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Aug 30
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484: The Overlooked Basic Skills Essential for Career Success with Dean Karrel

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Dean Karrel says: "The most important thing is to be yourself, enhance your own skills and make yourself better. That's how you advance your career and find new opportunities."

Dean Karrel makes the case for mastering the basic skills that will put you above the rest.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How “B students” can achieve more in their careers
  2. How to survive and thrive in office politics
  3. The secret to building unshakable confidence

About Dean

Dean Karrel is a Career and Executive Coach. He is the instructor of twelve courses with over 600,000 views available on LinkedIn Learning and has also been in senior leadership positions for more than three decades with major global publishing companies, including 22 years at Wiley. Karrel has hired and trained thousands of people at various stages of their careers, motivating them to maximize their abilities.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Dean Karrel Interview Transcript

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

Dean Karrel
Pete, thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to join. And you’re getting close to 500 of these podcasts. That’s really impressive.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Yeah, it is, it is coming up and I’ve got something special I’m thinking about for number 500. I hope it comes together.

Dean Karrel
I was wondering if you were going to do some special event. That’ll be very exciting. So, you’ve got certainly a lot of us listening when number 500 comes up.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Well, there’s so much good stuff to talk about and I want to first hear your tale. I understand you have entertained dreams of being a standup comedian and your name is pronounced Carol not Karrel.

Dean Karrel
Carol, that’s correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’ve got to hear, do you have one or two great jokes you think could be stage-ready?

Dean Karrel
Well, I’ve got a number of jokes that could be stage-ready, unfortunately, I don’t know if they’d be good for the podcast. It’s funny, over the course of my career, people have said to me, “Dean, you tell great stories, you tell great jokes, you should be a standup comedian.” Well, the funny thing is, it’s like if you’re in front of an audience of colleagues and friends, and you’re making fun of yourself or you’re making fun of senior leadership of the company, of course everybody is going to laugh and they’re going to enjoy it.

The trick is how do you do that in front of an audience that doesn’t know you? And so, early on, when I first graduated from college, I actually went to a couple open-mic nights. I’m living in upstate New York, Rochester, New York and I go to the Holiday Inn Chuckles Club or something on a Friday night open-mic night. And I think the crickets are still chirping. It is really tough.

I talk about it in my career about confidence and how important it is to have confidence. Well, that shattered my confidence, trying to tell jokes and be a standup comedian. It is something that these people I give a lot of credit, because talk about being vulnerable and being out there, and you’re standing on a stage. So, I quickly learned that standup comedy was not going to be my profession.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, that’s amazing. They make it look so easy, the great comedians, but behind the scenes, there are many, many jokes that have died after testing and you’re only seeing the greatest hits by the time the Netflix special comes out.

Dean Karrel
Well, it’s interesting, I talk about in business the importance of planning and preparation. And what’s interesting, if you go back to standup comedy, we see Seinfeld, or you see your favorite comedian, or you see the comedian who appears at the comedy club in Chicago or New York or LA. They just don’t get up there and start telling jokes. They’ve gone through weeks and months of planning and prepping and honing their skills so there’s a correlation to that to business, how important it is to be ready. And it’s also knowing your audience.

You asked me for a couple of jokes right now. Well, it’s not appropriate. It’s tough right now for this audience. And there’s a whole correlation to all of these things from comedy to actually to the business world of planning and preparation, and also knowing your audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I want to dig into a lot of the expertise and tidbits along these lines in terms of knowing your audience and doing the preparation. And so, you’ve done many courses and many years of coaching. I’d love to start with maybe what’s perhaps the most surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made when it comes to professionals at work, like over and over again you see this?

Dean Karrel
I think over and over again we try to impress or we get intimated by people with lofty titles or advance degrees, and we try to be people that we’re really not. I use an example of when I first got into business, I was really impressed with some of the colleagues that I worked with. I thought they were smarter, I thought they could do things better than me, and I’m kind of really intimidated by that, and I found myself trying to do things that really weren’t myself.

And you see in business where people say, “Well, I need to have an MBA in this,” or they get impressed by somebody who’s a senior vice president of marketing or sales or the CFO or CEO. And you need to step back and realize you have to be yourself and how do you enhance your own skills. And sometimes we get intimated and sometimes it comes back to confidence. But the most important thing is be yourself and enhance your own skills and make yourself better. And that’s how you advance your career and find new opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you say to yourself, could you share an example of the opposite of that? Like, it’s a mistake to try to do this when that’s not you.

Dean Karrel
Well, I remember going to meetings when I first got into business, and I’d be intimidated by seeing somebody that maybe had a lofty title and somebody with an advance degree. So, I would speak up in meetings because I thought that would be an impressive thing to show other people that I could hold my legs and hold my stance in front of a large group of people. And I would talk about things and I would go down a road that really didn’t need to be done. Or I would extol achievements that I had made in the sales field in trying to impress others. And I quickly came to realize, you know, that’s just not being myself.

I was trying to please others and at the same time what I was doing was not really being authentic. I wasn’t being genuine or real. I was just trying to prove myself to other people. And that never works. There’s a lightbulb that goes off in everybody’s career when they realize, “You know what, I just need to be myself.” Not everybody is meant to be the CEO. Not everybody is going to be the Chief Marketing Officer or the best sales professional.

So, how do you separate yourself? And how do you enhance your own abilities? And that’s the lightbulb that comes off in some people’s career early on, in some people it never goes on. But you have to realize that, “Where do you fit in business? And how do you maximize your abilities to be successful?”

Pete Mockaitis
And when you’re doing those things, trying to prove that you’re smart, which is unattractive for everyone around, it’s like, “Okay, Dean, you’re wasting our time. Okay, we already know that you’re fine, which is why you have this job and, yes, we already know those accomplishments. Thank you for reminding us. Can we get onto the topic at hand please?”

Dean Karrel
Well, we all know those people. We go into a meeting and somebody will say, “Well, I’m the senior vice president of XY & Z.” Or, there’s always that one person in every company who is the first person to talk in every meeting, they’re the know-it-all. And behind the scenes, we’re all saying, “Oh, I wish that person would just be quiet.” And they develop a reputation of being the know-it-all, and that’s never the right approach. It’s also the person, again, every company has them, and they’ll say, “Well, you know what, during my years at XYZ business school, I learned the following techniques.” Well, we don’t care.

