244: Behavioral Science Insights on How to Have a Good Day, Everyday with Caroline Webb

Pete Mockaitis
Caroline, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Caroline Webb
I’m delighted to be here, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun and run out of time far too soon, is my prediction, because I enjoy so much of what you have to share.  But for starters, I’d like to get your perspective on… So you did the consulting thing, you were at McKinsey, and now you are working in this space, talking about cognitive behavioral science and neuroscience and the good stuff that plays into effectiveness.  So I’d love to hear, in your own brain, how did the strategy consulting thought process translate into what you’re doing now?

Caroline Webb
Well, like a lot of people, when you go into consulting, you think maybe you’ll be there for a couple of years, but actually I really found my thing at McKinsey.  And my thing was actually behavioral change work.  So, I was there for 12 years doing this kind of work, where I’m helping people be at their best; sometimes it’s a whole company, sometimes it’s a team, sometimes it’s an individual.
And I think really in many ways I kind of grew up there; I definitely honed my style and figured out what it was that I could do to be most helpful in this space.  And I got an amazing opportunity to work with so many different types of organizations, that it was really a beautiful path for 12 years.  There came a point where I was ready to have a bit more of a portfolio life, so that I had more writing and speaking and so on in the mix.
And so that was the reason that I left five and a half years ago.  But it was a very formative experience.  I will say actually the first career that I had through the ‘90s as an economist also shaped me.  I’m sure that’s true for everybody, even when you do different types of work over your life, there’s something that you get from every job that you’ve had that you carry forward that makes you better and stronger at what you do next.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.  And I’d love to get your take… I remember one of my first exposures to economics was my mom – she was taking some night classes to become the next CEO of the Teachers Credit Union in Danville, Illinois, where I grew up.  And I remember she was explaining to me these things called “utility functions” for people, and I thought, “Wow, that’s really interesting.  How did they figure out what a person’s utility function is and how could I know mine and how could I optimize it?”, were my immediate questions as a child.  And it became clear that it was kind of… I didn’t know the word “optimize” yet, but I was like, “I want the most of it.”

Caroline Webb
I was thinking, very precocious child.

Pete Mockaitis
So here you are, working in the space of economics, and then now here – the world of behavior.  So, tell me – the utility function – is it all bunk, or can I make any good, practical use of that?

Caroline Webb
Well, the reason I was interested in economics was because… I had actually always wanted to be a scientist, I wanted to be an astrophysicist, actually.  I wanted to work for NASA.  But then I took an economics class and I thought, “Wow, this is sort of head-explosive; I didn’t realize you could be rigorous and scientific about human stuff.”  And really at that point I thought, “No, this is actually what I want to do.  I want to focus on human performance and potential, and being structured and thoughtful about how to help people maximize that.”
And so I was absolutely interested in this idea of the utility function, which for those of you who haven’t done Economics 101 is essentially saying, “What are the things that you value and you care about?  What are the things that you get utility or use or pleasure or value from?”  And I was actually a pretty grumpy economist for most of my 20s, because a lot of what was going on in economics was saying that everybody was basically perfect maximizers of their financial situation, and nothing else really mattered.
And the behavioral revolution hadn’t really broken across a lot of the economics discipline in my 20s, and that was one of the reasons I decided to go into consulting, because I really wanted to get closer to the human side, the messiness.  What is it that we really care about day to day?  What is it that really allows us at the end of the day to feel like, “Yeah, that was great”?
And money – yes, we need money, but it’s also about relationships and connections, it’s also about feeling purposeful, that you’re spending time on the right things, and that you feel good about what you’re achieving, and that you feel like you’ve got the, I don’t know, the internal resources to handle whatever comes your way.  And that is what we value, that is in our utility function.  And so I will say that the years of consulting and coaching really took me closer and closer to the work I most love that I’m doing now.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, excellent.  And so, I guess my snarkiness with regard to utility functions is…

Caroline Webb
No, I’m with you on that one.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so pristinely quantified, like, “It’s equal to U to the third power minus 2U.”  And so, I was so intrigued and I guess naïve, because like, “Wouldn’t that be so cool to know that?”  It’s like, how do you measure someone’s experience of goodness?  Do they get a blood sample?  Well, maybe you could open us up there, it’s like…

