things). They also explore ways introverts can own their need for deep work and recharging without sacrificing meaningful connection with colleagues, friends, or family.

Whether you’re an introvert seeking to maximize your best times of day, a leader managing a distributed team, or simply anyone who wants to work smarter instead of longer, this episode is packed with encouragement, proven strategies, and inspiration to support your journey.

Listen in, discover your strengths, and be strong.

Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/226

Steven Puri is the Founder and CEO of The Sukha Company, which helps people find focus and achieve a healthy work-life balance through its productivity app. He began his career as a newscaster and a software engineer at IBM, then moved into film production, working on movies like Independence Day and serving as a senior executive at DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox. After his time in Hollywood, Steven returned to tech, focusing on building tools that support focus and productivity in the modern workplace.

Website: thesukha.co

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Transcript

Steven Puri [00:00:01]:
And then the next big turn was really I had that moment of it seems like from the outside, a really glamorous job, like working on these movies and getting them done. But, ultimately, is Die Hard five going to, you know, change the world, I thought. I'm like, no. No. It's not really that good a script. It's out. Everyone knows that now.

David Hall [00:00:20]:
Yeah.

Steven Puri [00:00:20]:
And I decided to get back into to tech and engineering. I was like, you know what? I can choose smaller problems, but problems that I believe should be solved. And I went to go do some small tech companies. So I had had one previous exit back my engineering days. We sold a company. We did the Independence Day visual effects through, won the Academy Award and all that. So we raised about 15,000,000 for that company, sold it at a six x multiple, which is great. And then when did you two smaller companies recently? And both of them failed.

Steven Puri [00:00:51]:
I raised about 3,000,000 for each, and it was humbling. This is humiliating. It was really hard bumping into friends, you know, at the dry cleaners who were like, hey. How's it going? You're like, terribly. It's going really, really badly. I don't even wanna bump into you and tell you how badly it's going.

David Hall [00:01:06]:
Hello, and welcome to episode two twenty six of the Quiet and Strong podcast, especially for introverts. I'm your host, David Hall. I'm the creator of quietandstrong.com. This is a weekly podcast dedicated to understanding the strengths and needs of introverts along with strategies for success. Introversion is not something to fix, but to be embraced. Normally, we will air each episode on a Monday. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform.

David Hall [00:01:39]:
Leave a review or a rating. That would mean a lot to me and help others find the show. Tell a friend about the podcast, then help get the word out there that introversion is a beautiful thing. Steven Puri is the founder and CEO of the Sitka company with the mission to help millions of people find the focus find their focus, achieve more, and have a healthy work life. Steven's career started as a newscaster and interviewer for the number one youth news show in the DC Baltimore market and then as a junior software engineer at IBM. After attending USC in Los Angeles, he began film production and produced computer generated visual effects for 14 movies, including Independence Day, which won the Academy Award for visual effects. Steven then produced some indie films and eventually went studio side to develop and produce live action features as the VP of development and production at twentieth Century Fox and as an EVP at Dreamworks Pictures, where he helped work on Star Trek, Transformers, and more. After Fox, Steven returned to building tech companies and founded the Sukha company.

David Hall [00:02:51]:
Sukha means happiness from self fulfillment in Sanskrit. The Sukha is a focus app that bundles all the tools necessary to have a focused experience and a healthy productive workday. Alright. Well, welcome to the Quiet and Strong podcast, Steven. Steven, so good to have you on today.

Steven Puri [00:03:08]:
It is very nice to be here. Hope hope we have some fun.

David Hall [00:03:11]:
Yeah. We should. We're gonna definitely talk a lot about remote work. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your journey and for the work that you're doing now.

Steven Puri [00:03:20]:
Well, I'd say there are probably three important turns or twists that'll help inform, like, oh, that's why this dude is doing this thing he cares about, which is when I was little, both my parents worked at IBM. Both were engineers. So I was taught by my mom to be a software engineer, you know, which at the time was just called a coder. You were coding. And I loved that. I loved staying up late at night, like, being able to tinker with things. And then I worked I I won a Watson scholarship from IBM, which helped pay for college, and it gave me the opportunity to work at IBM during college to earn money. So I did that.

Steven Puri [00:03:57]:
And then the first big turn happens, I went to USC in Los Angeles. And in my dorm, a lot of my friends were in the cinema TV school because that is arguably the best cinema TV school in the world. And so, you know, you end up talking about movies and, you know, on Friday night, going to movies and going to have burgers with your friends, talk about it. And I happen to be there when film went digital. I could talk engineering because I was kind of a code monkey, but I had enough friends who had taught me, like, kind of what filmmakers think about. So it launched my second my sort of career coming out of college was not about engineering. It was actually producing computer graphics, which became producing films, and I did that. I rose up to the ranks.

Steven Puri [00:04:36]:
It was a lucky break. I worked hard. And that second sort of, like, arc was ending up a, you know, executive vice president at DreamWorks, working with Kurtzman Orsi, producing their that was the Transformers one and two, Star Trek 11, EaglEye era. And then going to twentieth Century Fox in the live action division where I was vice president there and ran, like, the diehard franchise, Wolverine franchise, a bunch of stuff like that for the studio. And then the next big turn was really I had that moment of it seems like from the outside, a really glamorous job, like, working on these movies and getting them done. But ultimately, is Die Hard five going to, you know, change the world, I thought. I'm like, no. No.

Steven Puri [00:05:16]:
It's not really that good a script. It's out. Everyone knows that now. Yeah. And I decided to get back into to tech and engineering. I was like, you know what? I can choose smaller problems, but problems that I believe should be solved. And I went to go do some small tech companies. So I had had one previous exit back my engineering days.

