Latest / OneLegUpAlex Media / One Leg Up on Time With Timecorder Founder Mark Ellwood 2-20-25

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One Leg Up on Time With Timecorder Founder Mark Ellwood 2-20-25 · OneLegUpAlex Media

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Here's your host, Balles Garrett.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: All Right, it's gonna be a new month soon, so
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: why not a new open, a little bit of the
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  Speaker 2: instrumental of Blinded by the Light by Man for man
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: to start us off each and every show on the
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: One Up Network.
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  Speaker 3: We're rebranding basically everything from YouTube to WordPress to the
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: podcast itself. We know a hyperlink that says one leg
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: Up Alex. Things are happening, So why not a more
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: upbeat open? And I heard that Riff and I said
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: this would be a great show open that being said,
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: you know, it was great last night, though they lost.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: The Four Nations final between Canada and Team USA, was
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: as hyped and lived up to the hype as it
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: could have.
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: And to be.
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  Speaker 3: Honest, if you want to know what American life is like,
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: don't go to a damn organized protest. I said this
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: on X Alex the NYC one. Don't go to an
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  Speaker 3: organized protest where they're very anti American. Go to a
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: sporting event where you will hear usay USA USA. That's
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  Speaker 3: the America I know and I love.
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  Speaker 4: Well.
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  Speaker 3: Interesting enough, ahead of this big contest last night, I
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: actually talked with someone across the border, mister Mark Elwood
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: about time and I think that's so fitting because last
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: night's game ended in overtime. We talked about time and
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: productivity and I wanted to share that with you right
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  Speaker 3: here on Alex Garrett's One Leg Up Network.
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  Speaker 4: But first of all, Mark, thanks for joining me.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Oh you like to be here now?
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: If you're am not sure who Mark what it is?
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: He is? Actually?
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Uh and then you picked that life fanal He's actually
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: the productivity expert and president of a Pace Productivity, Inc.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: And this is very important in the time where I
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: feel like we're back post COVID and everybody's getting productive again.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: But how do people turn to you and make sure
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: they are making the best use of their time. It
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: feels like you are all about time management, am I right?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of people out there trying to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: help people become more productive. What I do differently is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: that I measure how people spend their time. For those
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: watching on video, I developed a small electronic device called
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: a time quarter, and I invented that and I have
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: about four hundred those. I'd lend those out to employees
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: who use them to track their time for two weeks.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So I consult with corporate clients on how their employees
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: can spend their time better. So I've got a lot
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of data. Unlike other time management experts, I have thirty
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: five years of data about how people actually spend their time.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: I know I heard in this statue you've had five
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand hours in fact of real time data on this.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: Why were you so?
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: And we'll get to the time for a device a
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: little bit, But why are you songe how people spend
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: their time?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I think I've always been someone interested in productivity. It
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: started back when I was, let's see, eleven years old,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: as a paper boy, and when you delivered your papers,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I just got the idea that I didn't want to
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: spend all my time delivering papers, so I had to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: come up with some ways to become more productive. One
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of them, for instance, the weekend newspaper. And this may
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: be a lot new to a lot of your younger listeners,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: but anyway, the weekend newspaper came separately from a magazine,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and you had to put the magazine inside the paper
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: before you deliver them. So we'd all sit around the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: depot over these two piles and putting one into the other. Well,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: that's classic time and motion. How do you open the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: paper and insert the magazine as quickly as possible. That
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: was something I kind of relished in in terms of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: how fast I could do it. We all talk about technology, Well,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I bought the newspaper wagon. That's technology, and that helped
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: me deliver the papers faster and move them around to
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: different customers. I batched my jobs together, so instead of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: going to collect money from people every single week, which
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: is what you had to do, I split the route
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in half. I went one half for two weeks and
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the other half for the other two weeks. So that
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: saved me some time as well. So I was looking
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: at productivity ideas way back as a paper boy, and
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  Speaker 1: I kind of stayed with me for the rest of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: my life.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Now, you know, I know you're in Toronto, so I'm
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: sure those winters were tough. My dad was in Minnesota
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: talking about how he was a paper boy. So when
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: you developed your adaptation to delivering newspapers that help you
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: even through the winter, call them into that help.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, I actually grew up in Montreal, which is even
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: worse for snow. I don't know how I dragged that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: wagon through the snow eve weather, but sometimes you figured, okay,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'll fold the papers up and throw them. So there's
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: a little bit of interesting productivity. How long does it
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: take to fold the paper versus the number of somebody's porch,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So you have to kind of make that little calculation
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  Speaker 1: as well. So I was always thinking about how to
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  Speaker 1: finish the route faster. Heck, even on the way home.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of walking home, I had a way to kneel
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: on the wagon and shoot myself along so I could
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: move faster with the empty wagon. So I was always
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: thinking about that stuff way back.
