Jesse Patel | A Simpler Way to Stay Organized

Srini Rao Jesse, Welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Jess Patel: It's a delight to be here.

Srini Rao : It is my pleasure to have here. So I actually found out because somebody on your team wrote in and told me a bit about what you did, and when I heard that you from thinking you were going to be an actor to starting a tech company, I thought to myself, I was like, Okay, wait a minute. This is a fascinating story.

There's gotta be something here that, is very different. Anyways, before we get into all of that I wanted to start asking what did your parents do for work and how did that end up shaping what you ended up doing with your life and career?

Jess Patel: Sure. So my dad is a doctor, he's an internist, and my mom was a physical therapist, body worker, artist. . And so my dad really wanted to be a country doctor, like literally living in a, like I was born in a house with, there's a hundred people in the town and he wanted to just be traveling around, doing birds in people's houses and stuff like that.

And my mom couldn't handle it basically. So she was like, I need to move to the big city. So we moved to a town with like 6,000. And that's where I grew up. And so his desire to be a country doctor he grew up in, in New York City and then on Long Island had a huge impact on me, just in terms of me being rural.

I don't, and that obviously wasn't entirely cuz you wanted be a doctor, but we wanted to be in the country. And I don't know, he worked a lot and. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to not be there for my kids, basically. And he was there for my kids after the divorce, But I didn't want to be someone who was like working that hard, and particularly being a doctor he works so hard and he's a great dad.

But I didn't want to be up all night every night and waking up, then waking up at 5:00 AM and my mom, so she's a It's interesting, what immediately comes to mind for my mom is not her actual work which was body work, which was great and I think it made me really love getting massages.

But her art stuff like that's, she really, she was a calligrapher and in college and she was just a really great artist and that had a huge impact on me just in terms of her teaching me to draw, teaching me what it takes to get good at something. and just, I love drawing and that's something I do basically all day.

While I'm working. Like I'm talking to people I'm drawing. If I wasn't, didn't wanna make scratching sounds, I'd be drawing right now. And so that's a pretty big impact. It's not her work, but it's her, I don't know, evocation or something. Yeah.

Srini Rao : Okay. Your last name is Patel. Is are you, Is your dad Indian?

Jess Patel: No. Yeah, so this is a really interesting thing. So my family is my mom's side is, has been in America for a long time, but my dad's side is Polish Jewish and Russian Jewish. And certain things were happening in the beginning of the 20th century, which meant Poland was not a safe place for my family to.

And so the last memory my grandfather has of Poland before when he's a little kid, is like a Jew being dragged behind a cart by a rope, right? And then they're like, Peace out. Let's get outta here. And they come to America. And for most of my life, their name was Pawelski. I'm, for most of my life, I thought that the way Patels ski became Patel.

At Ellis Island, they cut off the last part of the name, which they often do. They just make it simpler. But it turns out that's not true. My grandfather and like half of his siblings, he had five siblings Chopped, made it from Patels Ski to Patel and I think the sixties or the, No, I guess it had to be earlier than that.

My dad was born in Patel basically when they were here, they were young adults. They're working in New York City. And I. I think they, there's not broad agreement on why they did it, like they've all passed away, but we've been talking about it. So it's either because of Polish prejudice, like they didn't want to be called like a dumb pole.

There's, But the main two theories are that they basically were pissed at Poland for murdering all their relatives or. They just wanted a shorter name for business purposes, basically, like my grandfather was a like a Robeson salesman and he just didn't want a long polish name I actually being like, pretend Indian has been a major part of my life, basically.

So like we live in this small town, so anytime an Indian would move into our town, they'd look in the phone book for Patels. My dad's a doctor, so they'd see Dr. Patel. They'd call us up, and my dad, but my dad is like obsessed with India So He's Oh, I'm not Indian, but you should come over.

We'll have you over. And he'd cook them Indian food. And he like, he'd always make banana curry, which like, I'm I'm now married to an Indian and I've never had banana curry. I don't even know. If that's a thing, right?

Srini Rao : Curry until

Jess Patel: exactly. Exactly. So I'm like, what the fuck is this banana cur?

But growing up I thought that was like such a classic Indian dish and yeah, so that's huge. And so now I'm married to an Indian, but the weird thing is she's mug, which they're all with the Portuguese, so she has a European last name and I'm a Patel. And

Srini Rao : So

Jess Patel: yeah.

Srini Rao : and she got an Indian last name by marrying

Jess Patel: Yeah. And then the final twist is we had kids and they were two girls and I thought Wow, they should get their mom's name cause they're girls and feminism and all that.

But she was like really torn between, essentially, they're gonna have you half white kids, they're gonna be white passing and no one's gonna know they're Indian. So if she gave them my name, they were to like, people would know they're Indian and it's shorter cuz her last name was like Masco, which is a Portuguese last name.

