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Why Your “Bad” Habits Might Be Good for You with Amanda Natividad — Part 2 · Time Billionaires: Mindset and Time Management for Work & Life

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Stop fighting your habits if you really can't break them. Like, if it's really too hard for you to break, stop fighting it. Try to organize for it.
• 0:07
  Speaker B: Ian, you're reminding me of one of my common micro moment tips, which is to stop fighting the motion. When a lot of people hear the concept behind Time Billionaires, they think I'm advocating for hustle culture or constant productivity. And I'm very much not. And so like, scrolling our phones is a habit that they were designed to build. Stop fighting it. Scroll the photos on your phone. Instead of social media, Scroll Goodreads scroll scroll, an app you want to read. If you like certain publications, download those. If we have the motion already, just replace it with the same motion. Don't fight it and say I have to replace my glass of wine with a stick of carrot. That's not going to work. This is a two part episode. If you want to check out the first part, listen to the previous episode of Time Billionaires. Is there an end of day or beginning of day routine or some kind of structure that you typically keep your weekdays to, to get started, to end, to recap
• 0:59
  Speaker A: end of the day. So I, I've given myself, this is more a newer tip or newer thing that I've done is I've given myself an end time. Like 4pm I'm done for the day. Like it just, it has to be. And so by that, that means it doesn't mean that I cannot work in the evening. What it means is it everything that was due is it's done. Everything that was due today or that's due early tomorrow, it's done. If there's a loose end, then it has to be like, it has to be something that will take less than five minutes. So maybe it's like I scheduled the SparkToro audience research newsletter or I have it, I sent out the test and I'm just waiting for Rand to review it and give his feedback. That's fine because I know that his feedback will either he won't have any or whatever he'll say will take me like one or two minutes to fix. And that's what I'm fine with being like, okay, that's done by 4 at like 10pm tonight, I'll log on real quick just to schedule the email. Like that's, that's fine. So anything that is like quick, like oh, one last thing that can go after 4pm but anything that's like a real task and it requires critical thinking, actual things to get done, I'll never start it after 4pm it's brilliant.
• 2:24
  Speaker B: It is. That's so aligned with all of the research that I'm aware of what makes us effective. And it answers that. That small snippet answers to me a lot of my question, which is how do you get so much important work done? And I think having that consistent stopping deadline is really helpful for making sure your most important work is done during your most creative prime hours. Because it's really common is for us to have meetings all day and then start our heads down, focus work after our prime creative blocks and just continue this cycle that leads to burnout. And what you're saying is no, anything that really requires that has to come before that. And it also then I think interrupts the spiral of letting emails just sort of seep in to what should be the creative blocks. Because if we have those peak times during the day, it's easy to say I'll do it later, I'll do it later, I'll do it later. But your 8pm brain is not as effective as your 8am brain. And so I love this consistent end time. And you're actually the first person to say that on the show. And I really like it because I also feel like the focus blocks we tend to talk about like any one to three hour uninterrupted block is as good as another, but it's not. And so if you're already tired and starting that when kids are asleep or no one's online for meetings, it probably isn't the best work you'll do. And so this is a big unlock from for my question of like how does Amanda do so much? You do a lot of this with this deadline for yourself of the most important work has to happen by four. Okay, we're coming up on two o' clock here. I want to make sure you can get back to that and but I also realized I didn't introduce you. Do you want to give a two to three sentence intro and then I'll share what inspired me to ask you on the show?
• 4:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it. So I'm Amanda Natividad. I am Chief Evangelist at SparkToro, which is an audience research tool and I am the co author of the forthcoming book Zero Click Marketing. I guess the quick intro on me would, would the context setting would be, you know, I've been a marketer for over a decade before starting, I guess my personal brand. And so sometimes people will kind of ask me like how, how did you come up so fast? Like you came out of nowhere Because I Had grown my Twitter account back when it was Twitter, not x, from like 700 to over a hundred thousand in like a year and a half. That was sort of like my kind of claim to fame asterisk. Right?
• 4:50
  Speaker B: It's.
• 4:51
  Speaker A: Don't want to sound like a douchebag, but like, that was kind of how people know me. Right? But like, people have asked, like, how did, like, how did you do that? Or like, where'd you come from? I'm like, I was part of the pack for many, many years. Like, I was just doing marketing work, had several corporate jobs like any other normal person does. And then it was when I was like 35, I decided to do the whole personal brand thing. And I feel lucky and very grateful for having been able to do that and that now I can use most of my time and energy kind of still focused on that personal brand, which is to help people do better marketing,
• 5:31
  Speaker B: which you're really good at. And there is no shortcut to that. You reminded me of Cal Newport's slow productivity. I don't know if you've read it, but he opens with a story of this reporter who essentially spent three months writing an article, laying up at, looking at the ceiling, trying to come together, but then wrote it in about three hours. And so you had the decades worth of experience that was necessary to share interesting, relevant, creative, unique insight that people gravitate toward, myself included, and learn from that can't be rushed. And so there is this rhythm to how work happens that I think we lose a lot of in today's creator economy. The sense that it just sort of happens, it comes together very quickly, especially now with AI. And so you didn't rush the prerequisite and you still seem to be learning a lot from what I can see. And I was shocked, absolutely shocked to learn that your team was three people. It seems to me like one of the industry leading marketing orgs. And I could not believe that. And so that really is what inspired this question. How do you do so much and a lot of this framework of what you do, when is part of it, some of the systems are part of it. Do you have an operating rhythm internally that you think is really effective or that you, you and your team tend to follow?