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: You know, you are also an award winner.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Tell us about that aspect of your life and how
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: you've developed Time quarter.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: You're an award winner as well. Talk about those moments.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Well, the award winning was for speaking, So some of
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you might be familiar with jc's International Nets Junior Chamber,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and so they had an annual Effective Speaking contest and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I won that in Canada and went on and I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: was the world runner up train some other people. So
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I think we should all get good at presentation skills
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and learning how to speak to audiences. But then, as
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: an adult, I invented this electronic device called the time quarter.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: So what happened was like everyone. I was in a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: meeting that was starting late, and I thought, oh, man,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: here we are waiting around for people to arrive. And
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I thought, gee, if we could add up that time
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that you and you and you and I spend waiting
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: for these meetings, maybe we could add that up somehow,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: or maybe we'd have a little device, or maybe we
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: could track different things, kind of like a chess clock
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in reverse. So that was the Aha moment, and we
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: all have those to come up with new ideas and inventions.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: It It didn't leave, though, and so I decided, yes,
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  Speaker 1: I was going to invent this electronic device. And the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: rest is history. I suppose.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Well about you know, and reporting and all that, and
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: you talk about your opening organizations, employees, we all clock
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: in and clock out right at the end of the day,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: at the beginning of the day. How does time quarter
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: manage that even more effectively than maybe other organizations.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Well, indeed, so I started my day at nine o'clock
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and I finished at five or something like that. And
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: during COVID there was a lot of employee monitoring systems
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: because everybody was working out of their home. Employees didn't
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: really like that. A whole lot because someone was measuring
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: their key strokes or their time on their computer or something.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So you have to do it in a kind of
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  Speaker 1: a friendly way. The old fashioned time and motion studies
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  Speaker 1: had guys standing around with stopwatches and clipboards, and that's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: no fun. So the first thing is you've got to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: make this anonymous. So when we ask people to track
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: their own time, we promised them, look, we're not going
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to use your name in the report. We're going to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: make all this anonymous. So we also make it fun
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to use. So the way it works is you program
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  Speaker 1: the time quarter with different activities sales, calls to customers,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: filling out paperwork, going to meetings and so on. And
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  Speaker 1: I've measured about three thousand different activities. It gets very granular.
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  Speaker 1: So you program the device with these different activities, maybe
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: twenty five or thirty or so. Then you give the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: begin a new activity. You just press one button. It's
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: dead simple to use. It gives your feedback. You can
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  Speaker 1: see where you're spending your time, So as you move
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: from one activity to another, you just press one button
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  Speaker 1: and it adds up that time. So over well two weeks,
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  Speaker 1: maybe eighty hours, you spend ten hours here and five
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: hours there and three hours there, and so when I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: can analyze all those hours, compare people to each other,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: compare them to where they want to be, compare them
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: to my database. It's an analytical exercise to show people
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: where they could be spending their time better.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: And how much time is wasted?
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  Speaker 3: Did you find that out during with time coren Like,
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: are you finding that out?
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I wrote a paper a couple of years back
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: on time waste, and there's different types of waste, you know,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: whether it's people shopping online while they're doing their work,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: or not focused on the right activities or whatever. What
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I concluded is that a lot of time waste is
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: not due to the individual themselves, but rather other forces
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: in the organization. So you're on this track doing this project,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and senior management tells you, oh, no, no, instead, we want
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you to be doing this other project. Or a customer
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: calls up with some extra request or a complaint or
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: something so, or it's another department you're waiting for them
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to get back to you with some results or something.