Pete Mockaitis
“At Harvard.”

Dean Karrel
Right? But every company has these people. And sometimes we can get caught in the trap of thinking, “Well, maybe that’s the route we should take.” And I came to realize, and it’s the wakeup call, saying, “That’s not the approach you need to do. You need to be yourself and enhance the abilities that you have and not worry about anybody else.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, one of your tenets there, I’d say within that realm, is that it’s really key to master the basics. And that sounds wise. Sure, we should master the basics. But can you tell us, what do you mean by that and sort of like what’s the alternative route that is a poor choice?

Dean Karrel
So, we all get caught up, let’s say, with learning advanced techniques in marketing or social media analyses and organizational development, mergers and acquisitions, and that we forget about, and I think it’s learning and going back to mastering social skills, people skills, soft skills. How do you handle yourself in a meeting? How do you handle public speaking? How do you work with a micromanager? The basics of business are lessons that they don’t teach at a business school.

Oftentimes, we learn these from, hopefully, our first sales manager, our first manager in whatever business that we happen to be in that will help coach us and train us. But a lot of times it happens through osmosis. We’d go to a meeting and we realize, “You know what, I shouldn’t be using my cellphone, I shouldn’t be texting.” Or, we’ll read about stories about that but no one has actually ever trained us in not to do these things.

So, over the course of my career, I’d always have, like, the people I work with have called them Deanisms, and I put together a list of about 200 different topics. And I wrote about a page, a page and a half on each just covering everything from meeting conduct to how to work with your managers, how to work with colleagues. We all talk about being authentic or being vulnerable and words like that, but what does that really mean? So, I went through all of these and I wrote just simple subjects of basic skills and how that can help you be successful in business.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s so wise. And I think I remember in sort of my earliest career moments, just like these simple things, like, “Okay, you have a spreadsheet. There’s a column for a category. Try to make those categories a sort of a simple set of, I don’t know, 5 to 20, or whatever as opposed to your own invention for each category. Otherwise, it won’t make any sense later on when you try to filter or pivot a table or whatnot that’s not useful. Or when you attach a file to an email, double-click that file to ensure that it is the correct version of the file and not a prior version of the file.”

And then I had a great mentor who was managing me in a meeting, and he saw that a partner was doing this as he was sending something out to the client, and he said, “See, Pete, even partners do that.” And it’s so true, it’s like those are the things that can embarrass you or can really distinguish you, I’d say, particularly in the early phases of a career in terms of like, “Okay, this person just gets it. I don’t have to explain all of that.” And that just sort of builds trust and credibility and all kinds of good things.

Dean Karrel
Some people do just get it and they understand it, they’re quick and they figure it all out. And you touched on something with Excel which, ironically, is one of the topics in the book that I wrote, is that I’ll have people come up to me and they say, “You know, I’m awful with math and I can’t do Excel.” Well, you have to learn the basics of Excel or any spreadsheet package, whether it’s Google Sheets or Excel, whatever spreadsheet package. You have to be able to put together a basic P&L, you have to be able to work your way through a basic P&L because that also holds true for our personal lives too.

How are you managing your own budgets at home? You have to learn basic math skills. But, again, that’s taught as a major course – analyses, spreadsheet analysis, and what-ifs and so forth. But for the average person, let’s say like me, the B student, did I ever have the course in saying how you use Excel for basic work in business and the importance of it? And I think it’s essential. I’m not saying you need to be the CFO or an accountant but you need to be able to navigate your way through Excel, a basic P&L, and a spreadsheet and a balance sheet.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s one basic. And you had mentioned, okay, you outlined about 200 of these. I’d love it if you could zero in on perhaps the most leveraged two to five-ish of these basics. And my criteria, I’m getting really choosy with you, are that they’re, one, often overlooked, like you might be surprised at how often people just sort of don’t do this; two, it makes all the difference in the world in terms of you do it or you don’t do it, and the impact of folks on it; and three, it’s a lot of bang for your buck in terms of, “Hey, it only takes a couple of minutes and it makes a world of difference.”

Dean Karrel
How about if we start off with a story? I’m a firm believer in knowing your audience and I think that’s so important no matter what job you have and what business you’re in, and I learned this from my very first manager. And he would talk to me and say about the importance of knowing the customer, learning a little bit more about them before you meet them.

So, my first sales manager was a religious person. He never pushed this on any of us who reported to him but we all knew he was a religious person, and he would always write personal notes. This is the early days of email, before email. He’d send a personal note saying how we were doing and how we could continue to improve. He was always big on that.

And that first Christmas, when I was working for him, I was sending out cards to all of my friends and I included one for him, and I had one that was a cartoon of Ziggy and a bear on a pair of skis, and when you open the card up, I wrote, “Happy Holidays – Deano!” And I mailed it off to my manager named Gary. And, literally, two days later, I get the Christmas card from him and he wrote a personal note. He talked about the blessings of the holiday season. And as soon as I got it, you know what, “I forgot, he always writes personal notes and maybe I should’ve sent him a religious card or whatever.”

When I saw him two weeks later, he said to me, “Hey, by the way, way to know your audience,” and he laughed and I apologized saying, “Gary, I’m sorry I didn’t send you a religious card.” And he smiled, he said, “I wasn’t looking for a religious card. I know I never talk about religion with anybody. But the fact is you just did a…” what this day and age would be like an e-card, an e-Christmas card, and it was a toss aside, “Happy Holidays – Deano!”

So, fast forward a year later at a holiday season, I get a Christmas card from him that’s religious in nature again, and then he had kept the same card I had sent to him, and he said, “Thinking of you – Gary.” And it’s his subtle coaching way of saying to remember, “Always know your audience.” And what’s funny now is we’ve exchanged that card for over 30 years, back and forth, with the same line, and, “Happy Holidays – Deano,” and he writes down, “Thinking of you – Gary.”