• 6:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. So this is a different piece. Right. So my two other colleagues, Rand Fishkin and Casey Henry, I mean the three of us are each very experienced in our fields and we've all experienced very different kinds of career paths and pivots. Right. So Casey, for example, I don't think he knows That I know. But for a while he dabbled as a photographer. He was a growth marketer for a long time before he decided to become an engineer. I think his first career was he worked with, I think kids at juvenile, juvenile detention centers. So like has had many lives as an incredible person. I myself had gone, I've gone to culinary school, I worked at a test kitchen, worked at a lot of different kinds of startups, so had a lot of different kinds of marketing experience. And so one thing I'll say there is we have a lot of experience and a lot of different adjacent knowledge and expertise, which means that each of us is like a team of four people in of ourselves, right? So that's one, like we're very multifaceted. The other one is we don't spend a lot of time in meetings. Now we do a twice a month all hands where we talk through things that need to be discussed. But we don't do like rolling status updates. Never. It's just, hey, we're working on this redesign of this feature. How are we going to do it? Right? So it's things that we have to actually discuss. And then I think a lot of it too is just we, a lot of us work very independently.
• 8:32
  Speaker B: The lack of pseudo productivity that a lot of workplaces are really dominated by. You don't have pseudo productivity in sorting your emails because why bother coding it if you can just address it in a single touch? You don't have pseudo productivity in the status update of making it look like you're busy because you know you'll deliver results and there's trust in that, but also the what to focus on. And so the nonlinear progress of each of your paths are essential to your success now. But deciding to go to culinary school to pivot into marketing, how do you decide what's worth your energy to follow?
• 9:07
  Speaker A: I kind of just do whatever I want. And I do, I do whatever I want while assessing the risk, you know, figuring out what's the upside, what's the downside, what's the actual cost to me. So, so going to culinary school, for instance, that was something I did when I was 25. My reasoning back then was Le Cordon Bleu had created a new program that was instead of two years, it was one year. So it cost half the cost. It didn't cost 20k, it cost 10k, which is, you know, it's a substantial amount of money, but it's not, it's not totally unaffordable. And I was like, okay, I can swing that. I Took out some school loans, whatever. But I can, I can afford that. And my other thought, other things in my thought process were I'm single and child free. So if I'm going to do something kind of bold like this, it's a total pivot. Now is the time. Like I'm never going to have more time than I do right now. Never going to have more energy than I do right now. So then that was the other thing. And then the last piece being, well, if becoming a restaurant chef or becoming a food writer does not work out, I will at least have a lifelong skill. I'll know how to cook.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And as a gift. And it's multifaceted. You're reminding me of range. I think David Epstein is the author. Yeah. Generalist role in a specialist world. I think this, the connectivity of following your curiosity, being passionate about what the season of your life is, it's key. I think that's so important. You were honest about the state of your energy and your time and what was a good use of it then, which wouldn't necessarily be the right ones now and didn't try to force it. That happens on a day to day basis. Like the micro level of if your energy is not prime for peak productivity focus in the afternoon, don't try to cram it. Don't stick your admin errands time in your peak or your meetings time during your peak productivity spiral or cycles. And then that then translated to your life and your month too, which is what I'm seeing as phenomenally effective, unique insights that you communicate super well and I'm so grateful that you did. And I sold this recording to you on the promise that it would be short. But then you fascinated me so much I asked way more questions than I expected to the very last one. Is there anything I didn't give you a chance to express about how you manage your time or systems that you swear by that you wanted to share?
• 11:34
  Speaker A: Okay, I have two things.
• 11:35
  Speaker B: Great.