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  Speaker 1: So Indeed, there's a little bit of time waste that
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: people spend themselves, but often it's waste caused by others.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I tend to not use the word waste that much,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: but I talk about non value added activities or administrative tasks,
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  Speaker 1: And for most knowledge workers that tends to be around
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: twenty five percent of their time. It's not wasted time,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: but it's not time that you're spending on your highest
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: priority activities. So if you can reduce that administrative time,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: that non value out of time, then you get more
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: time for your highest priority.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: By the way, how many people in their jobs in
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: general complain about all the paperwork they.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: They can't just do their own job, they have to
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: do paperwork.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: With I mean, there's I feel like since COVID that's
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: been an increase too, Like everybody, even managers, have to
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: do so much paperwork that wasn't there before.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Am I right, well, yeah, it hasn't gone away. So
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: we ask people some open ended questions in addition to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: doing the time quarter. We say, well, you know, what
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: are the most things? What things get in the way
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: of your productivity the most? And indeed paperwork and the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: mind tasks are top the list. And while they may
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: not be important to you, they may be important to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: someone else in the organization. So they kind of have
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to get done. And what I've discovered over thirty five
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: years is with all of the technology, and you know,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I was doing some of these studies before voicemail appeared,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: certainly before there was email, before the Internet, and I've
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: done them ever since, and with all those changes in technology,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: doing knowledge work type jobs for those who haven't been
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: outsourced or offloaded or whatever, is as long as someone's
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: doing a manager job or a sales rep or something
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like that, they continued to be burdened with those administrative tasks.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So everyone talks about AI and how it's going to
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: change jobs and so on. It may eliminate some jobs indeed,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: but to the extent that people are still doing knowledge
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: work jobs, they will still have some fair amount of
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: administrative activity. And that's how we want to help them
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: become more productive.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Mark, I think you're having companies and employees have one
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: leg up. So we talk about how the employees are
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: helped out. Now the organization, right, because you want to
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: help them track their employees just much you want to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: help the employee.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: Right, How does that connection work?
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Well, imagine you study, you know, a dozen sales reps
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: or fifty different customer service reps and again all the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: data is anonymous. What we can do is we can
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: find out what the top performers are doing and what
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the not so top performers are doing, again all anonymously,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and show what those patterns are. How do employees in
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: different offices work and so on. One of the recent
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: bits of research that I did was to look at
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: men versus women. So I went through my entire database
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: and separate people and it was kind of based on
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: their names. Susan is a woman, Malcolm as a man.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So I sort of separated them and created two different
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: databases and I looked at what do men how do
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: men versus women spend their time differently? And I concluded
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: based on four major findings that in fact, women are
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: better at managing their time than men in the workplace.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: If you like, we can go through those.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: And I feel like that's the same at home too.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, I'm terrible at time management. Thankfully,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: my fiance is able.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: To get me up out of bed, you know all
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: that stuff. So I feel what you're saying.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: But in the workplace, tell us about it from that perspective.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Well, first, if you look at total hours worked and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the average amongst knowledge workers is about forty six hours
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: per week. Now there's about three hours in there sort
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: of personal time. So everybody's usually working more hours than
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they're contracted. But if you look at men versus women,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: men are at forty eight hours and women are only
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: at forty five hours. So women, just by virtue of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: total hours worked, are more efficient than men, and you
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: kind of wonder, well, why is that. Well, one of
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the reasons that I started this, or I looked at
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the men versus women is outside of work, and there's
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who study time use amongst men
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: versus women all over the world. What we found generally
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: is that women are in the home more responsible for
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: domestic tasks, that's cooking and cleaning and taking care of
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: children and shopping and so on. So I thought, well,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: than men, what does it look like in the workplace.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So if women are working fewer hours in the workplace,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons is they've got to get home
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to pick up those kids from daycare and take care
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of them and so on, So just by virtue of that,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: they help to be more productive. Another of of findings.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Was this is very fascinating you're talking about because I
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: feel like in general, it's very newsworthy what we're talking about,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: because everybody's up in arms. I have to go back
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: to work. If you're a federal worker, they're up in arms.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: If you're in JP Morgan that they have to go
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: back to work. But as a CEO yourself, are you
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: finding that back to work in the office and not
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: at home is better?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Is better?
