The Obvious Strategy to Take Back Your Time - Jonathan Swanson - #1047

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
How did you get started in thinking about time and delegating?

**Jonathan Swanson** (0:07)
So my first job out of school was working at the White House, and I worked for the president's top economic advisor. And I got to walk in the West Wing every morning, which was a cool life experience. And I sat next to the president's executive assistants. And as you might imagine, the executive assistants to the president are really freaking good. And it set my bar crazy high for what this client EA partnership could look like. And so when I left the White House to start my first company, I asked myself the question, what if I had an assistant or a team of assistants that was as good as the president's? Obviously, I'm not going to become president, but what else could I accomplish if I had that sort of support? And so I hired my first assistant that way, and then set out on a journey to build the best team I could to see how it would change my life.

**Chris Williamson** (0:57)
What were the unlocks that you saw inside of the White House? How complex and big is the system of spindly octopuses with tentacles and everything trying to help get the machine moving?

**Jonathan Swanson** (1:10)
I mean, it's insane. The president has multiple assistants, as you might imagine. There's actually an entire department called Advance that plans every minute of the president's life for months in advance. And so if he's going to be in Brazil in three months, there's people deployed months in advance to go scope, prepare everything. And I think there's just kind of the level of optimization, which is one thing. But the thing that really struck me sitting next to the president's assistants is seeing the relationship they had. It wasn't just saving him time or doing tasks for him. At the end of the day, he would sit down, lean back in his chair and be like, what happened? And he would talk to his assistant. And this was one of the people he trusts most in the world. There's all these other people jockeying for his attention, governors, senators, NSA chiefs. But this assistant is the one person who's just like got his back fundamentally, emotionally, psychologically. And you can tell there was a real psychological connection that was very valuable beyond just the work.

**Chris Williamson** (2:16)
So it was a deep relationship of trust and kind of awareness, I suppose, because of how globally connected that assistant is to everything.

**Jonathan Swanson** (2:26)
Exactly. Like if you have an assistant there in your inbox, they're seeing the lawsuit that's coming, the person that's quitting, the money you just raised, the investor that rejected you, all the highs and lows that are shielded from most of your company, most of the White House. But that assistant sees all of it. And so they're on the emotional journey with you more than really anyone else.

**Chris Williamson** (2:50)
Okay. So jump to the end. That's the beginning. Jump to the end. What is your current setup when it comes to life with assistants?

**Jonathan Swanson** (3:01)
So I've got a chief of staff and a half dozen assistants that roll into that chief of staff. Each assistant specializes in different things. So one helps me with work, one helps me with finance, one helps me with my kiddos, house, et cetera. You know, I wouldn't recommend to anyone they start with that many. You start with one and get to capacity and then you keep going to the extent your means and your ambition allows. But in my experience, I just experienced this time scarcity for most of my life of, I just want more out of life. I want to spend more time with my family, my kids, do more work. And there's only so many hours in the day. And as I layered on more assistance, I eventually, when I got to six, got to the point where I was like, wow, I have this feeling of time abundance, where so much is taken care of that I can start thinking about new things that I want to do. And that, for me, was the most fundamental unlock. And it's not to say that's easy. It took me a decade to get there. No one's going to turn it on in a day. But it's possible and it feels really good. And I think that's what most people are looking for in life, is more time.

**Chris Williamson** (4:15)
How do you come to think about time, then? How do you regard it as a resource or a contributing element of people's lives?

**Jonathan Swanson** (4:25)