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optimize your day · Humanity Working

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna find out.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Not not right now, but I will find out whether it's as poor as a church mouse or as quiet as a church mouse.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and while you're at it, just by the way, you can't kill one rock with two birds.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Just letting you know.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mug that one up too, don't I?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_05: Billion Minds launches this summer.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_05: Sign up now to be one of the first to try it at billionminds.com.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_05: Billion Minds.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_05: Reimagining personal effectiveness for an always-on world.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_05: In the previous episode, we spoke about how personal effectiveness is a combination of organizing your work, having a method for doing it efficiently, and having the well-being to do it consistently.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I know you guys have been spending a lot of time researching and how to figure out how to make this happen day to day, but maybe let's start with you, Paul.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_05: Can you help me understand how a day is different when you do actually take all those things into consideration?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I think actually the day itself is a really, really good way of visualizing what personal effectiveness is.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it's quite hard when people start to think about being more personally effective to take the overall general principles behind it and apply it to a day.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: So once you do that, then you do get uh, I think more of a deeper understanding of what it means in practice.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: So for us, through our research, what we've really discovered about um what a day looks like is number one, it starts the day before.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so many of us, I think, on a day-to-day basis, the moment we're so overworked that the moment that we finish the last thing that we absolutely have to do, we switch everything off and we're out of there and we'll deal with the next day on the next day.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, when you think about it, that doesn't really put you in a position to start the next day well and to start the next day effectively.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so there needs, even if it's minimal, there needs to be some prior planning as to how the next day is is gonna begin effectively.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: And somewhat counterintuitively, what we found is that people that do that effectively and continuously, almost as a practice, um, it actually helps them switch off a little better.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because you might think, at least on surface, that that that means you're obsessing yourself with the next day on the previous day.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: But in reality, because you have that additional degree of preparedness for the day that is coming up, um, it can help you uh ease into that next day more effectively.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the first piece that effectively it starts before before the day even begins.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then secondly, uh on the day itself, what it means is that let's say your day begins at 9 a.m.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um if your day begins at 9 a.m., then at 9 a.m.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: you have a clear understanding of what you're gonna do, when you're gonna do the various bits that you're that you're gonna do during the day, and then also what success will look like.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you end your day, you are you have a clear understanding of what you did, you have a clear understanding of why you did it, um, and to loop it around to where we started this conversation, you have a clear understanding of how you're going to build on that on the next day.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so all of those elements need to come together in order for you to be truly effective throughout the day.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_05: That's interesting.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: So how realistic is that, Ryan, given kind of what you've what you've seen as well in terms of getting people to think of the day that way.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um it it strikes me when you said that that not only does it start the day before, but it overlaps a little bit into the next day too, if you do it right.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_05: And that could be initially kind of uh put put people in a in a position where they're like, yeah, my day never ends.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_05: So it's really interesting, you know, uh you feel better prepared for the day, so it's easier to switch off.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: I love that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: I love that concept.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_05: But getting people to do it, you know, how how how are we gonna do that?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: How are you gonna do that?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Getting people to do anything that's different than what they're doing, aka changing behaviors is is not easy, and it's a science and an art form in its own right.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, there's different, there's different stages of what it takes to um to change a behavior.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the first really is centered around awareness.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so just uh the very nature of of knowing uh what it's gonna really take for you to be able to switch off at the end of the day to help you to be able to prioritize effectively um and feel a sense of satisfaction and pride at the end of your day, just the awareness of what it takes is already a start, right?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and what you need though is you need some of these kind of micro wins in your life to kind of substantiate that changing that behavior is important so that you desire to change that behavior.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a reason why this we we tend to really focus on this manager day as such an important aspect of our approach, because if you can't get that right, you can't do much more beyond that, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it might sound narrow, it might sound small a day in the span of your whole life, but it's actually really important because once you're able to um to feel a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day and feel a sense that you've accomplished something very meaningful and feel that it's okay to shut down at the end of that day, um, then you want to feel that again, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost like you're you're inspired now to even take more action, be more proactive to do that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then with that energy, you can apply that to bigger things.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when we're working with people, Matt, on this, one of the things that commonly gets raised is the way that I just described it um sounds great in principle, but real life gets in the way, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so, sure, I've got all of these great plans for for what my day is gonna look like, but every day it gets scuppered.