So she actually went with Patel, which. , which I'm happy about rubbing her face all the time. Yeah.

Srini Rao : Wow. Okay. Woo. So the funny thing is I've had a lot of Jewish podcast guests and,

What I understand, the narrative about making your way in the world in a Jewish household is pretty much the same as it is an Indian household. Dr. Lu you went to Stanford, so I'm guessing there had to be some of that in your.

Jess Patel: It's interesting. Not really actually. So I , so when I was applying to Stanford, so I wanted to go to Stanford. I didn't even know what Stanford was. I learned about, I was obsessed with like science and stuff when I was in a sophomore in high school. And there was a couple of, I read Scientific American all the time, and there were a couple of.

Experiments I was really excited about and I learned they were all at Stanford Research labs. And when I learned from US News and World Report while sitting in the truck, my dad's truck outside his office waiting for him, that Stanford was a college, I was like, I want to go there. And when I started applying to Stanford, my dad was like, Are you sure you wanna do that?

Like it's like applying to Harvard. It's really hard to get into. And he was discourage me from doing. And I was like, Dad, I haven't gotten a math problem wrong in the last two years. And he's Okay. No, not at all. My parents were very much like supporting me in what I wanted to do.

Also, I got kicked outta a lot of schools when I was little. I was like the bad kid. So I don't think that was really, it wasn't projected to be in the cards for me. Exactly.

Srini Rao : Okay. So how in the world do you go from being the bad kid gets kicked out of a lot of schools to getting Stanford? That

Jess Patel: Oh yeah. So there's two important things. So one is Mrs. Hos, thank you very much. Mrs. Husker, freshman year was this teacher who. Would let me, a lot of my teachers would let me like bring, for example, ceramics into class and work on them in class so I wasn't totally disruptive or like work on art in class, whatever.

They would just let me do stuff so I wouldn't make their class a hell hole. And she came up to me one day relatively early in the school and she said, Jesse, I think you're pretty smart. Do you want to be in like the. Courses. And I was like, What? No, I'm not smart. And she's Think about it.

And she had me go talk to the guidance counselor and he was like teacher thinks you should do it. You should do it. So I, she basically just convinced me to transfer into the advanced Courses. And then I didn't really, I still did art in class, but I didn't, it was interesting all of a sudden and I was like, Oh, I guess I'm not, I guess I'm smart, Wow, that's interesting.

So that was one thing. And then the other thing, so that was freshman year, but then, so I was in these classes and they were great, but after my sophomore year my dad. We were in vacation and I remember we were canoeing around in what's it called? Mystic, Connecticut. That was like, you know that, I don't know, there's like a movie called Mystic Pizza or something.

Anyways, we're canoeing around on vacation and he said, there's something I wanted to talk to you about for a long time, but I didn't know how to bring it up. He basically said, I think you have a d, and do you wanna do something about it? Do you wanna get evaluated, maybe get medicated and all this stuff.

and I was like, Yeah, that sounds cool. Basically cuz I was like, I want to get into Stanford. Honestly. I was like, I really want to go to where the gravity Pro B. Gravity Pro B was this experiment. That's really cool to try to validate some prediction of the theory, Einstein's theory of general relativity.

And I was really excited about it and I, when I learned it was happening at Stanford, I really wanted to go there. So I was like, Oh yeah, I'll do anything I can do to get in there. And so I got tested and they were like, Yeah, you have add d do you want. Cocaine basically is what they give you . And I was like, Yeah, gimme some cocaine.

It'll help. And so they give me the cocaine, Ritalin, and I was just like, Holy cow. They're telling it all, They're explaining all this stuff to me in class. Like I used to basically just figure out math. And then I just was like, they're just explaining how it works. It's just so easy. And I real, I just I think I got like maybe one problem wrong in the next two years in math,

All of my, like math and physics were.

Higher than a hundred percent since then. And so that those two things like Miss Oscar and cocaine,

Srini Rao : Yeah look, I'm glad that you brought that up because I also, have been diagnosed with adhd. But

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : thing that happened to me, and this I always say is such an. My fourth grade teacher told my parents that I might have a learning disability because I was failing reading, which is ironic cuz I've written books for a living

,

i, because they're Indian parents, they're like, He doesn't have a learning disability, you're just a shitty teacher. And so it went undiagnosed. I just actually finished writing this article about long and short term consequences of being undiagnosed with ADHD until I was, I think, 20. I mean fired from every job. at Berkeley. I got straight As in high school because I have Indian parents.

They would

Jess Patel: Right.

