Latest / The Soap Box Podcast / Unravelling the time industry, with Vikki Yaffe

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Unravelling the time industry, with Vikki Yaffe · The Soap Box Podcast

• 1:18
  Peta: If you finally work out how to time block, then you'll get everything done on that big to-do list of yours, right?
• 1:25
  Peta: And once Amazon delivers that Pomodoro timer, you know, the one shaped like a tomato, then you will finally reach those big goals.
• 1:32
  Peta: Yeah, you'll get that offer written, created.
• 1:34
  Peta: You'll write the book.
• 1:37
  Peta: Well, not necessarily according to this week's guest on the soapbox podcast, she says.
• 1:45
  Peta: That we've created norms and systems that don't work for 95% of the population, and that instead of desperately trying to find the right tool to squeeze ourselves into the right shape that we should be changing the game completely.
• 1:59
  Peta: Instead, I can't wait to introduce you to Vicki er.
• 2:04
  Peta: She's the founder and CEO of Time Hackers, and the host of the Hack Your Time podcast, which you can run along and listen to after you're done here.
• 2:12
  Peta: And she is focused on unraveling the entire time industry.
• 2:18
  Peta: Vicki has some really, really interesting things to say, especially from her perspective of making her way through three burnouts all the way to being the time hacker, CEO.
• 2:31
  Peta: She talks about the wins that she's had with clients, the tools that she's tried and not worked, and how she's rethought the whole way that we look at.
• 2:39
  Peta: Productivity, anxiety, procrastination, and time management.
• 2:44
  Peta: We touched on some really interesting things.
• 2:47
  Peta: we talk about, ambitious overachievers, uh, that would be me.
• 2:51
  Peta: people who complain about time and how that is like almost part of their personality.
• 2:56
  Peta: Like I know I'm the person who goes, oh yeah, no, I'm so busy and I never have enough time all the time.
• 3:03
  Peta: We talk about how the work weeks, was developed by Henry Ford and like, come on, what else do we Still do from a hundred years ago?
• 3:12
  Peta: Anyway, I could list a whole bunch of really, really fascinating ideas that Vicki comes to the table with.
• 3:17
  Peta: she also brings a whole bunch of practical tips, so I know that you will get so much out of this episode, stuff that will help you with your business, with your life, with your mindset, with your households and all the life admin that comes with it.
• 3:31
  Peta: So I would advise you, even if you are currently doing the washing or cooking the dinner or whatever, grab a notebook, open up your notes up as well as your coffee.
• 3:40
  Peta: Sit back and listen to Vicki get on her soapbox.
• 3:45
  Peta: Vicki, it's really, really lovely to have you on the Soapbox podcast.
• 3:48
  Peta: I'm excited to get to chat.
• 3:51
  Vikki: So be here.
• 3:53
  Peta: Oh, um, for people who do not know you, and have not found you on the internet or anywhere yet, can you give them, an intro into who you are, what you do, and how you got here?
• 4:01
  Vikki: Yes.
• 4:02
  Vikki: Um, so I come off the back of daily anxiety attacks, three burnouts, 80 hour plus work weeks or procrastinating on things for years.
• 4:11
  Vikki: Um, and I really thought things take time and I just need to get really organized and I need to, you know, time block every 15 minutes and.
• 4:19
  Vikki: Work longer and harder, be willing to do more, and that's what's gonna create success.
• 4:23
  Vikki: And it didn't work.
• 4:24
  Vikki: Um, when I finally drove myself to, um, to be really ill, I was like, I guess that success is just isn't meant for me.
• 4:32
  Vikki: Um, anyway, fast forward because I'm sure we'll speak about the middle part now.
• 4:36
  Vikki: I'm the founder and CEO of Time Hackers.
• 4:37
  Vikki: We're an organization that helps people optimize their time instead of managing it.
• 4:42
  Vikki: Um, we provide tools and resources that support people.
• 4:46
  Vikki: You know, ignored by traditional time management.
• 4:49
  Vikki: So talking women, parents, neurodiverse, chronic illness, um, anyone whose job didn't exist a hundred years ago, which is most of us.
• 4:58
  Vikki: Um, and yeah, I have, um, a podcast called Hack Yard Time.
• 5:02
  Vikki: I have, um, yeah, a, a global community and we are just out there unraveling the entire time industry, which is definitely broken.
• 5:12
  Peta: I love it.
• 5:13
  Peta: I, so I met Vicki in Female Founders Rise, which is like a, um, a community for female founders.
• 5:20
  Peta: Um, kind of like it says in the tin, really.
• 5:23
  Peta: Um, and.
• 5:24
  Peta: a time hacking time kind of management is really interesting to me.
• 5:28
  Peta: The first, the first point in my like business where I stepped out and kind of had an opinion, like thought leadership is a really outdated term and I don't like it, but like the first time I went, no, this is what I think it's different to everybody else, was when I, I'd been listening to a podcast, um, for copywriters and they'd been going all over.
• 5:47
  Peta: All these time management hacks and the books and the things that you should do.
• 5:51
  Peta: Um.
• 5:52
  Peta: And, and I was like, none of this works because I had, um, an eight month old baby and an 8-year-old son that I was homeschooling.
• 5:59
  Peta: 'cause we were in lockdown.
• 6:00
  Peta: I was like, none of this works for me.
• 6:01
  Peta: Um, and I grabbed this free download from this really famous copywriter that was meant to help me get more organized and run my business properly.
• 6:10
  Peta: And one of the first pieces of advice was find a room that you can shut the door and go in.
• 6:17
  Peta: And if you can't do that, then you're not taking your business seriously.