Caroline Webb
I think that’s a good segue, because I will say that actually the thing that I took from all of those years working as an economist in public policy was that you could be rigorous about human stuff.  And I was fascinated by the growing body of research that was coming together on behavioral economics and actually explaining the real stuff, like how do we actually behave.  And then got very interested in behavioral neuroscience and behavioral psychology and did some additional training in those fields, and got certified as a coach, and really started to use the evidence base from behavioral science as a foundation for the work that I was doing with individuals and teams and organizations.
And I found over time that, first of all, there is really solid research that points to how we can feel better about every day and what we achieve at work.  And a lot of it isn’t getting translated into everyday advice that we can take easily.  And so, I became so fascinated by the fact that just using a little bit of insight on how the brain works would really help my clients see how it might help them to try something new in how they set up their day or how they handle a meeting or how they organize their to-do list.
And so, over time it became kind of my thing to use behavioral science and to be really rigorous and grounded in that way.  So, to the extent that we can quantify this stuff, I think that I have really kind of taken a position where I’m saying there’s a lot of really great research and evidence around this stuff, and wouldn’t it be amazing if we all knew a little bit more about it, because we could all be happier and more productive if we did?  And that’s what my work is all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic.  And much of this is synthesized in your book How to Have a Good Day.  Could you orient us a bit to that, in terms of the key themes or central message?

Caroline Webb
Yeah.  So the central message is really that we have a lot more control than we think.  There’s a lot of stuff that we assume day to day we have to just put up with – other people’s moods, or boundaries set by other people, or the way that situations seem to play out around us, and so on.  Obviously it is true that there is luck involved – if your boss turns up and he or she is in a cranky mood, there’s a limit to how much you can control that.
But what I’ve become interested in is the fact that actually research points to small things that we can do that have an actually disproportionate impact on how both we feel and actually how the people around us are able to perform and behave.  And so, that’s the message – we have a lot more control than we think, and tiny, tiny shifts can have a big, big impact.
And I’m very pragmatic, because your listeners are all busy and we’ve all got a ton of stuff to do, and we often buy books and mean to read them and then we don’t, because we don’t have time.  So I really wanted to think about, what is the simplest way that someone could build these ideas into their lives, without being annoyingly directive about, “This is what you must do at 8:00 am”, because everyone’s different.  But what is the principle that people can apply in their own lives?  So it’s super practical; that was really what I was trying to get to, was not just another think piece or not just full of stories.  It’s got research and it’s got stories, but it’s really, really practical.  So yeah, that’s my labor of love, it’s my life’s work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic.  Well, I’m eager to dig into things and so, I’ve got a number of areas I want to explore.  But first thing’s first, just to make sure we don’t somehow miss the golden egg.  Those things that have a disproportionate impact – could you share with us maybe the top one or two super leveraged things that you think folks who want to have great days often really should do right off the bat?

Caroline Webb
That’s a really cruel question, because there are about 100 in the book.  And everybody’s different, so I did write the book so that you could dive in at any point.  If you’ve got a difficult conversation you could turn to Chapter 9 and read the chapter on managing tensions and so on.  So, that is a tough question.  I can tell you some of the things that I love that I use for myself all the time.  I can say that there’s one very existential one and then there’s one very practical one.
So one very existential one is that we actually only perceive part of what’s around us at any given time, and we don’t know that because we’re not aware of what we don’t know.  Your brain can only process a certain amount of information at any given time.  We’ve actually got quite of lot of control over what we tend to see and hear in a situation.  And the rule that our brains follow is that whatever’s already top of mind for us, it will take that as a signal that we should see or hear things that relate to that.
So, you get out of bed on the wrong side of the bed, as our grandmothers might’ve once said, and suddenly everybody is incredibly annoying.  Actually what’s happened here is your brain is using this mechanism of selective attention to say, “Well, you’re in a bad mood, Caroline.  So, I guess I’ll make sure that you see every instance of everyone being a really big pain in the back side today.”  And the thing is, it works the other way around too.  So if you decide to look out for signs of collaboration in a meeting you’re not looking forward to, you are radically more likely to see them because you’ve told your brain that that’s what’s important.
And that’s the science behind a lot of “la-la” kind of advice about, “Just put a smile on your face and everything will be great.”  And truth is, that’s not true.  Sometimes, some days are just not great, or some meetings are not great, or some colleagues are not great.  But the truth is that we can see more of the good stuff that’s around us, that we tend to miss because our brain just uses the selective attention mechanism.
That’s pretty deep, because it does mean that the reality that you experience is way more in your control than you think it is.  And that’s something which means that every morning I intend to sort of set intentions and say, “Okay, what is it I want to look out for today?  What is it I really want to prioritize?  If there is anything difficult coming out, how do I want to go into that?”
And then the super practical thing that I might mention is singletasking.  So, as well as your brain only being able to consciously process a certain amount of information at any given time, it can actually also do one thing consciously at any time.  Only one thing.  So as you’re checking your email and browsing and flicking through something on your desk, you are actually asking your brain to switch from one thing to another.  And it’s really tiring and it uses up time and mental energy.  So, when we multitask, we feel super busy, but we’re actually slowing ourselves down.  We’re making between two and four times as many mistakes.
So one of the biggest things you can do to kind of get your work done more quickly and do it more brilliantly is actually to do one thing at a time.  Again, it sounds like our grandma’s advice, but the truth is that science now is very clear on this.  So I’m really clear that if I want to think clearly and I want to do good work and I’m struggling with something, I have to close down all of my browser tabs and shut everything off and really kind of give myself, give my brain the chance to do what it actually is able to do, which is to do one thing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you.  So, I want to dig in a bit deeper here, when it comes to whatever’s top of mind, the rest of the stuff you encounter filters through that, and that includes your mood.  And it really is kind of fascinating for me, is sometimes I will wake up and I really do want to sing with joy at the beginning of a new day; it’s like some sort of a Disney animation situation, like birds are chirping or something.
Sometimes I really do wake up like that, and other times for no good reason I wake up sleeping less that I would’ve liked to, and can’t quite fall back asleep.  It’s like, “Well, it’s 4:30 and I had kind of planned to sleep until 7:00, but I guess we’re done now.”  And so then as a result I’m a little bit grumpier about any number of things.  And so, I’m curious, when you’re in that moment, what is the go-to approach to kind of grab the steering wheel and point your focus and your mood to where you want it to be?