Steven Puri [00:05:38]:
We sold a company we did the Independence Day visual effects through, won the Academy Award and all that. So we raised about 15,000,000 for that company, sold it at a six x multiple, which is great. And then when did you two smaller companies recently? And both of them failed. I raised about 3,000,000 for each, and it was humbling. This is humiliating. It was really hard bumping into friends, you know, at the dry cleaners who were like, hey. How's it going? You're like, terribly. It's going really, really badly.

Steven Puri [00:06:05]:
I don't even wanna bump into you and

David Hall [00:06:07]:
tell you how badly it's going.

Steven Puri [00:06:08]:
And in the course of doing that, really had a lot of insights into remote work, read a bunch of the books by the smart people who've written about it, and was like, I think that's the next step and wanted to share those tools because there's a lot of stuff from film that applies to remote work. And I was like, wow. I don't think a lot of people have both been a senior executive of studio and also run a tech company. And that's kinda what I'm doing now. And having a kid as you know, I've got a kid Yeah.

David Hall [00:06:35]:
Yeah. Congratulations.

Steven Puri [00:06:37]:
Thank you. Lots of projects. Lots of projects in the oven.

David Hall [00:06:40]:
We're gonna get more into that, what you've learned Mhmm. About remote work from the different industries you were in. But, you know, I have to I have to ask, you know, you're a fellow introvert. What's the strength you have because you're an introvert?

Steven Puri [00:06:53]:
Oh, I am super comfortable going deep and quiet. Like, probably the not probably. Excise that word. The best times of day for me are 05:36 in the morning until about eight or nine. Quiet thought happens, like, actual thought. You know? And then often, like, after Laura goes to bed, there are a couple hours a night where it's just peaceful, and I can actually do things that move life forward as opposed to just the continuous Zooms interactions that are kind of exhausting.

David Hall [00:07:25]:
Yeah.

Steven Puri [00:07:25]:
I mean, I love this Zoom. Don't get me wrong. But, you know Yeah.

David Hall [00:07:28]:
Right. Right. Right.

Steven Puri [00:07:28]:
Doing too many and you're like, ugh.

David Hall [00:07:31]:
That's interesting that you do both ends because, like, I'm married to a fellow introvert, and I get my quiet in the morning, and she gets her quiet in in e you know, late at night while the rest of us are sleeping. So that's interesting. But the point is, like, there's a lot of talk about introversion and, you know, the need to recharge after social activity, but it's so much more than that. It's not just that. It's we need time to think and use our brains. You know, you be able to go deep like you're saying. We need to give ourselves time for that. And when we don't have time for that, that's where we struggle and maybe aren't doing our best work.

Steven Puri [00:08:06]:
It is very true. I'll tell you, one of my favorite childhood activities was we would go to the library. My mom was a very strong believer in, like, learn. Learn. By the way, later learn and then learn as much as you can. So we'd go there, and all three of us, my younger brother and I, my mom would max out our library cards, bring home stacks of books. Remember, carrying my arms with, like, someone to my chin just to hold them up. We go to the car, and there's a blue chair in one of the upstairs rooms with a window over the shoulder.

Steven Puri [00:08:35]:
And I would put a stack on one side, and I would just sit there all day Saturday and just read and put it on the right until the whole stack was there. And it was incredibly joyful for me. Like, it was such a wonderful thing. And I know some of my peers were out playing kickball or doing whatever. I was just like, this is this is my bliss.

David Hall [00:08:55]:
Yeah. That's awesome. And then, of course, on this show, we also bust myths. Is there a myth about introversion you wanna bust today?

Steven Puri [00:09:02]:
Well, I'll tell you this. When you and I met, we talked a bit about this, which is I know that in my rest state where I feel like I'm very comfortable in my element, there are certain patterns. They're very sort of like INTJ kind of thing. And there's also a thing that when I left to go to California, I realized I had to develop some behaviors because I did not know. When I moved there, I didn't know a single person in the state of California. And I realized I have to be better about stepping out of the things that are super comfortable for me in order to get along because I can't be alone. And that has worked out well for me. You know, like, when I went into my film career, it's a very social relationship driven business.

Steven Puri [00:09:43]:
So as much as you know, you have to also connect with people. And that, I think, was something that I was, some anxiety about. But, ultimately, I found, like, a balance between, okay, you know, I'm I need to read these five scripts. I need to go write this code or whatever, and that allows me to be in my happy sort of, like, zone. But then there's also, you know, value to, I'm gonna go into this meeting with a writer. We're gonna brainstorm stuff. We're gonna think about the third act. We're gonna you know? And, yeah, I guess bringing a balance to it was was a challenge, but now I feel kind of comfortable in in both.

David Hall [00:10:21]:
Yeah. And that's the thing. It's a balance because

Steven Puri [00:10:24]:
Mhmm.

David Hall [00:10:24]:
The myth in there is we do need to connect with people. A lot of people say, oh, introverts don't like people. And I'm like, oh, that's that's ridiculous. We all like people. It's just we do need some time like you were talking about. We do need some time alone. We do need to prepare for things, but we also need connection. And, you know, it's those brainstorming sessions can be very valuable interaction.

David Hall [00:10:45]:
But sometimes you're gonna think on your own. Sometimes you need to collaborate with other people.

Steven Puri [00:10:50]:
Yeah. And there was a a conversation that was happening earlier this week that was really about taking responsibility for yourself. And it's something that I believe very deeply in, which is should you and I become lifelong friends? It's part of my I view as part of my responsibility to sort of let you know, like, what are my rhythms? Like, how do I like to engage with you? So, for example, if I'm not responsive at a certain time of day or during a certain activity, you're not like, oh, Steven's being a dick. Why did I it's just like, oh, you know what? This is kind of his time. And, you know, we're gonna go out on the boat Saturday morning on Lake Travis. It'll be super fun. That's his time to do this. But he doesn't really he's not really in a chatty, like, let's go on the phone kind of mood now.