• 6:21
  Peta: And I got really cross and I wrote a blog and I put those posts out and I ended up going on that podcast to talk about kind of how, um, how none of that time management stuff works for, for people with caring responsibilities.
• 6:33
  Peta: So this is a topic really close to my heart.
• 6:36
  Vikki: Yes.
• 6:37
  Vikki: And like you say, I think what we've done is we've created, um, systems around time that do not work for, as you say, caregivers for 99% of us, I promise you.
• 6:48
  Vikki: Um, so the systems and the norms that we have around time, how we work, how we live.
• 6:53
  Vikki: You know this like nine to five everyday.
• 6:55
  Vikki: Consistency is the way to achieve results.
• 6:58
  Vikki: All of that, and then the tools that we've got to help us squeeze ourselves into the nine to five, like squeezing a square shape into a round hole.
• 7:06
  Vikki: Also don't work for us and actually make the problems worse.
• 7:09
  Vikki: So like thousands of people come to me saying, there's something wrong with me.
• 7:14
  Vikki: I just need the right plan.
• 7:15
  Vikki: Can you just tell me what to do and when to do it?
• 7:18
  Vikki: And I always say, chat, GPT can do that.
• 7:20
  Vikki: Go into chat, GPT, say your priorities, and it will come up with a perfect plan.
• 7:24
  Vikki: But you know what's gonna happen at 10:00 AM tomorrow when you've got to make that phone call.
• 7:28
  Vikki: That you're not looking forward to.
• 7:30
  Vikki: Suddenly you're gonna think, oh, let me just quickly respond to that email and let me just quickly redesign this Canva piece and let me just quickly and quickly, and you are not going to do it because your brain is ignored by time management, and this is the number one driver.
• 7:47
  Vikki: Of what you do with your time.
• 7:48
  Vikki: So if you are trying to bypass your brain, which evolved for your survival in the wild, and cares about keeping you alive, not achieving your goals, or completing your to-do list, anything that focuses on the external and doesn't give an inch to the internal is going to leave you further behind.
• 8:09
  Peta: Yeah.
• 8:10
  Peta: So I guess I don't really need to ask you what your soapbox is, because that's kind of, we've ended up here, which we do sometimes.
• 8:17
  Vikki: Yes.
• 8:19
  Peta: So tell me a little bit about how this became so important to you.
• 8:23
  Vikki: yeah.
• 8:23
  Vikki: But it was a complete accident.
• 8:24
  Vikki: I'm gonna be totally honest.
• 8:26
  Vikki: And
• 8:26
  Peta: best things are I.
• 8:27
  Vikki: all the best things are, and I think that's also part of like what I speak about with time hacking is allowing that fluidity, if I was so rigid when I started my business, I wouldn't have created what I've created now.
• 8:38
  Vikki: So is the ultimate example, um, of allowing yourself to evolve.
• 8:42
  Vikki: Um, so I started.
• 8:44
  Vikki: Coaching around anxiety and procrastination and those are the two areas that I really help people with.
• 8:53
  Vikki: And, but but anyone would come along and I was in the business mastermind and my business was growing quite well and some people wanted, you know, I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:59
  Vikki: I'm just growing a business.
• 9:00
  Vikki: Whatever you want help with, let's go.
• 9:02
  Vikki: Um, and within six months, like as I said, so I'd just come off the back of a burnout.
• 9:09
  Vikki: Closing a company that I really cared about.
• 9:12
  Vikki: We were on a mission to solve loneliness, which is, you know, really important to me.
• 9:16
  Vikki: So, closing that company, but third burnout, relocating back from Austin, Texas where I was with that company into my parents' house at 30.
• 9:23
  Vikki: You know, my friends like getting pregnant and having babies, getting married, and here I am like.
• 9:28
  Vikki: Hey, I am back at my parents' house with a failed business.
• 9:31
  Vikki: You know, like, let me just lie in bed for a few months and recover.
• 9:34
  Vikki: Um, so it really, and that was after the 80 hour work week.
• 9:38
  Vikki: That was after skipping out on, you know, a honeymoon so that I could go straight to this work conference.
• 9:42
  Vikki: That was like a lot of sacrifice because I was willing to sacrifice to succeed, even though.
• 9:47
  Vikki: That wasn't what was working.
• 9:49
  Vikki: So I'd had both.
• 9:50
  Vikki: I'd had a massive fail that felt very public because we had a community of a few thousand, which does not sound like a lot, but ours was all about live in-person events.
• 9:59
  Vikki: So like I, I touched these people.
• 10:00
  Vikki: So then to announce that we were closing, we hadn't made it felt very exposing, very embarrassing, very, like a lot of negative emotions.
• 10:10
  Vikki: So I had that and then I started going into the anxiety and procrastination coaching and I was like, you know what?
• 10:15
  Vikki: This.
• 10:17
  Vikki: Changed my life.
• 10:19
  Vikki: So I want to help people do this, right?
• 10:21
  Vikki: I had lots of people telling me about, you know, there's just, I, I don't need to go into it.
• 10:26
  Vikki: You can listen to the early episodes of my podcast about anxiety, but there's a lot of misinformation out there about it.
• 10:31
  Vikki: Um, so I.
• 10:34
  Vikki: And then within six months, I hit my three year business goal of six figures.
• 10:37
  Vikki: Six weeks later, I doubled it.
• 10:39
  Vikki: Two weeks after that, I had my first six figure launch, and I was like, it doesn't take time.
• 10:43
  Vikki: What?
• 10:44
  Vikki: It didn't take time for me to succeed.
• 10:46
  Vikki: The more time I gave, the, the sicker I got, the more I failed like catastrophically, and it didn't take time here.