• 11:36
  Speaker A: One is a home space organizational thing which is to stop fighting what you actually stop fighting your habits if you really can't break them. You know, if it's really too hard for you to break, stop fighting it. Try to organize for it. And so by that some of the quirks or habits in our household. We have a two story house and just with the way the mornings are, each of us, meaning my, my husband and I and our two kids, we don't each get perfectly ready upstairs and then go downstairs and go to school, right? Like we have like breakfast someone Wakes up later, someone wakes up earlier, someone has to poop. Like all these different things happening. And so the behavior that is sort of counterintuitive to things is normally. Right. You would keep your toothbrush and your toothpaste in your bathroom. That's where my husband and I keep ours. But for the kids, because we still help them brush their teeth, we keep it downstairs. And it looks weird, but it works because otherwise we would have to run back upstairs to brush teeth after breakfast. That doesn't make sense. Like, we just lose time and momentum doing that. So instead we keep it downstairs. We keep, we, we actually just keep. We clean the toothbrushes and we have like a special drying rack for them. The kitchen sink. We have the toothpaste there. And then other. The kids, like toiletry needs like a hairbrush, their nail cutter. I have a little like wooden box. It's a cute box, by the way. And I put it on the bookshelf. So we have a bookshelf that has books. And it's like in this reading nook, but in the middle of that there's a box that has random toiletry items, but you don't really notice it. That's an example of like, just go with what you do. Just go with what you do.
• 13:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. And this is an example of the non negotiables that a lot of us, myself included, have decided or not even consciously made the decision that I have decided that it's more important to fight my family's rhythm by forcing things where they're socially acceptable. And that's the myth that I actually want to invert, because I think this is brilliant. You're right. She just got her first tooth, so we're starting to brush it. But she's associated. She doesn't associate putting things in her mouth in the bathroom. So it's a fight. But she does associate putting things in her mouth at the kitchen table. Why can't we brush her teeth there? Yeah, and because it's literally just what the, the social acceptability of. Oh, why is my 12 month old's toothbrush in the kitchen? Who cares? Yeah, that and your, your acceptableness is. It's fine if it isn't where we would think things belong. If it works for your rhythm, don't fight it. Brilliant. And then stop investing energy in fighting what works for your family. No, that's great. Thank you. And they sent another one.
• 14:31
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. The other one was. This is a, this is a really hard one for me because naturally I am a night owl. Like, if I Could totally have it my way. I would go to bed at like 1 or 2 in the morning. I would wake up at like 10 in the morning if I. I wish. Right. I would do my most creative work at night. Like, ideally I would be doing fun, creative, deep work stuff at like 10pm but life with two kids is like, it's not. It might not even be that I'm sleepy by 10pm I'm just mentally fried. Like I am. I'm done by like 8pm like, my brain is not even there. So. Which has been a big bummer for me because it used to be nighttime. That was my time to do the fun, creative stuff.
• 15:17
  Speaker B: I know. Me too. My best campaign, some of them were like 8 to 10pm Yep.
• 15:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. But I can't do it anymore. And so I used to just. I would try to do it. I would try to muscle through it. Or I would just be like, you know what? I'm tired tonight. I won't do it tonight. Which is fine too. But as a result, I would just do less stuff. And so what I've done instead is, you know what that nighttime it. That nighttime period is. That has to be just like fun, extracurricular stuff. Whether that's reading a book, playing my video games. Like, then I can't work at night. So it just sort of.
• 15:52
  Speaker B: You've got to get your deadline done. Yeah, you've stopped fighting it. You just replace it.
• 15:57
  Speaker A: Stop fighting.
• 15:58
  Speaker B: No. And you're reminding me of one of my common micro moment tips, which is to stop fighting the motion. When a lot of people hear the concept behind time billionaires, they think I'm advocating for hustle culture or constant productivity. And I'm very much not. And so, like, scrolling our phones is a habit that they were designed to build. Stop fighting it. Scroll the photos on your phone. Instead of social media, scroll Goodreads scroll, an app you want to read. If you like certain publications, download those. If we have the motion already, just replace it with the same motion. Don't fight it and say, I have to replace my glass of wine with a stick of carrot. That's not going to work. Replace it with something that feels like a similar motion. And you've done that with your time hacks.
• 16:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's really, really good advice. That has me thinking too. Like, oh, I bought an Atlantic subscription a couple years ago and it was in part to like, now I'm backwards rationalizing it. It was in part to be like, well, I'm always on my phone anyway. If I'm going to open up my phone, I might as well read like good independent journalism. So, yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker B: And that used to be how we spent our leisure time. If you commuted on a bus. Bus. You brought one book or one publication and you just took it out and that was it. There wasn't the constant deluge of context shifting between, oh, you could have the Atlantic or the Economist or the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal constantly in the same motion. And so there is a lot more coming at us now. So we fatigue faster. So just the intentionality of why we choose to keep the apps that we do, we remove the friction where we can is largely up to us and on us now in a way that it didn't. It wasn't when I was growing up.
• 17:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. That is so true.
• 17:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. I love this conversation. I love every conversation with you, Amanda. You're brilliant and wonderful, and I'm super stoked for your kids, too, to have the intentionality. Like, I feel great for them. I know they're going to grow up to be wonderful people and already are. And I really appreciate your sharing this here.
• 17:58
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Thank you, Rebecca. This is so. This was so much fun to just like, geek out about all this stuff, and it was so great to just chat with you.