- The video discusses the importance of managing time effectively for productivity.
- It mentions the concept of a "maker schedule" for programmers and the need for uninterrupted blocks of time to focus on tasks.
- The video also emphasizes the importance of writing things down and having a well-managed to-do list.
- It discusses the significance of monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) and being aware of business statistics.
- The video suggests applying the maker schedule concept to sales and customer interactions as well.

- Scheduling short blocks of time is not as effective as dedicating longer blocks of time to important tasks
- Social media can be a major time suck and founders need to have a healthy relationship with it
- Founders should protect their time and energy by being abnormal in their approach
- Collecting mentors and advisors can be a distraction from building and launching a product
- Hedging bets and trying to de-risk a startup through multiple avenues is not the optimal strategy
- Taking risks and being proud of the work done is more important than avoiding failure.

- Splitting resources among multiple teams is not a good strategy to beat a strong opponent.
- This strategy is not effective even if one is trying to think strategically.
- Future billionaires focus on getting things done and avoid this ineffective strategy.

The video emphasizes the importance of effective time management for productivity. It discusses the concept of a "maker schedule" for programmers and the need for uninterrupted blocks of time. It also highlights the significance of writing things down, having a well-managed to-do list, and monitoring key performance indicators. The video suggests applying the maker schedule concept to sales and customer interactions. It advises against scheduling short blocks of time and warns about the time-consuming nature of social media. Founders are encouraged to protect their time and energy, avoid distractions, and take risks. Splitting resources among multiple teams is not recommended. Future billionaires prioritize getting things done and avoiding ineffective strategies.

Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel take a look at Paul Graham's essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" and share tips on how to be more effective and productive on the journey to creating a billion dollar business.

Read PG's essay here: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 
00:00 - How Future Billionaires Get Sh*t Done
00:38 - PG Essay
01:18 - Maker Schedule
03:59 - The Right Time
05:01 - Structure of YC
05:59 - Manager Schedule
06:36 - Meetings
07:38 - Visible KPIs
09:38 - Your Main Focus
10:51 - Great founders not do 👇
11:01 - Social Media
13:33 - Tools for Time
14:10 - Startup Mentorship
16:00 - Hedging Bets

I think a well-managed to-do list is a software product that you need to adopt.

I actually don't even care which 1 you adopt.

But it's like, when I tell something to founders and then they write it down in a notebook, I'm like, that's gone forever.

They have like a fountain pen and they're like taking beautiful notes, Michael.

We all know that everything important is in the Moleskine notebook.

This is Michael Seibel with Dalton Caldwell.

Today we're going to talk about how future billionaires get shit done.

So Dalton, you were inspired by a PG boast when thinking of this idea, right?

Yeah, Paul Graham wrote this really famous blog post, I believe called Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule, where he said something that all of us have thought before, but he put it very succinctly and in great words.

So if you haven't read it before, anyone out there on the internet, you should read it.

Just Google maker schedule, manager schedule, we can put a link in.

He introduces the idea of the difference between how makers, i.e.

Programmers in his case, organize their time to be productive versus folks that are managers.

You were a developer in your startup, I was a business guy in my startup.

I think in many ways this stuff came a little bit more natively to you, and I had to learn this stuff by like basically destroying the productivity of my co-founders.

So how did you think about Maker's Mode as a founder?

Most companies are set up around a manager schedule where you have a day packed with meeting after meeting.

And so if you're a programmer at a big company, you would have to, you know, you'd have like an hour to program here and an hour to program there.

This was not conducive to building things.

And so to just walk through my perspective as someone that was programming back in the day when I was a startup founder, when you're programming, the more of the program you can keep in your head at any 1 time, the easier it is for you to know what's going on and have the context up here to make changes and fix bugs.

And it takes like an hour or 2 cold of looking at a program and figuring stuff out for it to get loaded into RAM, so to speak.

And so if you're interrupted, like if you have to program in hour increments, man, are you gonna suck.

Like you constantly have to restart your state every time you program.