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: It gets scuppered by my boss or it gets scuppered by something that I uh that I didn't intend.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so what's the point?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I tend to think of, you'll hear probably throughout this podcast, quite a lot of sports analogies from me.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: But what I tend to think of is okay, well, that happens all the time in other disciplines that are centered around, if you like events, sporting events being a great example of this.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: If you are playing a team sport as an example, um, you are almost certainly playing a team, you're playing a team sport against an opposition.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: So you have a plan, you put a plan into place as to what you as to how you think this sporting event is gonna go, how you're gonna approach it, what your tactics are gonna be in order to be able to get yourself through this event, whether it's a football match or uh um uh which is you know for me uh for you guys soccer, I suppose.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: Or it's a whether it's a football match or I watch cricket a lot.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: In each of these cases, the Yeah, Paul just Paul just came across the pond yesterday.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, actually, I came across the pond 20 years ago, but I will not abandon what football is.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, so but anyway, so in each of those cases you're playing against an opposition and they got their own plans as to how this thing is gonna go.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the opposition in the team sport is kind of like your boss.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, hopefully they're not actually opposed to you, but they're kind of like your boss in the sense that you've got certain plans and they may change those plans.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: But that never stops a sports team from making plans in the first place and having a game plan as to how they're gonna get as to how they're gonna get through this.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: But what they're also very adept at doing is trying to understand when that game plan is interfered with, how to adjust and how to adapt.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: So if you start to think of your day as being like a football match or an event of some a sporting event of some sort, whereby you have your plan to approach it, and then you are flexible enough and adaptable enough in order to be able to adjust and adapt when circumstances change.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then equally important to sports team is to quickly debrief at the end of the day to understand at the end of the event, to understand what went well, what didn't go so well, and then to prepare themselves for the next match.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: In our case, the next match is the next day.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so these same techniques that are proven in other disciplines are ones that we can apply to the idea of getting of getting through the day and understand and expect that the day will change, but be prepared to have the best approach, planning approach going into it and to make the adjustments and adaptations that we need to when inevitably they do change.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: So, so you know, you both kind of touched on something that I think's really interesting there.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and Ryan, your your point about little wins and getting that momentum and flow, and you start to string them together and you change your behavior as a result of seeing the success.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: That pay that plays right into, you know, the sports thing too.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_05: You get on a roll, you start getting undefeated.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: Now it's like, well, you know, we we're better and better each time, and the confidence goes up, and and you can see it's all such a mental game, especially in pro sports, because they're all incredible at what they're doing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_05: That's that old any given Sunday type idea.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_05: And and you know, uh, that's really interesting.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: I like that because it because it the day does get out of control a bit.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um so finding ways to deal with that bad momentum or that inertia that takes you down the wrong path because you're subject to others, you know, how do you how do you how do you start to pull that in and control that?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_05: What what ways have you are you thinking about trying to control that that role in the direction you want it to go?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think one of the interesting points that you bring up here is that um that momentum uh issue that you talked about, sports teams deal with that in two ways, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, they get to this uh point where they find a way to build upon the positives that they've taken out of every match that they're in or every um sports game that they're in.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: So if you win, that's the basis for the confidence that goes into the next game.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you lose, that's the point to try to pull out the elements that didn't work and did work, and then find those elements that did work and build upon those and find those elements that didn't work and minimize those.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: But what I find particularly interesting about team sports today versus say 20 or 30 years ago is that you'll see as teams analyze their performance in each game, even if they win, they're evaluating the game as almost like a series of mini wins and mini losses, right?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: As in, yeah, we won this game, but we've still got to work on this, and we've got to still work on this, and we've still got to work on this if we're going to continue to improve and to and to continue to get better.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so it's almost like a stoic approach to it, where effectively you are never getting too high when things are going well, and never just consistently and just having blind belief that they'll continue to go better, and never getting too low when things are going badly, but finding the positive moments that are uh that are within there that you can then build upon.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the point about that is that it relates back to Ryan's point about these mini wins, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Even when a day goes badly, there might be half a dozen mini wins in that day that you can then build upon going forward.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: And all you got to do is identify them.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And this is why that idea of ending your day is really important.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because if it's simply a binary, it went well, great, I'll do that again tomorrow, or it went badly, all right.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, forget about that, and I I won't do, I won't behave like that ever again.