Caroline Webb
Yeah, that was a good way of putting it.  I mean exactly that – it’s a question of noticing your state of mind and knowing that your starting point is going to color what you see.  You’ll notice in a sense, because if you’ve ever bought a new car, you’ll see every car on the road that’s the same model.  If you’ve ever decided to boldly wear a new color to work and you kind of feel a bit self-conscious and it’s very top of mind for you, then you’ll see everybody who wears anything that’s that color all day.
So we know that what’s top of mind shapes what our brain decides to see, and what it doesn’t, what it decides is not relevant enough for you to notice consciously.  And it gives us a hint that actually it’s not that hard to redirect and to reset our filters actually.  It really does take just noticing where you’re at and saying, “What do I want to notice?  What do I actually most want to notice?”  That’s my go-to question.
I actually have a little… I use alliteration to remember: What is my aim, what assumptions am I making, and what’s my attitude?  So if I have a little bit more time, then I actually think about it in a more structured way and I say, “Okay, what really matters most to me?  What’s my real aim here?”  Because if you drift into a conversation you’re not looking forward to, the person’s perhaps been a bit of a jerk to you in the past, you are going to see everything that confirms that they are a jerk.  Confirmation bias is one example of this larger phenomenon.
And so, they might be a jerk, to be perfectly honest.  But the thing is, if you decide, “Okay, my real aim here is not to prove myself right that they’re a jerk, but actually to get something, to find some way that we can collaborate.”  I used that word earlier on.  Then you are more likely to see that.  If you check your attitude and say, “Okay, I can’t just say, ‘Right, Pete, now I’m going to be super happy.’”  You can’t necessarily just click your fingers, but you can say, “Okay, what is it that I can think about today that I’m looking forward to?”  And just have that top of mind, and that’s going to shape then what you see.
And then in terms of your assumptions – yeah, what you assume about someone is going to totally shape what you perceive.  And you can’t always, again, say… Sometimes you have assumptions about someone being a jerk because you’ve actually seen them be a jerk in the past, right?  So I’m not saying your assumptions are wrong, but you can say, “Why might that not be true today?”  And then you give yourself just the chance to widen the aperture of your perception to see a bit more than you would otherwise.
And it doesn’t have to take a lot.  Your hand can be on the handle as you’re going into a meeting, a conversation.  You can say, “Okay, what do I really want to notice here?”  You notice in the middle of a conversation that’s going south and you’re feeling annoyed, you can catch yourself, take a breath and put your feet on the floor, and just say, “Okay, what is it I really want here?  What is my real aim?”, knowing that that will actually have an effect on what happens.  It’s like “Choose Your Own Adventure” – we’re all at any given time choosing our own adventure by what we decide to have top of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Caroline, it’s funny that you bring up that “Take a breath, put both your feet on the floor.”  That was exactly the mechanism I stumbled into to calm myself down when I was a candidate doing case interviews to get into Bain.  And so, I’m curious, is there some behavioral science behind that particular practice, because it seems like we’ve both settled on that one?