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, what's your thought on that? Well?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I looked at that and another bit of research that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I did, and I added up the time that sort
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of made sense for people to be in an office,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and it tends to be just over ten hours per
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: week or more than a day, and that's for meetings
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and one on one conversations and so on. So why
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: is there this new move to now get people back
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: in the workplace. And there's a few reasons for that.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: What is meeting time and collaborations. It's hard to do
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: hybrid meetings for sure. Zoom meetings aren't too bad, but
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the best quality is in person where people can interrupt
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: each other, where you can see body language going on
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and so forth. So that's one reason to have people
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: back in the workplace. Another one that managers tell me
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: is call it management by working, by walking around the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: idea of direct contact with your employees, doing things like
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: personnel reviews or feedback and so on. That's done best
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: in the workplace. There's a third reason, call it simultaneousy,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: which is just the idea of people, say, being in
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a bullpen and they're all kind of working on customer
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: activities together or sales activities. They're sharing ideas, things are
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: going back and forth. Hey can you call that guy back?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: So that works better when people are in one place.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So those are some of the reasons.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: As a leader yourself, are you are you amused by
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: the outrage that people have to go back to work.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's such an outrage. Are you amused by it?
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Or is it?
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Is it something that we should take seriously as well,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: like listening to the employee as well.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: You know, early on during COVID, people said, oh boy,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: look at this, everyone's working from home. Work has changed,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: work is never going to be the same. I tended
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to be a little cautious. I said, it's still early on,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: so I don't try to make any predictions. I'm just
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: measuring what's going on. I think the idea of collaborative
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: work does make a lot of sense. The idea that
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: you can work from home because you've got a sick child,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: or there's a snowstorm, or you're not feeling well or something.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I think that makes sense as well. So we've introduced
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: a new kind of work flexibility that will been end
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: up long term. I don't want to make any predictions,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: but for sure, the idea of collaborative work in person,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: as I mentioned those different reasons, does make sense for
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: some good chunk of time. What we found with the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: time studies is that whether people were in the office
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: or working remotely. And I've studied people for years who
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: were working remotely, lots of sales reps and construction supervisors
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and so on. They are still burdened by those administrative tasks.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: They're still from home.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: They're not on the job site with their employees making
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: sure the job's getting you safe.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those ones are, but they work in different
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: sites all over the place. But some sales reps, certainly,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: over the years, there's lots of sales reps who have
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: never gone into the office. They've always been remote. So
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I've studied lots of remote workers. They all tend to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: be burdened by administrative tasks. That was the point. So
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: as to where people are going to end up working,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I think yes, there should be some significant amount of
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: time in an office because that's where collaborative work is
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: done in the best way possible. I'm just not trying
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: to make any predictions.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Let me ask about you because as your own CEO,
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: and you have probably employees with time quarterer in your company?
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: Right do they trust? Do you trust them? And do
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: they trust that you're not monitoring them? Twenty four seven?
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, how you have this tracking device, but how
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: do you use it on your own employee?
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Well, in fact, I don't. I am smart enough that
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I delegate all that. So I use contractors all over
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the place and delegate and hire people when I need them.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: So the smart companies are virtual companies like mine, where
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: they hire people where they need them in terms of
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you know, how employees really would react. And I've used
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: different contractors, have used the device. It's fun, it's simple,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: and so people like that. And it's only for two weeks.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: If you're going to monitor people, if you're going to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: track anything, have a reason for doing it. And so
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: my studies are just diagnostic I mentioned during COVID that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: people didn't like being tracked. Well, we're only doing it
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: for two weeks, so that's a good amount of time
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to get some data, but not too much that you're
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: constantly having to track your time with my device or
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: writing things down or whatever. Use it as a short
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: term diagnostic tool, whatever kind of technique you're going to use,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: but don't burden people with that all the time. Why
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: am I filling out this report every week if it
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't have any meaning?
