The Sukha Effect. Finding Flow, Focus & Purpose in Work & Life
- Andy Goram
- 53 minutes ago
- 36 min read
When was the last time you felt completely in flow; that sweet spot where focus feels effortless and you know exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing?
That’s the question that sits at the heart of this conversation with Steven Puri, founder of The Sukha Group. His story takes us from Hollywood to high-tech and back to something timeless — the search for meaning and ease in our work.
From Hollywood to Sukha
Steven’s career could easily fill two lifetimes. He spent years producing blockbuster films at DreamWorks and Fox, surrounded by creative giants and impossible deadlines. But when he stepped into the tech world, he found himself chasing something different — not just productivity, but purpose.
The turning point came on his honeymoon in Bali. One of his users told him he subscribed to Steven’s platform because it helped him finish work early enough to play with his kids. That moment stopped Steven in his tracks. His wife, Lauren, smiled and said the word he’d been searching for: Sukha — a Sanskrit term for happiness, ease and being in your natural lane.
“He’s telling you what he cares about is that feeling of Sukha. Being in your lane, doing what you’re meant to do, being good at it, being in control of your day and doing it with ease.”
From that hotel room in Bali, The Sukha Group was born.
Purpose Over Fear
For Steven, Sukha isn’t about doing less — it’s about doing what matters most. And that means tackling one of work’s biggest barriers: fear.
He recalls a story from his time at DreamWorks when Steven Spielberg accepted a better idea from the most junior person in the room without hesitation.
“He just cared about the best idea,” Steven remembers. “That’s how you create safety. You show people it’s totally okay to fail — that’s how the great ideas happen.”
That moment crystallised the connection between safety, courage and creativity — the conditions that allow purpose and flow to flourish.
Leadership as a Moral Obligation
As the conversation unfolds, Andy reflects on the responsibility that comes with leadership — that helping people find and express their purpose isn’t just good management; it’s a moral obligation. When people understand why their work matters, they find energy, not exhaustion.
Steven agrees. Leaders who create environments where people feel safe to contribute aren’t just driving performance — they’re unlocking meaning. And that’s where true engagement lives.
Living with Sukha
In the end, Sukha isn’t about chasing calm or cutting back. It’s about working and living in alignment — finding ease within effort, purpose within performance, and flow within the everyday.
As Steven puts it, when you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, with presence and intention, you don’t have to force greatness — it just flows.
You can listen to the full episode using the player below, or read the full transcript that follows.
Full Transcript
[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:06)
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition-smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.
Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work, and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
Purpose, Fear and Flow: An Unplanned Conversation
Okay then, today's episode my friends is, let's be honest, a first for me.
Normally before a conversation I spend time digging deep into my guest's world, finding the stories, themes, conducting some research, looking for angles, so that together we can shape something clear, interesting, unique maybe and hopefully valuable for you the listener. But this time I'm taking a different path. There's no neat brief or anything like a conversation map.
There's just a shared curiosity about work, creativity, purpose, and life. And it all began when my guest today, Steven Puri, founder of the Sukah Group, suggested a topic called, What Hollywood and Tech Taught Me About Deep Work, which to me already sounded fascinating. A man who's lived in two different worlds, Hollywood film production and the world of technology, and how something like deep work and focus had linked the two.
But- Oh, it sounds good already. Okay. Keep going.
This is great. But as we spoke, something deeper emerged. Steven is about to become a father for the first time.
He's facing a personal health challenge. And he's been reflecting not just on how we work deeply, but why we do what we do at all. And he suggested we dig into that instead.
So today, instead of a research-backed conversation, we're just going to let it unfold. We'll see where it takes us, maybe into purpose, focus, fear, meaning, creativity, maybe even legacy. Who knows?
Because sometimes the conversations we most need to have are the ones we never planned for. So welcome to the show, Steven.
[Steven Puri] (3:06 - 3:20)
That is such a beautiful introduction. And I appreciate that you would call this a unique or first type you've done, given that you've done episodes with like Dr. Seuss, which was, I thought, just brilliant. I was like, I was in.
[Andy Goram] (3:20 - 3:31)
When I heard the rhyme at the beginning, I was like, okay, this is a good pod. I like to think the conversation is always organic, right? And fun.
And we'll muck about. Some are better.
[Steven Puri] (3:32 - 3:40)
I've spoken probably 200 times in the past 10 years. Some are amazing. And I loved when we met.
And some are super awkward. So let's make it a good one.
[Andy Goram] (3:40 - 4:15)
Let's give it a go. And I think the plan is normally just my imposter syndrome to make sure, hey, there needs to be structure and everything else so that I know what I'm doing. Safety and structure.
But I feel ridiculously comfortable in your company, Steven, when we first had a chat about, and you suggested doing this kind of more free flow attempts. I was like, initially really, really nervous. But then you said a couple of things and I was like, okay, no, let's, let's go.
Let's let's let's rock and roll. Let's have a go.
[Steven Puri] (4:16 - 4:37)
Well, I hope we create something that is both entertaining for those playing along at home and also interesting and actionable like their ideas in here. I know you've had some people, like you said, very data driven, very, you know, evidence based kind of episodes and they're super helpful and others that are, you know, more inspirational. I hope we can sort of bridge those two.