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: There might have been two or three brilliant things you did do and you were just unlucky that day, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: So there are definitely ways in which you can sort of pull out the components of the day and use those as momentum, even if you've not built something that that at a macro level feels like momentum.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's always these little elements within it that you can build upon the next day.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what, Paul, I was just thinking too, because we we opened up uh when we were chatting at the beginning uh about these idioms.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think about how many idioms and and just random expressions there are about uh about the day, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he's having a day or she's having a bad day, or what a day.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like it's it all these expressions, uh, we should probably look some of them up too and to find the derivation.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But for the most part, what it reveals um in its entirety is that we think about days in superlatives.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's good, it's it's categorically awesome or it's it's horrible, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's one of those two things.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's very little in between.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we have to we find a way to convince ourselves it has to be one or the other.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and and the things like those idioms, of course, those influence the way we think, right?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: So that's true.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so if you think about your life and your day like that, then it becomes just this series of wild swings.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you're never really gonna make any progress because every good day you're gonna ignore all the bad things in it, and every bad day you're gonna ignore all the good things in it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so as a result, you actually never learn anything and you never get better.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's the other point on this as well, Matt, which is that we are by no means claiming that if you do all of the stuff that we opened up this podcast with, then from this point on, every day is gonna be, you know, roses and sunflowers and and yeah, you know, pixie dust.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not gonna be that way, right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: There are gonna be days that are good and there are gonna be days that are not so good, and that's fine, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: But what you're searching for is a way of approaching your day so that on balance over time you're having more and more effective days and fewer and fewer unaffective days.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: More good than bad.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: More good than bad.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_05: It also strikes me that you know, when you when you think about your day in a binary, uh you probably will focus on the bad stuff, even if you did a lot of good good things.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_05: That one thing you did bad is gonna resonate in your mind more.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: You fall asleep thinking about it and you forget all the good stuff you did.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um and all the and all the thing that happened to you, right?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, in other words, not your own role in that necessarily, but you know, somebody did something to you, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: And as we I think many of us know at this point, right?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Psychologists will talk talk all the time about focus on the things that you can control.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's it's like there's good news, there's bad news, and there's irrelevant news.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact that somebody uh somebody did something externally to you is almost irrelevant news in terms of how you've approached your day and how effective you've been in your day.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now, how you dealt with that, that is the stuff that is completely relevant.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: So somebody comes in, they cause a problem for you, you do your best to fix that problem.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's good news, right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you've if you've if you've worked well to fix the problem that you've encountered, it's the the good news is that you did that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: The irrelevant news is that somebody came in and and uh and caused you a problem.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's interesting too to say that we need someone or something to almost point out the good stuff, just like, hey, yeah, that happened.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_05: But don't forget, you also did this, this, this, and this today.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: And those are good.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_05: Those are good.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: And you can rest easy.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's it's it's an interesting psychological mix uh that we know occurs, but it just doesn't make its way into our into our uh day-to-day going about our business.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, that's interesting.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_05: So, so like how how do we uh how do you think we can deal with that issue best?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_05: And and maybe like, you know, how do you turn those those operational items into uh action in in your day and start to build this into life?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think one of the things that you need to think about quite a bit is in practice, the ways in which your days get messed with.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: They feel like it can happen in all kinds of a number of different ways, but in reality, um, it's actually quite predictable.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: There's just a few categories of the way in which your day gets um messed with, if you like.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: So one uh is that some external party um changed what you were planning on doing.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: So that could be a manager, um, it could be a colleague, it could be a customer, it could be a partner, it could be a spouse, um, it could be a child, it could be all kinds of different people, but something has happened which causes you to have to adjust what you're doing and uh act in a different way.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so we call those things um external interruptions.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: So it was um you were working in a particular way, it got interrupted and potentially changed by a third by a third party.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: The second category um we think of as internal interruptions.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so internal interruptions are the same thing on the surface, but they've been caused by you rather than caused by somebody else.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so the internal interruption could be something like uh a random thought that you chase after.