Steven Puri [00:11:31]:
And you won't know that unless I hope you understand that about me, and I will need to learn about you. And that's your responsibility to say like, hey, Steven. This is kind of how my interaction levels vary. You know?

David Hall [00:11:42]:
Yeah. That is so key. It's really important to talk to people about what you need.

Steven Puri [00:11:47]:
Yeah.

David Hall [00:11:47]:
And and, you know, if you need some time alone, great. But like you're saying, make a different plan. You know? Like, hey. You know what? I need this time for whatever I need to focus. Well, let's go do this later at this time, that kind of thing. So that just that's just key, really articulating. Here's what I need. Here's what I need.

David Hall [00:12:04]:
This is gonna make me be my best, but I still love you. I must do this Here's a different time.

Steven Puri [00:12:09]:
Yeah. Here's the minute landed with with Laura. My wife is she's extroverted and thrives on that. She's head of product for a large bank here in The United States, and she doesn't always or didn't always understand where I'd be like, I kinda need to go to my office upstairs and kind of this thing. And I was telling her about this screenwriter who's in the, you know, million dollar club, Ron Bass. And he had this famous thing with his family where he didn't talk to them in the morning. Like, he would get up, I think, early 05:30 or six or something, go to his office and write. And there was no, like, hey, who wants cereal? Do you want pancakes this morning? Okay.

Steven Puri [00:12:44]:
I need the car. There was no interaction. There was nothing. And when he came down at nine, ten AM, whatever, and had written stuff, and he he wrote the kind of dialogue that, like, Julia Roberts was in his scripts. You know, like Brad Pitt, you know what I mean? Like, he writes movie star dialogue. And what his thing was with his family, he said, I need that tranquility because once I start talking to you, I can't hear my characters in my head, and then I can't write dialogue all day. He's like, I need that time to do it this way. And when I talked to Laura about that, something clicked.

Steven Puri [00:13:18]:
She's like, oh, okay. You know what? In the morning, after you do yoga to work, you go up there. I'll see you, like, 09:10AM. Fine. All good.

David Hall [00:13:26]:
Yeah. That's brilliant. I love that. Because, you know, what do we need? Just share that. But at the same time, you know, we are gonna spend time with those we care about as well. I don't quite have that biggest space, but I have I've carved out a little bit of time in the morning where I I'm not talking to people.

Steven Puri [00:13:45]:
It is, finding our little, yeah, windows in the day. I know this afternoon after you and I chat, I have a little breathing room between now and dinner to just, like, focus on what happened this week, do the things that make me feel settled, which some people don't need. Like, Laura is just continually in motion. Bunch of my rides are continuing in motion. And for me, if I go continually into tomorrow without stopping going like, okay. How did the week go? What got done? What didn't get done? How to prepare for next week? I won't go into even dinner tonight and feel, like, at rest. I'll be like, I need that little internal moment of, like, looking within.

David Hall [00:14:22]:
Yeah. That's perfect. And, you know, we are we're recording this on a Friday afternoon. So you're at the end of your week, and it's good to look back and look ahead, you know, and take that time that you need.

Steven Puri [00:14:33]:
I love that. Yeah.

David Hall [00:14:34]:
So tell us, what's the SUCA company?

Steven Puri [00:14:38]:
So what is this thing you do, Steven?

David Hall [00:14:40]:
Yes.

Steven Puri [00:14:41]:
I'll tell you. Let me tell you. Working backwards from the problem that I had

David Hall [00:14:46]:
Yes.

Steven Puri [00:14:47]:
Might make the company a little more entertaining to hear about. So as I was, you know, exploring this with, you know, people in the pandemic, this remote work, hybrid work, that sort of thing. Right? What was interesting to me is in film, it's never been called, like, the remote period of the film or the hybrid period of the of the movie production. Right? I mean, you have preproduction, postproduction. You have, you know, actual production. But the funny thing is every movie goes through phases. There there's a remote phase. Writers writing at home, writing in coffee shops, you know, writing at their partner's house.

Steven Puri [00:15:23]:
You get a little traction, some money, production office opens. One or two days a week, you go in there for some meetings. Spend the rest of the week writing at home. You're on set. It's, you know, RTO in person, you know, hundred thousand dollars a day. Then you go back to hybrid. You go back to remote. It sort of goes to that arc.

Steven Puri [00:15:40]:
And each stage, you kinda know how to manage your energy. You know, this is gonna be really demanding. Oh, this is when I go inside and do that. And I noticed when I go into tech, I had a couple problems that were, like, bad. One, I call it the cold start problem, which is I would work from home. Whatever time I was like, I'm gonna start working at nine, nine thirty, eight thirty, whatever. I would always find that there was something I was doing at that time that sort of delayed that, like, oh, I'll just check my emails before I get going on the thing, or I'll, you know, throw in a little laundry so it's, you know, multitasking while I'm working, the laundry going. Like, who is it? Or picking my phone or something.

Steven Puri [00:16:15]:
Right? And what I realized, because in our community, you know, we have thousands of folks people, it boiled out of two problems that I actually had, and they're solvable. They're both about overwhelm. One was looking at my task list and being there's so many things on this. I'm there's no evidence of 17 things a day. And, yes, they all need to kinda get done, but, it's overwhelming. And it stops you, paralyzes you from actually getting going. Right? And we solve that for our members and myself by when you open, Suka in the morning, it's a it's a website that helps you get going. There's a smart assistant that looks at your task list, helps you choose three things.