Srini Rao : if you didn't get straight A's. but why do you think that we have this sort of stigma around adhd? I mean it like you're, See, this is what I'm seeing. Like in the contrast, it's you got the diagnosis. When

Young and look at the results. I got the diagnosis way later and after the diagnosis and medication.

Was like a different world.

Jess Patel: It's crazy.

Srini Rao : cuz you read about this stuff. I remember I met how just finished writing this book called ADHD 2.0

He said basically a person with h ADHD has a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes and it's just like a popcorn machine with endless

Jess Patel: right?

Srini Rao : And I wonder, for you like, That sense that, Okay, now I understand it cuz I think one of the things that I found to be so valuable Tara McMullen actually said, there's a term for this called biographical illumination, where suddenly you get that diagnosis and the rest of your life suddenly makes sense.

Jess Patel: right?

Srini Rao : I wonder, as somebody who was fortunate, at least I think fortunate to be diagnosed early in life, what do you think the differences in between somebody who gets diagnosed in a short term versus.

Jess Patel: You seem like a train wreck. Let me just open with that. , you seem okay. But I think, I actually have a, I know someone right now who is. In their, late career, very successful, but is just being diagnosed and realizing this thing, and they, it's been quite dramatic for them.

They. Have had to go through this whole like grieving process for their old self who they had convinced themselves they were, and convinced everyone else they had cuz they're very smart, very high functioning, and had built all these systems to let them feel like they were a type A person.

But then there were all these problems, all these inconsistencies, all these things that caused drama in their relationships and. All this stuff when as soon as they got this little inkling of learning what a d was and where I guess ADHD was and reading math like, Whoa, maybe I'm, this, maybe I'm like the opposite of what I've been projecting and convincing myself of, and this is related to why I have all this imposter syndrome.

So I think that it doesn't preclude you from being successful, first of all, and I, but I think that not knowing it is like setting the stage for people to be angry at. And you to be angry at yourself for things that you don't understand, that you have, don't have any control over. Sorry. And I think it's just really hard but at the same time, I think it's always that I can't remember, what did you call it?

Biographical illumination or

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: I think that is definitely happening to this person. And I think I think it's good for them and even though it's hard now and like they, their partner is having to go through it, the same understanding, shift in understanding and all that. I think it's good.

I think it would certainly have been better early. On the flip side, I feel like now our schools are so aware of it. And maybe it's being overdiagnosed. I don't know. My sense is if any kid gets into any trouble, they're like, give 'em some meds. Hey, take these pills, like shoving them down kid's throats.

I, I don't know exactly what it is, but I have some sense that we might have shifted in the, a bit in the opposite direction now.

Srini Rao : On the note of adhd, I forgot to ask you to do something before we started. Can I have you disable your camera and

Jess Patel: Oh.

Srini Rao : visuals dis find

Jess Patel: I'm not looking,

Srini Rao : reason

Jess Patel: Yeah. I'm not even looking at the camera at all.

Srini Rao : you're not.

Jess Patel: Yeah. . Yeah.

Srini Rao : so I actually don't have it turned on, and this is actually a good example of my ADHD at work.

So I actually specifically have to ca keep camera off for that very reason. But one thing I wonder what have you seen as both the advantages and disadvantages of having adhd? Because I think that what I'm realizing is in some context it's a gift, and in others it's an absolute burden. So

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : it been a gift and where has it been a burden?

Jess Patel: Huh. There's so much that's a gift that, just like the creative energy I have this like unbelievable creative energy, which I attribute in part to just the mind exploring and going off in different directions. Like the, and it's very

,

related to the downside, which is I might be standing in the kitchen for 10 minutes doing nothing, just in some idea, right?

And my wife might come up and be, Aren't you supposed to be getting dinner? And I'm like, Oh yeah. Totally and it's just like literally, it just can ideas can stop me in my tracks or just, and I have very strong visual imagination, so it's just can be like totally in a different world.

But that's also the, that's both the downside and the upside for me. I also, I don't take medication anymore because I really didn't like the tweaky feeling of it. So I haven't taken them since college.

So I still have a lot of the I, even though that it, it was transformative, I stopped.

I'm thinking about it again, but so I, I'm still in the middle of it, so I think that's I think one of the huge downsides of it is what's it called? Reactive dysphoria stuff. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Srini Rao : Rejection sensitivity is

Jess Patel: Yeah. Yeah. So that's really sucks, like just this, And for people who don't know about adhd, basically, it's one of these things where if you get negative feedback or you get rejected or something like this it's just so d just so much in a profound, exaggerated way, just such a gut punch.

Even the smallest little bit of negative feedback can be. Really debilitatingly painful, which I didn't know this. My wife actually, once she realized I had a d, even though I'd been telling her for ages, but when she started actually looking into it, she learned about that and she was like, Whoa.