Caroline Webb
Oh, sure.  The evidence around mindfulness is really mounting and is really compelling.  And mindfulness is essentially that practice of pausing, focusing your attention on one thing and not beating yourself up if your attention drifts.  And that’s really what’s at the heart of meditation practices and mindfulness practices of all sorts.
And the thing is that a lot of people have heard of mindfulness or they’ve heard of meditation, and maybe they tried to meditate for 20 minutes and it just felt so hard and so far from where they’re at.  I’ve always been really interested in, I suppose what I call “micro-mindfulness”, like what are the tiny moments of mindfulness that still seem to have an effect on the way that we feel and the way that we think?
And I’ve made it a mission of mine to dig out the research over the years that shows that smaller and smaller amounts of mindfulness still actually have an impact on your ability to regulate your emotions – stay calm, that is, and to think clearly about complex topics.  And sidebar – I’ve done the same with exercise; I’ve made it a mission to find all the research that shows that smaller and smaller amounts of exercise will boost your mood and your focus.  So, I’m really into the practicality of this.

Pete Mockaitis
Three seconds will do it.

Caroline Webb
Yeah, exactly.  And the smallest amount of mindfulness that you can do – absolutely.  Take one breath, notice one breath.  Put your feet on the floor, bring your attention to that.  It doesn’t have to be a lot to give you a bit of the bigger benefits that more mindfulness will give you.  And so, I use that sort of thing a lot in busy, difficult days.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, great.  Thank you.  So now I’d like to sort of think through when it comes to those high leverage points that make the disproportionate difference.  I read a lot about how the environment that we are in has a world of influence on our little thoughts, decisions, behaviors, and what becomes relatively easier or harder, and we do more of or less of those things.  So, what are your pro tips for molding our environment to set us up for success?

Caroline Webb
Yeah.  The thing you want to know here is that your brain is an associative machine.  You kind of know that already, in that one idea is linked to another and it’s stored in your brain as a memory.  You hear a song that reminds you of an amazing night out with your friends, or maybe the night you met your loved one, and it gives you a boost.  And that is the memory of a song being connected, being associated with a certain mental state, a certain emotional state.  And that’s the way that our brain works.
And so, if you associate a certain thing with another thing, then exposing yourself to the cue has a reasonable chance of triggering the state of mind that you associate with that cue.  The thing is, it’s just helpful to be aware of what your cues are and what your associations are.  We’re not all the same, so this is definitely an area in science which is a little bit fraught at the moment because a lot of people have said, “If you give people a hot drink, then that makes them feel warm and therefore they behave in a warm way towards people.”  There was a study, a very famous study that was done, that was showing that.  And I remember I was thinking, “Well, what about in the Middle East, where it’s really hot?  Maybe a chilled drink could actually make you feel good.  How does that really work?”
So the trick here is to really understand yourself and your associations.  So I put in the book something which has been quoted back to me so many times that I almost, almost regret it – but there was a song that Donna Summer sang called I Feel Love.  And I associated it with a show that was done by the Blue Man Group that I saw years ago, and it was the finale and it was so great.  I was so loving the show and it was amazing and I was super excited by the artistry and the magic of the production.  And so, after that it became my song for before I go on stage to give a speech.  I don’t always make people play it, like I’m home, but it’s just the song that I hum to myself in the bathroom before I go on.  It triggers that association in my mind.  It may not do that for you. [laugh]
But isn’t it interesting to think about what other things you associate with, I don’t know, high performance or whatever you’re trying to create?  So I think a lot about my office, and I know light is really, really important to me and it kind of brightens my mood to actually turn on a light.  Last week I was doing a workshop with a top team, a senior team at a charity, a non-profit, and I was paying a lot of attention to the room and the environment.  I was playing music when they came in, I actually borrowed a space heater to make sure that the place felt warm, I made sure that there were snacks so it felt welcoming and kind of nurturing.  So I think we just can think a lot more about our environment and know that it actually does have an impact on our ability to think and be at our best.

Pete Mockaitis
And I really feel that.  I think also with clutter.  It’s interesting – I am not a super neat freak, but I do really feel and notice how much better I feel in a tidy, organized environment, as opposed to a cluttered one.  And yet, I somehow seem to keep see-sawing between the two, as supposed to having a consistent tidiness.

