796: How to Make Progress on Your Most Audacious Goals, Every Day with Grace Lordan

Pete Mockaitis
Grace, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Grace Lordan
Hi, Pete. I’m delighted to be here, and I hope that I am awesome at my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, we’ll see.

Grace Lordan
We’ll find out.

Pete Mockaitis
Just kidding. Just kidding. No pressure. I’m excited to hear about your book Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want. But, first, I want to hear about your dog-kissing practices.

Grace Lordan
My dog-kissing practices, yes, I mean, that continues. And for my partner, it’s the most embarrassing thing, I think, ever because it’s not even just in private. It’s also in public. She will give me now kisses when she wants a treat. She gives me a kiss before she goes to bed at night. And, actually, when I want to laugh, I do say to her, “Casey, can I have a kiss?” and she does give me a kiss. So, for people who don’t like dog-kissing, it’s probably a really bad start to this podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, I think that’s adorable. My kids, lately, have been asking it at bedtime, “I want 10 kisses,” and I just love it, so. So, dog kisses, yeah, I’ll take those, too, if we had a dog. As long as the dog, I think if it’s a dog you know, that’s cool. I might be a little uncomfortable if it’s like a total stranger dog that looks kind of, you know, ill. I don’t know if I want him kissing me. But if it’s your dog, it’s all good.

Grace Lordan
I think cuteness is a factor as well. You’ve chosen your dog, so you obviously think it’s really cute, but I think some dogs do look quite intimidating. So, yeah, I think stick to kissing your own dog, for anybody listening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. We’re already getting actionable wisdom. Thank you, Grace. Well, let’s hear a little bit about inside your book. Were there any particularly surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made while you’re putting together Think Big?

Grace Lordan
There were lots simply because, when I was writing it, I treated myself as an experiment. So, if you read the book, there’s lots of tips that come from scientific research, and I actually tried them out. Some worked for me, and some didn’t work for me, which I think really kind of shows that you should, when you take advice, really figure out if it’s actually working for you.

I think some of the more interesting ones were thinking, for example, about the spotlight effect, how, for me, I have a tendency towards perfectionism, which it sounds wonderful, but actually it isn’t. It’s quite crippling. And learning about the spotlight effect, that people who are paying attention to you in the moment probably aren’t paying attention to you to the degree that you actually think has been quite freeing for me, and I’ve managed to verify that as true.

So, you can take that as depressing or not, Pete, but most of the things that I do, whether I do them well or do them badly, it feels like nobody’s watching, which is very freeing for me, but it could be quite depressing if you thought about it in another way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so I’m intrigued. How did you confirm? Did you say, “Hey, you, were you watching me earlier when I was doing this?” Or, how did you put that to the test that you were not really being spotlighted?

Grace Lordan
I think you wait for the legacy. So, if you do things like public speaking, or if you are the person who convenes round tables, sometimes you will have blunders and you won’t say things exactly the way that you wanted to say them. For example, you might not be as clear as you would want. And I used to ruminate on that, and I would ask you, if you were my colleague, who is in the round table, and procrastinate over, “What did you think?” because I’m drawing your attention, so you would probably have a few comments.

But I found out that, actually, not necessarily drawing people’s attention to it, verified for me the people weren’t paying attention to it to begin with. Then, actually, even just leaving a lag to get feedback of one week meant that people have kind of forgotten my blunders and really saw the performance as an average rather than these very small minute things that I was picking up.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, zooming out a bit, can you share what’s sort of the big idea or main thesis behind the book Think Big?

Grace Lordan
So, I wanted to write a book that was for people who weren’t able to just upheave their lives to create huge change, because I think, here in the UK, and also in the US, we hear these stories of people who have great success, and it feels like they do it overnight. So, I wanted to write a really, really realistic book but I still wanted to write something where people ended up achieving really, really big things.

So, the starting point is getting people to think big, which really is getting somebody to imagine what their life would be in the medium term, so think years rather than months, if everything worked out and you had no constraints. So, Pete, you mentioned that you have two young kids, you would basically not say, “Okay, I have two kids I have to really factor in their care in this think big.” Instead, you would just imagine, “What if it all worked out?”

And then the second step in that is saying, “Okay, now that I have this vision of myself, what does that person actually do on a day-to-day basis?” So, I think one of the places where we fall down when we’re thinking about our future is that we visualize ourselves doing these kinds of huge big things, so declaring that we have huge earnings in our company if we’re entrepreneurs; imagining ourselves giving a statement if we were a CEO; imagining ourselves doing something else as equally impressive if we’ve gone into another kind of career aspect. But we don’t think about the tasks that actually get you there and the grit on the day-to-day basis.