[Andy Goram] (4:38 - 5:01)
I'd love that. I would absolutely love that. Um, I've got to say, I'm really interested in the Sukha group because I couldn't help myself and do a little bit of research.
And that word, the word, the Sanskrit word Sukha, from my understanding about happiness, ease, where, where's that come from? What, why Sukha? What's it stand for?
The Story Behind The Sukha Group
[Steven Puri] (5:01 - 10:17)
You, I, you get gold star because that is not only a story that is close to my heart that will reveal a lot about me, but it's also, I think the most interesting way to start this conversation about why do we do what we do. Right. So I'm going to give you a story as I love to do, obviously working in film.
Okay. For those playing along at home, let me just be clear. I've been a senior executive at a couple of motion picture studios, Fox DreamWorks, blah, blah, raised over $20 million a venture, run some startups, both successes and failures.
And in the middle of a really interesting life and about to have my first kid. So Andy and I have had some wonderful conversation around that. And I'm now going to tell you why I named my company, the Sukha company.
Okay. So Sukha is Sanskrit. So Laura wife was super pregnant right now, 37 weeks.
She and I met in yoga. I married the girl on the yoga mat to my left. Wow.
Right. We were living in Manhattan. I saw her in class.
One of those times she was next to me. We chatted three months later, we went on a date. We are now married for 10, you know, long, long.
So we got married three years ago while I was in the middle of developing, you know, the company I created, which we'll talk about, which is, you know, a flow state website. It's a website to help you get into flow state. And we'll unpack that in a moment.
Great. What's important here is Lauren. I got married and we went to Bali for our honeymoon, which is a great place when you do yoga, go take your loved one, hang out at the beach, be alone, do the yoga.
Right. And I'm very grateful. It's my life is you can go for, you know, two weeks and just hang out in Bali on the way there.
I said to Laura, listen, I have been struggling to name this thing that I'm creating, which is kind of the culmination of everything I've learned about all these amazing high performers I worked with and what are their habits? How do you take everything they kind of do and put it together in like one place? Right.
And I keep coming with awful names, but I aspire to a great name. Like the way Amazon is not called like online bookstore place, you know, like Nike is not called like shoe runner thing, you know, and I was going with really, really bad names. So I said, maybe on these, uh, you know, these days we have, no one's going to bug me.
And my unconscious mind will like, give me a great name. The universe will speak to me. Right.
So Laura being adorable is like, I wish that for you. So we get there the first day, check in the hotel. And I said to her, I think something would seed my unconscious.
The Customer Who Defined Sukha
If you're cool with this, do you mind if I speak to two or three of these early members of our community and just ask their outside perspective? Hey, what do you love about this? Like, what feature is it?
Because we have, you know, flow music and smart assistants help you and, you know, all sorts of little things like there's a community. So Laura was like, I'm going to the pool, but you enjoy your zooms. I will see you at dinner.
Right. So I dropped in and I said, Hey, it was commit. Did three conversations.
Very simple. Me asking the dumb question. Hey, what's your favorite thing?
Right. Oh, you love the productivity scores. It was like the third gentleman who's a member.
He's still in there. When I was going into the wrap-up where it's like, Andy, I promised 10 minutes on respective time. Someone let you go.
Thank you so much. Right. Traditional wrap-up.
He stopped me and he says, Steven, you asked the wrong questions. And I was like, nice, good feedback. I know.
I was like, okay, guy that I don't know that well, I appreciate the feedback. What was the right question? He's like, you should have asked me why I pay you.
And I was like, okay, we don't charge that much, but fair enough. I'll take the bait. Why do you pay me?
He said the past year or so, I find I have two kinds of days at three o'clock. I'm playing with my kids. They're two and four right now.
Or it's six o'clock. I'm down on myself. Where did the day go?
I was busy, but I didn't do the thing. And maybe I'll get up early tomorrow and try to finish. I realized the difference is that I hit play in your website when I started work in the morning.
So I pay you because my kids are not going to be two and four forever. And I was like, okay, you win that round. That is a way better question answer than what I was pushing for.
Thank you. So I go to dinner with Laura. I'm like, oh my God, I spoke to this guy.
It was like more articulate about what I'm doing than I am. You're like, this is what he said. And she's like, that's really good.
Like he summed up a lot of what you're doing better than you've ever done it. So we're going to bed, you know, cute little honeymooners, first night of honeymoon, little spa robes on a brush, our little teeth, you know, and she looks at me, she goes, you know, in yoga, we hear all of these Sanskrit words, these concepts like Prana, your life force and your Dharma, your duty, your karma. She said, that dude described to you Sukha.
The universe spoke to you through him. He's telling you don't name this after like, oh, it's a flow state app. Oh, it's a distraction blocker.
He's telling you what he cares about is that feeling of Sukha, of being in your lane, doing what you're meant to do, being good at it, being in control of your day and do it with ease because he wants to be with his kids. He wants to see them grow up. I was like, you were absolutely right.