• 10:53
  Vikki: Like, what is it then?
• 10:54
  Vikki: And that was how time Hackers was born, because I think we are, we are all looking, it's like you are looking at time, you're obsessing about time, and it's like, you know, you hack time, stop looking at time, you optimize your time by looking at what's underneath and, and the problem.
• 11:08
  Vikki: And, and that was the start.
• 11:09
  Vikki: And it's evolved since then.
• 11:10
  Vikki: Right?
• 11:11
  Vikki: Then it was just about how to achieve your goals faster.
• 11:14
  Vikki: How do we hack time to achieve goals faster?
• 11:16
  Vikki: But then as I did it.
• 11:18
  Vikki: I started to think about actually this is quite exclusive and actually what are the roots of time management and actually who benefits from that system?
• 11:24
  Vikki: And actually, and it's just evolved and I've just worked, we've worked with so many, you know, we've got hundreds of global clients now.
• 11:30
  Vikki: Um, I've got a team of coaches that we've trained and certified in our proprietary tools and we work with organizations, individuals, and it's like.
• 11:38
  Vikki: It's not working.
• 11:39
  Vikki: And I feel crazy sometimes that, you know, with the best intentions, I feel like I'm up against like Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola's like normal.
• 11:49
  Vikki: You know, it's what everyone's doing.
• 11:51
  Vikki: And everyone's like, no, I just want Coca-Cola.
• 11:52
  Vikki: And I'm like, Hey, Coca-Cola isn't working for you so you can keep trying Coca-Cola.
• 11:57
  Vikki: Or like, we can look at why it's not working and do the thing that does.
• 12:02
  Vikki: So, um, I dunno if I even asked a question, but that's a little bit of.
• 12:06
  Peta: Totally.
• 12:07
  Peta: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Peta: Yeah.
• 12:08
  Peta: Okay.
• 12:08
  Peta: So let's talk about, um, like the type of people that you work with a little bit, and then I wanna come back to the whole, um, exclusionary kind of frameworks that you talked about earlier.
• 12:19
  Peta: So what kind of people do you work with?
• 12:22
  Peta: Kind of what are they struggling with?
• 12:24
  Peta: Um, yeah.
• 12:25
  Peta: And how do you help?
• 12:26
  Vikki: Yeah, so we tend to work with people who are, I call'em like they're ambitious overachievers.
• 12:32
  Vikki: They are like all in to do all the things.
• 12:34
  Vikki: They've tried 17 different, you know, they've got 17 tabs open.
• 12:38
  Vikki: They're the fastest email responder.
• 12:40
  Vikki: They're really good at getting things done.
• 12:42
  Vikki: It just so happens that they get things done really last minute.
• 12:46
  Vikki: Um, you know, when the deadline is, is there they.
• 12:50
  Vikki: Feel and know that they are capable of more, but they are drowning in busyness.
• 12:53
  Vikki: Like they've not even got room to breathe to think strategically.
• 12:57
  Vikki: So they're just saying yes to everything and doing all the things, and they're all in.
• 13:02
  Vikki: But they're not even realizing or they're criticizing themself instead of the tools in the system for why they aren't doing the important things.
• 13:10
  Vikki: So for example, someone might be like building the perfect course behind the scene that they're like really ready to sell and they've done like 29 of the 30 videos, but they can't nail that 30 video, that 30th one because their brain doesn't want'em to go out and sell it?
• 13:22
  Vikki: It's like I can't do that.
• 13:24
  Vikki: because then.
• 13:24
  Vikki: I'm like, ah.
• 13:25
  Vikki: Gonna get rejected.
• 13:26
  Vikki: So they're like, no, no, no.
• 13:27
  Vikki: I must go back and rerecord all 29 videos.
• 13:30
  Vikki: I must go back and rewrite my entire website and sales page.
• 13:33
  Vikki: Like I saw Time Hackers, but my website was still anxiety and procrastination coach and had a six figure launch of it.
• 13:39
  Vikki: So like they're the people that are like.
• 13:41
  Vikki: Their brain is just really smart, super smart, brain super, um, evolved to keep them alive.
• 13:49
  Vikki: And they almost use that intelligence against themselves.
• 13:51
  Vikki: Like, if I'm smart, I should be able to do the thing.
• 13:53
  Vikki: If I'm smart, I should be more productive.
• 13:55
  Vikki: If I'm smart, I should be more successful.
• 13:57
  Vikki: And I'm like, Hey, because you are so smart, you're gonna struggle more.
• 14:02
  Vikki: So there's nothing wrong with you.
• 14:03
  Vikki: In fact, there's everything right with you.
• 14:05
  Vikki: It's just a retraining.
• 14:06
  Vikki: I tend to work with, I mean, we work with employees, we work with, um.
• 14:11
  Vikki: With entrepreneurs, I do tend to work with someone who has something like a change making attitude.
• 14:18
  Vikki: Like a pioneer, like someone who's like, they're up against something that their brain is like, we are really not gonna do this thing.
• 14:24
  Vikki: Um, they've got an impact that they want to have that they know they're meant to have.
• 14:28
  Vikki: Um, and they yearn for more.
• 14:30
  Vikki: They're like here to live.
• 14:34
  Vikki: They're here to live.
• 14:35
  Vikki: They're not here to get by.
• 14:36
  Vikki: Um, I will say like we had a guy join this week, which is really fun.
• 14:41
  Vikki: We are 95% women, but we love men joining too.
• 14:45
  Vikki: Um, and I.
• 14:48
  Vikki: Yeah, I'd say we're, you know, 80% probably entrepreneurs, but our, our employee clients also will come thinking of someone off the top of my head.