And I didn't know about that. Cause I have add D so I'm not gonna look into all details, so she is, she's been educating me. I D, but. But yeah, that sucks, man. There's all these emotional things I think that really suck that are just like, I don't know what you can do about 'em, but they suck.

Srini Rao : It's funny because I relate to that whole idea of going to the kitchen. Like my mom, she's I'm at my parents' house right now cuz my sister's on maternity leave cuz she just had a baby. I wanted to hang out with them and she's like, All right, we're putting a checklist in the bathroom for you.

I hope that's okay. Cuz she's, she's O c D, so she needs everything. She's the towel has to be hung the cap needs to be put on the toothpaste. And what I realized at a certain point was people with ADHD for them, the things that other people they think are irrelevant, I have fr a friend who's Dude, he's You come over to our house, you open the cabinet to get something out, and then you don't close the door. And I've realized like, because my mind is already processed, like whatever I needed and I've just on mentally.

Jess Patel: forget. Yeah. My wife is . She's, she plays this game with my daughters of like, where will Jesse put his shoes next? Cause it's she's There's a box for the shoes, but he will arrange them meticulously in a random place, like around the house.

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: The other, when she played this game last, my shoes were arranged in like a line wedged up against the bottom of a counter, like one in front of the other, like in this way that you could never get there naturally.

And it, it just didn't occur to me at the time. Obviously there was no thought going on in my head.

Srini Rao : No I can completely

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : speaking of your wife you mentioned your wife is Indian. One thing I am always curious about with people who are interracial couples and children, is you preserve maintain heritage and culture.

Like, how do you integrate aspects of both your culture and hers when it comes to your.

Jess Patel: Yeah, so I think this might relate to a d as well, but so her family is very on top of it. They're all like, So basically the Indian culture stuff is doing pretty well. We go back to India pretty regularly. She sees her grandparents, she sees all her aunties and uncles and they're, I mean it's funny but like they go to church with her grandpa cuz they're from Goa.

So going Catholic, converted by the sword in 1400 and All that stuff is strong with them. The Jewish side, the American side, you don't have to worry about they're immersed in it. But the Jewish side, I'm doing a pretty bad. Actually a horrible job of it because my Jewish identity was taken in a weird way.

I always grew up Jewish. I was one of the Jewish kids in this town. But when I went to college, I don't really I'm like, my mom is a, is she converted? But she's not by blood Jewish. So she I don't look that Jewish. So people never really believed me when I said it in college. And I'd have to say a prayer to convince them or something.

Honestly, wore down my Jewish identity a lot, like not feeling accepted and part of it. And so it was this default thing that kind of left. And I think part of a d like I just don't remember or pay attention. I don't know if it's AV or just being like un engaged, but I basically am doing a really bad job of that.

And I've been thinking about it lately, like after Kanye said what he said about. Jews and Defcon three I had this feeling like, Oh shit, I gotta take these kids to temple. Like they've never been to synagogue and it's it's really bad. I don't know. It's not a part of my life other than just, it's part of my family.

I'm super secular. And I don't take the time, but I'd love to hear the songs again. We went to synagogue. My parents were, we went to synagogue every week and my parents were on like the board of the local reform synagogue and all this stuff. I don't know.

Srini Rao : Yeah, like many of the people I interview, you seem to have sort of a windy path. So at first you go from being, the bad kid in school, diagnosed with adhd, then to Stanford, then you go from Stanford to trying to be a, an actor

Jess Patel: Wait,

Srini Rao : company. So

Jess Patel: Yeah, . So I think that's I would love to pretend that that's that's the path that I wanted to be an actor, But I never thought I was gonna be an actor. I was an improviser, but I never thought I would do it professionally. I thought other things. So I thought, I thought I was gonna be, my, my dream was always to be an inventor, so it is, has to some degree turned out that way.

But I, what I studied in college was design and I. I really had no idea what I was gonna do, to be totally honest. I, my first job out of college was in the social innovation space. And it was a really crazy, strange job. But should we just pretend I wanted to be an actor?

Srini Rao : Sure we could do that.

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Yeah.

Srini Rao : like that based on the, the bio that you are the marketing guy sent us

Jess Patel: Yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry about.

Srini Rao : worries.

Jess Patel: I can do it. I can go with it.

Srini Rao : Yeah. You, I think that there's a line that struck me in particular, that in the bio that we got about you, and it was that your marketing guy said, You're an artist trapped in the body of a ceo.

Jess Patel: Very true. So I didn't wanna be an actor, but I wanted to be, was a children's book illustrator and author. And at Stanford I tried to design my own curriculum around that to, to have that be my thing, graduate in that cause I was taking anyways and they wouldn't let me. So I they wouldn't let me do an independent major.