And So a great maker's schedule is something like an 8 hour uninterrupted block of time.

And his argument, I think he was also talking about this from the perspective of an artist or a musician.

Like if you wanted to record an album or write music or if you wanted to write a book, the same deal.

If you had to write a book in 20 minute increments, I think a lot of writers wouldn't love that.

Which is so much different than the business guy.

Like, you know, I was the business guy at my startup and you certainly can do email in 20 minute increments or hour increments.

And so I remember having this conversation with Emmett where he said, Michael, imagine that I'm doing ridiculously complicated word problems and you're interrupting me in the middle of them.

I was like, oh, well, I've had to do hard word processing.

1, that sounds a lot harder than writing emails, but 2, I would hate to be interrupted.

And once he said that, it kind of clicked.

Before he said that, I just assumed, well, you know, he's typing, I'm typing.

And I remember when I read the post, what resonated with me is I felt like my work day really began around 5 or 6 p.m.

And that's because that's when things would quiet down and I would stop getting email and the building I was working out of would quiet down.

And that's where actually all the good programming happened

When I was- What was interesting was that for us, we basically had to figure out how to build that in.

I think in the beginning, organically it happened because that was our sleep cycle.

We were all living in an apartment together.

But when we had more employees and we had an office, we literally, and this is something that I just noticed happened organically, nothing got done before lunch.

Getting to work was all about getting in, answering your e-mail, doing a couple of meetings.

It was just like no 1 who was writing code even wanted to start writing code before lunch because lunch was the big FU in the middle of the day.

And our whole trick was 1, how do we not serve a lunch that makes everyone go to sleep?

And 2, how do we make that post lunchtime free of everything?

PG in some ways designed YC a little bit that way, right?

I think that's counterintuitive to a lot of founders.

Like, you know, we try to take as little time as possible during your week so you can actually get shit done.

And 3, I think people are often surprised, like a good portion of what I see is just asking you, what are you gonna accomplish by demo day?

And then asking you every week, well, did you do it?

And it's you confronting the yes or no of that.

It turns out that there's a lot of magic around that and he wanted to build as much maker time as possible in the program.

I think in this kind of balance between maker mode and manager mode, what people should be trying to do is maximize their productivity when they're in that mode.

So when I think about manager mode, for me I always like to think about this like, okay, if I'm gonna be managing my time between my to-do list, which is just another way of saying shit that's actually important to get done, meetings, email, and Slack, I always think that my to-do list comes first.

Like whenever I'm being productive, I start at the to-do list, and I do everything there, and then I check those things.

Versus it's inbox driven, other people are in control of your time, which is watch out.

And like we talk about this a lot, like you're gonna have to have some meetings.

I've seen a couple tricks, But they can all be reduced down to write shit down The worst thing is when you have to have another meeting because people didn't write the shit down from the first meeting That is like when you know, you punched yourself in the face But like I'm so shocked it's like no I'm gonna push

What we mean is, say you and I are in a meeting and we agree on something.

If Narlavus writes it down, it's like it never happened.

It's like we were like patting ourselves on the back.

Even if I didn't think I needed it, oh, let's write down the agenda.

Oh, let's write down notes where we decided.

Any other things that have made you productive as a manager?

that I do that I realize that a lot of the other successful founders did too was I had my analytics dashboard or whatever was important KPIs on the business up on my screen 24-7 and I would stare at it all the time.

I don't even know if you know this, but a lot of our internal stats I have memorized.

And it's because I stare at them all the time.

But I'm like obsessed with like the internal key KPIs for anything I'm working on.

I'm just like an addict to look at that stuff.

I think that that is such, what we see on the other side, and I completely agree with you, that was a huge thing.

Especially for my second startup, that was a really huge thing.

It's funny when you talk to a founder who knows their stats well, they just talk about their stats so differently.

First of all, they don't round off numbers to the nearest, like, 0, you know, like, but second of all, they know whether they're up or down 10%, at like, at any given time, like, at any given time.