And from that hotel room in Bali, on my little phone, I looked up the Sukha company, the happiness company. Yeah. $14 later, we had a name.
Beautiful.
[Andy Goram] (10:17 - 10:41)
What a lovely story though. And what a great guy, right? Well, what a super question.
Super question. Yeah. And I go, I envy people who have that, just that innate ability to ask really insightful, transformational questions that go way beyond open.
They just kind of open up all sorts of different boxes and avenues for you.
[Steven Puri] (10:41 - 11:07)
It is so great when you're with someone who's engaged and they really understand how to get it to gold in the hills, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
I'm totally with you. I'm very grateful that we have a great community in our flow state app that a lot of what they tell me and Tony is how we guide what we build. You know, they're very vocal.
They're very clear. This is what I think. And it is something I learned from my failed startups was listen, really actively listen.
[Andy Goram] (11:09 - 11:28)
Anyway, back to you. No, hey, listen, no. I mean, and so this self happiness ease purpose, I guess really flows through that philosophy that, you know, you're trying to pursue now.
You've got, as in your words, the little rascal arriving in literally a handful of days.
[Steven Puri] (11:28 - 11:29)
Yes.
[Andy Goram] (11:29 - 11:34)
You're going to have real focus and purpose on your hands very shortly. Less time.
[Steven Puri] (11:35 - 11:43)
By the way, this is not a beer. I'm opening a water. Okay.
But it was going to sound like a beer. Okay. It's five o'clock somewhere, my friend.
[Andy Goram] (11:43 - 11:49)
It's five o'clock somewhere. Um, I'm just saying, so you've mentioned a couple of times flow state and stuff, right?
[Steven Puri] (11:50 - 14:20)
Before we do that, can I bring up something that you touched upon and it stuck with me when we were speaking, I don't know, two weeks ago when we were talking. Um, we were talking about, there are some very prescriptive episodes you've done. They're very helpful and very actionable.
And we also talked about that greater idea of like, well, why are we doing this? And I love that your pod, like the energy you put into your pod is around, you know, how do we make this experience of work different? How do we get sticky?
You know, and that it has a two sided sort of equation. There is, I am a team leader. I'm a, I'm a leader here or I'm a contributor in both experiences.
You want to be magical. And the thing that really stuck with me is this, and I, I'm curious if this is a path you would like to go down here is when we talked about the why, like there are productivity techniques that are high performance tips. There's all sorts of things, but almost before you get to that, you have to say, well, why do I want to be a high performer?
Why do I want to have a team of it? Is it just more output, more money? We shipped 10% more widgets this week.
We sold three extra hours of services, right? And I think you and I share this view, which is everyone has something great inside them. And the question of this lifetime is, are they going to get it out?
And if you are an individual contributor and you have that desire to say, I'm not going to die with this thing inside, whether you are a graphic designer, you are a writer, a copywriter, whether you're a UI UX designer, an engineer, like whatever it is, you're, you are creating something. Right. And hopefully you get to sing your song.
And if you are a leader, it does not mean that you are a manager. It does not mean that your job is Thursday at five o'clock. I dropped by Andy's desk.
Hey, Andy, tomorrow morning at 10, the TPS reports are due. How you doing? Like that's, that's managing.
It's not leading. Leading is when you look at, at your team and you say, it is my job. It's my honor to be the one who draws greatness out of each of you, who could look at each of you like a coach on a team and go, this is the role you are going to play in our being a championship team and drawing that out.
And you listen to like athletic players talk about coaches that they've had when they've won championships. Those coaches dig deep into each person and go, I am going to pull forth the greatness. And I think that is why we do this.
Leadership and Drawing Out Greatness
[Andy Goram] (14:21 - 15:08)
I would wholeheartedly agree. I maybe go, I don't know if it's further, but it's adjacent is that I, I genuinely think it's your moral obligation to do that. Yep.
Because it's easy to talk about this stuff and go, Hey, have you realized your purpose? Are you delivering your purpose? Are you being the best person you can be?
I think it's cliche to think that everybody can even see that or know what their thing is. And until someone is given the opportunity to find that thing, to play with it, to see what it does, to see the impact it has on themselves, to see the impact that it has on others. Loads of people wonder through life, I guess, with that thing still wrapped up inside, never, never been opened.
Right? Yeah.
[Steven Puri] (15:09 - 15:23)
And you want to have a sticky organization, a sticky team. Oh yeah, sure. You can offer free coffee in the lunchroom or we have the best retreats, whatever.
But there is nothing as sticky as someone going, I am doing the thing I was meant to do on this earth. This is amazing.
[Andy Goram] (15:24 - 15:31)
Do you know what though? I fully subscribe to that feeling. Would you like the coffee in the lunchroom?
[Steven Puri] (15:31 - 15:31)
Okay.
[Andy Goram] (15:31 - 16:05)
No, no, no, no, I just think that people, too many people, and I would consider myself in the evangelist camp, but there are too many people who go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there are employees go, I don't need that. I'm just here to pick up a paycheck.
And there are managers, leaders who have the same opinion that is, they're just people to do stuff. Right? And I think- Can I challenge you on that?
