Make your life simpler, with Roy Schwartz

0:03 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning, this is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's episode will be a slightly longer one, part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us. So today I am delighted to welcome Roy Schwartz to Before Breakfast. Roy is the co-founder of Axios and the co-author of the brand new book, simplify, do 50% more with 50% less. Roy, welcome to the show.

0:38 Oh, thank you so much for having me.

0:39 Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

0:43 Sure. As you mentioned, I'm Roy Schwartz. I'm one of the founders of Axios. Axios has three founders, the same group that originally put together Politico. And then we did that for 10 years and then created Axios. Axios was really created to provide people with news information as efficiently as possible. We saw an opening. We saw everyone being overwhelmed with fake news, real news, text messages, Slack messages.

1:09 And so we said, OK, what's a new way that we can format content so that it can be really efficient? And so that's why we launched Axios. And ultimately, that's what's led to our new book, Simplify, as well.

1:21 Yeah, well, we are all about efficiency here at this podcast. Big fan of the topic. So 50%, I have to say, is very specific. Why are you guys promising that we're going to get 50% more done with 50% less, I guess, effort, time? I don't know. Tell me.

1:37 Well, we've been implementing this for the last couple of years and have seen dramatic results, as well as starting to implement it within clients and seeing the same thing happen there. And so we don't write books. That's actually not our day-to-day occupation. So when we write something, we write it because we think it's going to add tremendous value to people's lives. And so we want to make a difference. We want to give back in many ways.

1:59 And so Simplify is that. It captures all of these stories and lessons that we've learned over the last few years that have helped us to be super productive, super efficient with the use of AI, I may add, and where we find AI to be useful and where we find it to be detrimental. And so we thought now's the time for this book because We're all kind of feeling anxious, right? We're feeling overwhelmed in terms of news and change. And then there's this daunting thing that's about to happen, right? Or is happening, right? Within AI and the impact that AI is going to have on our lives, whether professional or personal. And so we wanted to look at that and say, okay, well, who's going to win when all of this takes place? And our belief is

2:45 that the companies and the people that have simplified their lives so that they're able to focus, they're able to be efficient, and they're able to move quickly. Because one of the things that we see is there's going to be a lot of change happening and we're going to have to pivot, whether that's in your personal life and professional life, there's going to be changes that are coming and those that are able to adapt to it quickly.

3:04 And in order to do that, you have to make space.

3:07 You guys refer to AI as something of a power tool. I wonder if you can explain that metaphor in terms of what AI is doing with us.

3:18 Well, two things. We refer to the whole book as a power tool, right? It's written in a very, how do I actually simplify my life? What are the steps that I need to take? How do I actually use AI to hold myself accountable? I think the big difference between this book and a lot of other great books that are out there is we actually show you how to use AI to hold yourself accountable to the things in the book that you want to make part of your life. So I'll just give you an example. It's easy because everyone has meetings in their lives. We have a couple of chapters in the book about meetings. And so everyone's experienced this. There are too many meetings. The meetings are too long. There are too many people in them.

3:56 There's often not an agenda in those meetings. And it is human nature. It's every company on the planet, no matter how efficient they are, will end up with more meetings than they should, longer meetings, too many people. And so we talk about how do you actually use AI to look at your calendar, to understand your goals, and to examine, basically like I would call it like a chief simplicity officer, right? Looking at your calendar and then coming back to you and saying, hey, these 10 meetings that you had last week, they match up with your goals.

4:26 That's great. But these other five meetings, they don't seem to match up with your goals. And could they be better as an email? Do you have to go to them? Is there a better way to accomplish your goals and remove some things? Because our belief is, and this is what's covered in the book, that you confront, then you delete in order to be able to amplify. And so the delete part is really important because you need to make the room, you need to make the space. And so That's the way in which you can use AI to hold yourself accountable and actually stick to some of the things that you want to from the book.

5:03 Well, let's talk about that three-part process, the confront, delete, and amplify and get to each of them. I mean, first of all, what does it mean to, what are we supposed to be confronting in our lives here?