Caroline Webb
Yeah, and that is a beautiful example of how you want to know yourself, because there are some people who’ll say, “Oh my God, I hate a clinical environment.  It makes it really hard for me to be creative.  I don’t know how you could possibly have a clear desk.”  So, it really is important for you to know yourself and to think, “Okay, what is it that’s going to really help me be at my best?”  Because it’s not always going to be the same.
I had to take a guess last week in the workshop with those folks, because I know that food, warmth and music are kind of universal human things, but when you get to the finer details, actually you really just need to know yourself and think about, “Okay, if I want to be super productive, what do I associate with being super productive?”  Maybe it’s being in a particular place, booking a particular seat to go and sit, and so on.  So yeah, it’s really interesting when you start to think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I guess I’ve been a little bit cautious.  I don’t know if this is scientifically held or not, so Caroline, you’ll set me straight once and for all.  When it comes to these cues and the triggers, I guess sometimes I’m worried that I might sort of, I don’t know, use it up, if you will.  So for example, let’s just say that Eye of the Tiger is a pump up song.  And so, if I am feeling sleepy and I think, “You know what?  I want to get pumped up, I should listen to Eye of the Tiger.”  And then I do that dozens of times, do I risk weakening the power of the Eye of the Tiger song cue because I keep playing it when I’m sleepy and I desire to be pumped up?

Caroline Webb
That’s interesting.  That’s a really great question.  What’s at the heart of what you’re saying is absolutely right – that if you start to associate Eye of the Tiger with feeling tired, then it may actually lose its power for you.  In general what we know is that the more that you repeat a connection, the stronger that connection gets.  That’s effectively the mechanism that sits behind learning – it’s the strengthening of the synapses between different neurons that relate to different cues, different activities, different thoughts and so on.
And so, what you want to be aware of is just notice the effect on you.  If it’s no longer working, rethink.  And I think you’re very smart to say actually you change over time.  We evolve as human beings, and the associations we have change.  If I started to associate I Feel Love with… If I were a terrible public speaker and I associated I Feel Love with feeling awful on the stage, that would probably not be great.  But as it is, I love speaking and it gives me such energy and I really adore it, so the positive connection is still there.

Pete Mockaitis
And this is bringing me back to a little bit of my teenage years, in which Tony Robbins was my hero – fun fact; as a teenager.  And I know he’s big on associations, whether it’s a “Yes!” or a power move or touching one finger to another.  Is it possible to make connections between kind of abstract or neutral cues so that you make them mean something for you by being in a particular state of mind, and then doing or saying or experiencing that which you desire to be a trigger cue?

Caroline Webb
Oh, sure, absolutely.  You’re in control of your own mind.  If you want to associate this thing with that thing, then absolutely.  It’s in your gift.  This is why rituals are so powerful, right?  I mean rituals on the face of it usually look a bit dumb, but if it means something to you and it helps you feel a certain way, then go for it.
I remember there was one time I was in a taxi, I was on my way to a concert that I was actually singing in.  So I was quite focused on the fact that I was about to perform.  And I didn’t really want to be having a big in-depth conversation with the driver at that particular… I’m quite a chatty person, but that was not what I wanted.  But anyway, never mind.  We were having a conversation and he was asking me what I do and I told him about the book and he said, “Oh, you know what?  You should issue a pebble with every book.”  I was like, “Oh my God.  What?”  And he said that whenever he has something that he’s working on for himself personally, he has a pebble in his pocket.  And so whenever he feels the pebble, it reminds him of the thing that he’s working on.
And that is an example of someone just deciding, “Okay, this is going to be my cue.”  It doesn’t matter – as long as it works for you, then it’s valid.  And the truth is there is no point me issuing a pebble with the book because pebbles might not do it for you.  But I do encourage people to think about what is the thing that’s going to remind you of the stuff that you genuinely want to do for yourself, and to be smart about putting those things around you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good.  And I’m already sort of brainstorming maybe it could be putting your phone upside down or the opposite way of what would be an intuitive means of picking up your phone.  And it’s like, “Why is my phone upside down?  Oh, because I want to remember to focus on this thing.”

Caroline Webb
Yeah.  And it doesn’t have to be too artful either.  It can be something as simple as just having a post-it note.  When I was writing the book, it was a kind of big undertaking to try and summarize all of neuroscience and psychology and behavioral economics and cover everything that anyone needed; make a kind of general book about how to have a good day.  And sometimes I did think, “Oh my God, what am I doing?  I can see why nobody’s done this before.”
And so, to help me stay focused and motivated, I had a post-it note which reminded me of the reader and the person who was going to use this.  And it just had the name of three clients – “This is for Sarah, for Nye and for Peter.”  And that was the thing that I went back to time and again.  I didn’t have to come up with an object to remind me of that.  I just had that written on a post-it note, visible, in a way that I could go back to when I needed to.
And it goes back to the fact that our attention is really the currency of our lives, and we don’t have an infinite amount of it.  In fact, we have a very limited amount of conscious attention, and we can choose where to put it.  And being smart about what is it that’s going to remind you of where you want to put it – that’s a large part of the game of figuring out how to be at your best and how to have a good day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is so good.  Thank you.  Now could you share with us a little bit, when it comes to energy – to keeping the levels high and available?  Because I think for me that’s another variable that makes all the difference day to day, in terms of some days are higher than others on the energy factor, and those days result in way more great output than the opposite.  So what could we do to get more good days there?