And because I basically need external structure or I don't do things, it didn't happen. So in the terms of the being an artist trapped in the CEO's body, that's entirely true. I just think, like I'm a, I'm in terms of being a scatterbrained idea person who just wants to create, wants to be a craftsman and just has this insatiable creative energy.

It's a huge contrast and conflict with having to build and run an organization. Which requires a lot of follow through , a lot of attention to detail, which in some ways I have, but it's I think as you could probably relate, you don't really have control over where your attention to detail goes,

Srini Rao : absolutely.

Jess Patel: and so in a sense I am trying to, at this point, I've hired people who are. Who are more type a, more organized to compliment me and have am just increasingly shifting things over to them that I, I'm just not well suited to do, so that I can be more of an artist, more of an explorer. And I think what I really wanna be is an ad, like an adventurer, I would say is like I, I think I, I wrote to you about mad science, like my, I'm inspiring mad scientists and I really wanna just try all these crazy ideas I have.

And see if any of them are real, And I can't, I don't know. In high school I had an idea based on my rudimentary understanding of magnetism for a perpetual motion machine, and I like spent a month building it and it didn't work. Turns out, which sucks, but

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: that is it's almost like I want to go back to doing that, to trying, just trying wild things.

Hopefully they work, hopefully they're not you. Outlined, but by the laws of physics, but yeah.

Srini Rao : yeah, I mean there are so many ironies in this, right? Like you're this person who struggles to get things done. So you build a company that helps you get things done.

It is. So yeah, what was the impetus for starting a workflow? Even explain it to people. And then I wanna talk about your views on productivity, because I think

Jess Patel: yeah. Absolutely.

Srini Rao : This is one of those things where, I just finished reading you might like this book Madeline Do.

She's gonna be a guest here called, I Didn't Do the Thing Today. And it was such a view on productivity. But,

Jess Patel: It.

Srini Rao : as somebody who, literally basically runs a company to help people be more productively, first, what was the impetus?

Jess Patel: Yeah, so I had a job. It was my first. My second job out of college basically, and I was the business development director of a small nonprofit. And in terms of what I was directing, that's my own activities, just to be clear. That was my title, a small technology nonprofit that was basically trying to be like Mozilla for video.

They were trying to build open source software that would in 2005, prevent something like YouTube. It was clear that something like YouTube was gonna happen and they wanted it happen, like an open source, decentralized way. They obviously failed, but they had, they still had 5 million users or something, and they were trying to figure out how do we make this a sustainable business?

And there were like 400 different options. So you could sell ads, you could sell content. Customize your software for other people? You could, There was just, it maybe literally 10 different directions you could go. All were viable things, viable potential directions, but each of which was essentially starting a new business from scratch using the similar resource and even each of which required an enormous amount of detail to to execute, implement, and some small project in inside any of them might end up being, like pitch and.

And source and whatever, 10 new companies, any of which are, they might have a whole department for them, in another organization. So I had this just really overwhelming job and I couldn't keep track of the information. Like it was just, I couldn't keep track. And I also, at the same time, in parallel, had this just profound creative urge, which I mentioned already, and I was not scratching it, so I'm being overwhelmed by, Information and just churning through productivity tools.

So everything, base camp, text mate, just word every, everything that you can think from that era that existed. I basically tried it and I encountered the same problem in all of them. It's that they had a limited depth. So there's always some definition of project, some definition of milestone task, whatever, or just the size of the paper and word for example.

Limits how much you can break things down. And as I think someone with a d, I really need to break something as big as take over the world down into this, a step as small as open your computer and type. A word. So I couldn't do that. And I also couldn't basically all the projects I have seemed like they expanded and I needed something with a fractal structure.

So I just needed, I knew I needed a fractal structure and I knew I wanted to make something. So I basically, and I knew I, I'd taken a couple programming classes in college and I knew I. That process, that, that felt the same to me. Programming felt the same to me as working with clay or drawing or something like that.

It really felt like an artistic tinkering type of thing. You have an idea, you make something and there it is in front of you. It's like a beautiful thing. And so I just decided to combine those. I knew I wanted a fractal thing and I knew I liked programming, so I just started working on it and.

And once I started using it, I was like, This is great. This is awesome. I like it. And then that's the very, that's the impetus. That's the story of the impetus.

Srini Rao : Wow.

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : yeah, so we will talk a little bit about workflow and how it differs from some of the other stuff out there in a second. But I want to go back to this whole idea of productivity because I think that, as a culture, let's face it, we've. Become somewhat productivity obsessed.