And so, the message there was great coaching. He didn’t go write it at my face, saying, “Dean, what are you doing here?” And it’s something that’s just a nice lesson through the years we’ve gone through. So, knowing your audience also then ties in with, Pete, you know, today, I’ve spent some time and, obviously, I’ve heard your podcast before, but I went to listen to the ones you’ve just done recently so I get a feeling of  your style, you’ve got a great sense of humor, you always ask great detailed questions that dig in deeper. So, it’s like knowing the audience and knowing who you are, getting a feel for you before you and I are chatting today.

So, to me, that’s a critical lesson. Is that a course at a business school? Is that a course in a community college? No, this is something that I think are basic skills and lessons.

Pete Mockaitis
And there it’s just a matter of kind of asking yourself a couple key questions in terms of, “Okay, what are they? What are they into? What might they appreciate? What’s something that’s unique to them?” And that’s good. Well, you talked about humor and happy holidays, I’m thinking about, I believe this is the episode of 30 Rock where so he made a card and said, the front said, “Happy Holidays,” and then you open it up and it said, “Here’s what terrorists say – Merry Christmas.”

Dean Karrel
That’s good. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s outrageous. So, that’s what I’m thinking about when you go on standup comedy and about knowing your audience and cards.

Dean Karrel
Well, it ties in maybe a little bit also about you and I meeting for the first time today through this podcast. You asked me how do I pronounce my name. And I would bet you, over your course of your lifetime, Pete, your name has been pronounced more than a few times. And I call that basic skill of I make sure that on LinkedIn you phonetically spell it. It’s like it’s very simple but it’s, to me, that’s a sign of respect of saying, “You asked me how to pronounce my name. I take the time to learn your name.” Basic skill.

When your name is mispronounced, and you talk, let’s say, in a business setting, if I’m seeing a new customer, or a new client, or whatever, and I mispronounced their name, immediately you get off on the wrong foot, right?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. That’s true. I was in a training once and someone said, “Oh, Pete Macchiatis. I just love that name. It reminds me of a macchiato.” I was like, “That’s completely wrong but I’m not going to take that from you if you’re getting such delight.”

Dean Karrel
Yeah, well, then you take it to the next step. How often has it been misspelled?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right, yeah. Plenty.

Dean Karrel
You know, my name has always got – people usually misspell it with two Ls and other people get away with it for once, twice, maybe three times. Then after the third time, it’s like, “Hey, wait a minute now.” So, again, a basic skill of respect. It also ties in remembering people’s names. We always see people say that, “Oh, I’m awful with names.” Well, we all struggle with names sometimes. We can’t remember everybody we meet.

But how many times have you met somebody, Pete, you’ve met them three times, and then they’ll say to you, “Hey, it’s nice to meet you.” It’s like, “Where have you been? I’ve met you three times already, and you still don’t know my name, or you still don’t even remember that you’ve met me.” And, again, basic skill but it carries so much weight, and I think is it make or break for business success? No, but compiled and put together with all the basic skills, I think it can separate you from other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, absolutely. Okay. So, we’ve talked about knowing your audience and knowing names and pronunciations. So, what are a couple other big ones?

Dean Karrel
How about first impressions? You know, we all say we shouldn’t make judgments off a first impressions? But it is critically important in this day and age whether it’s through an email, whether it’s through a phone call, whether it’s through a first-time meeting with somebody. And my story that I have in the book that I love telling is this is one where there was a day that I wasn’t going to be seeing clients, I wasn’t going to be meeting with customers, and I dressed casually to work, which, for me, is khaki pants and a more toned-down dress shirt.

And I’m going to the coffee shop across the street, and there’s a gentleman, two people in front of me, and this is a coffee shop I go to every day. They’ve got a great staff. Lovely people work there. And, all of a sudden, they got a little bit behind, they got a little slow. And this guy, two people in front of me, started to get in the face of the woman who was making the coffee. And there was a point where I just said, “Hey, buddy, take a break. She’s doing the best she can.” And I said it really politely.

Well, this guy turned around and looked at me like I was, you know, who am I. And he had a few choice words for me. And at 7:30 in the morning, I wasn’t about to start getting in an argument, but I finally just said, “Hey, take it easy, will you?” So, fast forward two or three hours later, a sales manager I’m working with comes to my office and he says, “Dean, I’m interviewing candidates for an opening position, for a new opening position. I know you’re not planning to see somebody today, but do you mind spending a few moments with this person?”

Well, you know where this is headed. About two seconds later, the guy from the coffee shop walks in, and he looks at me, and I just said to him, “Hey, how was your coffee?” Well, he went white. And, again, it’s a first impression, he was a good salesperson, but you learn a lot about somebody and how they act when no one’s looking. And, to me, that’s something. If he treats people like that in a coffee shop, this poor person who’s working so hard, how is he going to treat a customer? How is he going to treat clients if that is his style when he thinks nobody around from that company is going to see him?

And we ended up hiring somebody else, and that wasn’t the overall deciding factor, with that person’s attitude, but because we found somebody who was really superior in all of their skills. But what that did was a memory for me of just how this person acted. And so, that’s a nice story, a reminder that all first impressions do make a difference.

Pete Mockaitis
And that kind of gets me thinking about gossip in the office. And I don’t know how Stephen Covey said it in terms of like honoring those who are not present or something like that. it’s like, “Boy, if you’re saying these things to me about that person, you’re probably saying some things about me to others. And that just kind of doesn’t feel so great.”

Dean Karrel
I’ve talked about gossip. I think that’s one of the great destroyers of corporate culture and it gets people all wound up, and it’s part of human nature. We like talking about things and you can’t eliminate it completely. But 90% of the time, what gossip does is it ends up getting people more stressed out. And it’s not senior management that gets stressed out, it’s the rank and file, it’s the support team, it’s the assistants, it’s the entry-level people who they hear gossip, they’ll hear that somebody’s been laid off or fired, and then the gossip and the rumors starts. And before you know it, you’ve got a whole organization that’s tied up in a knot.