Caroline Webb
Well, there is a sort of motherly thing to say, first of all, I suppose, which is that it is true that getting enough sleep is probably the single biggest thing that any of us could do to live our best lives.  The research is really, really powerful on this, that the vast majority of us need eight hours – maybe a little less, maybe a little more – and that when we don’t get it, we really see our analytical capability slip – so your ability to solve puzzles and perform on tests and so on.  You can measure this.
And your ability to regulate your emotions.  There’s that phrase again that behavioral scientists often use, which is just to stay on an even keel when things happen that aren’t great.  And that’s quite apart from just your physical energy and your ability to just keep going.  And so, it really does matter to think about what it would take to prioritize that a bit more.  It’s one of the single biggest things you can do.
The other sort of motherly thing to say, I suppose, is that energy – we do associate it with perhaps physical activity, and there’s no doubt that when we’re more energetic we feel more like exercising, but it goes the other way too.  It really helps to figure out how can I get between 10 and 20 minutes of just slightly raised heart rate, knowing that that will then boost your sense of energy, not just physically but mentally and emotionally after that.  And so, I’m really thoughtful about how do I get just that little bit of exercise into the day, even when I’m feeling a bit tired.
And then there’s a bunch of stuff, which is just so interesting, about how you boost your mental and emotional energy, even on days which are really dragging you down.  A couple that I really like – it turns out that showing gratitude is really a powerful way of boosting your mental and emotional energy, and it’s actually quite a long-lasting intervention as well.  And I like to do that at the end of a day – to sit and say, “Okay, what were the good things that happened today?”  And sometimes it’s quite hard, because it was not a great day, believe it or not.  Sometimes there are things that are just, it’s a really tough day.
But as soon as you start to think about what were the good things – it’s again, focusing your attention.  You start to see the good things more readily and you start to remember things you would otherwise have forgotten.  And I sit on the couch with my husband and we do that at the end of the day, and it’s a really powerful intervention.
And then generosity – that’s the other thing that’s I think so fascinating.  Because when you feel worn down, it sort of counterintuitive, that being nice to someone else would give you a boost.  But actually it’s really, really reliable.  And you kind of know this – someone stops you on the street to ask for directions and for some reason you decide today you’re actually going to stop and help them.  You feel amazing; you feel so fantastic about your kind of bounteous-ness and your ability to give.  And it’s a very interesting little quirk to think about, “How can I do something nice for someone else?  How can I pay a compliment that’s totally unexpected?”  And to then notice how it gives you a boost.  Never mind them; I mean it’s nice for them too.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic, thank you.  So, you mentioned that you had the research on the smallest amount of mindfulness or the smallest amount of exercise.  And so, there you have it – 10 to 20 minutes of slightly raised heart rate.  So you just mean like walking would make a huge difference.

Caroline Webb
Exactly.  I’m a huge fan of walking.  And I think it’s not always easy to get to the gym.  In fact, actually I’ve given up on gym memberships.  I bought an elliptical trainer years ago.  It was a really bad elliptical trainer, I will say, and it was in a sale.  But it was all I needed.  I just had it close by and so I could jump on that.  And so anytime I was getting a bit stuck on something or I was noticing I was a bit cranky, then I would get on that and just peddle away for sometimes as little as 10 minutes, and then I would notice my head clearing and an insight coming.  And the research is really clear on that being an effect of a small amount of cardiovascular exercise.
But yeah, the other thing that I do a lot is walk.  Going to a meeting, just figuring out what would it take for me to just walk to this meeting or walk to this appointment.  And I kind of have a rule that if it’s less than half an hour… It’s very rare if you take public transportation or you drive that you can get anywhere major within 20 minutes or so.  It’s usually 20 to 30 minutes, at least where I live in New York.
And so, if it’s less than 30 minutes walk, I will walk; I will take the walk.  And I’ve just got into the habit of doing that, and sometimes it’s just 10 minutes and then it’s a no-brainer.  Yeah, so I’m really, really looking out all the time for these tiny little opportunities – taking the stairs rather than the elevator if it’s less than five floors – that sort of thing.  Or less than three floors, depending on how energetic I’m feeling.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good.  Well, Caroline, now could you share with us – maybe we’ve got the energy locked in, but that’s not always the same thing as motivation.  So, what’s your take on ways to get and stay motivated when you’re just not feeling it?