So, I get people to visualize those, and, assuming that they’re happy with the tasks that they visualize, I ask them to put small steps in place that gets them doing those tasks now. Or, if they’re not able to do those tasks because of a skill deficit, to put steps in place to get those skills. If they visualize those tasks, and say, “Actually, this sounds really horrible. I like the idea of running my own company, but the day-to-day sounds terrible,” then they reiterate the process again. And, fundamentally, it’s about figuring out what you love doing, but also figuring out what you love doing that leads you to something probably bigger than you’re imagining at the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so that sounds pretty quick and zippy, Grace. Is that the case? Or, how long are we talking till we land upon a vision and a plan that feels awesome for people?

Grace Lordan
So, I think it is zippy. I have exercises in the book to get people thinking about the activities they like doing on a day-to-day basis if they don’t know what they want to do so they can map back to a big dream. I have kind of guidance on the type of skills that you need to do particular careers. So, I think the think big part is actually quite…it happens really, really quick. I love the word zippy, by the way. It is actually quite zippy.

But I think the hard part is putting the small steps in place and sticking to those small steps. So, once you get over chapter two and you have this kind of big vision in mind, the rest of the book is devoted to thinking about, “How can you stick to your small steps? How can you find time to do the small steps? How can you overcome your own biases? How can you overcome the biases of others?” And that part of the journey does take time.

And I think most of us as human beings are really…find really easy dreaming of something that we might never achieve, and those small steps are the bridge to actually making it a reality.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And in the book, you’ve got six key areas: time, goal-planning, self-narratives, other people, environment, and resilience. Can you share with us a couple of your favorite tips inside each of these areas that can help us to think big and realize those big thoughts?

Grace Lordan
So, I’ve said this so many times since the book has been written, so it feels like a cliché, but it is something that’s fundamentally true, is that time is the one thing that we can’t get back. It is our most precious resource. And one of the things that I love doing, when I feel that I’m not making progress, is time audits, and I’d encourage anyone listening to do one as well, and really divide…so, firstly, auditing what they’ve on a day-to-day basis, ideally, in 15-minute increments. And then going back and asking yourself, “Which bucket do those increments fall into?”

So, firstly, “Are these things that actually allows me to be happy in the moment or allow somebody else to be happy in the moment, or give some value?” The second are the things that, actually, are investing in your future self. So, this idea of me plus, or the person who you visualize when you think big. And the last are what I call time sinkers, and these are things that absolutely waste your time.

And when I wrote the book, my biggest time sinker is sitting in meetings. I work in the university and the meetings tend to be very, very long. I don’t know about the US, but in the UK, they tend to be very, very long, very, very boring, and no decision ever gets made. A lot of small-stake stuff gets debated. So, for me, that was my time sinker to really focus in on, “Do I need to be at these meetings if nobody is actually making a decision, nobody is listening to me?”

Another time sinker for me was spending too much time on email. For other people, it could be social media, it could be online shopping, but really figuring out what those time sinkers are and re-allocating that time to invest in your future long-term self.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, if I may, Grace, I’m curious, if you determine these emails are taking too much time, these meetings are taking too much time, in practice, how does one just ditch them, it’s like, “You know what, not doing anymore. Hey, Dean, or whomever, not going to those meetings anymore”? How do you pull that off?

Grace Lordan
It’s a really great question. So, I think, for me, it’s going to be easier than for a lot of people because one of the benefits of working in the university is they have this thing called tenure, where it’s kind of hard to fire you. So, if no one is listening to you in a meeting, it’s quite valid for you to say to the chair, “No one’s paying attention to me so I’m just not going to show up for this.” And if they don’t change the meeting, I think that’s okay.

I think it’s harder if you have a job where you do have to show up, but, nonetheless, I think it’s possible. So, for people who I know who work in finance and technology companies in extraordinary competitive environments, one of the solutions that they have for the emails is to check emails at particular times during the day.

So, they’re not firefighters and they’re not heart surgeons, so if it takes them 90 minutes to respond to something, it’s not going to be the end of the world. And that batching has been extraordinarily effective for them. On meetings, and we might get into this in a while, in a lot of companies where I’ve kind of been working and kind of doing work about redesigning how leadership should look, is fundamentally is about redesigning meetings to give time back to your team.