Yeah, listen, I don't agree with it. I vehemently fight against it, but I think there's stuff going on like that.
Fear, Failure and the Role of Psychological Safety
[Steven Puri] (16:05 - 19:08)
With Sukah, I talked to a lot of people who are contributors. We are, as I mentioned, our biggest cohorts of members are developers, engineers, designers, and authors, right? Some are writers.
And so I speak to them, I speak to leaders of those teams. And I'll tell you this, in talking to a lot of them about the problems that they face, including, you know, leaders who are afraid of remote work or hybrid work, wrestling with all this, there is a lot of fear driving the thing you just said. And I completely agree with you.
Yes, there is a whole strata of individual contributors that are just in it for the paycheck. They're just like, you know what? I'm not giving my soul here.
This is not my song. I'm here to be here X number of hours at this rate, and it pays for stuff. And there's some manager leaders that are like, I've given up trying to inspire people.
I want the TPS reports in Friday at 10. And I'm good. And it's absolutely true, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I will say this, the leaders with whom I have worked, and I'd like to believe at certain times I've been good at this, certain times I've failed, that actually have those teams that go on to do the stuff. Like we won an Academy Award for Independence Day, right?
I produced the digital effects. We won the Academy Award for visual effects on that movie. And it was hard because Fox fought us.
Fox viewed us as this. Finding this person, shitty little sci-fi movie. And we fought at pencils.
It was like, you want a pencil? Fill out this form. You're like, oh my God, we still won the Academy Award.
Yeah. Here's the thing. You as a leader, and I don't care if you say, well, I'm really just a middle manager or you're the CEO.
If you lead people, if people look to you for direction, there are big things you need to do. I'm not talking about going over the budgets. I'm not talking about hiring.
I'm talking about two big things. You need to state why we are here. Our mission is we are here to cure cancer.
We are here to clean up the environment. We're here to make the best romantic comedies we can make, whatever that is, right? And you have to declare the culture, which is expressed through values, which is expressed through how do we treat each other?
How do we treat our competitors? How do we treat our customers? And if you do those two things, well, hiring changes.
The composition of your team changes. If I know that I've stated we are here to cure cancer and this is how we're going to operate. And I meet Andy and Andy is like, I watched my grandmother die of breast cancer.
Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. There's no question in my mind whether Andy is moving the ball down the field. He is here for the right reason. Now, if I meet Andy and he's been on Indeed and he has five jobs in six years, I am an idiot for hiring him because he is not here for these two big reasons.
So that is the biggest square one thing I can say. So you have to be clear.
[Andy Goram] (19:09 - 20:28)
This is why we're here and this is how we treat each other and hire according to those. Amen, sir, to that. You know, frankly, that they are two things tattooed on my soul in trying to help people.
It will, you know, big brave boy. Steve, not put up with it. Anybody that knows me know that's a total lie.
Incredibly low pain threshold sitting quite. So it's more about press on decals than a tattoo. Yeah, I think I see.
I could go with that. And I think that why I think I wonder whether it comes back to what you talked about, about fear before in the fear of discovering or trying to even look into that or fear of failure of not being able to understand those things, because I think having real purpose under underplaying what you do is hugely motivating. And I speak from personal experience of leaving corporate, losing what I thought was purpose and literally wandering around in the wilderness, which felt pretty bad and awful until you do a bit of self-reflection and self-searching, get a few people to help push you around.
When you see it, I don't think I understood just how much I missed that thing.
Lessons from Spielberg: The Best Idea Wins
[Steven Puri] (20:29 - 24:10)
So you said something that I want to hang a lantern on, which is you said, yes, it can be scary to try to do something that is great means it's probably hard. Yeah. Which means there's a chance you will fail and failure is scary.
So much like a parent. You as a leader need to show that failure is OK, the attempt to do something great is what's important. I'm going to tell you a very specific story.
I'm going to change the details a little bit out of respect. But when I was at DreamWorks, yeah, I remember the first time I was in this is when Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snyder were running the studio, right? Last studio run by a filmmaker.
And it showed it was very creative, probably the best four years of my film career were in DreamWorks. I loved it. So I remember the first time I had a meeting in Steven's private conference room, like right off his office in the Amlan Southwestern Adobe, you know, it's very likely he had built there.
This is his conference room with the big wooden carved table in it. And no matter how many movies that worked on at this point and how many Academy Award, I'm just going to be super honest. There was a moment I had and there was like, oh, MFG, like, this is where my career is led.
I'm sitting two seats down from Steven working on a project that I brought to the studio. And, you know, Stacey sitting across from me, the president of DreamWorks, the vice president was on it, myself, two writers to produce. I'm sitting there at this table.
Steven Spielberg talking about a movie. My, right. Okay.
So let's just say it was a great moment. And I saw this happen where I was like, wow. And I'm going to change the details at respect to Steven because I don't want to talk out of school.
Right. So we were discussing a sci-fi movie with aliens. And as you know, Steven's done some pretty huge hits in sci-fi with aliens, something like that.
Right. So he has opinions. He's gone down roads.
Right. So he said something that was akin to, okay, so, you know, in this scene, what we really need is the aliens got to come through the wall. And when he bursts through the wall, we're going to then see him interact with this.