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it could be something along the lines of you forgot something or you didn't plan for something, and it's actually really important, but it's not recorded, it's not present when you start your day.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have to suddenly switch gears because you forgot that you had a deadline or something along those lines.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so that obviously can change the way in which your day works as well.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then the third uh category, I would just refer to it as sort of lack of discipline.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I mean by that is let's think about it in terms of a day with a uh that's structured largely around a calendar, and you've got meetings.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say you've got a meeting at uh 10 o'clock, and you've got a meeting at 12 o'clock, and you've got a meeting at two o'clock, and you've got and there are long meetings and you've got gaps between them.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe uh you have you start work at nine o'clock and you fritter away that first hour, you know, looking at Facebook or doing whatever else this is you like to do, or online shopping, or something like that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then you get to the second window, you don't really know what you're gonna do then, and so you wind up frittering away part of that, and you're not making progress against any of your goals because you're you're using these extended periods of times as your break without thinking about when your break is actually gonna occur for maximum effectiveness, and you're just frittering away your time.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: So the external interruptions, they're there it may be beyond your control as to when those external interruptions are gonna happen, although not completely, because you can put yourself on do not disturb, you can switch off notifications and things along those lines.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um so there are things that you can do to control when they're gonna occur, and there are certainly things that you can do to control um when and how you act upon them.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so many of us don't have the discipline to understand that when somebody else asks us to do something, we then have a choice as to whether we do that or not, and also when we do that, when we respond to that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so for those external interruptions, it's really about making sure that using notifications and playing with things like batching your email and things along those lines, that you're controlling, you're getting as much control as you can over when those external interruptions happen.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then you're also being disciplined in terms of how you're determining what to do with those external interruptions.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: For internal interruptions, um, that's obviously built around practice.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: So, for example, if it's the random thought that gets in your head, document the thought and then figure out when to act upon that thought later.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and or if it stems from other aspects of your uh of your life that are causing yourself to interrupt yourself, like for example, you forgot to prioritize the uh the thing that you actually needed to do.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: You forgot about the deadline.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: If it's one of those things, then making sure that you have a consistent way of recording those deadlines, of recording the things that you yourself have agreed.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And are responsible for.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then in the third piece on the lack of discipline side, for most people, the way you get around that is you schedule breaks.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the reason that we take breaks, most of us uh um take these informal breaks that we blow away an hour, you know, fritter away that hour on Facebook is because we don't actually schedule break time for us.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so our mind is just saying, all right, well, you didn't schedule a break, so I'm freaking taking one.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: So this is uh that's effectively what is happening when people are um when when people are frittering away time, is it's their we believe anyway, it's their subconscious telling them that they that they want and they need a break.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: So these things are all manageable and dealable with.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but there are these are things that we don't necessarily take control of ourselves and we just let happen to us.
• 24:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a it's it's a challenge to inspire yourself or put yourself into a state of deep thought where you're really in a kind of a concentration state.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's that's hard enough to do.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um the problem is what happens a lot is even when you get into that state, A, you might not know it, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to make sure that you're aware of that so you can prioritize really rich thinking in that time.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the other thing is we tend to do a pretty bad idea, uh, excuse me, we do a um uh a poor job, I should say, of um kind of figuring out what to do with those thoughts.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're in that that deep state, you're likely to have your brain take you in a bunch of different directions.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're gonna get um some ideas, some of which are random, some of which are apropos of what you're doing, um, some things that you want to get accomplished that could be a long-term objective, or it could be something that's very near-term and tactical, um, or simply something that's um a quick follow-up biting item with an individual.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so call mom back, things like that.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is so many things can come through your mind once you've blocked out those external distractions and allowed your brain to just kind of go wild.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's all goodness, but it's very difficult to have the discipline of first of all capturing that goodness.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then second of all, um, being disciplined enough not to just act on everything instantly.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and so certainly what we think is, um, and certainly studies would show that getting things out of your brain is extremely important for two big reasons.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: One is what I just mentioned is that it's um that's when you're doing your best thinking, let your brain go, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's some genius that's in there somewhere, right?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so just allowing yourself that that opportunity to do that um deep work, if you like.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then but the other part of it is once you do get that out of your head, um, it's making sure that you don't just start going through those things and treating them all as a priority just because they just happen to come out of your brain.