5:13 So really, and we take this to an extreme, but we say, okay, it's a little morbid, but imagine yourself in your deathbed. what are the three things that you want to be remembered for? And that's your North Star, right? Those are the things that you need to make sure you've made space for. And so in most people, they would say things like, you know, friends, family, loved ones, right?

5:35 That's their number one, right? Number two is usually something related to meaning and work and purpose. And three might be something about life, longevity, you know, that's for everyone on their own. But in order to make sure that your life actually gets to, you get to be a good father, you get to be a good husband, right?

5:56 I need to make room in my life and I need to know what's important, what my North stars are in order to be able to then delete the things that are less necessary in order to then amplify those areas in my life. So, you know, confront, you basically walk through, how do you confront things like meetings, like time, Like even we have this chapter that I think your audience will appreciate, which is the hell yeah rule, which is too often we say yes to something like a coffee, a drink off to work, a dinner party or something.

6:31 And we then, you know, it's a month out. And then the day before we're dreading it. We're like, oh, my God, why did I say yes to this? Right. we have the hell yeah rule. If you're not going to say hell yeah, and you're not all in, don't say yes. In fact, say no. And I'm booked. You don't need to explain it. People don't need like a long story. I'm sorry. I'm booked. That's it. And too often we find ourselves saying yes to things. And that means that we're, and this is unconscious, but we're saying no to things that are important to us, like working out, like family, like friends. And so It gives you permission to really confront those things and to say no to things that might be taking up time that isn't as

7:14 important as the other things in your life.

7:16 Yeah, we have a saying around here that if you wouldn't say yes tomorrow, don't say yes for the future. Because it turns out that future you is going to be pretty similar to whatever you tomorrow is. But you have a more rational view of what tomorrow is going to look like than most of us do.

7:32 I love that rule. That's exactly right. Tomorrow is a good, like, am I excited to go do it or not? And if the answer is no, just say no, because it's not going to change in a month.

7:42 Not going to change at all.

7:43 All right.

7:43 We're going to take a quick ad break and I'll be back with more from Roy Schwartz. Well, I am back talking with Roy Schwartz, who is the co-founder of Axios, the co-author of the new book, Simplify. So we've been talking about confronting and deleting. So I have a question about how AI is useful for this. Because you mentioned it looks at your calendar and says, well, these are your goals and this is your calendar and these five meetings don't match it. I do that myself. I mean, before I take it, I would sort of imagine that somebody who's thoughtful about their life would already be looking at their calendar and asking, is this, you know, meeting with my, does this match my priorities? Is this something

8:35 I should be doing? I mean, why is AI helpful for this in a way that like our own brains or perhaps even with the assistance of our, you know, assistant can't do?

8:48 I think in a very important way. So you might be able to look at your calendar today. You might even be able to take in the week that you can't take in the month. And so what AI can do is it can look back and it can look forward. It's unemotional. It doesn't, you know, justify things that are there. You obviously have to teach it. Right. And so, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I'm disappointed in how AI does it. AI is like having the smartest intern in the world, but on day one. You have to train it. You have to give it the context. Otherwise, you're going to get really bad results. And so what we talk about in the book, in the example you gave of the calendar, which I think is a really good one because everyone can sort of picture that in

9:32 their mind, is You start with what are the goals that you're setting? So we'll use a month. So we'll say, okay, this month, these are my three objectives. And I keep using the number three for an important reason I'll talk about in a second. But you say, these are the three objectives that I'm trying to do for this month.

9:51 Now it looks at your calendar and it says, okay, these things seem to align and these things don't. And so then you can actually examine that. confront that and usually people just don't do that on their own as an example i did this and i was surprised 50 of my calendar is not aligned with my goals Right.

10:11 And by the way, I've written a book on this topic. Right. Like I'm really trying to focus in here. And yet 50 percent of my meetings were not really. And so I am.

10:20 I mean, what were these meetings like? I mean, sorry, I don't want to call out any of your colleagues here, but what does that mean when it's like, you know.

10:25 It's a lot of like one on ones and check ins and skip levels and so forth. So some of them could be better as, um, shorter meetings for sure. Everything is for whatever reason, everything's a standard 30 minutes, right? Like, do you really need 30 minutes? Right. Um, two, some things are actually better written than they are in person.