• 14:56
  Vikki: She like worked 20 hour less every week and got three promotions within 16 months.
• 14:59
  Vikki: Like, you know, it's, it, yeah, it's, it's really the mindset that's in common versus the demographics, let's say.
• 15:08
  Vikki: That's how I see it.
• 15:09
  Vikki: Um, so that's the people that we help.
• 15:12
  Peta: Why do you think it's 95% women?
• 15:14
  Peta: That's really interesting.
• 15:15
  Vikki: I think partly because for a while I branded myself as the feminist time coach.
• 15:20
  Peta: Okay.
• 15:20
  Peta: Yeah.
• 15:23
  Vikki: And I also think a lot of our in-person client events, it's all photos of women.
• 15:27
  Vikki: So on my website it's so, you know, um, so you can see that this majority of women have had men DM me before saying, can I join?
• 15:36
  Vikki: Is it okay for men to join?
• 15:38
  Vikki: Um, so I think that I need to do a better job there.
• 15:42
  Vikki: Um, yeah, I, that's probably what I'd say.
• 15:46
  Vikki: And also when I think about when I was first growing in my community, you know, when you're first selling something, you know, you're selling to the people around you.
• 15:52
  Vikki: And I just think I was around more women.
• 15:55
  Peta: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
• 15:55
  Peta: I'm just wondering if it's a.
• 15:58
  Peta: If it's a signal that kind of more, that traditional time management things work better for men on the whole, obviously with kind of provisors and stereotypes, um, than they do for women.
• 16:09
  Vikki: I mean, I definitely think that when I say the tool, you know, the tools weren't built for women.
• 16:14
  Vikki: The tools were built for men, and they were built for men in factories.
• 16:18
  Vikki: So what I found with our male clients is different struggles, which is why time hackers doesn't come in and tell you that you've got to start your workday at 6:00 AM or 10:00 PM you know, like, so it's about using'em for you.
• 16:32
  Vikki: But I think, and I also think for men, um.
• 16:36
  Vikki: I think there's diff, there's different ways that they've been socialized, whereby, I'm thinking of one of our male clients.
• 16:42
  Vikki: He came on the podcast and, and he's in the police force, he's a detective.
• 16:46
  Vikki: Um, and he was sharing about his colleagues and it's like they can know what's not working and still they have different pressures to not rock the boat, um, and, and ask for help.
• 17:01
  Vikki: They have different pressures to ask for
• 17:03
  Peta: Mm-hmm.
• 17:03
  Vikki: There's just different ways of been socialized.
• 17:05
  Vikki: But if you are listening, I mean, and you know, any man that would love help with their time and you know, and everyone Of
• 17:12
  Peta: Oh yeah.
• 17:13
  Peta: Okay.
• 17:14
  Peta: So let's talk about those, like those men in factories, like the structures the, you said that you noticed that it was, that there was a systemic element to the problems with time management.
• 17:27
  Peta: Um, what were those first kind of inklings that you had and how did it develop?
• 17:32
  Vikki: Yeah, well, like I said, for a long time I thought it was just me.
• 17:36
  Vikki: I was the problem.
• 17:37
  Vikki: Um, and it developed as my community grown, as my tools evolved, and as I got to see'em in practice and got to coach at this point, probably thousands of people.
• 17:48
  Vikki: Um, but essentially, you know, we've made decisions around what's normal and what you know.
• 17:57
  Vikki: The 40 hour work week was revolutionary a hundred years ago was a way to cut out by Henry Ford.
• 18:04
  Vikki: It's like, what else do we do from a hundred years ago that we're like, that's that.
• 18:09
  Vikki: That'll be it.
• 18:10
  Vikki: We made the decision a hundred years ago, so let's stick with that.
• 18:12
  Vikki: Like so you know, we've not really, we are seeing this in recent years, the challenge, especially post COVID of like the four day work with flexible hours, but it's like people are so afraid of change.
• 18:24
  Vikki: We've built entire school systems to support it, you know, like, um, and our whole is so ingrained, but essentially what we're speaking about is just the basic things.
• 18:36
  Vikki: A five day work week.
• 18:37
  Vikki: A nine to five or eight to six structure.
• 18:40
  Vikki: The idea that more hours gets you promoted faster and being available in the evening and being working longer equals working harder equals caring.
• 18:49
  Vikki: Um, you know, meetings should be an hour.
• 18:53
  Vikki: Okay.
• 18:54
  Vikki: Like, you know, we should have the same, we should be consistent.
• 18:56
  Vikki: We should have the same meeting at the same time every single week.
• 18:59
  Vikki: If we're releasing a podcast, we should release one every single week.
• 19:01
  Vikki: And it better be the same format and the same style.
• 19:03
  Vikki: And.
• 19:04
  Vikki: You know, it's just this idea of even the idea of consistency.
• 19:08
  Vikki: And I see so many women speak about this and I'm just like, this is not how women operate, but okay.
• 19:13
  Vikki: Um, and someone bought me into their community once to coach their people.
• 19:17
  Vikki: I.
• 19:18
  Vikki: They love my work and I coached someone on consistency and they were like, I'm just gonna push through even though I don't feel well.
• 19:24
  Vikki: And I was like, why?
• 19:26
  Vikki: And she was like, you know, consistency creates results.
• 19:28
  Vikki: And I was like, no, no, no.
• 19:29
  Vikki: Taken care of.
• 19:30
  Vikki: Anyway, we touched on it and then she said, well, the woman who's mastermind it was actually taught this last week.
• 19:36
  Vikki: And I was like, well, I will have a chat with her.