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: All right?
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You know, I gotta say this, A lot of the
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: productivity I you don't know. I'm staying in the news realm
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: for a second. A lot of productivity is being scrutinized
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: by dose. And you're a tech guy, and Elon's a
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: tech guy.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: But are they doing these.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Things the right way monitoring productivity or are they doing
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: absolutely wrong? And what would your advice be as they're
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: trying to cut everything including wasted time? I feel like,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: what's your advice to these you know, de Doge and
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: all that that's trying to cut all this?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Well, first, you know, does the mission of this organization
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: make sense? Is government priorities? So that's where you have
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: to start, and they seem to be determining that some
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: organizations aren't consistent with this, you know, with this administration's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: view of what needs to get done. So but let's
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: say you've got something that is consistent. Then you go
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: through and you say, well, what are people doing. You
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: can do that in a macro sense and say, you know,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: maybe people shouldn't be doing this thing on this program,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: or maybe we can outsource it. When you get to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: my level, it's more about fine tuning. Can we make
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: those employees who are still there more productive by fine
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: tuning and looking at their results. What they've been doing
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: is just laying off people whole scale without the need
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: to do a study. That's going to happen sometimes because
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: it's not that those jobs aren't consistent with the mission
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of the organization. Perhaps it's tough. You know, people have
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: worked there for a long time, they believe in what
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: they are doing, and my view is an enlightened one.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: People care about the work that they do, they care
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: about the organization. They want to do a good job.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be wasting their time, and so
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: you know, talk to them and ask them about what
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: kind of contributed contributions they can make to the mission
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: and you'd be surprised.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: I noticed you have the book Cut the Lot of Email,
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: which was another one of your books. I do feel
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: like productivity is wasting when we get all these emails
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: hitting our inbox.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: How do we cut through all that?
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Like, I mean, it's tiring to see nine hundred and
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: fifty seven thousand emails?
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: Right, So how did you what's your advice to that?
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: And how did you work through your emails? I mean
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: to write this book?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, first I measured it, and so we asked
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: employees to measure not all of them, but some time
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: spent on what they considered to be unnecessary email. It
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: turns out to be three point four hours per week. WHOA,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of time, and so how do you
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: manage it? The first is to receive less stuff. Take
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: yourself off of mailing lists, take yourself off of copy lists.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: What a lot of managers say is well I need
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to know what's going on, and so they want to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: have their finger on the pulse of everything. They want
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to be copied on everything. That's not a good way
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: to stay in touch. You do that through weekly update
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: meetings or reports or whatever. But you don't have to
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: receive every email. The other thing is to be aware
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in terms of what we send out. It's not them,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: it's us. Sometimes very quickly, I ask people how many
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: bad drivers are out there? And you ask a whole
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: room full of people, as I've done, and typically the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: number comes back about thirty three percent. So people believe
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: that about a third of drivers out there are bad drivers.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Then you say, okay, would all the bad drivers please
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: stand up? And nobody does. So we attribute this bad
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: behavior to others and not ourselves. Okay, So now let's
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: talk about email place. There's no bad email senders out there.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: It's all of us. There's no evil person down in
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the basement sending out emails all day to everyone's chagrin.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's all of us. If you copy twenty people, you've
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: sent out twenty emails. So we have to take responsibility
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: for our own email behavior. And so how do you
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: do that? You keep one subject per email, don't say
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and also and also make sure you use the right medium.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's time for a phone call. If you're writing
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a long story, you did this, and I said that,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and then you got back to me with us stop
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the storytelling. Just pick up the phone. Recognize you't can't
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: change behavior. If you want to someone some feedback and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: some of that is critical or needs some adjustment, maybe
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: email is not the way to do it. Pick up
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the phone. You find out there's a reason that they
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: didn't get back to you because they had to attend
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a funeral or something. So you know, treat people nicely
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: and use the right medium rather than always email.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: I want to say, by the way, your time quarter
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: device is ninety four percent participation.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Congratulations on that, by the way.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, if you do surveys of employees for
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: an employees or you know, they'll give you fifty or
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: sixty or seventy percent. Why do we get ninety four percent?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Because it's fun, because it's simple, because it gives you
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: feedback and the results are anonymous. That's how we get
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: good positive results.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: I feel like at eleven years old, you kind of
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: realize time is money because you probably had to do
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: the paper run and then you had to get to school,
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: then back and do the paper on after school. Is
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: that kind of how it went, So you probably had
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: that idea of time is money right away, am I right?