Whereas other founders, it's like, yeah, I think it was an up week, but, and it's like how do you not know?

How do you not know if your revenue went up this week?

I don't get when someone is operating a business, and it's like what was our revenue last month?

But the bookkeeper, they give that to me at the end of the month, and it's like, what?

Or people didn't know, I mean, for us, it was DAUs and it was amount of video watched, but it's like, everyone on the founding team knew when we had less traffic today than yesterday.

I think my last point on this manager schedule, a little thing that I would just add, is what I've learned that I did not appreciate when I was a founder, is that the maker schedule vibe works for sales and talking to customers too.

And it's scheduling 20 minute blocks to talk to customers is not the same as an 8 hour, like, even if it's not literally you're a programmer, using the maker's concept to apply to the things that are the main event of your startup at any 1 time, and for many folks that is sales.

Yeah, you should be scheduling 8 hour blocks.

If your job as the co-founder is to be doing sales and it's like a couple of slivers in between other things on your schedule, I don't think that's going to go well.

It's basically this idea of get all of this stupid crap so productive that you can clear out, that every founder can clear out a chunk of their time for the maker schedule.

And like, some founders are gonna have to do more of this non-development blocking tackling, others are gonna have to do less of it, but I completely agree with you.

It's really hard to get anything at a high level done in 20 minute blocks.

Let's talk though about the opposite of all these things, right?

So, you know, the premise of this chat is how future billionaires get shit done.

Let's talk about what we see great founders not do.

Look, I think the trickiest thing for everybody is social media.

It's like social media is the black hole for time.

And you know, we're all guilty of it too.

And so what's tricky is how to have a healthy relationship with social media so that you aren't spending 24-7 paying attention to who the main character on Twitter is that said something dumb and everyone's making fun of them.

And it's also not hard to think that you are a startup founder and you're succeeding and you did well, but if a hidden camera was shadowing you through the day, it was like you just read Twitter all day.

Imagine if there was a hidden camera auditing what people actually did with a lot of their time.

I think some people out there would be pretty embarrassed if there was a full, clear-eyed accounting of where their time went.

It's like, hey, Discord here, TechCrunch here, Twitter here, you know.

like, how much time are you actually spending on not those things?

I had a Twitter problem and you know 1 of the things that I realized is that sometimes willpower isn't enough.

You know, like What I did was I unfollowed everyone on Twitter, and then I installed this Chrome app that basically disables three-quarters of Twitter's features.

It was like, this is an addictive thing, I need an intervention, and that did it.

That killed my Twitter because it was just like, oh well.

And it was funny because for a while Twitter kept on trying to feed me interesting articles and interesting stuff but it wasn't, they couldn't really do it because I was not following anyone, I wasn't really interacting with many tweets and so eventually just like it broke.

But yeah I mean I uninstalled Facebook years ago so I don't have it, I don't have notifications on, I don't have the Twitter app installed on my phone.

So again like Everyone should do what works for them, but people that actually are super productive do abnormal things to turn all this crap off.

Like you have to like aggressively be abnormal on protecting your time.

Because if you don't, the world is going to steal your time from you.

It's going to steal your energy from you.

And like, that's a bad trade off if you're a startup founder, man.

It's like, it's almost like there are these 2 sets of tools.

There's 1 set of tools that allow you to organize your time better.

And there's another set of tools that protect your time.

And yeah, effective people use both constantly.

And I think ineffective people sometimes are mistaken and they think, if I were just had a stronger will, I like needing tools is the problem.

Like successful people are just have a stronger will.

It's like no, successful people reach for tools all the time.

Like successful people recognize their weaknesses and actually reach for tools.

The collecting of mentors, advisors, weird credentials like advice.

Oh I went through 3 different accelerators and an idea lab, oh my advisory board, I'm building my advisory board.

Why do you think founders are attracted to that versus just building something and launching it?

It smells like you're doing successful startup stuff.

You're like part of a community of startup this, and there's all this stuff you can do.