I feel I realize when I log into Medium now, I'm like, why do I feel like I'm drowning an assess pool of productivity porn? Because

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : I'm like, and I've contributed to a lot of this because I wrote a lot of these articles and now I'm like, every time I open this damn site, it's all I see. And I have a course called Maximize Your Output, which is related to my favorite go-to note taking out is me because it works perfectly for the way my brain works. But, let's talk about this. The idea of productivity as this abstract metric that we're just all obsessively trying to optimize.

Cuz I feel like we almost have this sort of idea of productivity without a purpose.

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : let it happen. And and sometimes it conflicts with being creative. It. Yeah, Like I saw, I just, I literally just finished writing this article titled Why Me the ta, Why Task Completion is a terrible Measure of Your Productivity

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : people are like, Oh, I'm just gonna check off all these things.

Do you have a productive day? Cuz I crossed all this shit off of list. I was like, Yeah, but what impact did any of that have?

Jess Patel: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was about to say is I say I, I'm not obsessed with productivity at all unless you define it as doing something meaningful or important or enjoyable, like I, I'm really not trying to optimize every minute or I guess I am, but I think it's. What, who said this? I can't remember anyways.

Like the idea that what you work on matters more than how you work on it or how efficiently you work on it. I think that's, I think that's true, and I think that in terms of productivity for me, like what workflow he does for me, for example, this is just. It's just about enabling me to focus.

It's not about squeezing more hours outta my day. It's unless I can write down the smallest thing and then zoom in on it and take notes while I'm working on it, and just keep doing that in this, manage my working memory in a very fluid way. I just can't do anything. I'm frozen.

For me, productivity is about extending your capabilities, extending your mind, extending what you can do in a fundamental way, and focusing on what is it that I should actually be doing. So one thing I do right now and one thing I'm experimenting with is focus. Focus and accountability services is a, like a way of thinking about it, where basically you like help people do the stuff that they're avoiding for whatever reason or that they can't get themselves to do.

And that is much more important doing

,

the stuff you know you need to do, but you can't get yourself to, That's much more important than like being more effective and efficient at whatever the hell you are doing. You.

Srini Rao : Yeah it's funny. Julian Smith who you might know, uhs, a founder of Breather, runs another startup now called the Practice which is the coaching He's been mentor.

I reached out to him and I said, Look, Julian, made the transition from, being solely an artist to being a CEO of two venture funded companies now.

And the reason I reached out to you is because the one piece of advice you gave me led to a six figure book contract. I'm like, Everything you've taught. So I was like, You're

Jess Patel: Yeah.

Srini Rao : you've made the transition I've made. And your advice led to really concrete results. But one thing I've noticed about our mentorship calls every week. Basically we talk, not about what I've been doing, but what I should stop doing.

Yeah. And that right there was just a art, like when you start to think about that, what happens? You suddenly realize yeah, you might work a little longer and you'll probably work on less stuff, but more impactful stuff. And he had this really description when he calls the attention. value funnel where it's where does your attention and effort go and what value does it produce and how do you filter out for those things? And that was really just, it was such a different way of thinking where it's like, Okay, what do I do that produces any value?

And I'm like, Maybe three or four things. I always joke that I'm the most useless person at my company all I, the only things of value that I do are people, write and speak and produce content. I'm like, that is what 98% of my time should be focused on is producing content, not tweaking website designs and stuff like this. I feel like people get so caught up in minutiae. That is very irrelevant to what they're trying to accomplish. It's like the person, This is actually a really a good example. My best friend and I, we host this segment called The Creativity Hour. I'm talking about people who start a business, right?

And he's there's some people who say they're gonna start a business and they go and get a business card printed, then there are other people who go and just sell the service. Like we put all these things in our way that are completely irrelevant. So for you, as somebody with ADHD who has the same tend tendencies I do to want to like, go in multiple directions and x explore ideas, how do you prevent yourself from going in parallel paths and how do you identify things that actually end up having the most impact?

Jess Patel: I think that is a question for the ages, the last one. How do you identify what has more impact ? And I, I think to, to an extent, like when we can learn from sort of product design process there, which is you can do some amount of Analysis by the theory and your understanding of whatever system you're trying to change is you can do that, but then that almost never stands up.

That's directional, I think, and it doesn't really stand up to reality usually. So I think the way you figure out how you're gonna have impact is by doing something small and seeing if it has an impact and if it does, do more of it and go further in that direction. If it doesn't shift direction a little bit.

Does that answer does, Is that like a valid answer to the question?

Srini Rao : I think so. I think that other thing is that, people are also, this is one thing I think about is, and people are like, Okay, what is the impact? And the. I think they can get into a trap of measuring their progress against outcomes. And I realized a long time ago that was actually a really easy way to kill your motivation.

Jess Patel: Yeah, totally.