And we're going to realize his weakness is probable. We're a foreshadow. His, his vulnerability, his kryptonite is this, right?
Okay. So he says this and someone who was coming through the room, essentially a coffee boy, coffee deliverer said, actually, I feel like we saw that in this other director's movie, like two years ago. And what if it were this other thing?
And I thought to myself, wow, we'll never see him alive again. That was nice. Having a coffee boy cup.
Right. Exactly. Don't memorize his name.
He'll be in the dumpster in small pieces by lunch. Right. And even pause and said, ah, yeah, actually, uh, it's better.
We should do that. And the meeting just moved forward. And I was like, wow, what was that?
Where Steven just showed to the, like 10 people here, he just cares about best idea. It is not about I'm precious with my ideas. I'm, I have to be right.
That was really the hallmark of mediocre creatives that I worked with. They become very possessive. Like, no, in the scene, he absolutely has to be on a motorcycle and it has to have this because I need this to happen.
And you're like, it doesn't make sense to the character. We haven't set up yet. And with Steven was just like, yeah, uh, we should do that.
And the meeting just moved on. Like nothing had happened. And I was like, I need to remember that's how you create safety.
He failed. Come up with the best idea.
[Andy Goram] (24:10 - 24:20)
And he showed it was totally cool. What do you think Steven Spielberg's? Why purpose was, did you ever talk to him about that?
Is it, was it really obvious with working?
[Steven Puri] (24:20 - 24:39)
I, I have to be honest with you, Steven and I interacted over my four years there, but it was never on the level of, Hey man, like how are you doing? What are, what are you up to this weekend? Like, you know, what are you wrestling with, with your kids or Kate?
Like we were not there. It was a professional relationship. I don't have an insight that way.
And I'd be lying if I told you I did.
[Andy Goram] (24:39 - 24:51)
No, no, no. It's fine. Just interesting.
Even, even maybe from the feel of how the organization operated and that little vignette of a story about best idea wins. I mean, to me, it's the example of storyteller, right?
Meaning, Emotion and Purposeful Work
[Steven Puri] (24:52 - 25:36)
It's very, you know, he's obviously close with George Lucas. You know, there are a couple of people that are a couple of directors that are there and for them, it is magic. The emotional clay, how you could put together these images with this sound and show it to someone and make them feel a certain way.
That's magical. And Steven understood that like sometimes for better or worse. But I mean, I'm not here to nitpick Steven Spielberg.
He's amazing. But I think that was his why was there was an emotional magic to telling a story and having someone feel. And that's really cool.
That was some of my best meetings I had were in film period where dreamworks.
[Andy Goram] (25:36 - 26:00)
I think that word feel is like hugely important. Circling back to what we were just sort of talking about before in that I just want people to feel something positive at work. I just wanted to feel a bit.
I know it's all again, choice of words, but, you know, I genuinely want people to have more fulfilling work lives. And that even when that comes out, it sounds a bit too much.
[Steven Puri] (26:01 - 30:22)
But you know what? I'm not afraid to sound like a crazy person. So let me do that for a moment.
OK, which is I think we both want to believe that you can leave work energized with the feeling of I've done something meaningful. Yeah, right. It's not every day.
It's not every day that you're saving three children from a burning house. You know what I mean? But there is a sense of like if you're a firefighter, there are those days when you do something heroic and it's amazing.
And the other days we make sure the fire engine is ready to go in case today is a day with the thing. Right. So this really brings me to something I talked about around flow states, which is there is a way of doing the knowledge work you have to do.
This is not obviously for servers in restaurants. This is not for painters on, you know, house paintings, things like that. But there is I should probably for those playing along at home.
Let me set the table very quickly, because I know some people listening are like flow masters. They're in flow all the time. Others maybe have a passing understanding of it because it's becoming super popular.
So Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csincszentmihalyi, he had a thesis. He said these high performers in wildly different disciplines, athletes and artists and scientists and inventors, they go into these concentrated states where they do the thing that makes them famous, the thing that moves the world around them. And they talk about those states in very similar ways.
Kind of what's up with that? So he did his research. And at the end of it, he wrote a book called Flow.
And that is the seminal work on this. It's from whence we get the term flow states. And when he was asked about naming this book, he said the greatest thing he said.
Flow is the most beautiful metaphor I could find to express what I learned, which is we are all on the river paddling to move ourselves forward. But if you align your boat with the current, it carries you. It magnifies your efforts.
You go further and faster, and that's what these high performers have figured out to do and do consistently. And he said, listen, people call it different things. Even in my research, like Michael Jordan has that famous quote of the basketball player about when I'm in the zone, it's just me in the ball.
Right. And there's a Cossack quote I love. They always mangle where he's like, I was up all night.
I lost track of time. I didn't eat, pee. But I think I finished Gernika tonight, you know?
And to be lost in the work that way, he said, there are some very similar characteristics when you talk to these people. He said, number one, it always and it only happens when they're doing something I think is meaningful. So I was joking about, you know, turning in the TPS reports.