• 19:41
  Vikki: And I'm sorry, but you know, but it is like we are accidentally teaching.
• 19:48
  Vikki: Norms and systems and strategies that were not designed for us that we struggle with, and then we're pushing it onto other people.
• 19:54
  Vikki: Why are we more burnt out?
• 19:55
  Vikki: Why are we less productive?
• 19:56
  Vikki: Like, look at the data.
• 19:58
  Vikki: It isn't working.
• 19:59
  Vikki: It's just not working.
• 20:00
  Vikki: I.
• 20:01
  Peta: Yeah.
• 20:03
  Peta: That's so true.
• 20:05
  Peta: Um, there's, yeah.
• 20:06
  Peta: And like the, especially with the girl boss kind of vibe that arrived over the last few years.
• 20:13
  Peta: Yeah.
• 20:14
  Peta: It's like we can, we can hustle, we can push through.
• 20:18
  Peta: I bet you kind of hate the word hustle.
• 20:21
  Vikki: I also think, and I've got a course on this hacking hustle inside Time hackers where I speak about the opposite of hustle and what actually produces results, but the at the basic level.
• 20:30
  Vikki: Do we even know what hustle means?
• 20:32
  Vikki: Like we are using this like hustle.
• 20:34
  Vikki: Like you don't want someone to hustle you.
• 20:36
  Vikki: That's like immoral hustle means rushing frantically, like hustle.
• 20:39
  Vikki: Like have we even looked at the definition of the language?
• 20:42
  Vikki: And when we look at the definition, are we like, yeah, I wanna be a hurried, rushed person that's scamming people.
• 20:49
  Vikki: Like what?
• 20:51
  Vikki: So, um, you know, even, you know, one of my first mentors said that you have to hustle to your first 100 K and then you can, I'm like, why?
• 21:00
  Vikki: Why do we think that, that, why do we have to compromise ourselves and our sanity and our health?
• 21:05
  Vikki: I was the ultimate hustler.
• 21:07
  Vikki: I call myself a recovering, procrastinating hustler.
• 21:09
  Vikki: 'cause I was doing all of the things or none of the things.
• 21:13
  Vikki: At what point do we, are we really going to keep buying in that?
• 21:15
  Vikki: We need to sacrifice ourselves?
• 21:17
  Vikki: How many people's businesses need to be forced closed like mine?
• 21:20
  Vikki: How many burnouts do we need to go through?
• 21:21
  Vikki: How many health impacts do we need to have?
• 21:23
  Vikki: How, you know, like what I always say to people, it's like my view at that point was, I can't hustle hard.
• 21:29
  Vikki: And us it's like, no, no, no.
• 21:30
  Vikki: The hustle is what's creating the unsustainability, the right decision making, the lower quality work, the lower sanity, like.
• 21:39
  Vikki: The, the illness, the, the sickness, like everything that's coming through is coming from that.
• 21:43
  Vikki: So like what if hustle is the problem, not the solution.
• 21:48
  Vikki: And it's just that some of us are really, really good at producing results and we can produce results in spite of hustle, not because of it.
• 21:55
  Vikki: Yeah.
• 21:55
  Peta: That's interesting.
• 21:56
  Peta: Yeah.
• 21:57
  Peta: So you mean like the examples that get held up as.
• 22:01
  Peta: We hustled and we made it so like, I dunno off the top of my head, like Steven Bartlet and Amy Port De Field, and although there are other reasons that she managed to get where she did.
• 22:11
  Peta: Um, but yeah, those kind of people, they preach hustle because they think it worked for them and they preach it as the rule.
• 22:20
  Peta: But yeah, like you said, maybe they are the exception.
• 22:23
  Vikki: Yeah.
• 22:23
  Vikki: Or like I say, maybe they, they were able to achieve with hustle, but it wasn't because of hustle.
• 22:28
  Vikki: I also think like, again, hustle is a word that we all define differently.
• 22:32
  Vikki: I.
• 22:33
  Vikki: So what do you even mean by hustle?
• 22:34
  Vikki: Tell me what you mean.
• 22:35
  Vikki: Like it's so vague that like someone's saying like, oh, I achieved because of hustle.
• 22:39
  Vikki: No, tell me why you achieved hustle doesn't mean anything.
• 22:42
  Vikki: Tell me what were you thinking?
• 22:44
  Vikki: What were you doing?
• 22:44
  Vikki: What were you testing?
• 22:45
  Vikki: How many times did you fail?
• 22:46
  Vikki: Like, give me the data saying I hustled my way to success.
• 22:49
  Vikki: Like, well now I'm gonna just overwork and work longer hours and think that's it.
• 22:53
  Vikki: And that's not it.
• 22:54
  Vikki: Longer hours don't equal success and we know that.
• 22:56
  Vikki: Just by looking at like on a global scale, GDP and the countries that work the longest hours are not the richest.
• 23:03
  Vikki: So it's not that.
• 23:06
  Peta: So what are the kind of the first kind of mindset blocks or um, kind of misunderstandings that you have to help people break down when they Yeah.
• 23:15
  Peta: Start to think about their time management.
• 23:18
  Vikki: Well, even I can tell you.
• 23:19
  Vikki: So we have a free guide called the Stop Wasting Time Guide.
• 23:22
  Vikki: You can get it.
• 23:23
  Peta: Yeah.
• 23:24
  Vikki: Xyz slash guide.
• 23:25
  Vikki: Uh, we'll put the link in the show notes.
• 23:28
  Vikki: And there, it's really like everything that you have been taught to stop wasting time is gonna be setting an alarm that you can hit snooze on.