Steven Puri [00:16:56]:
This is all you get. You get three things you're gonna work on. Let's be realistic. We have data that's 77 better chance. If you choose three things, you'll finish three. Then if you choose more than three, you'll actually finish two because it's just paralyzing. Right? So that overwhelm at how many things to get done, we wanted to help get over that. And the other thing I was like, sometimes there's a thing on there where I'd make a task that's not achievable in an hour or two hours.

Steven Puri [00:17:21]:
Write my book, you know, like, make the new app, do things like that. And that's when we had this smart assistant say, hey. You know what? Write your book as awesome. What if today's task is just outline the first chapter? Can we do that in thirty minutes? And once you've, you know, worked that out, it helps you get over the cold start problem. And the other problem was that, like, you get distracted during the day. I get distracted during the day. At the end of the day, I have that moment of, like, where did the day go? I'll get up early tomorrow and finish the stuff I didn't finish. Right? And a lot of that is just during the day managing your focus and managing out distractions that a lot of companies want you to spend your life in their platform so they can sell ads, and you don't get the money from those ads.

Steven Puri [00:18:06]:
They do. Right? And that was something where, like, you know what? If you could look at the the top books around this, a lot of them say, oh, music helps. There's certain kind of music. Some people like silence. Some people like music. We have a thousand hours of focused music. There are Pomodoro timers to help you remember to take breaks. You know, like, I have ADHD.

Steven Puri [00:18:24]:
Sometimes you get so focused, you forget to stand up and just stretch. So we have little videos to be like, hey. Do a two minute scratch. You'll feel better. So a lot of the the super companies built backwards from the cold start problem in the morning. How do I get going and organize my day properly, which it does for you? Or at the end of the day saying, oh, man. I'm done earlier because I just you know, every time I open Facebook, my smartest system was like, Steven, do you really need to be in Facebook right now? I'm like, no. I actually don't.

David Hall [00:18:49]:
So it's

Steven Puri [00:18:49]:
things like that. And, hopefully, it's fun and delightful. You know? We wanted to make something that delighted people.

David Hall [00:18:55]:
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about focus and Mhmm. Too often we're you know, whatever environment we're in, we're trying to do more than one thing at a time, which is not really possible. So

Steven Puri [00:19:07]:
how

David Hall [00:19:07]:
do how do we how do we do that?

Steven Puri [00:19:10]:
Let's talk about what you just brought, which

David Hall [00:19:11]:
is Yeah.

Steven Puri [00:19:12]:
That the myth of multitasking. Right? Yes. Which as someone with, ADHD doesn't really present as hyperactive, but ADHD, the multitasking distracted sort of thing. I believed, oh, I can do all these things in parallel. And the research shows you don't actually do them in parallel. It is you monotask until you get something done. Great. Or you monotask.

Steven Puri [00:19:36]:
You don't get it done. You context switch to another task. Do that for a little while. Switch to another thing. Do that for a while. And you do the same work, but you lose energy because to store remembering where you were with the thing that you're gonna pick up later and then to remember the next task and where you left off, that burns brain energy. So that was a real learning for me of, like, you basically have monotasking. You just decide if you want to break it up and give away time and it brain energy to context switching.

Steven Puri [00:20:08]:
You know? And there are other things, but that's a good little bug.

David Hall [00:20:12]:
Yeah. It's like, where did I leave off? Yeah. And I've known some people that were pretty proud of their ability to multitask, but it's like, no. You're really not. You really are just switching like you're saying. It's you can't do you can't think about more than one thing at a time.

Steven Puri [00:20:26]:
Yes. Can I give you something contradictory? Yes. This is actually a fun observation, and this comes from film. So when I was 20, I was making that first baby step into film, right? I was at USC. And I think I was a senior or something. And I was working at this ad agency that did trailers from movies. So we did a lot of Warner Brothers and Buena Vista Disney stuff. And two guys ran it.

Steven Puri [00:20:52]:
Really smart guys, top of their game, high in demand, so it was a really great place to work. I ran the department that assigned writers to trailers. So we would get rough cuts of movies in that are coming out later in the year, and I'll be the one to go, oh, David would be perfect for this action adventure. He's written three trailers for that this year. Great. David, here's a movie to watch. Right? So Jeff, one of the two guys around the company, comes to my office. I'm 20 years old.

Steven Puri [00:21:15]:
He's 40. Right? And he's like, Steve he was calling Stevie. He's like, Stevie, you know Bart? I'm like, yeah. Bart in the vault. Like, yeah. Nice dude. Talked him in the elevator. But yeah.

Steven Puri [00:21:27]:
He's like, you ever give him a movie? I was like, to write a trailer? Bart, the guy in the vault who drives the tapes around. Like, that Bart? He's like, yeah. I was like, I no, I haven't. He's like, I got an instinct about him. I was like, Jeff, like, you run the company, man. You've been doing this for twenty years. Your instincts probably better than mine. So happy to give him a movie.

Steven Puri [00:21:46]:
He's like, okay. Okay. Good. So he comes in my house two days later. He's like, how's Bart doing? I was like, haven't checked? He gave him the movie two days ago, Jeff. I wanna stress him out. He's like, okay, Stevie. Okay.

Steven Puri [00:21:56]:
Yeah. That's fair. So what else did you give him? I was like, I gave him one movie. He's never written a trailer before. He's like, Stevie, have I taught you nothing? And I was like, maybe. Like, what? He's like, it's always about the other thing. Creativity does not work the way linear work does. It's not doing a spreadsheet.

