THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli Efti:

Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah. Today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk, I  guess, about something inspired by the last conversation we had.

Steli Efti:

Yep.

Hiten Shah:

Steli was so inspired, before we started he tweeted it. So, obviously, we have to  do a episode about it. Steli, I’m going to let you do the reveal.

Steli Efti:

Yeah. So, the quote was … We called each other up. Before we record the  episode, oftentimes, we just go, “How’s it going? How was your week?” Hiten’s response to  my question, “How’s it going? How was your week?”, was, “Steli, every week is a  blur.” I laughed and then Hiten said, “If it’s not a blur, you’re not moving  fast enough,” which made me tweet these two amazing quotes from the one and only  Hiten Shah. Both tweeted and posted on Facebook and it got a ton of response.  A lot of likes, a lot of comments, a lot of shares, which made me  think, “Maybe there’s something to do this.” A) It’s a feeling that a lot of  people can identify with, but also maybe it’s something we should talk about. This could  be about how to move faster in life. I don’t know. This is going to  be one of these wild episodes where we don’t know where we want to go  until we arrive there, together, organically. Tell me about that feeling that makes you answer  like, “I don’t fucking know. Every week is a blur. Things move so fast and  if it wasn’t, I’d be concerned.”

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, we talked about postmortems. Something I do often, especially with my business partner, Marie,  where we do week in reviews. We actually have one coming up by the end  of today. Sometimes we skip them. Last week, we actually skipped it on accident, because  we don’t have it in the calendars. We did two weeks separately in one. Some  of these are like three to five pages long, in a Google Doc. That’s where  it comes from, Steli. It’s like, “Shit. How many things did we actually accomplish in  that week?” A lot of times our calendars are actually pretty empty, but then when  we start thinking about actually everything that was done, it just compounds and you’re just like, “Wow.” I think this is a difficult exercise to do on your own, to  be honest. It’s worthy of doing on your own, don’t get me wrong, but I  think when you do it with someone else, you remember things you easily could have forgotten. Now we have, I don’t even know how long the sheet is, but you’re  talking about 52 of these every year. It really helps you, even if you never  go back to it, it helps you really think through this idea that one, time  only exists in your mind. The blur, to me, makes me actually happy, when I  think of it like that. The reason for that is I don’t want to think  that just because a day is 24 hours I can only accomplish x amount of  things. To me, I really love the feeling of, “Wow, what did I do yesterday?  How many things actually happened? It almost felt like this thing that happened three or  four days ago feels like a month ago.” It’s more of a mindset, to me,  where it’s like, I know I’m moving fast enough when I can barely remember what  happened. Not because I have a bad memory, I actually have a great memory, but  because so many things have happened since then. In a business, even early on, your  goal is to move fast. Your goal is to make things happen. To me, I  love it when even a day feels like a blur, a week feels like a  blur and time just sort of disappears because that means I’m really moving at a pace where it’s almost unbelievable what happened a week ago or what happened last week.

Steli Efti:

That’s so interesting. That’s why, when I wrote these quotes, “Every week is a blur”,  and then I wrote down, “If it’s a blur, you’re not moving fast enough”, I  didn’t want to write both in one. I felt like the first one is kind  of ambiguous if it’s good or not. What are you really saying if you say,  “Every week is a blur”? This could sound like you’re complaining. It could sound like  you’re overwhelmed. It could sound like-

Hiten Shah:

It could sound like you’re on drugs. Who knows, right?

Steli Efti:

Yes. I like the ambiguity of it, the second one, to me, is what brings  it home, where you say, “If it’s not a blur, the speed of accomplishment and  movement is just too slow.” You know what’s funny? I feel like a lot of  people … A lot of entrepreneurs that I meet, especially the ones that are, I  don’t know if successful is the right measurement, that have done a lot already, are  very experienced, it seems like there’s a common thread that a lot of these people,  they’re not dwelling on the past as much as the average person is. To me,  I wouldn’t describe it in the way that you did, but to me, I’ve always  said, if it’s longer than a week ago, it’s longer than a few days ago,  I feel like I have no sense of time. If it’s longer than seven days,  it could be eights days or eight years. Feels the same to me. To me,  it feels like most of my life and most of my focus is very strongly  in the today. It’s a little bit of what happened yesterday. There’s a little bit  of what needs to happen next, but I’m very present focused. I’m not super future  focused. I don’t know if a lot of visionary people are like that, but I  notice that if it’s in the past for longer than just a few days, I  have no sense of time. I can remember things really clearly, but from an emotional  point of few, to me, it makes no difference if it was two months ago  or two years. It feels exactly the same. It’s like, it’s in the fucking past.  It does not make any difference. Let me ask you, when it comes to …  I love that you said, “Hey, time is such a human construct.” It’s the way  we organize things. It doesn’t really exist. You can accomplish an incredible amount in a  day, in a week, or nothing. A day can feel like a year, or it  can feel like a second, depending on what is happening in that bracket of time.  Has it always been like this or is it also a question of what phase  you’re in? Right now, you’re launching a new product with a new business partner. A  lot of new shit is happening, while you’re launching a bunch of new things with  your old businesses. It’s like a lot of new stuff is happening. Is that an  accelerated pace, or sprint, in your life right now? Or, is it like, “Yeah, when  it wasn’t this, it was something else. For as long as I can remember, it’s  always been, for the last whatever years, it’s always been that every week is just  a shit ton is happening in my life.”

Hiten Shah:

For me, it’s probably since like ’98, ’99. I want to say it’s like 18  years, easy, since I got into college. Maybe even before that, if I really want  to go there. I almost want to say before that, but I can’t prove it.  The reason I say that is I’m one of those people where I have to  keep myself busy. I call it entertainment. I have to keep myself entertained. It’s not  like how most people do. I don’t think we’ve talked about this. This is probably  another episode. We’ve got ideas for days. I don’t watch TV or movies anymore. Ever.

Steli Efti:

Ever.

Hiten Shah:

Ever is a word. Yeah.

Steli Efti:

Interesting.

Hiten Shah:

It’s not that I don’t love them. I used to watch them at 2x and  go through a Game of Thrones season in like a weekend, so this is not  out of not loving those things.

Steli Efti:

Wait, a second. You were watching TV shows in 2x? You’re insane, dude.

Hiten Shah:

This is all another episode, man.

Steli Efti:

You are insane.

Hiten Shah:

This is another episode.

Steli Efti:

I’ve never heard of people-

Hiten Shah:

But anyway, we have to talk about this. You’re going to love it. Anyways. For  me, I have to keep myself entertained, otherwise I get apathetic and I don’t care  about things. The movement, the process of feeling that blur, and feeling like things are  in motion, and they are, and making progress is so important to me. It’s at  the core of me. It probably started with the thing … I think we talked  about this briefly in the last episode, about being bored. My father telling me, “If  you’re bored, it’s your problem. You need to solve that. That’s not an excuse for anything. Boredom shouldn’t exist. You might as well not do anything with your life” type  of thing. He never used all those words, but that’s what I made up in  my head. He probably has better words. I should ask him. To me, it’s always  been like that. The reason it’s been like that is, again, I blame my father,  but since I was four or five years old, he would tell me I should  be an entrepreneur. I think the definition of that is that you are achieving things  most people couldn’t fathom, in very short amounts of time. I’ll give one example before  I … I want to get your reactions, obviously, dig into it a little bit  more. My father just went to, I think it was, Jamaica. He told me he and the people he went with, over a three to five day period, maybe less,  I think three to five days, I haven’t got all the stats yet, but he  did 250 surgeries.

Steli Efti:

Holy shit.

Hiten Shah:

All for free. All for free. He does this many times a year. He’s probably  impacting a thousand to five thousand lives a year by all these medical missions he  does, and helps out and stuff like that. And all the ones he’s helped set  up that he doesn’t have to go to and do anything with. That’s a blur  to me. I’m looking at that. I’m like, “That must be a blur, dude. Wow.”  It’s all positive, obviously, helping people. He was telling me about a story of a  five year old girl who, in 2015, they did a surgery on one of her  eyes. She has some kind of cataracts. I guess she was like three at the  time. Now, they did surgery on the other eye, this time. She wouldn’t have got  it unless they went there and just did it. It’s things like that. The compounding  of that. Think about it. Out of 250 humans, how many stories like that are  there? How much compounding of this activity is happening, just with that? I guess for me, I grew up with. That’s my reasoning of where that comes from and why  it’s probably existed for a very long time. I watched it growing up. My dad  would do insane amounts of things, where people would be like, “Are you kidding me?”