Caroline Webb
Yeah, it happens to us all, doesn’t it?  I have a lot of things that I throw at this, and I’ll share a couple of my favorites.  One thing that we know is we know that purpose, feeling a sense of purpose, feeling that what we’re doing has a point to it, is inherently motivating.  And then you say, “Okay, but the whole point is that what I’m doing seems useless, so I don’t feel motivated to do it.”  So there’s the first step, just to say, “It’s very rare than anything you’re doing is truly, truly, truly pointless.  What is it that actually is going to result?  What good thing is going to result of you doing this thing?”  And you sometimes have to push through a few layers of snark to get to something that actually feels good.
But it really is worth just, again, refocusing your attention on, “Okay, what is the ultimate payoff?”  Maybe it’s not to you; maybe it’s to someone else, but what is the real benefit of getting this done?  And if the payoff is to someone else, then the payoff effectively to you is to make them feel good and to actually do something useful for them.
And it really helps me to really picture it being done at the end of the day.  So if I’m really struggling with something I’ve been procrastinating on, then what you’re really trying to do is get your brain to put more weight on the future benefit that is going to result from you doing the work, and to have that offset the feeling of the immediate cost of getting something done.  Your brain is not very good at thinking about abstract future things.  It’s very good at focusing on the stuff that’s right in front of it.
And so, if something is just a bit difficult to get done – maybe it’s an email you’re putting off writing – I’m sure everybody has one of those – you’re really focused on the fact that you don’t want to write this email.  And it’s much harder to think about the relationship benefit that’s going to flow from you actually getting it done.  So really just picturing, “Okay, how great is it going to feel when I’ve done this?  How great is it going to be for the other person, who’s not going to be waiting anymore on this email?”  That really helps.
And the other thing that helps is actually the other side of the equation, which is not just amplifying your sense of the future benefits of getting it done, but actually reducing the feeling of the initial cost of putting in the effort.  And what do I mean by that?  I mean often there’s something we’re putting off because it just feels too hard or too complicated and we actually don’t know the way in, and we keep on coming back to the thing on the to-do list, because it just seems like so much of a pain.
So, I’m a big fan of asking, “What’s the smallest – very, very smallest first step you could take to get this task on the road?”  So maybe this email you’ve been putting off.  I can’t guess what you’re putting off, but if I think about an email that I’m putting off, I’ve got to decide on whether I’m going to do a particular piece of client work or not, and I keep on not being sure whether this is going to be the right piece of work for me, whether I’m going to be the right person for them.  And so, I keep on not answering.  And I will say I’m not being kind of completely egregious about this – I did tell them that I wouldn’t get back to them for a few weeks.
But the thing that’s getting in the way is that I know that there’s someone who knows a bit more about that client and I haven’t emailed her to ask her.  And that’s the simple first step that I could take, is just to drop her a line and say, “Hey, can we chat?  I just want to talk this through with you and see whether you think this is a good fit, both sides.”  So I did that, and it was great.  She wrote right back and now I’m having that conversation tomorrow, and then I know that I’ll be in a position to write the more difficult email.  And so the small first step, the tiny, tiny first step – sometimes you have to really think, “What is it that’s actually blocking this, and what is the first tiny thing I could do that is so small I can’t argue that I can’t do it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it.  That reminds me of David Allen, Episode 15, in terms of zeroing in on the next action, and when it’s so dead, dirt simple, you feel just silly, like, “Of course I could do that, that’s fine.”

Caroline Webb
Yeah.  And I’m such a big fan of the ridiculously small steps that you obviously can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent.  Well, Caroline, tell me – is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Caroline Webb
Well, I don’t think so.  I hope I’m giving a bit of a sense of the kind of work that I do and how practical it is.  I will say that the work that I do really leaves people space to figure out how to apply this stuff in their own lives.  And I’m really pragmatic about that, and I’m always really delighted to hear people’s stories about how they’re using these principles and these ideas in their own lives, because there are so many different ways of applying them.  So, if any of your listeners happen to look at the book or try any of these ideas out, I’d love to hear how they work for you and what exactly you’re doing with them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent, thank you.  And what would be the best place to contact you for that?