So, again, moving away from these forums where we over-deliberate on small-stake stuff to an environment where we have trust, and bringing people together when the big things are at stake, or when you’re creating and when you’re innovating. And in the book, I talk a bit about how you can redesign meetings if you’re in charge of them, but also if you’re somebody who’s low-power, how you can nudge the person in charge to get you there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great turn of a phrase, deliberating on low-stake stuff. And I guess one would need to think through, “Are the low stakes just for me? Is there a low-stake for the company, for the team, or for everybody?” And I think, often, the answer is there’s little stakes for everybody. Maybe someone just doesn’t feel confident enough to make a decision on their own without gathering input. Or, they’re extroverted, they just like to chitchat.

So, I guess there’s any number of reasons why meetings appear that ought not to have appeared, but I think that’s a really great check-in question to work through there in terms of, “Is this, in fact, small stakes for everybody? And are we just talking because here we are and we’re intellectual creatures who have different ideas so we’re going to talk about them because that’s the topic placed in front of us?”

Grace Lordan
I think it comes from a really good place, so I think, as organizations grew, it was hard to build trust in organizations. Because, if we think back a hundred years as things were actually getting bigger, usually, you were just battling a growth cycle, so the idea of putting structure around meetings probably wasn’t something that dawned on anyone, particularly when people were working nine to five and time wasn’t as scarce as it is today.

I think, now, we fundamentally have an oversupply of meetings to discuss small-stakes stuff because we want to be transparent, so it comes from a really good place. So, if, for example, I’m interested in how many bike racks that I should put outside buildings, it’s nice for me to ask you, Pete, because I feel that I should be an inclusive person but, for you, that’s taking your time.

So, I think the battle for leaders and for companies now is to, firstly, figure out, “What are the things that are low stakes and what’s high stakes?” and put transparency around the low-stake stuff for the one person or the two people who might really want to see how that decision is made. They should be able to go online and look that up.

But I think for the rest of the people who are actually happy to trust and give autonomy to their teammates, then they should get on with it. And I think part of it is that leaders themselves shouldn’t be involved in the low-stakes decision-making. So, for example, if I’m in your team, Pete, and you’re the leader, you, like everyone else in the team, should accept me making decisions without you being there, and the mode of transparency that’s open to the team.

And I think I see in teams now, particularly in finance and tech where I do a lot of work, where people are moving towards that mode, and they’re getting just a lot of time back. And people are ending up being happier, safe in the knowledge that when the big decisions are being made, they’ll be called into the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I like the bike rack example a lot because you can very politely say, “You know, I trust you and whatever you decide with regard to how many bike racks is fine.” And then that might be a good little test for yourself internally, like, “Do you have any input here?” It’s like, “Actually, I guess I wouldn’t want you to add hundreds of bike racks, such that the closets are…or the hallways are really crowded, but other than that, I mean, really, you could have five, you could have 50, and it’s just fine with me.”

Grace Lordan
And most people will make a really sensible decision in that domain. And there are these experiments that are fantastic in behavioral science, where they give people things to deliberate in meetings, and they look to see how much time they spend on items, like the bike rack, as composed to items like project choice, capital structure decisions, pensions, and people tend to spend more time talking about the bike racks because, fundamentally, in meetings, most people can give an opinion on a bike rack because it’s a very easy thing for us to conceptualize.

When the material gets hard, you get much fewer questions. And, actually, for the meetings to work, we need it to be the other way around. We need it to be people like me who don’t necessarily and fully understand the question on pensions, for example, to be asking the questions so that everyone in the room gets to understand that really big decision, and we should leave the bike racks to somebody else to decide.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really good perspective, and I’m amused by podcasters. I’ve been in some podcast forums where folks have a question about, I don’t know, cover art, which kind of matters. It’s not the number one thing but it sort of matters. But that’s very easy for anyone to opine on, like, “I like the yellow one. I like the one with the bigger face,” a piece of art or design anyone can comment upon but, really, what’s most critical is, “Okay, do I have a show that serves a real audience and a real need that’s somewhat distinctive and/or superior from the alternatives available?”

But that’s a lot harder to…like, you’d actually have to do some research to be able to tell you, to opine on that as opposed to, “I like the yellow one.” And yet, yeah, that’s great. So, in a way, the primary driver of deliberation time is not so much importance or value but just, I guess, ease of folks having opinions on, opine-ability. I don’t know what we’d call that.

