Finding focus

Welcome to Rework, a podcast by thirty seven Signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm Kimberly Rhodes, joined as always by the cofounders of thirty seven Signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanssen. This week, we're talking a little bit about finding focus. In fact, we got an email in from a listener, Richard. So we're gonna dive into some of his questions. He said he discovered the podcast a few weeks ago. There's so many interesting gems. Thank you so much. It became clear to me that Jason and David value focused time each day. No interruptions, just deeply engaged into the task at hand. I have a multifold question about this. I'm trying to self improve on focus and clear thinking, and I think Jason's and David's answers would help a lot. So here we go, guys. No pressure. The first one is, how do you battle procrastination? That's kind of a big general question, but do you guys are you procrastinators? I kinda feel like you're not. Well, here's what I would say about procrastination. I think it's a tool, and it helps you figure out what you really wanna do and what you really don't wanna do. Mhmm. That's kind of all it is. If you really wanna do something, you tend to just do it. If you don't wanna do it, you put it off. In my opinion, it's not a good or bad thing. It just brings clarity to the table and goes, this is really what you care about and what you don't. Like, I will procrastinate on paperwork because I hate paperwork. I'm not gonna procrastinate on, like, stuff I'm really interested in doing. But it's also when I find myself procrastinating on something, it just reminds me that maybe I don't actually wanna do this, and why don't I actually wanna do this? And is there something I can change about it that would make me wanna do it? That's how I think about it. I don't think it's good or bad necessarily. I do think it can be useful at times. I think sometimes when you have less time to do something at the end of the day, you end up just kinda focusing on the stuff that matters and not all the other stuff you could do. But, fundamentally, I really just believe it separates the what do you wanna do from what the what do you not wanna do. Yeah. That's a good point. David, how do you feel the same way? I find that procrastination is actually a bit of a superpower. It is how I get my inboxes cleaned up. It is how I just tick off all the to dos that feel easy to manage and get off the list when there's something I don't wanna do. And I agree with Jason. It is very often I don't wanna do it. But I just did this case with the Rails …