Steven Puri [00:22:12]:
I was like, okay. He's like, if you don't give him another movie, he will have one thing to stare at and the beads of sweat will come down his temples and

David Hall [00:22:20]:
he will, like, come up

Steven Puri [00:22:21]:
with every bad obvious idea for that creative project. He's like, if you don't give him something else to think about because the back of your mind is where that, oh, I don't know, chocolate and peanut butter. Oh, what did they taste like together? That will never happen. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll give him another movie. I did. Jeff, as you can tell from where the story is going, was right. Bart is a very well established writer, producer for promos and trailers in Hollywood.

Steven Puri [00:22:49]:
And I saw that same thing throughout my film career. That idea happens, and the best creatives know they have to have that other thing. And there's a great book about this, the neuroscience of this friend who was interested called The Net and the Butterfly that talks about sort of the executive mode network that's, like, kind of executing actions. And when it's busy, the default mode network that does the, I don't know, what does this taste like sort of thing, that gets to run free. And when you can manage that, and maybe you've experienced it, like, having great ideas when you're driving or showering or doing the dishes or something where you're kinda busy and you go, oh, you know what? Oh, I should that is the same effect. So it's the only caveat or carve out I would have about monotasking is there is a creative process that actually defies monotasking.

David Hall [00:23:42]:
Yeah. I mean, you're still not doing something at the same time. But like you said, some of our best ideas are when we're when we stepped away and we're not trying we're not trying to work on something actively, you know, in the shower or in the car, you know, that kind of thing. You know, when we when I so I used to work in office all the time. And when the pandemic hit, I went completely remote. And I learned that I missed that driving time, not because of the gas or the time, but but I was really I really had some good thinking time. You you know, just stepping away and good ideas would come. Yeah.

Steven Puri [00:24:20]:
Do you go for walks now?

David Hall [00:24:23]:
Some.

Steven Puri [00:24:24]:
That helps me bunch. Just even walking around my neighborhood, just the process of navigating the streets and the traffic and the sidewalks freeze that thing up where sometimes on the walk, I'll have the idea that sitting at my desk, I'm stumped on.

David Hall [00:24:37]:
Yeah. For sure. And, you mentioned music. How do you pick the music for your app?

Steven Puri [00:24:43]:
You know what? There is okay. I'm lucky in that coming from film. I have a bunch of friends that are film composers, and they have a bunch of time with their hands right now. So when you look at the research, which says there is the middle of the road sort of like, this is what most people benefit from. Right? And we all have the friend that listens to hardcore something when they work. You know, that it's like, we all the outlier. So this is not about the outliers. This is the middle of the bell curve is it's usually under the research between 60 to 90 beats per minute, certain key signatures, nonvocal, ambient kind of music that helps you get into essentially what's a flow state.

Steven Puri [00:25:22]:
And anyone who hasn't read that book or even a summary of that book, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychologist, it's he's the one who named flow state. That comes from his book where he was like, you get into this state and high performance do where it's not just you paddling, it's the river stretch to carry you forward. And you do your best work, you do it faster. That's ultimately what we aspire to at SUCCA is to help you get into your flow state. I experienced it the first time not knowing what a flow state was. I was on a flight, and I think the American Wi Fi was out. And I remember I had some, like, mock ups or designs or something to do. And I looked up.

Steven Puri [00:26:00]:
I was like, why are we landing? Like, we just took off. Like, something's wrong. No. We had flown from Austin to San Francisco. I had missed the entire flight because I was just in what I was doing. I don't think I got a drink from the drink cart. I didn't go to the bathroom. Like, nothing.

Steven Puri [00:26:15]:
In that state, which actually allowed me to go to dinner that night in SF and not have the hanging pressure of I gotta get back to the hotel and finish my work. I was like, I I'm done. This feels great. That was very interesting. And that's that's really the goal of Super is to help you feel like I'm good at what I do. I'm doing it. I'm in command of what I do, and I have time for what I want.

David Hall [00:26:38]:
Yeah. That's the amazing place to get to. It's like Yep. It's when we can get into that state, we're more efficient, and it's enjoyable. But also Right? We we come up with some great ideas, and it doesn't feel like work.

Steven Puri [00:26:57]:
It doesn't. And I'll tell you, especially having spent a bunch of time working at SF, there are aspects of that culture. And in in New York, that is like the hustle grind culture. It's almost like a badge of honor. I was up until 2AM coding on this. Oh my god. We're up all night. Oh, you know, like, you all think you're living in Zuckerberg's garage and inventing new Facebook.

Steven Puri [00:27:16]:
You know what I mean? But there is a there is a bragging right to how long and I would love to redefine that for ourselves, for the people that work for us, with people we work for as what did you get done? Like, if if your work is what you do and it's not how long it took you to do it, it's not where you did it. It's not even what time of day you did it. But if what you did moves your life or the company forward, I don't care if it took you eight minutes. I don't need to know that you spent sixteen hours for me to be happy. I need to know that what you did, customers started sharing with their friends because, like, that's so delightful, this feature is built. And you're like, thank you. Thank you for spending three hours on this. You know? It was worth a hundred hours, but you just happen to find a way to focus.

David Hall [00:28:05]:
Yeah. That's beautiful. It's it's like it's not the goal is not to be busy. The goal is to get those things done that we wanna get done.

Steven Puri [00:28:12]:
That is it. Can I tell you why I named my company this weird name that no one can pronounce?

David Hall [00:28:17]:
Yeah. I'll tell you. Because I get

Steven Puri [00:28:19]:
this question a lot. So Laura and I met in yoga, part of her daily life. Ten years later, you know, we're getting married, and I've got a version of this running that does not have the the name. Right? Working title. And we go to Bali for our honeymoon. Very grateful that our life is such a place where you go there for ten days, and no one bugged me. I said to Laura, I've been struggling with every bad name. Maybe it's that other thing thing.