And a gossip to me is a destroyer. And I say, unless you hear from the CEO or corporate communications, what you’re hearing is speculation and gossip, and turn it off and don’t listen to it. I think, again, that’s one of the lessons in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I very recently heard, I realized a turn of phrase, I don’t know where it came from, and it was just to, “Talk to people not about people.” I thought that is a nice encapsulation of it. And the thing is talking to people, it takes more courage and humility than just shooting your mouth off for stress relief or whatever.

Dean Karrel
Right. Tied in with gossip is also using the BCC on your email. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. And whether it’s blind carboned or confidential. Confidential is another one. I think confidentiality is, again, once one person knows, two people are going to know, and it’s not confidential anymore. And I’ve had a few experiences in my career when I learned my lesson about that. And you’ll find out about confidentiality lasts about 10 minutes and then it spreads like wildfire.

So, if you don’t want somebody to know about it, and if you said something bad about somebody, then don’t say it, or see them face to face and talk about it and discuss the issue. Don’t put it in writing, don’t spread it around, and all of that does is cause ill will and it’s not good for you or that other person.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. Well, while we’re on this kind of a topic, a number of your basics fall into the category of office politics. How should we think about that? And for those who say, “Oh, I hate politics,” like, how do we survive and thrive in that environment?

Dean Karrel
Well, we all hate politics, all of that. It’s part of an organization and it’s part of all of the company’s culture. And a lot of that starts at the very top. And if you’ve got a good CEO, you’ve got good leadership, good companies, politics are usually nipped in the bud. Jeff Bezos doesn’t put up with that at Amazon. And Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn has a great culture in that organization. Every company has politics but it’s nipped in the bud.

Where you see things are going sideways, or where management is not involved, or if they’re in lofty towers and they’re not visible, they’re not being seen, and I’ve come full circle on this in my career. When I first started, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, the CEOs were the best, they’re at the top.” Well, there are lousy CEOs and there are really good CEOs, just like there are good managers and there are lousy managers.

Again, early on, I thought, “Well, you know what, I can adapt and I can change.” And people who put up with office politics, managers who are micromanagers, they’re not going to change, so that’s where you, again, have to look after your own interest and find that next opportunity. A lot of people are put in high positions, lofty positions, and they’ve never been trained on what to do in those positions. People are managers, but that’s a big step in becoming a leader. And leaders don’t put up with politics, they don’t put up with gossip. It’s focused on the customer, focused on success, profitability, and so on. And I think some people have got it and others don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say don’t put up with politics, what are some things in particular that encompasses this set of behaviors to avoid?

Dean Karrel
It’s communication. And if you have a problem with somebody, or something is going on, don’t send emails, and don’t wait for next month’s townhall meeting, do it today. Get the group of people together today. Or if you’re hearing about something that’s going on in the organization, if you’re a leader in the company, or if you’re department head, don’t sit on it, address it.

Too often now, we wait for, “Well, you know, we have a department meeting on Friday and we’ll discuss it,” or, the buzzword now, “Let’s have a townhall meeting next month on the 15th.” If things need to be addressed, whether it’s politics, rumors, gossip, where we’re going as a company, don’t wait. Do it today. And I think the best leaders address those things and nip them in the bud and that’s how you become successful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, any other critical basics that make a world of difference?

Dean Karrel
Well, again, going back to knowing your audience, the people I’ve worked with, they’ve heard this mantra, and when they hear this podcast, they’re going to hear it again. It’s planning and preparation. And that’s one of my primary messages throughout my career. Again, I was a B student, and I got to be a B student because of extra credit.

And I used to take the time to plan and be ready, and whether it was a test to take, a course to do, and in business, seeing a new customer or seeing a new client, I always make sure I was ready to go. I use the analogy of you don’t start cooking and getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner the night before, right? You’re going to have a problem. And you’ll hear people say, “You know, I’m seeing a customer, I’m seeing a client,” and it’s 24 hours before they’re going to go. You can’t do that. You have to be planned.

The Thanksgiving dinner, you’ve got to defrost the turkey five days early. You got to know what other people are going to want to eat. You have to get all of the side courses ready. So, Pete, do you think I sat down for this podcast at 4:00 o’clock or 3:00 o’clock or whenever and said, “Oh, here we go”? No, I went and learned a little bit more about you. Again, as I said, learn and listen to some of your other podcasts.

That is not rocket science. But planning and preparation is something that people just take for granted sometimes. And I think it’s one of the basics that has helped me become more successful than maybe I could’ve been in my career. I mean, it’s helped me move to the next level of taking that time to know customers, know the people, do the research.

If I’m going to visit a publicly-traded company, spend time on their website to learn about their financials. Spend time to look for presentations they’ve made, press releases. All of these can help you and give you a competitive advantage and just make you more prepared. Also, that ties in with helping you be more confident. And if you’re prepared, you’re ready, you’ve taken the time to know everything you can, so it just builds your confidence, which I think is one of the other critical aspects of the basics is confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, do you have a checklist there that you sort of know, “Okay, preparation complete”? I guess my own process is I imagine kind of.
“What might they ask me? And am I ready to answer that? And what would I most not want them to ask me because it’s trickier, difficult, or embarrassing, or I don’t think I’ve got a great answer for it? And how will I handle that?”

And so then, once I feel good in the sense of, “Okay, I think that no matter what kind of thing they throw at me, I’ve got a decent response.” That’s when I feel prepared. But do you have a particular set of issues or research activities you like to make sure you do with your time?

Dean Karrel
I think you nailed it just there. If you think they’re going to ask you, “Hope they don’t ask the embarrassing question,” they’re going to ask the embarrassing question. And if there’s something going on with your company, or something with your product or service offering, they’re going to ask that questions. You have to be prepared for handling objections.

Ironically, that’s one of my courses at LinkedIn Learning is handling objections. And if you’re ready, you know you’re going to get questions about whether it’s your price, or your product, or your service. If you’re surprised about questions that are being asked by your customer or your client, then you haven’t done your proper planning and preparation.

So, the checklist is knowing what questions you’re going to be hit with, which are the objections. And having your checklist ready with the key features and elements, whether it’s yourself, whether it’s your business, and having those, the top three things that you want to be able to get at, not the top 10. What are the key critical things that I want to make sure Pete knows about me through this podcast? And, again, that’s not that difficult to do but not everybody does it. And, again, that goes to being prepared and being ready.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you mentioned confidence is key, and one of the means by which you acquire that is by doing the proper preparation.