Grace Lordan
So, in behavioral science, there’s a whole area of research that talks about shared information versus hidden information. So, the shared information are the things that we have in common this evening when we’re talking. And for a podcast, it probably makes sense for us to focus on things that are shared, otherwise it would sound really weird for the audience.

But if we’re working together, the value of us as colleagues is actually in our hidden information, so you’ll have insights that I don’t have, and we should take time to learn those for the big stuff. But we should hire somebody who we can delegate the small stuff to so we actually have that time. So, some of the kind of work that I do is really getting people to, firstly, understand what we’re talking about to be true, but, secondly, to get comfortable talking about that hidden information.

Because one of the first things we do when we have new colleagues in companies is that we kind of condition them, if they’re going to stay with us, to conform to the type of information that we like sharing in meetings, which really gets rid of the comparative advantage we get when that person comes through the door. And it all comes down to our ego.

As humans, we just like to be comfortable in conversations where we fully understand what’s going on. But, obviously, to learn something new, there has to be lots of moments in our life where we’re sitting in rooms where we fundamentally don’t understand something. We grapple with that so we get on the same page as somebody who has a different perspective or unique information compared to us.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, so we had some thoughts on time. How about self-narratives?

Grace Lordan
Yeah. So, one of the interesting things for me, because my background is in computer science, so one of the biggest learning curves for me has been that people prefer storytelling over data. One of the most interesting things to me in the psychology literature is that the biggest storytellers we are, are the stories that we essentially tell ourselves.

So, if I’m ever going to do something new, what actually goes on in my mind just before I do that particular thing is going to govern how well I actually do it in the moment, how I feel coming out of it, and whether or not I’ll engage in it again. And in Think Big, I kind of explore the idea of self-narratives that might be holding people back, like, “I’m not good enough,” “This doesn’t necessarily suit me,” “I don’t have time for this,” and really getting people to challenge those narratives so that they get to move forward in a way that feels much freer.

And I think, again, kind of in writing this and in talking to different people on their perspectives, what are the things that really stood out for me is, fundamentally, people often don’t see that. It’s themselves that are the majority of what’s holding them back as compared to other people. We usually see it really clearly if somebody else puts an obstacle in our way, but those obstacles that we have through the image we have of ourselves, which is probably not true, by the way, is something fundamentally that, I think, people need to address in order to achieve and, given the topic of this podcast, be awesome at their job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And so, if we’re exploring the stories that we’re telling to ourselves or about ourselves, do you have any pro tips on identifying what stories may not be serving us so well, and how to reframe them?

Grace Lordan
Absolutely. So, I think that there’s kind of two different ways in which you can go about this. So, the first is that you can start listening to yourself, essentially. So, when you have these big moments, recognizing whether or not you’re going into imposter syndrome; recognizing whether or not your self-chatter is saying that you don’t necessarily have enough time, which is my one, by the way; recognizing what that actual narrative is; and challenging that narrative in the moment by giving disconfirming evidence.

And I think that there’s some good evidence in psychology that this can work for people, I’m quite skeptical because I can’t imagine myself being in a situation where I’m about to do an action that’s making me nervous, and I find myself having the strength to have that argument with myself internally. So, I prefer the other approach, which is really to, once you’ve identified that narrative, to think about actions that disconfirm that particular narrative and engage in those regularly.

So, really, for example, if you think about somebody whose self-narrative says that they’re a smoker, so they now start saying, “Actually, I’m not a smoker. I’m somebody who does something different.” So, every time that they might think of a cigarette, instead of going and smoking, they bring that narrative to the fore so that they’re swapping out one behavior for another behavior in themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And then when it comes to resilience, how do we get a boost there?

Grace Lordan
So, the chapter on resilience, I actually wrote before COVID, and I think it’s been the most popular chapter in the book because, during the COVID pandemic, a lot of people really wanted to figure out how they could become more resilient when they’re at home. Again, in the same flavor as the book, I really lean on what are small things that you can do on a day-to-day basis that will preserve your resilience reserves or also enhance them.

So, I’ll give you two, which are two of my favorites. So, the first is to really reflect what you do when something negative happens to you. So, whether or not it’s a colleague insulting you, not getting a promotion, to something even bigger than that. What are the typical types of reactions that you have? So, really kind of engage in that self-awareness.

And for behavioral scientists, we call that period affect. So, basically, you’re reacting with emotion and you’re in this hot stage which probably isn’t the best for you to make decisions about your way forward, figuring out what you’re actually going to do in that period. So, for me, in the book, I give the readers a list of things that I do that range from a walk around the block when it’s something small, to taking bigger timeouts to have to spend some time with friends and get the healthy jolts of confirmation bias when things are a bit worse.