Steli Efti:

That’s amazing. Any time … At some point, we’re going to do a remix of  my favorite stories of your dad, over the 200 episodes that we’ve made. Your dad  is an amazing person and is super inspiring. A lot can be explained, in terms  of your life choices, by some of the examples that he said.

Hiten Shah:

Totally.

Steli Efti:

That’s so awesome and inspiring to hear. There’s so much in the last few minutes  of your answers that we could begin, but-

Hiten Shah:

Sorry.

Steli Efti:

I’ll touch on a few things. This is a fun episode. We can do whatever  the fuck we want. It doesn’t have to be as super tactical or something. There’s  a few things that you said. Number one, for people that are like, “Wait, Hiten said something about doing a lot of postmortem with his business partner. How do you  do that? What does it mean?” Episode 139, check it out. It’s one of those  things that … I don’t think a lot of writing exists out there on how  to do this correctly and how to think about this from a framework perspective, so  I think this is one of the best episodes that we’ve made. Listen to that  one. The other thing that I’ll say, though, and this is randomly me picking something,  or noticing something, is we talk about the power of words and the weight of  words. I know that you and I both deeply care about this. It’s one of  the many things why we enjoy talking to each other, probably. We did an episode  on this, on like, where is it? The weight of your words. I think it  was episode 73, “The Power of Words”. We also made another episode, 45, for those  that are interested in that. Check that out. The reason why I bring this up  is that you said, “I need entertainment,” and I thought, most people would use the word, I need to be busy, or I’m very busy, when you would use the  word I’m really entertained this week, or I’m looking for more entertainment. It’s so interesting  to me. Using this different word makes all the difference. The reason why I thought  about this was that, even just a few weeks ago, somebody was talking about being  burned out. You were like, “No. You’re bored. Don’t say you’re burned out. You’re just  bored about something.” If you think about it in that way, it makes all the  difference on how you feel and what kind of available options and solutions are there  for you. If you’re telling yourself, “I’m bored right now,” you’re going to think about  the solutions very differently than then when you tell yourself you’re burned out. I don’t  know why, but I picked on this “I need to be entertained” as something that  most people would describe with a different word. That difference makes all the difference. I’d  love to get into the fucking why are you watching TV shows in 2x? We’ll  talk about this on a different show.

Hiten Shah:

And how I stopped?

Steli Efti:

How do you stop that? Let’s wrap this episode up on … People that listen  and that are inspired and think, “Okay … ” Basically what we’re talking about is  moving through life at a faster pace or packing more life into your days.

Hiten Shah:

I love that description of packing more life into your days. Wow.

Steli Efti:

Awesome, that’s going to be the quote of the day. But for people that go,  “Wow,” they’re leaning in as they’re listening. They think, “Yes, I want to be closer  to that” or “I don’t experience life right now that way, but I want to,” is there something, like advice we could give, or a tip at the end of  this episode, on how to move faster through life. What is something actual we could  give to people that want to experience this type of blur in their life more?

Hiten Shah:

This is the hardest thing to do probably, because it’s all around us, but how  can you forget about time? Think about some activity you’re doing and don’t worry about  time. Pick an activity that’s about your business, that you might need to do, and  forget time. Don’t put time as a factor in any way. Not even starting at  a certain time. Just say, “Whenever I get up, I’m going to do my morning  ritual routine and then I’m going to get at something, and just go, and not  worry about how long it’s going to take or what time I start it or  anything like that.” You can pick anything, but if you just do that one thing,  that might help you understand where time isn’t really a factor in anything.

Steli Efti:

Wow. I love this. This is such a powerful tip. I honestly had a tip  to share. I don’t want to anymore.

Hiten Shah:

No, no.

Steli Efti:

No. We’re going to end on this. This is so awesome. I just want people  to do this. Take a thing that you’re going to … Actually, you want to  take a project … You want to work on something you want to do and  then just go, “Tomorrow morning, or today, I’m going to do my breakfast, my ritual,  and I’m going to start working on this, not worrying about how much time it  takes, what time it is, and just experience the action fully, without the concept or the framework of time.” I love that. All right. That’s it from us.

Hiten Shah:

Tell us how it goes.

Steli Efti:

Yeah. Please. @hnshah, @steli. Easy ways to find our emails online. Send us emails. Send  us a tweet. Let us know how that experience was. That’s it from us for  this episode.

Hiten Shah:

Bye.