Dean Karrel
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some other components to have that confidence?

Dean Karrel
So, to build your confidence is it does take time. And if anybody says they’re always confident all of the time, then they’re lying. We all go through things over the course of our career and it’s like a rollercoaster. And I think people need to hear that. I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve been in business a long time. And when I say to people, “You know, I still have my confidence or I get nervous sometimes.” Hey, Pete, I was a little nervous getting ready for you today.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intimidated.

Dean Karrel
That’s showing, Pete, the vulnerable side, the authentic side of me but it also shows that I’m ready so I can be confident as we begin to speak. And I think that’s so important in knowing and realizing in the course of our careers, we’re going to have moments where our confidence is rocked. And the trick is, how do you overcome that? And then it goes back to building on your strengths and working in areas where you know you can have some successes.

But if you think, over the course of my three plus decades of being in business, I’ve always been, “Hey, I’m Dean Karrel. Let’s rock and roll.” Oh, that’s a lot of baloney. I’ve had moments where I’m like, “What’s next?” I mentioned I do these courses with LinkedIn Learning and, Pete, like you, I’ve spoken my whole life. I speak in front of audiences all the time, and sales meetings through the years, 500 people, 300 people, whatever.

I’m out at LinkedIn’s studios out in California, and I’m ready to tape a course and, all of a sudden, my knees start shaking. And I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, I know how to do this.” But my confidence was a little unsure because it was a new step for me, something new to me. And the trick though is then being able to overcome that and realizing, “You know what, I have done this before. I have been successful in this before.” And I said, I took a deep breath, did a little spin around the block, so to speak, in the studio, and then we’re ready to roll.

But I think people need to hear, if you’re new to business or even if you’ve been in business for 10 years, 15 years, you’re going to have moments where your confidence is rocked. And the trick is how to overcome it, and you go back to your strengths, which again, for me, are the basics – planning and preparation, working with people, understanding people, and so forth. And, again, that ties back to some degree just my philosophy of business, and it starts off with being good to people.

People say, “Is that a business skill?” I can’t tell you, Pete, how many people come up to me and it’s a good feeling, “Hey, Dean, you’re so nice. You’re nice to people.” Well, how hard is that? But it differentiates me from a lot of people. I say hello. “Why, is that a business skill?” How many times have you walked down the hallway, Pete, and somebody looks at you and they just grunt or they don’t look at you at all? Does that happen?

Pete Mockaitis
Right, yeah.

Dean Karrel
So, people say, “Well, Dean, you always say hello.” “Wow, there’s an MBA course. Dean says hello.” You know what I mean? But that’s part of my philosophy. If you’re a B student, you got to work hard, and that’s one of my messages often, it’s work ethic. So, I sound like everybody’s grandfather here, but you have to have a good work ethic. And, to me, that’s a basic skill. It’s integrity, character, reputation, credibility. I mean, these are, to me, are cornerstones of being successful in business that they don’t teach at any school.

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

Dean Karrel
Well, the last message is it’s like you always have to know your priorities. And what really matters, you know, at the end of the day our families have to come first. So, we all talk about we want to be the most successful business person, “I want the corner office,” or, “I want to make more money,” but at the end of the day, it’s knowing your priorities. And what really matters in life and I think family comes first.

I worked my tail off throughout my career but at the end of the day I’m proud that I didn’t miss some of my son’s events, I didn’t miss my daughter’s basketball games, and I think that’s a message that we all talk about, but I think we all need to follow and follow even better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dean Karrel
Well, it ties in with business, and the quote side of it is that, “The true test of a person’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” And I think that ties in with my basics, being good to people, and being who you want to be. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and be happy with what you’re seeing? So, John Wooden actually has that quote, which I don’t like using sports people for quotes, but it’s his is such a good one. “The true test of an individual’s character is what they do when no one is watching.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dean Karrel
I’m a big believer in I wish I had taken more psychology classes in college and afterwards. And I’ve done that later on. And I’m a believer in emotional intelligence. So, Daniel Goleman’s studies on emotional intelligence. There’s other great studies, Travis Bradberry’s EQ 2.0. I think how we follow human nature, human behavior, I think those are all valuable skills for all of us to learn in business. And I think those are studies that I really enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Dean Karrel
Two of them. One is, and this might surprise you, coming back from the sales industry, but it goes back to when I was a kid. I read Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. And just the trauma that this individual went through, the struggles that he went through, and I actually wrote to Arthur Miller, and it goes back to being good to people. Arthur Miller wrote me back, and I was a high school kid. So, that book had an impact on me and my life.

And there’s a business book that I recommend to everybody and I think it’s essential reading, it’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. And it’s 200 pages, inexpensive book. It’s worth everybody’s time to read. I think it’s a really valuable book of how you work in an organization, work with teams, and how you need to get things done.

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

Dean Karrel
I love my iPad, I love my iPhone. I don’t use them 24 hours a day but it keeps me organized, it keeps me on top of things, and I use them for all of my chores. Going back to your Excel question, I live on Excel too, I keep everything organized. I’m an organize freak. I drive people nuts with that that I used to work with because I’m really organized. Because if I don’t stay organized, I find myself going crazy. So, this keeps me focused is when I have all of my tasks, my to-do list.

You’ve had a number of people on your podcast talk about being organized and having things and journals and notes. Well, I agree with that, so those tools and everything that I can use that can help me stay focused, I think, is valuable for me.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote is back to you often?

Dean Karrel
Everybody always says to me, “Dean, you always talk about planning and preparation.” I also talk about you have to believe in yourself. Because, again, I have had moments where I’m like, “What’s this all about? And what am I doing?” And we all go through that at various stages of our life, in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. So, my nugget is you’ve got to believe in yourself. And not every day is going to be perfect.