And then the second stage is dealing with the problem. And I ask people to do this ahead of time, so really think about, “When negative things happen, what are you actually going to reach with?” so that they’re not reacting with their emotions. And this is particularly useful, I think, for people who do become very emotional when things don’t actually go their way.

Within companies, you can also do this within teams so if you’re trying to build psychological safety, you could think about saying to your team, “Look, there’s going to be moments where things don’t go our way. And when things don’t go our way, we’re going to take a timeout, and this is what the timeouts can actually look like.” And that does something for the team in giving them certainty about what would happen in an uncertain situation. And with respect to the individual, you’re essentially giving yourself certainty about what you’re going to do when things don’t necessarily go wrong. So, it seems to be very effective.

The second then is to really go into a battle with loss aversion. So, if you can imagine yourself, Pete, and you’re walking down the street today, this won’t happen in London, by the way, because the weather is extraordinarily hot today, but if you’re walking down the street and it’s a rainy day, and somebody splashes you with a puddle, so they go through, you’re soak from head to toe, and you’re meant to go somewhere important. How would you react in that situation?

Pete Mockaitis
I would probably say, “Aargh!”

Grace Lordan
Would you shake a fist? Would you be annoyed at the driver?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I’d be annoyed, angry, confused, startled, yeah.

Grace Lordan
Would you tell the story later to other people?

Pete Mockaitis
It really could go either way. I suppose if I was entering a room and everyone says, “Whoa, why are you covered in mud?” I would absolutely tell them.

Grace Lordan
You might do it.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d probably tell my wife but, yeah, I’d probably lead with that.

Grace Lordan
But it would stick with you even for that moment where you have that angry burst, you have a negative reaction. That seems to be what most people would have, then some people would carry it with them for their day, and then some people would just find it really hard to get over. So, you have these kinds of three types of people, if you like.

You get the same when you have somebody who insults you. So, if you can imagine yourself being in the workplace and somebody says, “Pete, you’ve done an extraordinarily bad job today. I don’t know why you came to work,” usually people inside will feel quite negatively towards that person. They might tell their spouse or they might tell a friend, but it really weighs on their mind.

Or, if a colleague ignores them, the same thing. So, if a colleague ignores them, they do feel negatively towards the person, “What’s going on? Why is Jim ignoring me today? I don’t necessarily know what’s going on.” And on the other side, we don’t celebrate when we don’t get splashed by a puddle. We don’t celebrate when people are incredibly kind to us and give us compliments in work. We’re very unlikely to celebrate when somebody kind of gives us that greeting in the hall with a big smile on their face.

And it’s actually been shown kind of time and time again that people who focus on those moments, the driver who slowed down without actually splashing them and ruining their day, the person who is incredibly kind to them, the person who gives the good greeting, if you concentrate on those at a certain point in the day, which is known as gratitude in the literature, or celebrating small wins, if you’re a behavioral scientist, it really allows you to not just kind of preserve your resilience stores because it moves the focus away from bad things that have happened to positive, but also allows you to become more resilient because you recognize that you have these good things going on in your life.

And that is something that I really kind of encourage people to try and see if it works for them. For me, I’m not a great journaler so I usually do this at the end of my day, like 7:00, it would be later tonight, and I write down that I’m really grateful for a good conversation with Pete. And having those moments where I actually kind of look at my day, and say, “Yes, everything didn’t go my way but there were these things that actually stand out that life is going in the right direction,” is extraordinarily resilience-preserving and incredibly easy to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Grace, you’re also an authority on issues associated with bias. Can you speak to some of the takeaways there that can help us be more awesome at our jobs?

Grace Lordan
Yes. So, I wrote a whole chapter on bias in the book and one of the things that I ask people to recognize in the beginning is to think about what is the proportion of their journey that belongs to them, and what is the proportion of the journey where they rely on other people.

And then we go deep-diving into the biases that traditionally hold people back. And one of my favorites is confirmation bias. So, it’s my favorite because confirmation bias is both a good thing and a bad thing. So, when you’re having a really crummy day and things haven’t gone your way, you absolutely want somebody who’s going to take your side, who’s going to tell you that you’re right, and who isn’t going to put up a fight against you when you say to them it was all somebody else’s fault. You absolutely want that.

However, if we bring confirmation bias into the workplace on our regular days when we’re trying to do our job, when we’re trying to get critical feedback, it really, really will hold us back. And confirmation bias is a tendency for me to hold a belief and then go looking for evidence that actually confirms that belief.