Steven Puri [00:28:41]:
I was like, flow state app 14, focus productivity, mate. Like, every bad name. Right? And I said, maybe, you know, on this trip, my unconscious mind will bubble up like, oh, this is what you should call it. She's like, okay. Cool. You know, good luck with that. I'm like, do you mind if I talk to a couple of our early members, you know, on the first day just to see my unconscious mind of, like, what they like? So I had a couple I reached out, put it in the group chat. I was like, hey.

Steven Puri [00:29:06]:
Who has a couple minutes to chat? Spoke to three people. I said ten minutes. That's all I want of your time. They were relatively good. The third one, I asked the usual dumb questions. Hey, man. You know, do you like the music? What's your favorite feature? Do you like the the coach, the smart assistant thing that helps you? Do you like the distraction blocking or the mobile phone blocking? And after eight minutes, I went into the wrap up. I'm like, David, thank you so much.

Steven Puri [00:29:27]:
I said ten minutes. You know, I'm gonna let you go on with your day. And he said, you didn't ask me the right question. And I was like, really? What was the right question? It's like, ask me why I pay you. Okay. Why do you pay me? He said, I have a choice. At 03:00, I can be playing with my two year old and my four year old. At 06:00, I can feel where the hell did the day go.

Steven Puri [00:29:50]:
He said, the difference is did I open your app in the morning? Help me focus. And I pay you for those three hours because my kids do knock me two and four forever, and I wanna watch that YouTube video with them, and I wanna read that book with them. That's why I pay you the 30¢ a day or whatever I pay you. And I was like, woah. Okay. Thank you. I told Lauren this at dinner. She's like, it's pretty good.

Steven Puri [00:30:15]:
I'm like, yeah. This guy is more articulate about my company than I am. So So we're going to bed, and Laura's like, we're brushing our little teeth. You're not gonna make it to bed. And she says, you know what he was describing to you? He's describing to you that concept we hear a bunch in yoga. He's your prana and, you know, karma and dharma and all these she's like, he's describing sukha. When you are, like, in your lane doing the thing you're meant to do, you're good at it. It feels good, and you're in control of it.

Steven Puri [00:30:37]:
Like, you can do it with ease. She said, that's that's what he's saying. And I was like, we're gonna call the company the happiness company. We're gonna call it the sukha company. And I bought the URL from bed in Bali on my honeymoon.

David Hall [00:30:50]:
Alright.

Steven Puri [00:30:51]:
Much Dolores Chagrin. She's like, what are you doing? I'm like, leave me alone for a minute.

David Hall [00:30:54]:
And what we're talking about is it's just so key. It's like you can get things done faster in that flow state

Steven Puri [00:31:02]:
Mhmm.

David Hall [00:31:02]:
And you have then time to do other things that you wanna do, whether it be be playing with your kids like your example or or something else.

Steven Puri [00:31:09]:
Yeah. Some people use it because they have a side hustle. And it's just like, oh, I wanna get my work done here so I can go do the thing. I'm working on a degree or, you know, we there was a a guy, Roy King, who's a vice principal in Missouri, and he's been in there for, like, two years. And you see him nights and weekends working. And he while he's a vice principal at this school, he was working on his PhD in engineering, and he finished it last month. And it was super cool. He's like, thank you.

Steven Puri [00:31:38]:
Like, this allowed me to sort of compartmentalize so I could be really if I have two hours of focus at night and that's what my brain has, I can use it really well. And he's like, you can, you know, you can call me doctor King now. He got his doctorate.

David Hall [00:31:51]:
That's awesome.

Steven Puri [00:31:51]:
I'm super proud of it. He's a really nice guy and, you know, but he needed that quiet time of just help me use this time really well.

David Hall [00:31:59]:
Yeah. Talk more about the timer and the concept behind that.

Steven Puri [00:32:03]:
You know what? There is this concept, and I was this I was not familiar with this. This is a learning that Steven had in the course of reading the books by the smart people. Right? And there's a Italian guy who used, you know, the kitchen timer. It looks like a tomato. And Pomodoro means tomato. And he just said, you know, what if we were to do this cycle of, like, working for twenty five minutes and the timer goes off and then rest for five or, you know, refresh your mind for five. And you do that cycle a number of times and you do a longer breaks or thing. So that's basically the heartbeat of my platform is we're like, that's actually kind of cool that you would take this break.

Steven Puri [00:32:37]:
And I thought, how do you make that delightful and beautiful? Like, I want someone to come to the thing we built and just continually feel like in every interaction with every button, everything, there's, like, a sense of delight. Like, someone cared to delight me. So we thought, number one, when you're watching, you know, the timer, you can start, it counts down from 25 to zero. You can click it, change it. Like, I work fifty five and five. That's my thing because I just feel like that's a better rhythm for me. So you can edit it, can customize it. It'll remember all that.

Steven Puri [00:33:04]:
Your smart assistant will set it for you. But then also when your break starts, what's a healthy thing to do? Okay. You know what? Stretch. Like, I sit here a lot. So every fifty five minutes, I can click a little button. A little thing comes up, says, do you want to stretch? And there's a little, you know, sixty second, hundred twenty second video, which is here stretches you can do at your desk. This is not like we're gonna go out like we're football players doing some crazy, you know, things that you can do a breathing exercise. If you wanna do a box breathing, there's not a little video.

Steven Puri [00:33:35]:
Just click one of these. You can you get points if you drink a glass of water because that is healthy, And I don't do enough of it. You know, when I sit too long, go for a walk. Get 15 points. And at the end of the day, you get a score and you compare yourself day over day. Like, am I becoming healthier and more productive? And you get points for not multitasking, by the way. If you start and finish the task, you get more points than if you just jump around and finish the same task. So things like that.