And on my work now as a coach with people, I see rollercoasters that people are on, and it’s like, “Oh, man.” There’s a fine line, as you know, Pete, between coaching and being a psychologist, and I have to put the barrier up sometimes. And you see people that are really going through some struggles in their business careers, and I always go back, you have to believe in yourself and go back to the things that work for you, which ties into mastering the basics. And then the other nugget that everybody I’ve ever trained and worked with is family comes first, that I’ve already mentioned that. It’s so true.

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

Dean Karrel
Well, I have a website, you know, TheSkyridgeGroup.com but, frankly, what I’m on every day, and I post a couple of times a week, is on LinkedIn. I urge people to follow me. I post videos that are a minute, two minutes long. And I had one yesterday about the importance that we have to have of following up with people who are looking for jobs, or people who write to you and say, “I need help looking for jobs.” And sometimes we duck those calls and sometimes we don’t respond to those emails. So, on LinkedIn, I have posts and videos that are up all the times. I would actually direct folks, follow me there. I think you’ll like what I have to talk about.

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

Dean Karrel
Well, it sounds like a catchphrase but you always have to be learning. I went back to college at a later stage of my career, four years ago, and it was the best thing I ever did. I went back to New York University, NYU, I took courses in human resources management, two exceptional professors, and I was with people there half my age.

So, always be learning, always look for new opportunities. You don’t have to take the MBA course. Take any course. Read. You got to read books. You got to take a seminar. Listen to these podcasts. If you pick up two tidbits, three pieces of information, what a great investment of your time. And my challenge is, to everybody, never stop, whether you’re 20, 40, 60 or 80. It’s always going to pay you dividends.

Pete Mockaitis
Dean, thanks for this and I wish you all the luck with your mastering of basics and your many other adventures.

Dean Karrel
Pete, I really enjoyed speaking to you and I’m excited for every podcast obviously, but you’re getting close to number 500, so you can count on me there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you.

Dean Karrel
Thank you again.

Aug 28
0

483: How to Take Control of Your Attention with Nir Eyal

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Nir Eyal says: "It's not good enough to know what we should do... It's also about knowing what we should not do."

Nir Eyal identifies the surprising reason why we get distracted and how you can overcome it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why mainstream productivity advice doesn’t work
  2. The four steps to becoming indistractable
  3. The real motivation for all human behavior

About Nir

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The M.I.T. Technology Review dubbed Nir, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir’s writing has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. Nir is also an active investor in habit-forming technologies. Some of his past investments include: Refresh.io (acquired by LinkedIn), Worklife (acquired by Cisco), Eventbrite, Anchor.fm, and many others. Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Nir Eyal Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nir, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Nir Eyal
It is so good to be back. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’ll have a lot of fun talking here. It’s funny, your book wasn’t even close to out but we were already talking about it last time. So, I’m excited to dig into greater detail here.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, me, too. Well, what can I tell you? We got a lot to talk about since last time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we do. But, first, I need to at least touch upon your habit of running barefoot in New York City. What is this? Isn’t that gross and dangerous?

Nir Eyal
Oh, yeah. This is weird, right? Let’s see, so a few years ago. First of all, I want you to know, I have, for almost my entire life, hated physical activity of any sort, shape, or form.

And then I read this book called Born to Run which is this book that explores or has this hypothesis that. The way we actually kill the animals wasn’t by arrows and spears at first. It was that we evolved the ability to run after our prey. And, in fact, our people in Africa still, to this day, who do what’s called subsistence hunting, they run down animals, and that’s their dinner.

A long way of saying, I just thought that was super cool, and I thought, “Well, if that’s how we were born to run, right, to borrow from the title of this book, well, maybe I’ll give it a shot.” And part of the reason I always hated running was that I constantly had knee pain and joint pain and shin splints, and I decided to, first, use minimalist shoes, very, very soft, very, very small-soled shoes. And then I actually moved to barefoot-barefoot, like nothing on my feet, and this is the first time that I have run without pain. I still get winded, right? I run for a long time, or I run fast, but I don’t have anymore muscular pain or joint pain.

And so, I’ve been doing it for about four years now. And I moved to New York City a few years ago, and I kept it up around here, believe it not. I get a lot of funny stares and funny looks but, thankfully, haven’t had any injuries.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. I guess I’m just imagining, no offense to New York, coming from Chicago, like a broken 40 bottles on the sidewalk, and “Argh.”

Nir Eyal
You know, what we’ve done here. You know, Indistractable, my new book, has so many pearls of wisdom. Now that people have heard this crazy thing I just told you, they’re not going to listen to anything else I say.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, credibility shot.

Nir Eyal
Exactly. This is not what the book is about at all. But I think if there’s one thread that does run through a lot of different things I do, is that I love to challenge convention, right? I love to overturn apple carts. And in an age where, you know, the entire time I’ve grown up, I’ve always been told that we need lots of cushion beneath our feet in order to protect us and help us run faster. And Airs and Reeboks, they all tell us that that’s what’s needed.

And so, I just really love this way that actually turns out that these thick-soled shoes may actually be part of the problem for a lot of runners, not for everyone, right? If you like to run and you like a lot of cushion and you’re not having any pain or discomfort, well, then good on you. Keep doing it. But, for me, it wasn’t working and I tried something else. And, in my case, it was running shoeless.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nir Eyal
And, by the way, I don’t run everywhere in New York. Like, there are paths that you can run on where it’s relatively clean and relatively safe.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, you’ve never had a nasty shard of anything get wedged into your foot and cause it to bleed?

Nir Eyal
Don’t jinx me, bro. But so far so good. No, I’ve never had anything. Because what’s interesting about the way we run is that if you run correctly, you should land very softly on the ground.

When you run without shoes, you actually can’t run incorrectly. It hurts. You feel it immediately. You get this feedback right away. And so, I don’t land very hard on the ground. It’s amazing how our feet have evolved to prevent injury.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m satisfied.

Nir Eyal
Take my word for it. You don’t have to do it. It’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so you’ve been putting a lot of time in research into this notion of becoming indistractable. Can you share with us kind of why did this become a passion point for you and you’ve chosen to invest your energies here?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so I wrote Hooked about five years ago, this book which was subtitled “How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” And that book is really about this question that I had at the time of, “How do we get people to use our products and services?” So many products and services out there are wonderful, they’re great, they improve people’s lives, if they would only use them.