Srini Rao : for that. That's, I'll do the work of aery on ability at Harvard. She has a progress principle and I was like, Oh, okay. If you measure your progress with that you can control,

Jess Patel: Yeah, exactly.

Srini Rao : you actually stay a lot more motivated to show up and do the thing that you want to.

Jess Patel: Yeah. Yeah. The four disciplines of execution is, Cal Newport recommends that, right? And it's, they have this concept of lead me, lead metrics, which are exactly that. And that it's depressing if you like, if you diet and you measure your weight. Ever all the only thing it can do can hurt you.

Because if you've lost weight, you're like, Congratulations, let's have a milkshake. And if you've, if you haven't lost weight, you're depressed and you give up. It's measure your how well you're doing. Measure weigh yourself once a month or less and like measure whether you're doing, eating the stuff you wanna eat or whatever it is.

Diet's a silly example, but yeah, I totally agree.

But, okay. So there were two parts to that question. The original question one was how do you measure, how do you tell what's worth with doing? And then I think you also asked how do I in particular, choose what to focus on and what to not get pet pulled in parallel tracks?

So I would say I'm not great at that. It's hard, it's a real struggle for me with ADHD, as you said. But what I'm trying to do more is orient my life toward my strengths. So that I don't have to be failing at things. I'm not good at all the time, , and it's I love nothing better than working on my weaknesses.

But in terms of my career, like what I'm trying to do right now is if I, if you're to say Oh, okay, you're, I'm 40, I'm 42, I'm gonna die. And as much time as I've already had on this earth, like I'm reaching the end of my or whatever, I, the sun is now past noon and especially in terms of my productive years.

If I was to be saying what do I want to be the best at in the next, while, I would say it's probably like opportunity, identification and creation. So that would let me, if I could just say, Oh, I think here's a huge opportunity. And I am going to first identify it and set up the, all the systems and all of the precursors to success for this, and then just let it go.

Set up teams or set up whatever set, do that essentially be in more of a producer role for ideas. That would, I think, that would let me be exceptionally effective at both being able to pursue things in parallel. So like taking advantage of that desire and potentially, because I'm not a great organizer, having more of a role of feedback and accountability for whatever it is that I start and want to do.

And that's also increasingly what I'm doing with my work is I have other people who are doing all the operations and then I have the vision for the product and other things, and then I give feedback and I I or, and I prepare the initial. The idea, like the thing that keeps things there's an inherent work flowiness to things that I think is a lot just my taste.

And so I just make sure things stick to that.

Srini Rao : Gimme an idea, like what does an average morning for you look like? You're a CEO of the company. When you sit down at your desk in the morning, or when you wake up in the morning, how does your day?

Jess Patel: So first it starts with me wrangling my children to get them to school. But after that it sits, I start by sitting down and. Actually, so let's just go, let's rewind a little while. But what I used to happen was someone would call me this woman who is my sort of focus coach and make me plan my day and go and start doing all the stuff that I avoid doing, and she would just sit with me.

And I'm not doing that now because mostly I've structured my day. So I have meetings, she calls me later in the day now. But I have meetings that essentially structure my time for me. But before I have the meetings, I have 45 minutes or so. And I will go through, we've built like a communication tool in our product, which is not public, but is very powerful and I'll go through and catch up on that.

But. Usually whatever the big project I have that I'm supposed to be focused on, I have a meeting scheduled for essentially as beginning of the day as can be where I'm guaranteed that my kids aren't still screaming and not out of the house. So I usually, I'll have some external structure that makes me focus on what I'm supposed to focus on and a social structure, and it'll pull me into it and hopefully that kind of sets the, make sure that I end up doing the deep work on what needs to be, what's highest priority.

Yeah. And sometimes I wake up before my children wake up and get to do some something that lets me center myself. But oftentimes I. Wake up and rush off to deal with screamy children.

Srini Rao : Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but you're not venture funded, right? You guys self

Jess Patel: raised a little bit of money basically, so my co-founder and I were paralyzed. He didn't really wanna work on it anymore, and we were Blah. He also, and he was not willing to let me just run with it, so I had to buy him out. So I raised some money to buy him out. But yeah, we're not venture funder.

We're not on that cycle.

Srini Rao : Yeah, so that's one of the things I wanted to ask about because I, we raised some money as well, and. Definitely changes when you take somebody else's money because now you are no longer just accountable to yourself, put to somebody else. And I remember Jeff be who was at Adobe, he said, this is a virtually irreversible path.

He said, Once you take somebody else's money, particularly at that level, and in a world where everybody's trying to build, the next unicorn, I wonder. That, Like, why is that just, why is that not part of your long term vision and, how do you see that whole ecosystem?

Because I feel like it the, you look at the Ubers of the world, it's like world domination at any cost.