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: That's right? From a young age, I wanted to earn
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: money through the paper route, but I realized I can't
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: let that hog all my time, my priority. The biggest
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: thing I needed to do is deliver papers. You know,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: in retrospect, we also had to collect from customers. I
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: would knock at your door once a week, come at
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: high it's you know this much you're gonna pay me?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And in retrospect, I think I would have had more
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of them pay at the office. Think, well, now you
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: do it online, right. The advantage to seeing them in
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: person is maybe you earned a few more tips because
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: they'd give you a little bit extra. So there was that,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: But maybe I would have had them pay remotely or
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: online rather than me having to go collect all the time.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: So that's something that we've gone from.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Paper runs, and some people still do it, right. I've
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: seen trucks still, even though the pay print is dying.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: I don't think it is.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: It's soll being published every day, but a lot of
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: subscription bases changing the way.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: The newspaper world is for sure.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Yep, all right, I gotta ask you this. You're going
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: to speak in a conference this October. Tell us about that.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: That's another big part of this conversation. You're going to
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: have a conference on time in October and tell us
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: about what to expect.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't organize those. Other people organize them Association
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: of Time Use Research, and so I go to those
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: every year and show up and present some of my data.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: So I did the one on the men versus women.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at senior women executives and looking to find
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: some volunteers to contribute to that project. So I'm constantly
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: looking to gather data. I'm a research guy that likes data,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and I think that informs us better than people who
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: just kind of make stuff up.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Well, one you mentioned the senior executive women. I'm thinking here,
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: people once they retired don't always retire anymore.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: And you find that too, that people.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Who are a little and retire from their main job
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: or still reinventing themselves, and maybe they're turning to you
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: to know, Hey, I've got to spend my time better
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: in retirement than the old way, if you will, like,
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: which was just sitting.
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Around doing no watching TV. And a lot people want
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: to do more than just that nowadays.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Sure, and you know that starts with goal setting and
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: whether you're you know, in a corporate environment or not.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: What are your goals? And sometimes people struggle with measuring
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: their goals. So I want to feel more fit or
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I want to be healthy, all right, well how can
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: you measure that? So maybe you want to run a
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: marathon and completing a marathon is a goal, and then
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you do one and then you say, well, I want
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: to complete it in five hours or four hours. Or
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I want to get better at playing tennis. I want
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to achieve this level in the club in terms of
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: tennis results. So there's a lot of stuff you can measure,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: and whether it's at work or retirement. I get people
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: to look at what are the goals that I'm interested
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in achieving in my life life They're consistent with what's
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: important to me. All right?
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: All right, Mark Alwa, thanks so much for joining. And
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: where can people get the time quarter if they're interested.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Well, you can contact me in my website. It's getmore
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Done dot com. So it's got all lot kinds of
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: tips and blog articles and research, so get more Done
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: dot Com. You can contact me through that.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And I guess my other last question is are you
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: hoping this helps people eliminate what to do in downtime?
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, we all have that downtime, but I think.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: You're telling us use your downtime in a better way
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: than you currently are.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Well, bet, downtime's okay as well. I did some research
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of mothers and they found that the more time they
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: spent for themselves, the better they could be as a mother.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: So they were relaxing or having a bath or doing
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: garden for them that was very important and it did
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: make a difference in terms of their quality of life
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and feeling less rushed. So do spend time for yourself
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and that makes you a better mother or father.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: In fact, well, it looks like Marco has one leg
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: up on productivity. Thanks for joining us today and we'll
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: have you back on maybe it as the conference gets closer.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: You bet all right, Thanks so much for joining the
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: One Leg Up Network today.