It may not be doing TPS reports or stapling paper. They're mopping the floor. Right.
But it may be doing something where you're like, I have an idea. He said, it's always when they have skills that apply and they're challenged. Right.
So it is, you're doing something you're trained to do. You like to do whether it is painting, writing, writing code, you know, designing, whatever. And he said, it's interesting.
You lose track of time. Distractions fall away. You're, you're deep in the work.
And at the end, you feel a sense of joy of uplift as opposed to depletion. And that's one of the things I think is amazing because if you create in your team, the conditions where people can actually be in flow, you deal with less burnout, you deal with less, you know, attrition and you get the staff meetings. I mean, Andy, I know you have a feeling on this is if you're running a team and in the staff meeting, I come in and I say, Andy, my emails are all returned in box zero, you return my Slack messages.
Do you want that? Or do you want me to say, Hey, actually yesterday I took that hour you gave me and I thought of this and I described something where everyone in the room went, oh my God, like that idea changes the trajectory of what we're doing.
[Andy Goram] (30:24 - 30:45)
What do you want? Well, I think, I mean, crikey, there's so much to unpack in there. I think coming back to the whole idea of flow, I just, and come back to whoever it is, whether it's, you know, high performers, whatever, there is nothing quite like at work when you feel like you've been on it.
Right. That's it. It doesn't matter.
[Steven Puri] (30:45 - 30:47)
Is that your phrase for flow?
[Andy Goram] (30:48 - 32:17)
I just think if I, if I'm on it, I can get shit done in great quality. I can, I think better. I think less distracted.
I, I am, I'm, I'm, I'm on it. And I can also feel that I've been on it in lots of times in my, my career as a, as a waiter, as a bus boy could have felt on it. You're like, I'm not thinking about table numbers and the order of service, or I'm just in it, feeling great, connecting with customers, getting stuff done.
I am all over my station. That's as much flow as somebody like intentionally setting out to do some deep work. You know, for me, I think that's important.
And then the great point you make about leadership and creating environments. I think this is where this stuff kind of gets lost sometimes in leadership. Not enough people go to leadership school and they try to continue to do the technical stuff they were doing in the previous role as a, as a leader.
Instead of your focus now is on this group in front of you. And your job is to really create an environment where stuff can grow and percolate and, and be done and people can feel on it or inflow or like they've achieved or they've contributed that, that is your, that is your job. That, that is now your obligation.
And that's what I love about this topic.
Living with Intention, Flow and Focus
[Steven Puri] (32:17 - 32:36)
I have a question for you. So riddle me this in your current life, when you have those opportunities to be on it in the zone inflow, you're doing that thing where you do the work faster, you're immersed in it and it's great work. You feel up.
What are the obstacles? What are the blockers?
[Andy Goram] (32:36 - 33:20)
What are the things that stop you? Uh, maybe something initially, like I might suffer with a bit of procrastination at the beginning, going sometimes is good, which to be honest is where something like chat GPT has been a revelation for me. How so?
How do you use chat GPT to, to avoid the blank piece of paper? I will download, I will download consciousness into chat GPT and say, can you make something of this? Give me a start for 10 and the start for 10, I could either love it and I'm off or hate it and I'm off, but it's a starter for 10 instead of staring at a blank page.
I mean, do you do some of the things? I mean, you created a whole, whole thing around this. So I absolutely do.
[Steven Puri] (33:21 - 34:55)
I'll tell you, there are two big things that I wrestle with one, you nailed it, which is a procrastination. And what I found is it's usually born of overwhelm where either I have too many things to do and I don't know where to start or there's something I need to do. And in the amount of time I have today, I can barely make a dent in it.
It's like a goal as opposed to a task, right? Um, it was one of the things in designing the website. I was like, okay, we should have a smart assistant running on one of the LLMs that looks at your task list and says, Hey, you know what?
It feels like these are your priorities and let me break this one down for you. So it's more like a 30 minute task than a five hour goal for the week. Right?
And it's going to sound so simple and you don't laugh, but the overwhelm of looking at a task list of like 17 things and be like, ah, we did the simplest thing where when you start your session, you know, like I described, uh, that number who said, and he hits play in the morning, there's a play button in the center of the screen and hit play and your Pomodoro timer starts. We hide everything, but your top three tasks. And I'll tell you this, since we did that, it not only helps me not to jump around and get overwhelmed, but 77% more of our members finish all three.
And when they could see the entire list, they would finish two or one. Nothing. The tasks didn't change.
The people didn't change. Music didn't change. It was simply a thing of looking up and going, oh yeah, I can do this thing.
Got it. And it helps you focus on them. Just taking the clutter out.
So simple.
[Andy Goram] (34:55 - 35:20)
Can I ask you, this is a geeky question for me around Pomodoro. Um, so Pomodoro, for those that are listening that the technique to help you kind of train your focus, right. To sort of cadence of exactly of working and taking breaks.
So, um, the school of thought of hearing the ticking being, uh, something that helps people focus or can be a distraction, which side of the coin are you on? Okay.