So, for example, if I’m somebody who believes that we should go with a particular project at work, or, to use our example, that there should be ten bike racks outside the building, I will look for evidence that confirms that particular belief. But, of course, there’s lots of other perspectives that I should be taking into account when I’m making big decisions, like, the project to actually take on, a colleague to hire, or who to actually promote.

And, fundamentally, I think some of the battles that we have at the moment is getting within teams and individuals to really look outside themselves, for perspectives that aren’t their own, and to battle their own self-beliefs. And if you think about whether or not you’re growing as a person, it can be really helpful to ask yourself when was the last time that you changed your mind on something that was a fundamental belief to you.

So, you come into this world, we were brought up in a certain way, we go about our journey, and we kind of create particular beliefs. When did you actually change your mind? And in the absence of being able to identify when you changed your mind, being honest with yourself, and saying, “When did I sit down with somebody who held a different belief to me and had a conversation with them?”

And, for me, most of my work is in companies when it comes to investment choices, colleagues to hire, colleagues to promote, but you can also link this to what’s kind of going on in society and different perspectives with respect to governments and ideologies, and people just aren’t talking to each other. And what it really comes down to is, as human beings, again, our ego lends us to hanging around with people who have the same viewpoints of us and always wanting to be right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Grace, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Grace Lordan
No, I’m good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Grace Lordan
I think I’m going to go with Madeleine Albright, who has passed away very recently, who said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Grace Lordan
So, I have a number of them, but one that I refer to a lot is one that was done in the ‘60s on the Pygmalion Effect that really demonstrated that when researchers went into schools and they picked out the kids that had the highest ability, and then when they went away, and they came back and they looked at the kids’ test scores, well, they actually were kids who had done incredibly well.

But what was really unique about this study was that the kids had been randomly selected on the first day. So, they weren’t the highest ability at all, and it really demonstrated two things. So, firstly, self-belief of the kids mattered because they have been given the label that they were high ability but also the belief in the teachers towards these students.

So, if you are somebody who is struggling or who isn’t doing incredibly well at work, it might just be that you don’t have a manager who’s giving you opportunities to thrive. And why I picked that one this evening is it has been replicated many times in companies to demonstrate that somebody who isn’t doing particularly well in one team under a particular manager, when they move and the manager actually believes in them and inputs into them and gives them opportunities, they do tend to grow.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And now could you share a favorite book?

Grace Lordan
I love a lot by Ryan Holiday. So, at the moment I’m reading Courage is Calling, which is an absolutely amazing book, and I’m really looking forward to the second part, which is coming out in September on discipline. I think the work he does that really links to stoicism and some other concepts that have been long forgotten, and bringing them into the modern day is just so unique. I would really recommend people reading him.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Grace Lordan
iPad. So, my iPad is used to check my emails. So, on every other device, I don’t have my emails come in and ping and distract me. I use my iPad as the accessory where I check my emails, and it’s been the one thing that has really allowed me to increase my productivity in the last decade.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you don’t view or reply to any emails on your computer?

Grace Lordan
No, or phone. And, at the moment, it’s in a different room, so the cost of me checking it is actually really high. So, if you said, “I want to go and just make a coffee, I’ll be back in two minutes,” previously I would be checking on my phone, answering some emails, getting distracted, and not being in the moment. Now, I have to physically walk out, get it. Sometimes I do do it on autopilot, I won’t lie, but the majority of time, it has become conscious. So, it’s not the tool itself, but it’s what it enables me to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Grace Lordan
Favorite habit is I was going to say the email checker, but I’m going to pick something different. It’s walking my dog. So, I walk her morning, afternoon, and evening, very short in the afternoon, and it’s really just a chance to get mindful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Grace Lordan
So, I say a lot that time is your most precious resource, and people do, on Instagram, let me know what they’re using their precious resource for. And so, we can’t get it back. So, really bringing people’s focus to time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Grace Lordan
www.GraceLordan.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Grace Lordan
Yes, I’d like people to make a pledge to have one small change in their life that will make them be awesome at their jobs. If they’re not sure what to do, it can be doing a time audit. So, figuring out what they did in the last week, breaking that time into 15-minute chunks, and dividing it into things that are time sinkers, things that give you happiness in the moment, and things that are going to make you move more towards your future self.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Grace, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck as you think big.

Grace Lordan
Thank you, Pete. You’re absolutely awesome.