Steven Puri [00:34:00]:
Yeah. It's kinda what it is.

David Hall [00:34:02]:
How does the timer help us to focus?

Steven Puri [00:34:05]:
You know what it is is there is research, and there was a great Huberman podcast, Huberman Lab, where he talks about a brain glucose levels. And it is true. Now they have the science behind it that your brain glucose level does deplete. After about ninety minutes, you sort of like run out of brain food, if you will. Right? Often why, you know, you feel like you need snacks around if you're working a long time, that sort of thing. So what we thought is, okay, there's an element of I'm working on focus that is I need to stay in the state. And there's another thought, which is you've been there too long. You need to pull yourself out and do something healthy.

Steven Puri [00:34:42]:
So we kinda built that into the timer to say, like, hey. You know what? You can do this cycle. You can customize it for your own buyer with them. But also after a hundred twenty minutes, like, you don't get more points. You don't get more. We want you to take a break. If you do a two hour chunk of actually focused work, it you can multiply what you get done simply by dropping into a flow state, and that's kinda what we do.

David Hall [00:35:05]:
Yeah. Awesome. So you've been involved in remote work long before 2020, it sounds like?

Steven Puri [00:35:11]:
That's the thing. It's like yeah. I know when Zoom became a verb.

David Hall [00:35:15]:
Yeah. But,

Steven Puri [00:35:17]:
had been working on a lot. It was only really though in the past six years that I started studying it, understanding the problems that I felt were universal, and really smart people had written stuff on the science behind the problem, the science behind the solution. And you read the top 12 books, I wanna say, and there's a lot of commonality. They have their own lexicon. They call things different things, but they're kinda the same thing. But they all talk about, you know, like, how to prioritize, whether you wanna talk the Eisenhower matrix, whether you wanna talk, you know, eat the frog. They kinda come down a couple principles, and that's what I wanted to build. I built and it worked for me and happily, it seems to work for others.

Steven Puri [00:35:55]:
Yeah.

David Hall [00:35:55]:
Yeah. So let's definitely talk about the challenges. But first, what's the benefits of remote work?

Steven Puri [00:36:02]:
The obvious ones that everyone talks about, yes. No commute time. Although you're right, you lose the little brain, you know, thing

David Hall [00:36:10]:
to bomb. Substitute somehow.

Steven Puri [00:36:11]:
Exactly. You tell your substitute. So there is that. There is for me as someone who runs a company, the advantage of you can hire someone anywhere. You can hire global talent, like designer in in Dubai working with this. Engineer in Montreal, another engineer in Vancouver. And there's no, oh, well, you're more than twenty minute drive from the office. Guess we're not gonna work together unless you move.

Steven Puri [00:36:33]:
That is amazing, especially in this world. Now not every industry can take advantage of that. I understand that. But many businesses can. So, you know, those sort of things are super valuable. But it does present challenges in terms of if you don't hire well, you do run into that leadership thing of, like, oh, is everyone working? Who's who's taking a nap during the day? Who's working a second job and not telling me? Like, you have to hire well for this to work. And you also have to lead from purpose. You have to lead from a place of why is this important? Because when people are engaged in a task and Mihai talks about this in flow, one of the sort of conditions precedent that helps you get into flow is believing that what you're doing is meaningful.

Steven Puri [00:37:18]:
So

David Hall [00:37:19]:
Yeah. So what what are some challenges that you see people have? You know

Steven Puri [00:37:23]:
what? Distractions are many. Numerous. Right? So that thing of I'm in the office. Okay. I could go to the break room. I could chat with my friend about the game. I could do that. Add to that everything around the house where you're like, oh, I could fold the laundry, and I should probably do this.

Steven Puri [00:37:42]:
And then, oh, you know, and, you know, you can joke about rearranging your sock drawer, but there are million sock doors around the house that could be rearranged. Right.

David Hall [00:37:50]:
Right.

Steven Puri [00:37:50]:
I was really guilty of that. I, you know, the things I talk about, I'm not high and mighty. I'm like, you know, my name is Steven p. I'm a procrastinator.

David Hall [00:38:01]:
Yeah. So, you know, we busted the myth earlier that introverts we do need people. We do need connection. We need some time too. We need both.

Steven Puri [00:38:10]:
You just have to manage your need. Yeah.

David Hall [00:38:12]:
Yeah. So especially in a solely if everybody in a company is working remotely, how do you build connection?

Steven Puri [00:38:20]:
Well, it's interesting because when you look at it through the lens of respecting people or introverts or extroverts, there is the advantage of with remote work. You can attract people that maybe don't wanna be in the office, like, continually bombarded with people coming by their desk. Like, you get people especially people in creative fields, designers, writers, they want to have their own space. Right? So that's another advantage we we didn't really touch upon a moment ago. But, you know, challenges of that sort of team with communication is, yeah, sometimes there's not the camaraderie. Oh, let's all go to, you know, TGI Fridays together. I'm joking, but you know what I'm saying? Like, there's not that little thing of, like, what are we all doing for lunch? And the random hallway interactions where you're like, oh, David, I wanted to mention to you, we're thinking of doing this thing, and you're like, actually, I designed something that would apply it. You know, you don't have a lot of that.

Steven Puri [00:39:11]:
So that is something where it's does come down to, like, communication tools. You know, like, a lot of companies, including ours, we do have a stand up where it can be super fun. It could be super engaging, but it definitely gives that moment of being like, hey. Does anyone else you have any solution to this thing that I'm kinda stuck on? Blah blah blah. So it's kind of a forced kismet, if you will. So, you know, tools like that. And then at some point, being in person doesn't help. I'll I'll mention this creatively in in film.