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Your brain's not really consciously spewing out things that are urgent in the moment or that are aligned to particular objectives that you're driving.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's just you're just letting it go and letting it go freely.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's up to you, kind of the more conscious you, to start to identify what's urgent for me to do now, what's aligned to things that I've prioritized, outcomes that I'm trying to achieve, um, what's relevant to me in a personal setting or work setting, um, and and what priorities I've set across those things, um, as it were.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's that's a trap that I'll admit I fall into is I I tend to have a really good idea, or at least I think it's a really good idea.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the the challenge I face is I allow it to pull me in.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I devote anordinate amount of time to fully fleshing that thing out, as opposed to saying, all right, I've got it, it's out of my head, and now I'm kind of shifting back toward what I'm supposed to be doing right now or what's urgent, what's important for me to be doing right now.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one really interesting aspect of what Ryan's highlighting there is that our own brains can mess with us on this stuff, right?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and for example, um often we confuse top of mind with urgency.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: And in other words, it's here in my head, I'm thinking about it right now.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: That means it's urgent and I must act upon it in some way.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: And in reality, the only urgent thing is to get it out of there and with just enough detail so that when I'm in a state to be able to determine empirically how urgent or important it is, then I can make a decision as to whether it is more it whether it is so important that I should abandon what I planned to do and do something different.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: So that first piece where effectively the brain is saying to you, it's it's top of my mind, so it's urgent, so I should act on it right now, that happens all kinds of times every day.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: That actually is one of those internal interruptions that we're talking about, whereby you're working on something, something pops into your head, and before you know where you are, you're doing that new thing versus the existing thing without any real conscious evaluation whether the new thing is actually more urgent than the existing thing that you're doing.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's also the difference between urgency and importance.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: So you can have things that um that are urgent, as in should be done today.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't do them today, then you'll miss an opportunity, but they're not necessarily important.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll give you one specific example of something that is urgent and not necessarily important.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't know when the lottery uh, you know, when the the lottery that we have over here, I can't remember what day the lottery closes, but let's imagine, for example, that this week was a uh was a mega millions lottery and it closed at the end of today.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: In order to be in the mega millions lottery, I gotta buy my ticket before a particular time, right?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: So, and if I if it's 10 minutes away from now, buying a mega millions lottery ticket is something that is urgent.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now, is it important that I buy a mega millions lottery ticket?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're you gotta play to win, but empirically, it's not important because the chances of me winning are so low.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: So that is something where there is a time dimension to it.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but is it more important that I buy the mega millions lottery ticket than it is that I finish uh an important piece of work that I've committed to doing uh to my boss and a customer?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Or is it more important that I buy the lottery ticket than I take my son out to the ballgame?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: So those are the things where our brains can mess with us, whereby they confuse top of mind with urgency and they confuse urgency with importance.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so we have to think about all of those things as we start evaluating what it is that we should be doing.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what people don't realize is that um it's it's more fun actually when you're able to dump all your ideas out and sort through them uh than it is to take one and just go crazy with it.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I I find it to be extremely uh interesting when you look at the diversity of thought that goes on in your brain.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way that you can really see that is when you kind of get it all out.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I just got one idea out and then kept on exploring that, well, I've done a couple things.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: One is I've kind of obviated my priorities, as we talked about, it's kind of taking me off a squirrel.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I went over in one particular direction.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the other thing it is it shut down my human ingenuity.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: My brain was going.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just shut it down because I went and did something else.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so um, even though that was fun for me in the moment, it's more fun when you're able to sift through uh all these great ideas and thoughts and identify with each one of them and determining um, is this something I need to act on now?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is it not something that I need to do at all?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then giving yourself the freedom to explore that once you do have the bandwidth, once you have set that priority and once you have aligned it to your objectives, it's really a beautiful thing.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's I think there's a common thread that's emerging here, which is kind of interesting, which is that there are things that our brains want to do, um whereby we can just ignore that on the surface, and our brains will do them anyway, and they'll do them at random times, they'll do them at times that are inconvenient for us.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: Or we can schedule those times to allow our brain to do those things and give it freedom to do those things.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, what I was describing before about we we don't schedule breaks in our day, and because we don't schedule breaks in our day, then our brain says, All right, I'm taking one, I'm off to Facebook.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: We don't schedule time for this kind of like, um, you know, what are my ideas?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: How should I explore those ideas?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: What do I do with those ideas?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so our brain just decides to interrupt us at inconvenient moments and give them uh and and give them free reign and take us off track of what we're what we're trying to do.