10:45 Some things are about ego, right? Like, Oh, I should be in this meeting or I've always been in this meeting, but, um, AI is pretty unemotional about these things. So I've taken it to an extreme. Maybe not all of your audience can do this, but my AI is connected to my calendar, to my email, and to my note taker. And so it really understands, am I talking in that meeting? What was said in that meeting? What were the emails leading up to that meeting? And then how long was that meeting?

11:13 And so it really does have full context for And so it can take in a lot of information. And so it really can be the best assistant that you've ever had. Yes, a great assistant could do these things. But how many of us have that assistant and how many of us can make sure that that assistant does that work, you know, day in and day out?

11:33 Now, before we talk a little bit more about meeting length, I did want to circle back to the three aspects.

11:39 So why three? Okay. So we have a whole chapter in the book. And again, this book is well-researched. We try and uncover things that already exist. My two co-writers are reporters by training, right? So we come at this with a lot of research and analysis and a lot of case studies. What was really interesting is there's a lot of documentation that once you get past three goals, three objectives, your ability to actually achieve those goals or objectives goes down. And so three kind of is a magical number where once you had four or five or more objectives, goals, performance deteriorated. And so we try and think of things in threes. So what that does mean, because a lot of companies have way more than three objectives,

12:29 is prioritizing for your team, making sure you're clear in your communication to your team, and maybe even condensing the timeline. Because a lot of companies plan around a year And I think those days are gone. I don't think you can plan anymore on an annual cycle. Look at how quickly, how many new models come out every single month and their capabilities that change every single month. And so if you're not re-examining what your company and what your team is doing on a monthly basis, you're going to fall behind.

12:58 All right.

12:59 So now let's move on to the meetings. You mentioned the default 30. I think you guys are a fan of 20-minute meetings, right? or something I believe, but what should we be doing with these?

13:10 Listen, every organization, every person might be different. What we're more trying to confront is the default, right? So many things within an organization are done by default and not by design. And so we're actually trying to flip that. We're trying to say, okay, everything should really be by design.

13:30 And the more you can think about that, the more you're going to be efficient in your life, the more you're going to be able to actually simplify your life. And so meetings, some meetings should be five minutes or 10 minutes. You can get just as much accomplished and some need to be an hour, right? It might depend.

13:45 But what interestingly happens is the default on your calendar setting is 30. And so everything just ends up being 30 minutes. And if you're like me, like they end up being back to back. And so we just said, let's examine that, right? Like, yes, delete a few, but also let's reduce the timeframe of a few of these so that we can amplify the ones like brainstorming sessions that might need to be longer.

14:06 So let's talk about Amplify, because that's the last part of the confront, delete, amplify. What does it mean to amplify after we have gotten rid of all the extraneous stuff in our schedules?

14:19 So I'll start with family and friends. I think that when you do that morbid exercise of your deathbed, you realize, I'm not spending enough time with my family. I'm not spending enough time with my good friends. And you have to make space for that. And so if you've done that by the confront and delete, then your job is to go in there and amplify, actually set time aside to work out, to work on your mindfulness, to spend time with your friends and your family, and make sure that you're actually kind of scheduling it the way that you would schedule meetings, right? Like make sure you put in the time and the effort. And so that's the personal side, I would say, of Amplify. On the work side of Amplify, it's really understanding those three goals that

14:59 you're setting for yourself or for your team or for your company and your strengths. Because In this future world that we're rapidly moving into, AI is going to be good at pretty much everything in terms of being average. And you, as a person, are average at most things or below average at some things, but you're exceptional at a few things. And our belief, and there's countless studies on this, The more time you spend on your strengths, the more outcomes you're going to get. And that is actually going to be amplified in this AI era that we're all stepping into. You'll be able to do more.

15:36 You'll be able to achieve more. And you will not be as easily set aside because you are extremely talented in these one, two, three areas, as opposed to trying to be average in multiple areas.

15:51 You talk about using AI as a creative partner. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about smart ways to do that.