[Steven Puri] (35:21 - 38:07)
Okay. I'm going to give you more than you asked for, because I actually kind of love this because this is a story about things that Steven learned on the job. So in creating Succo, which for straight up is a flow state website, we looked at all the research, Mihai, the giants who stood on top of his giant shoulders and did research on it.
Here's how music helps. All right. A lot of the research on music was there's a sweet spot for most people of music that helps people drop in or quickly into flow.
Like, you don't just say I'm in flow, right? It takes you research shows 15 to 23 minutes to drop in. So they said, there is some music that helps you get in more quickly and stay in.
Right. So what did I do? Remember, I come from film.
I have a bunch of friends. We're film composers. Hey, who has some time on their hands and can write me flow music.
I need like a thousand hours of flow music, basically written to this research 60 to 90 beats per minute, certain key signatures, non vocal. So you don't sing along ambient, you know, background. So we have tons of this music.
Right. And I was like, great. We're gonna have a Pomodoro timer.
It's like the heartbeat of the website. You hit play. It starts real cycles.
You have a break coming up. Right. And what we're going to do is we're going to then say, pick a playlist, all these like upbeat, down tempo, lo-fi, binaural beats.
Right. Interesting learning. So buddy who does the sound for LucasArts for the Star Wars games, right?
Lives up in Marin. He called me. Oh, I just got back from Nepal.
It was my son's high school graduating present. He wanted to go to Nepal. We went.
One day while we were in Kathmandu, it poured rain like this lush, delicious rain. And I had my recording equipment. So I recorded two hours of it.
I don't really know what to do with it. I just want to capture it. Do you want it?
I was like, for free? Sure. Done.
Join. Send it over. Right.
So just quietly in the middle of all the other playlists, you know, like sonic caffeine, ambient atmosphere, downtown, right? We put in a playlist, Himalayan dream rain. And it was just two hours of rain in Kathmandu.
Didn't announce it. Just were like, it has become our third most popular playlist. Wow.
And when I talk to people, because I run the platform, I can see who's listening to it. So I was like, Andy, can I ask you a couple of questions? Like, why do you listen to rain instead of, you know, ticking of a clock like Pomodoro?
All this music we paid to have written. Yeah. And it was so interesting.
It was about mental associations. Okay. I got answers like, oh, when I was young, my grandmother raised me in Georgia and it would rain there when I'd be studying.
So when I hear the rain, it brings me back to, oh, I have, I have homework to do.
[Andy Goram] (38:07 - 38:07)
Yeah.
[Steven Puri] (38:07 - 40:13)
Stuff like that. Like, oh, where I was when I was young, here's, oh, I used to work in London and it was so interesting. I get, I have a mental trigger.
Rain makes me think now's the time to focus. So we experimented. I found streams in Japan, surf in Cyprus, this lake up in Canada that has these indigenous birds you hear chirping.
We threw a bunch of them up, semi-popular, not as popular as the rain. And then a woman asked me, she DM'd me, one of our members and said, listen, before the pandemic, I used to be able to go, I'm a writer. I used to go to coffee shop.
I had a baby during the pandemic. Can't just run off like my single days and hang out in a coffee shop. But there's something about that, that maybe it's the romance of being a coffee shop writer or something.
You know, like any chance you could find sound of a coffee shop. And we did. Someone had recorded a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria.
We threw it up there and it's become very popular with writers. And it reminded me back when I was an executive at DreamWorks and at Sony before that, there is a famous coffee bean and tea leaf in West Hollywood. It's right across Sunset Boulevard from the Director's Guild.
And it's known as kind of a writer's clubhouse. Like when you walk in there, everybody's on their little MacBook airs, you know, bribing away. And it has the full spectrum.
There is the old guy in the corner who has written like $3 million scripts this year. But this is his habit to come to this coffee shop for 20 years since he was like a young punk. Right.
And then you have like two girls next to you at the communal table who just got off the bus and they're writing their first TV pilot with their index fingers, you know. And it was so cool because there was an energy in that room where everyone's trying to do something. They're trying to write the next great thing.
And I understood what she said, which she's like, there was something about hearing just the baristas with their, I don't know what it's called, the espresso and the little plates clattering. She's like, it brings me back. So that I thought was fascinating.
I know we can do hours on other parts of this, but, um, that association that some people have, like, I know it will trigger.
[Andy Goram] (40:14 - 40:43)
That sort of personal cognitive connection to right. You know, focus or whatever it might be. Know yourself.
I love that. Um, I feels like this conversation has been a bit in flow in the, it's just been effortless to just listen to you talk. And the time flew by.
Well, and I don't want to leave it at this point because we, we were having a conversation about why we do what we do and your world's changing.
[Steven Puri] (40:44 - 40:44)
Yeah.
[Andy Goram] (40:44 - 41:13)
Your world's changing. And I know myself as, um, making that migration from Singleton to responsibility for kids, you begin to focus on legacy. Hmm.
And I'm interested in this while we do what we do. Where's the whole legacy piece flying around Steven's world right now? Because the world's changing for you in a matter of days.
The world is changing a lot.
[Steven Puri] (41:13 - 42:41)
I, one of my intentions for this year was I had never thought about the next generation before. I think I've lived very selfishly that I've kept my life very small. And with Laura, I thought, you know what?
