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Published · transcript-backed

Gergely Orosz: preference

17 Nov 2022 Lenny's Podcast Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer)

“I really like that it forces me to have my calendar empty, because for so many years my calendar was this giant mess of meetings on top of meetings, and I would barely have any time to actually have focus time.”

— Gergely Orosz

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Gergely Orosz
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
preference
Recorded
17 Nov 2022
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

Transcript context

…It's cool Centered does that for you, and it has music and all the things. So I that a lot. Awesome. What do you love most about this life that you lead now, versus what you used to do? And then I'm going to ask you the opposite, but let's start there. I really like that it forces me to have my calendar empty, because for so many years my calendar was this giant mess of meetings on top of meetings, and I would barely have any time to actually have focus time. Now I actually have the opposite. I usually have a lot of focus time, and I have very, very few meetings or things. And even now I get a little bit cagey [inaudible 00:41:51] I have this one meeting in the whole day. So I like how it's [inaudible 00:41:55] manage your time [inaudible 00:41:58] so that's the best part. And I also like how much in charge I am. Initially it freaked me out, in the sense of how much creative freedom I have. I can write about whatever. I can change a format, I can do this, I can do that. It can be a little bit overwhelming, because I also know that people are going to be reading this, and what are they going to think about it? But I do like that it's very entrepreneurial, so I get to experiment a lot as well, which reminds me a little bit of my old job, because at Uber we also experimented a lot, and obviously more in a corporate setting. But I guess that's just gotten extended. So these are the two favorite things, is the open calendar or very few meetings, and experimenting, trying out stuff and being able to decide what I want to try out. Plus one on both those. I have a rule of no meetings before 3:00 PM, and it generally works 99% of the time. And the reason I do that is, to your point, if there's a meeting at 11:00, I just can't do anything really deep until that point, and then afterwards I have to get back on track. And having that deep focus time is so important for this work, even though half the time I'm on Twitter and distracted, as long as I get enough time to focus, good things happen. Okay. Opposite. What are some of the most surprising downsides and sucky parts of this path that you've taken?…

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