And I'm not saying it's all bad, but it's a bottomless pit of time suck.

You could be in that bottomless pit for years and be a startup founder that's never built a product and has never gotten a single customer because you just cycled in and out of various forms of startup mentorship.

It's like going to Hollywood and getting acting lessons.

And you're in this acting lessons mode for years, and you're like, yeah, I'm an actor.

It feels like you're making progress, right?

You know, I think a lot of it also has to do with founders being a little bit afraid and thinking these things de-risk.

Well, if I have an advisory board that's gonna de-risk my startup, it's a bunch of smart people saying my idea's good.

Or if I do a bunch of mentorship, it de-risks my startup, I get a lot of advice.

And I don't know, the thing we keep on saying over and over again is like the 2 things that ridiculously re-de-risk your startup, 3 things, and we'll get to the third in a second.

First one's talking to your customers, The second one's building a launching product.

And it's like, God forbid you're doing anything more than you're doing those things, you are not taking the optimal de-risk strategy.

And then the last 1, we see a lot of people trying to hedge their bets.

So many people trying to be like, well, I'm keeping grad school open, I've got a Google job offer, I've got a Jane Street or whatever the new tech finance thing of the minute is, and I'm talking to 3 friends about doing a startup.

And like I'm kind of moving all those pieces down the board at the same time.

And like we get asked questions like okay so how do I optimize this?

I'm like I don't I don't think you can be great at those 4 things at the same time.

Like It's hard enough to be great at 1 of those things.

How do I know I'm making the right decision?

When you're taking a high risk life decision, you know, like we said, again, like we said on this video series a number of times, you're gonna look stupid and you're gonna take risk and there's a chance you're gonna be like, that was a huge mistake.

And you wanna like barter with the universe.

You wanna be like, come on, can't I de-risk this?

You want to think that you can be smarter than the system to somehow give up nothing and have no downside and only have upside.

more you wanna try to barter with the universe to be like, okay, first I'll get a job at Google and I'll save money and then I'll do, you know, I'll invest in crypto and then I'll do like, you wanna like barter with the universe to have no risk.

And I guess like, I get where people are coming from.

I just, I'm not sure that's a real thing.

And I think it's being more real with yourself is like, yeah, I'm taking risks.

Like, yeah, quitting my job at Google is a risk.

And this, I may regret it, but I may not.

And but I'm doing this with eyes wide open.

And by actually putting my full heart into anything I do, whatever that is, including not quitting my job, that's how can you have regrets about that?

I mean, this is what I tell a lot of folks.

I do a lot of office hours with people that are shutting down.

I did 1 today, you know, it's like their final office hours because they're shutting down their startup.

And I tend to tell people similar stuff, which is like, look, if you're proud of the job you did, you know, if you had heart and you gave it your all and you feel like you learned stuff, then great job.

And you should view this as an affirmative experience.

I know you had your heart into this thing and like we'll get the next 1.

And I think that that message has to be told because it is rewarding but founders have to be kind of reminded that they didn't fail.

Like it's not like or let's just put it this way It's not like failing a test that like, a basic math test that you just didn't study for.

Like, you tried to do something that so few people in the world are successful at.

Failing is not really failing, like, at all.

Like when you're really good in college, you try to go pro and you like make a team and then you get cut in the first year.

1 of the best thousand people on earth who could play basketball.

so it's like, you know, again it would be great if you were number 1 in the world, but like people are gonna respect what you did.

And if you're proud in your heart of the work you did, then you will view this as a positive thing in your life.

And I always tell the people who are hedging, I always say this the other side, in our world it's really competitive.

And what happens if there's a team that's exactly as competent as you, and they're not hedging?

So how much better do you have to be than that team if you're splitting your resources 2 ways, 3 ways, 4 ways?

So it's not even a good strategy, even if you were trying to think strategically, unfortunately.

Those Are some of the things that future billionaires do to get shit done and some of the things that they avoid as well great chapel

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How Future Billionaires Get Sh*t Done