It would actually be amazing to have like a child, have a family together. So suddenly for the first time in my life, I started thinking about who are you passing this world off to? And I thought, what have I done to make the world that my kids are going to get?
All of our kids are going to get any better. Like none of the movies I worked on, I've worked on movies. People love to talk about, but let me be honest, they didn't really move the world.
They're just fun to watch starships fly through the cosmos and, you know, Bruce Willis do silly stuff in a tank, you know? So I made a goal for myself this year between now and I know my life is going to change in 18 days. So my friends are like, you won't sleep again.
But I made a goal to say, there are things that I have learned about being around high performers, you know, being leading teams and participating in teams that have done really amazing stuff. And have I shared those enough? And I'm so glad that we met.
I'm glad we got the opportunity to talk about, you know, some of these things. I know we've, there were more things we were thinking about talking about. We didn't really get to, but that's one of the things I did this year was I looked for places where I could say, Hey, you know what?
Can I, if the things I have to share, would they benefit your audience? Would you like to do that? I'll do it.
[Andy Goram] (42:43 - 43:33)
So that's, I hope it's not our last conversation, my friend. I genuinely hope it's not our last conversation. I've absolutely loved the conversation.
If you're going to write more Dr. Seuss, I'm coming back. Funny enough. No, one's been in touch about that yet.
It was a pretty bad, but you know, it's a start point. It's a start point. And Steven, before I do let you go today on this topic of why we do what we do at the end of every episode, I have this thing called sticky notes.
And so before you go off to live your last 18 days of pre-fatherdom and everything kind of changes, what three little bits of advice about getting people to think about why we do what we do, all the flow stuff. What three bits of advice would you like to leave the audience with today that you could fit on three little sticky notes on someone's screen?
Steven’s Three Sticky Notes of Advice
[Steven Puri] (43:33 - 44:45)
Yeah. I appreciate that. And I had actually thought about this already.
Oh, good. This was coming. So, uh, things we have touched upon and were tendentially touched upon.
Number one is find the greatness in yourself or others. Because ultimately, like when you release that, there is no feeling quite like that. Um, next one is accept failure as part of success, which is that, that Steven story.
I told you that was when I saw it up close and personal, I was like, wow, that, that was not, I haven't seen other people handle it that way. That was amazing. You know, let's see.
Yeah. Um, and the third one is that if you want to do something great, whether that is lead a team to be great, or you yourself are going to do the right thing, look at the conditions you're setting. You know, like if you want to grow a pine tree and you're in the middle of the ocean, you're not setting the right condition.
You know what I mean? So look at those things by saying, like, am I setting aside time? Am I creating conditions where I can focus?
Am I clear my goals? Like things like that. So, so create the conditions for you to do the right thing.
[Andy Goram] (44:46 - 45:02)
Oh my goodness. I have loved this episode. I've loved listening to you.
I could listen to you for so much fun. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. Now look, if people want to find out a bit more about you and a bit more about the Sucre group and the whole app situation.
Now, where can they go? Where can they find all this stuff out?
[Steven Puri] (45:02 - 45:58)
If there's anything that I've said on this, that someone has a question, doesn't have to be about my company. It can be about who's the Hungarian guy or who's Cal Newport or whatever. You drop me an email.
I will send you back something to read, to learn, right? Steven at the Sucre, T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A dot C-O. I will not write you back a long email.
We're all busy. But if you're curious about something and I can help, I will do that. Um, and then if someone wants to try, you know, a flow state, try a kind of focused practice.
They're more than welcome. We have seven days for free. Um, it's at the Sukha dot C-O, the Sukha company, T-H-E-S-U-K-H-A dot C-O.
Um, I encourage you to give it a shot and see what you can do. And I know we didn't talk a lot about flow states here. Maybe in a future episode or something, but, um, you know, just do something great.
Find the tools that help you to do that great thing.
[Andy Goram] (45:58 - 46:30)
I'd love that. Brilliant. Well, look, fabulous to spend some time with you.
The very, very best of love and good wishes. Thank you. You and Laura in an 18 days time.
I think that's an exciting thing. Carl, I can only imagine what that feels like. It feels like a long time that happened to me and it was amazing.
My one piece of advice to any new dads is get your hair cut before you go in the delivery room. The photos of me looking like fat Elvis holding a small baby are not good. Yeah.
Why? I hadn't thought about that. Small details, mate.
Small details. Hey, where's my pen?
[Steven Puri] (46:32 - 46:40)
Andy, thank you so much for having me and being such a gracious host and, and for the advice on the haircut, which I can tell you're thinking I need to get my haircut. No, no, no.
[Andy Goram] (46:41 - 47:32)
It was subtle. It was subtle, but I got you. Steven, you're an absolute superstar.
Thank you very much, my friend. You take care. You too.
Bye everyone. Okay then. So that was Steven Puri.
I mean, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. If you'd like to find out anything more about any of the things we've talked about or get in touch with Steven as he graciously offered, then please check out the show notes. So that concludes today's episode.
I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like comment and subscribe. It really helps.
I'm Andy Goram and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.
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