• 23:36
  Vikki: It's gonna be, you know, like planning your week on a Sunday night or Monday morning.
• 23:39
  Vikki: It's gonna be all these external downloading another app that's gonna like tell you what to do or when to do it.
• 23:44
  Vikki: I'll give you a checklist that you can tick off or write writing and rewriting and color coding, and circling all of this fun stuff with the to-do list.
• 23:51
  Vikki: And I really come at it from a brain point of view.
• 23:53
  Vikki: And I'll even give one of the examples right here.
• 23:57
  Vikki: If you think, like, if you talk, if you, I always say, we'll complain about two things with absolute strangers in a, in a waiting room anywhere.
• 24:08
  Vikki: One is the weather and two is time.
• 24:10
  Vikki: Now, I want you to think about what happens when you complain about time, when you are like, personality is, I'm not enough.
• 24:15
  Vikki: There's not enough time.
• 24:16
  Vikki: I'm so busy, there's too much to do.
• 24:18
  Vikki: Like, ah, like what is that creating?
• 24:21
  Vikki: Like how can you create plenty of time when you.
• 24:25
  Vikki: Adopted that as like a personality trait, as like an identity.
• 24:29
  Vikki: And what happens every time we complain about time, we are creating stress, we are creating anxiety, we are creating overwhelm, and all of those things are going to distract us when it comes to doing the thing that we want to do.
• 24:42
  Vikki: And it's going to consumes, it's going to impact our quality of sleep.
• 24:45
  Vikki: It's going to therefore impact our decision making and the quality of decisions and how much we actually implement on them.
• 24:51
  Vikki: Um, so it's like the way you talk about time, the way you think about time.
• 24:56
  Vikki: It doesn't matter how pretty your planner is, how many alarms you've got set, or how you know, how great your calendar looks.
• 25:05
  Vikki: If you are in the mindset of I don't have enough time, you are gonna keep wasting time.
• 25:11
  Vikki: You can't stop.
• 25:15
  Peta: So what is the benefit of, so we, we like, so from the data that you've, that you've mentioned and that you've looked at, like the, the usual ways of managing time, the usual setups of work weeks, all this kind of thing does not work for the majority of people.
• 25:31
  Peta: So who is benefiting from it?
• 25:35
  Peta: Being pushed on All of us from the moment that we end up in like reception class.
• 25:41
  Vikki: I think if we start a school, then we have to remember the school system is built to cover employees so that they can keep working for someone else.
• 25:51
  Vikki: I mean, I could go quite, quite deep on this to be honest.
• 25:53
  Peta: Go for it.
• 25:55
  Vikki: So firstly, we obviously have the people at the top of the pile.
• 25:59
  Vikki: I think more than that, I think that, you know, there's so many issues in the world.
• 26:04
  Vikki: I'm talking about climate, I'm talking about, you know, the, the whole point of this podcast sociopolitical, and there's so many things that we are too busy to do anything about that.
• 26:14
  Vikki: The real problem is not just that you don't get to launch your own business and make six figure years or six figure months.
• 26:19
  Vikki: The real problem is, you know, I think about what I'm doing now with my child, and by the way, do what you want with your child.
• 26:25
  Vikki: I do not know what's best for your child, but when I came to this work.
• 26:29
  Vikki: I didn't even know, you know, I would have a kid, but I do, and now you know, I'm taking him to Spain at the end of this month for a four or five week world schooling, and I'm getting to really question what I want for his education.
• 26:40
  Vikki: I have lots of space to be like, what do I actually want for him?
• 26:44
  Vikki: Do I want him to be in full-time in a school?
• 26:47
  Vikki: Do I want him to be flexi schooling?
• 26:48
  Vikki: Do I want it to be world school?
• 26:50
  Vikki: Like what do I want?
• 26:51
  Vikki: I know, I know it's not probably a hundred percent homeschooling, but I know for sure.
• 26:55
  Vikki: But I'm getting, I've got lots of space and time to really think intentionally about what do I want for him that we don't get when we're so busy, because our calendars are overstuffed, that we don't really get to make conscious choices for our own children, let alone ourselves, let alone our parents that need caregiving, let alone, you know, where we are living.
• 27:16
  Vikki: And I'm thinking about, you know, how many people are living with like some mold in a room in their house.
• 27:22
  Vikki: Because they're like, oh, I need to sort that.
• 27:24
  Vikki: I need to sort about how many people aren't going to the dentist because they've, even though they've got horrendous pain, it keeps coming and going and coming and going co.
• 27:31
  Vikki: Like we, we, we have lost capacity to take care of ourselves.
• 27:35
  Vikki: Um, and we've lost capacity to drive our own life and we've become.
• 27:40
  Vikki: Homogenous.
• 27:41
  Vikki: We've become a mass market product, and this is what I speak about, the time industry generally.
• 27:45
  Vikki: It's like a mass marketization of like everyone should wake up at 5:00 AM and everyone should do 20.
• 27:50
  Vikki: What's the Pomodoro method?
• 27:51
  Vikki: 25 minutes on and five minutes off and everyone like, what Two benefits from that?
• 27:55
  Vikki: The people who are selling product, what I sell is harder.
• 28:00
  Vikki: It's harder because you don't get to outsource the decision making and responsibility.
• 28:05
  Vikki: But that's also why it's easier, because you get to do what works for you faster and that's why it's more successful.
• 28:11
  Vikki: So, but of course if you're gonna see an ad that's like, hey, the 27 page planner, that's gonna give you five hours back or you're gonna see, hey, um, come learn how to like.
• 28:21
  Vikki: Optimize your brain and manage your brain, you're gonna be like, Hmm, I'll take the 27 page download.