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think what I'm getting at is that as in the workplace, um like break periods have gone, like the the tea break or coffee break or um or lunch break or whatever it would happen to be has disappeared as an artifact.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um that hasn't got rid of our brain's need to take those breaks.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so you see, particularly here in the US, people working inordinately long hours and then prior to COVID spending a good proportion of those long hours wandering around corridors.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and they're doing it because their brain is telling them that they need to take a break.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: The schools that, you know, if you go to my son's elementary school, they've got this right, right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: They understand that kids need to take regular breaks and they need recess and they need things, things like that.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and they know that because if you don't give kids recess, they lose concentration.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're no different.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're no different to those kids.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: We need our recess, we need the time to be able to act upon these impulses that our brain is telling us it needs on a day-to-day basis.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't feel like we can afford that because we're too busy.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: But in reality, if we don't take that, our brains rebel and we just become less efficient on a day-to-day basis.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I and I I wonder if there's a there's a way, sort of like in a practice of doing this and being and having it pointed out to you regularly, how you uh I would say, like mismanage these idea squirrels, basically, is the practice of of being able to evaluate them because you're not gonna stop them from coming into your mind, but you can certainly say, okay, this is a parkable one.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_05: I will put this on the side and I will, I know it's I know what's happening here.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna put it over here and I'll get to it later and I'll feel better about it.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_05: So it's yeah, there certainly are.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: There are.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there are, I mean, the Pomodoro technique is one that springs to mind, whereby in the Pomodoro technique, they explicitly break down your working uh your working day into these 25-minute chunks with five minute breaks between them.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then as you practice the Pomodoro technique as one of these internal interruptions occurs, then you jot that down, and then you have a period of time where effectively you're acting upon that, but you have a defined goal for that 25-minute period of time.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh folks that are practitioners of the Pomodoro technique, um, experienced practitioners of it, often talk about the fact that the five-minute break is as sacrosanct as the 25-minute Pomodoro.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it's extremely important to pull yourself away from that period of focus, use that five-minute break effectively.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then it's also extremely important to make sure that, you know, as you've jotted down those those thoughts that you have, that you have some time to be able to act upon those and go after those.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there's two, there's two, so there's the idea squirrel, and then the other one that we haven't talked about yet, but I think is it's a good time to introduce it is the um uh how am I pronouncing it now?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: The FOMOI.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: FOMOI.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: FOMO I.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of FOMO, it's fear of missing out on an idea.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you have that, Ryan.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have that.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I have fear of missing out on an ide on an idea.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that's that's a huge challenge because you feel like if you don't, if you don't continue to explore it, you're gonna lose it.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that that actually um kind of reminds me, Matt, of a uh hack that that I use for myself, um, which is I I tend to, or I've discovered, I should say, that um when my brain is in that state that I mentioned before, that kind of deep thinking state, uh, is when I'm on my run.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it um it's it's the time where it's all it's it's physically impossible for me to do work, right?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: With the even work like on a computer or do something tactical.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and so it's also shutting down those external forces, as we as Paul discussed before.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I only have my internal forces.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I've held my brain uh a hostage, if you like.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's the but the problem that also that it ensues when I'm on my run is that I don't have a pad and and uh a pen, you know, that I can write down all that all these ideas.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, my hack is that I will communicate into I've got a voice recognition software that's uh that's synced up with our billion mind software that allows me to kind of extract that in a voice setting.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I just explain myself very briefly, one sentence things.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I get back from my run, I've got this laundry list of stuff very random.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I it's fun to do the triage.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: I usually do it while I'm cooling down for my run.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll just say, okay, that's a terrible idea.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I just that's gone.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is something I need to talk to this person about.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sound activity that I need to associate with that person.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is an idea of something I want to do that's bigger, something longer term, something that I want to strive for.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't need to do it now, but I didn't want to forget that it was a it was a good thing that can help motivate me or get me healthy or something like that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm able to still categorize that as an objective, but just not prioritize it.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, there's the stuff that's like, all right, now I immediately need to pick up the phone and call Paul because this is something that is a discussion topic of a call we're having with somebody later on today, right?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's at that that became urgent.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was kind of you know two acts involved in that.