15:59 Yeah, I think too many people use AI as a search agent, right? To just answer a question and maybe probe the one or two questions deeper. What we're actually talking about is setting up AI to be able to be a thought partner, to go back and forth. And one of the things that we talk about in the book is making sure that the memory that the AI has is accurate. So actually looking, asking it. This is the only technology where you could ask it, how does it work? How do I get the most out of it?

16:29 And so you don't even have to struggle through online searches. You want to figure out how to connect AI to your calendar. You just ask AI, how do I connect you to my calendar? And it will walk you through those steps. But in this case, what we're talking about is saying, how do I make sure that the memory that it has is accurate so it has the context to help me make decisions? And then when I'm putting something in there, I'm not just one and done. I'm not just asking a question and walking away. I'm actually having a pretty long, in some cases, you know, in my case, I will have sometimes an hour or two hours of conversation with AI when I'm sorting through a difficult or complex problem.

17:09 Do you do that with your co-founders? So, I mean, how does AI relate to, you know, having this conversation with the two gentlemen you write this book with, for instance?

17:22 Yes. So Jim and I, quite famously, because we talk about this in our books and in our articles, but they are both incredibly early risers. probably Jim's first call is to Mike because they're up early. And we have Axios AM, which is a 10 item, very efficient news briefing that we send out as a newsletter to, I think at this point, we have two and a half million readers. And so that goes out every morning. So the first call is between Jim and Mike to look through that list, make sure that it's the best use of everyone's time who's going to read it. And then the next call is to me usually. And we're talking about you know, it's like an ongoing conversation about maybe it's major issues that we're dealing with, what we're trying

18:07 to do from a day-to-day standpoint, or what we're trying to accomplish in the next month or six months.

18:13 But I'm saying like, what do you get out of using an AI partner, thought partner that you aren't getting from Jim and Mike?

18:23 I'll give a great example. We were trying to redesign one of our newsletters and, um, You don't have to wait anymore. I mean, this is, you know, again, I'm not an AI optimist or pessimist. You know, I'm just practical about the usage. But I had some ideas of how I wanted to redesign this newsletter. And I just went into, in this case, it was OpenAI. I was in chat GPT. I said, here's the existing one. Here's how I want to change it. And no joke, within maybe 45 seconds, I had four versions of that newsletter with the way in which I'd wanted it to be changed. Now, were they all perfect? No. But then I was able to, again, kind of have a conversation. Okay, I really like the top one. Here are the changes I want you to make.

19:10 Let's redo that and then edit that one. Then I actually, in this case, sent that to Jim and Mike and said, okay, I like this one. What do you guys think of it? Okay, gotcha.

19:19 All right, well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Roy Schwartz. Well, I am back talking with Roy Schwartz, who is the co-founder of Axios, the co-author of the new book, Simplify. So you mentioned that Axios, the morning report to the newsletter, I believe that's part of your morning routine. Can you tell us about your morning routine?

19:46 Yes. So Axios AM is the first thing I read in the morning. I grab a cup of coffee and I'm not the reporter, so I'm not really reading my own stuff, although obviously I'm a founder of the company. But we were trying to solve a problem that we had, which was I want to get up to date on factual news. We're nonpartisan. We have no editorial, so we don't lean one way or another. And we wanted to cover what are the most important things that you maybe missed yesterday or that are going to happen today. And because we have about 200 reporters, there's a lot of first party information in there, like things that other companies will later grab, like the New York Times might grab something and say, oh, Axios reported X, Y, Z. And

20:30 so that goes out to about two and a half million people, but probably most importantly, We started with influencers. So we started with Capitol Hill. We started with the president, the people around the president and CEOs of companies. And so this is really well read amongst influencers in the country.

20:46 And so we're very good at understanding what are the real top 10 things that are going to drive the conversation for today. And so it's really efficient. You can read the whole thing in less than two minutes.

20:58 So that's what you do. You get your coffee, you read this and then go about your day.

21:02 That is my absolute day routine. I would like to say that I meditate every morning or I work out every morning. I do meditate some mornings and I do work out some mornings. But without fail, I grab my cup of coffee and I read Axios.