• 28:26
  Vikki: 'cause that's, but then you are gonna be three pages in.
• 28:28
  Vikki: You're gonna lose it, misplace it, it's not gonna work, and you're gonna, so it's hard to today, hard today for easy tomorrow or easy today for hard tomorrow.
• 28:36
  Vikki: And, and yeah, ultimately we're a product.
• 28:39
  Vikki: And I'm just gonna say one more thing and then get off my soapbox.
• 28:42
  Peta: that's why you're here.
• 28:43
  Peta: Go for it.
• 28:44
  Vikki: Yeah.
• 28:44
  Vikki: Um, we, you have to remember, as an individual, you are seen as a producer or a consumer, and that's your value to the economy.
• 28:51
  Vikki: Right.
• 28:51
  Vikki: So if you're not producing IE working long hours, creating things out there, busy and you're not consuming, buying things, buying comfort, I'm, I'm thinking about like even the comfort of takeaway and the comfort of, you know, ready meals and the comfort are, by the way.
• 29:07
  Vikki: I love all those things.
• 29:08
  Vikki: So I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say, you know, like do what you do what's right for you.
• 29:11
  Vikki: But if you are dependent on external, on spending money to experience things, to just survive, to just get through the week, and then your depends, you know, and then your mindset is like, well, I'm only valuable when I'm producing in the world.
• 29:24
  Vikki: Congratulations.
• 29:25
  Vikki: Whenever you are producing or consuming, you are contributing.
• 29:28
  Vikki: To the economy and outside of yourself, and that's why so many people have such a difficult time resting because resting is a waste of time because guess what you're not doing when you're resting, producing, or consuming.
• 29:38
  Vikki: But guess what you are doing when you're resting, taking care of yourself.
• 29:42
  Peta: Yeah,
• 29:43
  Vikki: That's it.
• 29:45
  Peta: I love it.
• 29:46
  Peta: I want you to stay on your soapbox for longer.
• 29:48
  Peta: No, I completely agree.
• 29:49
  Peta: Um, and I say that as someone who is relearning how to rest, I'm the kind of person.
• 29:54
  Peta: That goes, right, I'm resting.
• 29:56
  Peta: How can I do this in a more productive way?
• 29:58
  Vikki: Yeah.
• 29:59
  Vikki: By the way, I always say to people, if that's your first step, like let's not even shame it.
• 30:05
  Vikki: 'cause that's another brain strategy is to be like, oh, I'm doing it wrong, so I might as well not try do it wrong a hundred times.
• 30:11
  Vikki: Just keep trying.
• 30:12
  Peta: yeah.
• 30:13
  Peta: No, that is my, yeah.
• 30:13
  Peta: My first step has been I'm going to read a book that has nothing to do with work, and yes, my brain will be working, but I'll still be resting.
• 30:20
  Peta: Um, yeah, no, I think it's so important and.
• 30:24
  Peta: The what you said about not about because we are so busy, we don't have time to make conscious choices, I think is so interesting, especially with the way.
• 30:38
  Peta: I mean, the way the entire world is kicking off, like we don't have time to make conscious choices about, um, how we, how we advocate for people, um, that we care about and causes that we care about.
• 30:51
  Peta: We don't have time to do anything physically to support those causes and support those people.
• 30:58
  Peta: The, but the thing that kind of hits me the most is that we don't, it's almost organized so that we don't have time to.
• 31:06
  Peta: Make a conscious choice to engage with our community.
• 31:10
  Peta: So because we're all like, we must, we must get up and do these things.
• 31:15
  Peta: Um, we must then go to work.
• 31:17
  Peta: We must then come home from work and then do these things and then we go to bed.
• 31:21
  Peta: Whereas, um, I.
• 31:23
  Peta: When, at no point in that time is there time for, um, like mutual support in the community or gathering in the community or caring for people or making connections or, because that feels really ephemeral and like it's not contributing.
• 31:40
  Peta: But that's what those, building those links and building those kind of communities, whether they're online or like in your physical space, that's how we.
• 31:52
  Peta: Build a society that it supports others that helps others, but that also can stand up for itself.
• 31:59
  Peta: When, I don't know, for example, fascistic.
• 32:02
  Peta: Dictators decide to take over political buildings, but we don't.
• 32:07
  Peta: We haven't had time to build any of those because we've been too busy working.
• 32:11
  Peta: 'cause that's what we think we're meant to do.
• 32:13
  Vikki: Yeah.
• 32:13
  Vikki: And interesting.
• 32:14
  Vikki: Um.
• 32:16
  Vikki: I saw this thing on Instagram that was like, we still need a village.
• 32:19
  Vikki: We just pay for it now.
• 32:20
  Vikki: And like, it's fine.
• 32:22
  Vikki: I love the fact that we're seeing, you know, and I want these people to be even better paid and I do want'em to be seen as raised, but it, but it is interesting.
• 32:28
  Vikki: I always think like we actually have one really lovely neighbor, um, but like.
• 32:34
  Vikki: Why is it so, why we've built all these walls to divide and separate us, and as I said, my previous business was all around loneliness.
• 32:40
  Vikki: So this is something super dear, dear to me.
• 32:43
  Vikki: And when I go to Spain, I'm going with 10 other moms and 19 kids and we're all living in a house together and we're gonna have this amazing experience that I'm really yearning for, um, because I'm yearning for community.
• 32:53
  Vikki: But we've built norms where like community doesn't matter and I think.
• 32:56
  Vikki: Community matters most, like connection, relationships, all of those things.