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: There was the act of getting it out of my brain in that particular case, using voice recognition and NLP to get it into our my new information feed, and then the act of going through and triaging those things um and and assigning them to particular roles in my life.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I can visualize all that information that came from in here, I can visualize it in the context of my life, which allows me to figure out if it's important or if it's urgent.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: So, what other areas uh do you struggle with personally to act upon besides the ones we've already talked about today?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, for me, something that I have been working on for some time and I continue to work on um is how I take ownership of my calendar.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I've been formally and informally researching this space for a long time.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: I understand um the importance of having ownership of your calendar.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: I understand that there are times when we do certain pieces of work uh better.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and there are times when we do certain pieces of work worse.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, good lay uh book that talks about that is Dan Pink's When, but there are many others that that uh that talk about these types of things.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: So for me personally, I know that I'm a night owl.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: I know that um I do uh writing in particular uh better at the end of the day.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um I know that um I need a dedicated setup in order to be able to do that well.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that I need a period of time that is relatively uninterrupted that will allow me to do that work um consistently, efficiently, and effectively.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then there are other times of the day where I know that I do other work really well.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you were to take a look at my calendar, you would see on my calendar these blocks of time um that are set up to allow me to do the right type of work at the right time, which I know based on my experience are associated with me doing that work really well.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I know when to schedule my writing block in order to be able to write really well.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that piece of it, I got nailed.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: What I don't have is sticking to the discipline of that.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I open up my calendar to others too much.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: I allow other people to schedule over those periods, and then I'm the party that makes the adjustment.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so I need to get much more disciplined at holding on to these chunks of time when I know I'm gonna do a certain piece of work really well, um, and taking ownership of my own calendar, which after all is really the only way in which I can take ownership of my own day and my own life, right?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: This this is our personal responsibility.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's our personal responsibility to ourselves and to others to do our best work every day.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: And if we let go of the things that allow us to do it, then we're never actually going to succeed at that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's something where, like in like in the immediacy of the moment, I go, you know, you know what, schedule over that, no problem.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: Or somebody'll I forget to turn my notifications off, somebody will interrupt, and I'll and they say, Can you take a call?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll say, sure.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't preserve that as well as I should.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: So let's let's say you figured it out, you're getting good at it, you're getting better at it.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_05: Now you've managed all the things, all the tasks, you're doing your day better.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_05: How does that get you to shut it down effectively, to shut down your day and feel good about it?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_05: Like how that seems like a whole other challenge to surmount.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: So, number one, it's it's making that itself important, right?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: And again, this is something that I've struggled with personally as well.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: You you're running against the clock, uh, you've got the personal commitment that you've got to get to, you're worried about getting there in time, you are worried about missing finishing the thing that you're supposed to finish.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: So you run five minutes over and you don't have time for that last, for that last five minutes.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: That last five minutes when you review what you've done, you understand what you've accomplished, and you get yourself ready for the next day.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: For some, it will be five minutes, for others, it might be 20 or 25 or something along those lines.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: But establishing that as a practice is one of the single most important things that you can do in order to create this continuous, sustainable productivity over time.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it feels like nothing, but it's incredibly important because if you don't do it, then your ability to be able to switch off from the from the core work environment is diminished.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Your brain will continue to linger upon those things and what could you have accomplished and so on.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: In many cases, you'll have almost no understanding of the value that you've brought.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: Before I did this on a regular basis, um, I'd finished my day, somebody would say to me, How did your day go?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd be like, I don't even know what I did.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and that is a very, very common thought.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: We've spoken to hundreds of people at this point about this topic, and people talk about that as a feeling quite a lot, and they certainly don't know the value that they brought.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but then also, as a as we've said before, right, it sets you up for a success um in the next day.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and so that should apply whether it's a Friday and you're going into a Saturday, whether it's a Sunday and you're going into a Monday.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's simply just um a position of like closing the door mentally on what you did, and then being ready to open the door the next day in terms of where you're gonna go.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so we would urge people to structure their day in such a way that wherever they're at in what they do, they finish at a time that gives them the time to do this uh review process and mentally shut the door on the day.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it takes practice, it takes discipline to do it, um, but it's incredibly important.