Caroline Webb
Well, I’ve got a website, which is CarolineWebb.co – that is .co, not .com actually, because it turns out there are millions of Caroline Webbs and I did not get CarolineWebb.com.  But CarolineWebb.co has all sort of resources and contact details and so on.  And I’m also on Facebook – Caroline Webb Author, and on Twitter – @Caroline_Webb_ – every day, sharing nuggets of science-based advice.  And I’m active on both, and respond to everybody on both of those platforms.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect.  Thank you.  Now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Caroline Webb
There is a quote that I used right at the beginning of my book, which is something that actually a lot of people have grabbed on to.  I just love it.  It’s from Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life, and she says, “The way we spend our days is, of course, the way we spend our lives.”  And it’s just this beautiful sense of actually what we do every day really is the building blocks of our lives.  And if we can get those things right, then actually that is the way that we are living.  And so, it gives us back that sort of sense of actually this is something that’s under my control to some extent – the felling that the small stuff matters.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent, thank you.  And how about a favorite book?

Caroline Webb
Oh, man, I read about 600-700 books for the research of this book.  And I love them all, so what can I say?  I’ll tell you what I will say about this – I really, really value reading fiction.  So I obviously write non-fiction and I read a lot of non-fiction, but I find that I am a better human being when I’m reading some fiction.  It kind of takes me out of myself.  Talking about meditation and easy ways to kind of get some mindfulness – it kind of brings my focus to one thing and stops the chatter in my mind.  So I just finished reading Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, which is a very interesting book about refugees.  And it was a beautiful, beautiful creation, so that was the last thing I read.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.  And how about a favorite tool?

Caroline Webb
Oh, man, a lot of those too.  Well, I do like tools that really help to lighten the cognitive load on my brain, because we can only ever hold three or four things in mind at any given time, as you know if you try and remember a list of seven things.  So, I really value software like Evernote, which allows you to not try and remember anything, but just to kind of dump it in and go back to it whenever you want, and to really just always outsource your memory, outsource the storage capacity of your brain.  So yeah, Evernote has been a big thing for me in these last few years.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Caroline Webb
Well, I’ve shared a lot of my habits in this conversation.  Yeah, I don’t know what I would add to the habits I’ve described here.  I do have a habit which we haven’t talked about, which is to make sure that I treat seeing friends as important as having a meeting.  So, when you look at all the research on human connection, it turns out that one of the most powerful things you can do to boost your own sense of wellbeing is to pay attention to the quality of your relationships.
And so, I’ve done that for many years, even when I was at McKinsey, living the consultant life.  If I was seeing a friend, I just treated it as a meeting, and of course sometimes you move meetings, but not very often.  And so, I just give it that priority and know that it’s as important for my sense of self and my ability to be at my best as anything else that I’m doing.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget or piece that you share in your trainings or speaking or in your book that has a whole lot of Kindle book highlights or retweets or that comes back to you again and again?

Caroline Webb
It’s really interesting.  People just love different parts of the book, so there is no specific… There are loads of people who’ll say, “This thing that you say about what’s top of mind really shapes our perceptions of what seems to happen” – that gets retweeted a lot.  The Annie Dillard quote that I mentioned gets retweeted a lot.  I think one of the things that people say they like a lot is the summaries at the end of each chapter, which just summarize all of the advice that’s in the chapter.  I will say my brother actually recommends my book based on the fact that people don’t even have to read it in order to be able to use it.  So I think that aspect of my work seems to have resonated with people.

Pete Mockaitis
High praise from the family.

Caroline Webb
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action that you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Caroline Webb
That’s a good final question.  I think that the challenge, or the opportunity, let’s say, that I will put in front of people is just to notice when you are focused on what you can’t control and to remember that you are going to potentially miss the things that you can control, and that there’s an enormous amount of power in saying, “Okay, I know that this or this is not great right now, but what is there that I can control?”  There might be one of those smallest first steps that you can take that is in your control; there might be something that’s familiar to you or that you know for sure that enables you to take that step.
And it might be that you can control your attitude, even when everything around you is just incredibly annoying.  You can decide to control your attitude and decide what your attitude wants to be.  You can say, “Okay, this is all terrible, but what can I choose to learn from this?”  So I think it is that opportunity to focus on what we can control, rather than things we can’t.  And that makes a huge difference to how every day feels.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  Well, Caroline, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing these perspectives.  It’s so, so useful and I can’t wait to do some of them myself right away, from building the cues to ensuring that even if 10 to 20 minutes of slightly raised heart rate doesn’t make me feel like a macho man, it makes a huge impact for my energy.  And so, all this good stuff.

Caroline Webb
Wonderful, wonderful.  Thanks for the conversation, it’s been great.