Jess Patel: Yeah it's funny, so I don't know Travis Colick, but he's friends with friends and I've hung out with him a handful of times. Not since Uber, but like at the beginning of Uber and before. And I'm just like, Look, that's like his personality, even when he's like playing cards, I dunno.

And but in terms of the broader question, so actually, it's funny. So my goal, so I had that first job in social entrepreneurship, social innovation space. That I mentioned at the beginning, and my goal basically since then, there's this whole category of company that's, how Yvonne Chanard has given away Patagonia and made it a for purpose business.

He's do you know about this?

Srini Rao : Yeah, I

Jess Patel: Yeah. So yeah, so they're basically donating all the profits from the company forever to nonprofit whose goal is to help address climate change. So since that job, when I was like 23 or. I had this idea that, I think you could, there, there's Newman's own and there's a bunch of smaller companies, but I had this idea that I think you could, it would be possible to get a positive feedback loop such that most.

Companies like that for purpose companies end up being a dominant force in the global economy, like a dominant form of company, maybe surpassing like for profit companies in the long term. And so I became really obsessed with that idea and I wanted to start a company so that I could dramatically. Give away the money and stuff.

So that's my plan and that's what I wanna do with workflow and with other things. And so that's the reason that I haven't wanted to raise money that raised a lot of money. I still wanna do things that are huge, but I don't want to be tied into having my main goal be to. The richest people richer, and I don't have, I know a lot of the richest people, they're great, but I don't have anything against billionaires, but I just, it's like, it's just not the system I'm excited about.

Srini Rao : . Yeah.

Jess Patel: yeah

Srini Rao : which makes me wonder, I'm guessing, given what you've just said, and I feel this way too, that workflow is probably not gonna be the last company you built.

Jess Patel: No, I am. I think honestly, I think the crazy thing I want to do, I wanna see if I can I would say at this point, yes, it's not the last company I'm gonna build, but I'm not sure company is the right word for what I wanna build next.

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: it might be more like movement or non-profit or something.

Yeah.

Srini Rao : Amazing. This has been really fascinating. I have really just enjoyed talking to you and so many different directions and so many sort of insights spark from me during our conversation. So I wanna finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unistaff.

Jess Patel: Unmistakable, , I would say like the thing, I think there, there are lots of things, but my favorite thing is just authenticity. Like we had a, I went out to a diner with my brother, my mom last weekend, and our server was this woman who. Was really delightful. My brother said at one point, he's like, What percentage of things that come to her mind do you think?

She says, And he and I was like 83, and he's Yeah, I think I'm like a 30. But she was not, It wasn't in an annoying way, it was just in this delightfully like cheerful, positive way. But something about her struck me as just so authentic that she was definitely unistaff. to me. And I don't know. I mean there's obviously, there's, you could say uniqueness, but that doesn't feel like a unique answer.

So

Srini Rao : Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with Eness. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything that you're up to? Or, sorry, not the

Jess Patel: The book?

Srini Rao : Josh.

Jess Patel: let's talk about my book. Yeah.

Okay. So I believe in doing small prototyping, doing stupid things that are bound to fail. So I want you to go if you think I should, if your listeners think that I should. Pursue the direction of mad science and exploring a future in which, Oh, yeah.

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: So I think one thing I had wanted to mention and forgive me for let me think actually if this is a good idea. You have editors, right? It's fine for me to

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: quiet for a second. Let me ask you

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: question, then we can edit it out. So in terms of that whole thing around.

Sort of giving my money away, doing diving into the whole idea of I don't think we went into enough detail about any of these projects. I was thinking about saying Okay, I'm gonna do a test here. I set up a sub stack with nothing on it. I was like, Okay, maybe I'll see if people would join a sub stack from the interview.

It doesn't seem like it's in the spirit, but I don't have any, I basically, I don't have any I don't have much of a presence on the inter other than I'm not a content creator.

Srini Rao : Yeah.

Jess Patel: can go to WorkFlowy.

Srini Rao : All right. Let's leave it at that. Let me just ask how, where can people find out about your question

Jess Patel: Yeah. Yeah.

Srini Rao : Just leave it there. Yeah. Cause I, Yeah, there just wasn't, I didn't think that went anywhere, unfortunately.

Jess Patel: Oh no, that didn't go anywhere. I was trying to ask you a question of should I promote a should I promote something random and completely new?

Srini Rao : No, I don't think that

Jess Patel: No. Okay. Okay.

Srini Rao : All right all yeah, so where can people find out more about you, your work and everything? They're up to.

Jess Patel: I don't have much of a social media presence. You could follow me on Twitter. I'm Jesse, p j e s e p, but there's not much going on there. I recommend just checking out workflow e.com. That's the company product I've been making and that's it.

Srini Rao : All right, and for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.