• 33:02
  Vikki: Um, and then on the other point, I also think the problem is then I, I think we're seeing this in terms of media and information, right?
• 33:09
  Vikki: And then suddenly social media, you learn, you get your world news and information from an Instagram story that's three seconds long from someone that you trust because they've got like.
• 33:20
  Vikki: A movie that you like or a business that you bought from once or whatever it might be, and now they are your source of information, forgetting that they have not maybe been to the region or had firsthand or had, you know, any kind of experience.
• 33:34
  Vikki: They've got no attachment or buy-in.
• 33:36
  Vikki: Um, and so it really is, I think we're seeing what we're seeing is more division.
• 33:41
  Vikki: So you know what we see and that's the problem if, if community is the bomb, what we're seeing is division.
• 33:48
  Vikki: Uh.
• 33:50
  Vikki: That is the downfall.
• 33:52
  Vikki: I think it's like, what if we can have different viewers because we've fed different information and because we have different priorities and that's normal and we can still love each other versus what I've seen in recent years, um, which is, you are either for me or you against me, and if you're against me, then you can die.
• 34:11
  Vikki: And literally, I've had messages like that in my inbox, so, you know.
• 34:16
  Vikki: It's even like, it's frightening how many good well-meaning people you know, so sure that they're so right based off of the three infographics that they read that, that you know, that they're willing to stand against.
• 34:33
  Vikki: Lived experience.
• 34:35
  Vikki: I mean, I've lost best friends over.
• 34:37
  Vikki: I'm just gonna share it.
• 34:38
  Vikki: Um, my, I was in Israel on October 7th, my partner and my kid Israeli.
• 34:43
  Vikki: I've lived there for a long time and I've lost best friends over what's happened.
• 34:49
  Vikki: Um.
• 34:50
  Vikki: Instead of ever asking me like, what was it actually like, was that actually a problem?
• 34:54
  Vikki: Like, I just wanna know, you know, I've, I've got my own information.
• 34:57
  Vikki: This is people that have never been there.
• 34:59
  Vikki: They've been like, oh, suddenly I'm like, enemy number one.
• 35:02
  Vikki: And it's like, but I'm the same person.
• 35:04
  Vikki: So all that's changed is a situation has come up where you're getting messages and, and if you ask me, you are not even asking my opinion.
• 35:13
  Vikki: You're just making assumptions.
• 35:14
  Vikki: I'm like, suddenly an evil person, which is like really, is really hard.
• 35:20
  Peta: It is.
• 35:20
  Peta: And I think like for, it's my understanding, like some of it is a lack of critical thinking and the fact that we don't teach critical thinking and it's not part of kind of how we bring up.
• 35:32
  Peta: Children, but also not a skill that we, that we learn as adults, which in the world of social media and fractured media kind of systems is, is even more important.
• 35:41
  Peta: Um, but again, it is a, it is a time thing.
• 35:44
  Peta: Like critical thinking takes time.
• 35:47
  Peta: Triangulating your information sources takes time, like taking, um, taking the time to look at different sources, to speak to different people, to gather information from across different.
• 36:00
  Peta: Like sources, that takes time.
• 36:03
  Peta: Um, and it's a lot easier and a lot quicker to flick through your social media feed and, and to find your information by reading the captions on a reel that you've got on mute.
• 36:15
  Peta: Which I mean, to be honest, I do most of the time because, because there are kids around.
• 36:20
  Peta: But yeah, I.
• 36:22
  Peta: So I think, uh, some of it is like we, we feel like we don't, we don't have the time and we have to make those, those assumptions and, and make those decisions and, and put ourselves in a camp really quickly.
• 36:34
  Vikki: Because it's like you either left or you right.
• 36:36
  Vikki: Can't be both and And the moderate voices that are like, Hey, what if we can be both?
• 36:42
  Vikki: They're not dramatic enough to get enough views on social media to educate people.
• 36:48
  Vikki: So it's the drama that our brain, our brain's wired to, you know, seek drama.
• 36:54
  Vikki: Um, and so they want the polarization, they want the extremism, social media feeds that, and what we're creating is more division, more extremism and, you know, the, the more nuanced voices, it's like, well, that's not interesting from our brain.
• 37:07
  Vikki: It's not entertaining enough.
• 37:09
  Peta: yeah, yeah.
• 37:10
  Peta: No, that's so true.
• 37:12
  Peta: And very sad and something that this podcast is trying to, um, remedy in some way.
• 37:17
  Peta: So I hope that it does that.
• 37:19
  Peta: Um, this has been fascinating.
• 37:21
  Peta: Absolutely fascinating.
• 37:23
  Peta: um, if people want, um, to come and find you, if they wanna find out about time hackers and how you can help them, um, where should they go?
• 37:32
  Vikki: Yeah, I mean, so you could start with the Hack Your Time podcast, just any of your podcast apps.
• 37:38
  Vikki: Um, you could go to Time Hackers, xyz slash guide and get that free guide.
• 37:42
  Vikki: Stop Wasting Time.
• 37:44
  Vikki: And I'm also on Instagram at.
• 37:48
  Vikki: K-I-Y-F-F.
• 37:50
  Peta: Cool.
• 37:50
  Peta: Okay.
• 37:50
  Peta: I would massively encourage people to go and find Vicki, find time hackers.
• 37:54
  Peta: Um, I am, yeah, I'm gonna head over straight over to her podcast after this and binge a whole bunch of episodes, um, because this is something that I massively need help on.
• 38:03
  Peta: Um, but thank you so much.
• 38:04
  Peta: It has been an absolute pleasure and yeah, it's been really lovely to talk to you.
• 38:09
  Vikki: Thanks me.