21:16 And then what does the rest of your workday look like? Do you structure it in a certain way?

21:20 I mean, I like to be busy. And so I tend to like back to back meetings, although I will say since I've written the book, I've started to add in things like focus time so that I can have the time to think and plan things out more effectively. I've put in more time with my good friends and my family. I've actually scheduled it in. And the same thing, by the way, for my workouts, because I didn't do that in the past. Right. I was not. very good, even though I wanted to do those things, you know, I just, you know, other things took presence. And when you look back, you go, well, how important were they?

21:55 They weren't that important in the, you know, they're super important in the short term. They're not very important in the long term. Yeah.

22:01 I get a sense sometimes that a lot of people would do well to cancel like one random conference call. They happen to be on and go for a walk or a run instead.

22:08 I love that advice. That's great. Yeah.

22:11 Delete something and amplify something else. So, Roy, I ask all my guests, what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?

22:21 So I think this is, I was thinking about this. I got two things, but I'll give you the one that has made the biggest impact in my life that is part, it's in the book. Every one of us has consumables. And when I say consumables, I mean like hair gel, moisturizer, shampoo, conditioner, all that stuff. You also have things in your home that you're supposed to change every three, four months, like your air filters or whatever else.

22:45 I took one morning and I automated all of it. So, you know, I did the Amazon, I did the subscribe and save, and I basically went through and automated all of my consumables and I never have to think about it again. And it just arrives, you know, in the case of air filters, right? You're supposed to change them every four months. I just don't think about that anymore.

23:06 When they arrive, I change them And I never have to think about it again. See, I, okay.

23:11 I have resisted this just because I don't like things stacking up. And I feel like my use is not quite as, I don't know, are you on the exact right schedule? Like you know exactly when you're going to be done with your shampoo?

23:23 Well, so the reason I took, it took me a couple of hours actually. So I went through and I looked at how often am I reordering these things anyway? And so I wasn't basing it, you know, Amazon does their like, you know, a recommended timeframe. Don't look at that.

23:39 It's like those people who use a lot of shampoo. Less hair or something. That's not going to be you.

23:45 Exactly. Some things are, you know, every six months, some things are every year. Like they're not, you know, they're not that often, but by automating all of them, I just never had to think about it again. Okay.

23:54 I like it. You said you had two. What was the second one?

23:57 Well, I will say you are specifically like, how did I take one day from good to great? And I recently sort of refound my joy of meditating. And so I took a morning. I took the 20 minutes. I meditated. It made my day better. And I've committed to doing that every day since. And I'm so far so good.

24:20 All right. You're sticking with the habit now. That's great. And you mentioned, you know, you're not necessarily like AI optimist or pessimist. What are you looking forward to with it right now, though?

24:32 I really look forward to, you know, a lot of the things that we do, I would say are advanced is maybe the wrong word, but I think that most people use it for search and the other things seem difficult. I don't want to set up a Mac mini and like go set up my own agent or my army of agents. Right. We are probably six months away from every one of us. having those same capabilities, but in a much simpler way where you sort of talk about the outcome you're trying to achieve. And then the AI is figuring out, is that one agent? Is it 30 agents?

25:07 And what's the most efficient way to solve it? And so that is a future that I'm looking forward to because I think that, you know, man, if I could automate my travel, for example, wouldn't that be great?

25:19 Unfortunately, the AI can't really travel for you at this point.

25:22 No, no, no. I just mean booking my flights and my hotel and my rental car.

25:25 Now, if it can go to Cleveland for me, now that's an interesting idea.

25:29 Yes, yes. But then we're really in trouble if it can just take my place.

25:32 That's true.

25:32 That's true.

25:33 I probably should go. All right. Well, Roy, where can people find you?

25:38 So Simplify is available wherever you like to buy books. And it came out September 15th. So it's easy to get, although it has been sold out of a few places. So that's exciting. And then Axios. So go to Axios.com, sign up for one of our newsletters. I would recommend starting with Axios AM. It's all free. It's a great way to get the news in an unbiased way.

26:01 Sounds good. Well, Roy, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening. And here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.

26:27 If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.