And so, I wanted to understand the psychology behind how some of the world’s most habit-forming products do what they do, right? How do companies like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and WhatsApp and Snapchat and Slack, how are they designed to get us to keep coming back? And wouldn’t it be great if we could take that same secret sauce and apply it to all sorts of products and services, right, to build healthy habits?

And so, that’s what Hooked was all about. I’ve looked for this book, I couldn’t find it, so I decided to write it myself. I taught for many years at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business, and at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, and that was the subject of my first book.

Now, shortly after that book was written, about a year and a half, two years after that book was written, I found that my behavior was changing in ways I didn’t always like, to be honest with you. I remember this one occasion, I was sitting with my daughter, and we had this afternoon together. And we had this book of activities that daddies and daughters could do together. And one of the activities was to ask each other this question, and I’ll never forget the question. The question was, “If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want?”

And I remember the question but I don’t remember her answer because when she was telling me the answer to this question, I was busy on my phone. I was checking some bit of internet nonsense. And so, that’s when I realized, “Wait a minute, I wrote the book on how to build habit-forming technology, I understand the guts of how these companies do what they do, I teach companies how to build healthy habits, and yet, here I am, getting unhealthfully hooked myself.”

And so, I thought, “Wow, if I’m struggling with this, then I bet a lot of other people are struggling with this as well.” And this was several years ago. But, now, we definitely see that. At the time when I wrote Hooked I had to convince people that Facebook and Slack and WhatsApp and Instagram and all these products didn’t just get lucky, that, in fact, they were designed with consumer psychology in mind, that consumer psychology really matters, that these people understand what makes you click and what makes you tick better than you understand yourself.

Today, I don’t have to sell that anymore. People know this is true and, if anything, the problem is we overuse these technologies. So, that’s when I decided, as I do in the case of every time I have an idea for a book, I read everything I could possibly find on the topic of distraction, of psychology, of addiction. And what every other book said, the conventional wisdom, what we all hear today is that technology is the problem, that these companies are addicting us, that it’s melting our brain, that it’s hijacking us.

And the more I dove into that psychology, I realized it wasn’t actually true. Not only that, not only was it not true, it didn’t work, right? They all basically say the same thing. They say, like, basically the problem is technology, right? Cut it out of your life, do a digital detox, go on a 30-day whatever retreat, just get it out of your life, and that’ll solve the problem.

So, I did that. I followed the advice. I did what they told me, I went on a digital detox, I bought a feature phone that didn’t have any apps on it, I bought a word processor on eBay from the 1990s, they don’t even make them anymore, but has no internet connection, and that’s what I used to do my writing, and it didn’t work because I still got distracted.

I would start to write, and writing is really hard for me, it doesn’t come naturally, and I would say, “Ah, this is really hard. Maybe I’ll just read this book on the bookcase for a few minutes because that’s kind of related to my work,” or, “My desk needs organizing,” or, “I should probably take out the trash.” And I found myself constantly getting distracted, and that’s a big problem because, the fact is, if you want to do creative, in my field it’s writing, but no matter what creative endeavor you want to do, without focus, without doing what it is you decide you’re going to do, nothing gets done, right? All of your amazing genius ideas stays stuck in your head. You have to produce.

And this idea that the technology was the problem, one, it didn’t work, two, it’s super impractical because my audience and I live online, right? I need these tools to reach people who might be interested and who could be helped by the work I’m doing. So, all in all, I just was really disappointed with the current solutions so I started diving to the psychology of, “Why do we get distracted in the first place?’ I mean, to me, that’s such a fascinating question.

Aristotle and Socrates had this question 2500 years ago, this question of akrasia, they called it, this tendency to do things against our better interest. So, the question is, “Why is it that despite the fact that we know what to do, we don’t do the right thing?” We all know there’s tons of self-help books in the nutrition space, and they all basically say the same thing, right? Like, we know how to get healthy. Workplace productivity, we know how to be productive, just do the work, right? We know how to have better relationships. Be fully present with those you love. Why don’t we do it?

And so, that’s really the question I seek to answer in Indistractable, “Why don’t we do we say we’re going to do? And what would life be like if we were indistractable?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s really juicy there. So, this is an ancient problem, the human being becoming distracted and pursuing things that are not in our best interest. So, the devices, I guess, Nir, you’re somewhat off the hook for addicting us all the more and destroying our lives. They are not 100% to blame and you’re sharing that is also, I guess, reduced as well. So, let’s hear it. What can be done with regard to this human tendency to defeat distractions, be they digital or otherwise?

Nir Eyal
Yeah. Well, I will tell you that in this day and age the technologies have gotten so good and so pervasive, as they have become more persuasive, that the world, if you don’t know these techniques, if you don’t become indistractable, they’ll get you. Not only that, they’ll get your work colleagues, they’ll get your kids. Like, the cost of living in an age where there is so many good things to explore, whether it’s online, whether it’s in social media, on YouTube, there’s so many interesting things to explore.

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad per se. it’s just that if you don’t have these techniques, it is easier than ever to succumb to distractions. So, it’s not your fault that these things exist. But here’s the sad reality. It is our responsibility. This stuff is not going away. And if you wait for legislators to do something about it, if you hold your breath waiting for the geniuses in Washington to fix the problem, you’re going to suffocate.

So, what I learned in this process is actually a very empowering and hopeful message, that we have more power than we know. That, in fact, by calling these things addictive, by thinking that they’re hijacking our brain, we are actually, ironically, making it so. It’s called learned helplessness. That when we say, “Oh, those algorithms are hijacking my brain and it’s addictive.” Especially when people talk about their kids, by the way, it’s fascinating, right? They’re absolutely convinced that there’s nothing they can do about it, that these kids are just addicted to these video games.

And, in fact, there’s been many studies done on people who are actually pathologically addicted to various substances like alcohol, like the various drugs, and it turns out, the number one determinant of whether someone recovers after rehab is not the level of physical dependency, it’s actually their belief in their own power to change.