Steven Puri [00:39:42]:
I have never had as good a collaboration creatively, like, working on story or not on a Zoom or a Meet or a Teams that I've had in person. Like, I do think there is something about some of those, like, I don't know, David. What happens in the third act? Well, remember, he's got the sword, and the dragon is behind the cave. You know? Like, there's just something I'll be in the room. You feel like that little energy, and that I've never seen replaced on a Zoom.

David Hall [00:40:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. There's there's in person definitely is needed for some things.

Steven Puri [00:40:13]:
Yeah. Some things. And it's just maybe the pandemic for many companies expanded the palette, more colors to paint with. Because now we do respect, oh, here are things where remote work or remote work for, you know, you know, introverts who want that kind of time, it allows them to do their best. And if that is true for us, then it's just more publicly known now than it was maybe ten years ago.

David Hall [00:40:37]:
Yeah. And, as far as your app goes, how do you build community there?

Steven Puri [00:40:45]:
You know what it is? There is and this is an optional thing, but a lot of people do it is on the left side, there's a panel where you can see who's online right now. And there's a group chat where it's a very focused community. So people will post things they're working on. Writers will say like, oh, hey. I just wrote this blog post. Someone would be like, hey. Post the URL. Let's all go read it.

Steven Puri [00:41:04]:
You know? Or designers would be like, oh, I put up my new portfolio on Behance or dribble or whatever, and they'll post URL. So it's like a fun community of people who wanna share. A lot of people just read. I can tell you I know how many people are in there. Yes. Less than 10% that do most of the sharing and talking as it is in most social. But it's fun because you do go in there and some days there's a lively conversation around like, oh, that's a beautiful thing. Have you ever seen this? Oh, I'm having this thing.

Steven Puri [00:41:30]:
Oh, try reading this. So you can choose to participate in that if you want. There's also a very solo, like, single player experience of, hey, man. I've got two hours. I need to do four hours of work, and I wanna feel good. Just hit play. Music plays. You do your work.

Steven Puri [00:41:46]:
Smart assistant blocks everything. You know, you can lock your phone, by the way. You can shoot a QR code if you're like, that's guilty, is just shoot with your camera, put your phone down, you pick up your phone, TikTok, email, WhatsApp, whatever. Your smart assistant would be like, Fury, do you really need to be in WhatsApp right now? You're like, you know what? I don't. I actually think not.

David Hall [00:42:09]:
Yeah. I I'm guilty there. I could use that where I don't pick up my phone.

Steven Puri [00:42:14]:
Yeah. When you know, I'll tell you we made a mistake, and maybe this is fun just to talk about the dumb things you've done, is we initially thought, okay. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna build a mobile app, and that'll, like, help people watch their phones. Right? Epic failure. Plush the money and the time down the toilet. Everyone has app fatigue. They don't wanna download another app and run that. When we made it so simple, it was just like, hey, man.

Steven Puri [00:42:37]:
Open your camera and tap this. Suddenly, people started using it. And had I thought of that earlier, would have saved a lot of time and and trouble. But, you know, you learn.

David Hall [00:42:47]:
Steven, our time together has gone by really fast. Is there anything else you wanna share about remote work and how to be successful?

Steven Puri [00:42:55]:
I'll tell you this. There's so much to talk about, and I want to, you know, share the things that I've learned. And you're welcome to put my email address in the show notes. If someone wants to reach out, it doesn't have to be about my company. It doesn't have to be about anything. If there are also fantastic apps out there that I don't make. So if you want a recommendation for, hey, I just want music. Oh, you know, look at Brain FM.

Steven Puri [00:43:16]:
Look at Ndell. Whatever. My email address is available. If you have a question, what was that book you referenced? Who's Cal Newport? What did near a l write? Is there a blog post that teaches me something? Email me. I will not email you back 19 paragraphs of, you know, my life story as a child. I do work really hard to get back to everyone within twenty four hours. So if not if I'm not sick or traveling. So if there's someone who wants, like, can you give me some advice or point me towards something? I'm happy to help.

Steven Puri [00:43:43]:
And that's probably the best thing I could say because there's a lot of other stuff we didn't touch on, but you know?

David Hall [00:43:47]:
Yeah. So in addition to your email, is there another place, website that people can go to find out more about you and your work?

Steven Puri [00:43:54]:
Oh, sure. Yeah. If you want to read our blog, which has a lot of information, or try like, the Suka itself has a seven day free trial. If you think it sounds like it might work for you, no credit card. We don't charge you. We have incredibly high retention because the people who do the trial and sign up generally love it. So we have, like, 95% retention month over month because most people who don't love it just are gone on the first day. They're like, oh, no.

Steven Puri [00:44:18]:
I was looking for a task manager. I wanna use Trello or something. Right? Which is great. So the easiest way to do that is just go to the Sukhla company, which is t h e s u k h a dot c o, not c o m, but v s u k h a dot c o. And you'll find the blog there. You'll find news articles and, you know, and you'll find the app.

David Hall [00:44:40]:
Awesome. Alright. Well, thanks again, Steven.

Steven Puri [00:44:42]:
David, thank you for having me, and hope this has been interesting.

David Hall [00:44:45]:
Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you. I hope you take the time to explore other episodes and learn from other amazing guests. Remember, if you're interested in getting to know yourself better, there is now a free Typefinder personality assessment on the Quiet and Strong website. This free assessment will give you a brief report, including the four letter Myers Briggs code. I'll add a link in the show notes. And I'd love to connect with you. Reach out at david@quietandstrong.com or check out the quietandstrong.com website, which includes blog posts and links to social media for Quiet and Strong and much more.

David Hall [00:45:22]:
Send me topics or guests you would like to see on the show. So many great things about being an introvert, and so we need those to be understood. Get to know your introverted strengths and needs, and be strong.