And so, that’s really the message. If there’s one message of this book, it’s to look at the root causes of distraction and then do something about those root causes, not the proximate causes, starting with, and this is kind of, I’ll just name the four parts of the indistractable model, then we can dive deeper into the parts that interest you.

So, the indistractable model has these four parts. So, I want you to kind of picture in your mind here a number line, right? So, it extends left to right, it extends out from and into infinity, let’s say, so you have this horizontal line on one side, and on the right side, we have traction. Traction is any action that you take that draws you towards what you want in life, okay? The word traction actually comes from the Latin trahere which means to draw towards. So, things that you do, actions you take that move you towards what you want in life.

What’s the opposite of traction? Distraction. Right, the opposite of traction is distraction. Distraction is anything you do that moves you away from what you want in life, right? So, it’s anything you do unintentionally. So, the idea here is I’m not going to be the moral police and tell you video games are bad, but watching a sports match is somehow good, right? If it’s something that you want to do, whether it’s check YouTube, look at Reddit, watch sports games on TV, whatever it is you want to do, if you plan to do that activity, that quote “the time you plan to waste is not wasted time.” As long as you plan to do that, it’s traction.

If it takes you off track, right, if you’re with your daughter like I was, and I plan to spend time with her, and then I get distracted with my phone, well, that took me off track, it made me do something I didn’t want to do, so that’s distraction. Okay, so that’s traction and distraction.

Now, you’ve got this horizontal number line. Now, imagine two arrows pointing to the center of that number line, and these two arrows represent the things that either lead us to traction or distraction. They are two types of triggers. We have external triggers and we have internal triggers. External triggers are the things that prompt us to action in our environment that move us towards traction or distraction. So, the pings, the dings, the rings, anything that moves you to traction or distraction.

What also moves us to traction or distraction is the internal triggers which aren’t around us, they’re not in our environment. These are cues to action that start from within us. And what’s probably the biggest revelation that I had writing this book in the past five years was that distraction starts from within because all human behavior, everything we do is not motivated for the reason most people think. Most people think that motivation is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This is called Freud’s Pleasure Principle. Not true. It turns out we are not motivated by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Neurologically speaking, it’s pain all the way down.

All human motivation is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort. It’s called the homeostatic response. So, physically, if you think about, okay, you feel cold, you put on a jacket. If you’re hot again, you go indoors, you feel hot, you take it off. If you’re hungry, you feel hunger pangs, you eat. When you’re stuffed, okay, that doesn’t feel good, you stop eating. So, those are physiological sensations, this is called the homeostatic response.

The same is true to psychological sensations, right? So, when you feel lonely, what do you do? You check Facebook or maybe Tinder. If you feel uncertain about something, before you scan your brain, what do you do? You check Google. If you are bored, what do you do? You check Reddit or news or YouTube or all these different products to satiate that uncomfortable emotional state. Even the pursuit of pleasure, in fact. Desire is uncomfortable, right? There’s a reason we say love hurts, right, because even wanting something is psychologically uncomfortable.

So, this means, if we believe that all behaviors is prompted by the desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management. And if we want to do the things we say we’re going to do, in business, in life, in our creative endeavors, we have to understand how to master these internal triggers. So, that’s the first step. Master the internal triggers. The second step is make time for traction. The third step is to hack back the external triggers. And the fourth step is to prevent distraction with pacts. So, that’s basically the outline of this book. Lots of tactics, that’s the overall strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m fascinated by this principle here that it’s all pain avoidance and, I guess, you’re putting desire in the category of pain because I’m thinking, “Well, we certainly do things just for the fun of it.” Like, going on a honeymoon, I’m thinking.

When I went to Hawaii with my wife, it’s like there wasn’t something we were trying to escape. I mean, yeah, it was cold in Chicago but we were primarily thinking, “Oh, Hawaii. It’s going to be sunny and fun and enjoyable, and we’ll just get to be together.” So, I guess I’m just wrapping my brain around this notion that it is, in fact, all pain avoidance as opposed to pleasure seeking.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so it’s a perfect example. So, why does the brain make us feel good, right? If the idea is that we have this pleasure response, we definitely have this response to pleasure. But, in fact, it turns out that we don’t do things because they feel good, we do things because they felt good in the past. We have a memory, an association that creates a desire, a longing, an uncomfortable itch that we seek to scratch because we have this memory of how it felt in the past. And that’s the driver. Even the pursuit of pleasure is itself an escape from discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing because I’ve had previous experiences of going on vacation or taking a break from responsibility and just hanging out with people and enjoy. Because I’m recalling that, I’m experiencing a desire, a form of discomfort, it’s like that is the thing I want, and I’m trying to escape that desire by doing it.

Nir Eyal
Right. Exactly. So, that longing, that wanting, that craving, is, in fact, what’s driving your behavior, driving your action.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued now, I’ve heard in the realm of marketing, for example, that it seems like it’s almost always a better pathway in terms of effectiveness to deal in pain as opposed to pleasure. So, I’ve read that before, I don’t know. You do a lot of research. Can you lay it on me some studies that point to this truth?

Nir Eyal
Yes, so it’s not that we create pain, that’s sadistic, right? We would never want to create pain in our customers. It’s that the role of all products and services is to scratch some kind of itch, right? If the customer doesn’t have any kind of discomfort, there’s nothing for us to do. They don’t need anything. So, if you’re cool, if you’re chill, you don’t need anything.

So, for example, I was on a flight, this is a terrific example of the point. I was on a transcon flight and there was a guy in the aisle seat across from me, and he was clearly passed out, he had the pillow under his neck, he had a blanket on, he was sound asleep. And the flight attendant comes by, and she says to him, “Sir?” He’s sleeping, he can’t hear, so she says it again, she says it a little louder, she says, “Sir?” He doesn’t wake up. Finally, she says it even louder, she said, “Sir!” He wakes up, he’s like, “Whoa, whoa, what is it?” She says, “What would you like to drink, sir?”

And this is a perfect example of, “Would he want a drink?” “Yes, when he’s thirsty, not when he’s asleep.” And so, this is a terrific example of how, yes, we want things, right, he would want that water but only if he felt the internal trigger, only if he had that thirst, and that drove his desire to ask for the drink. When he’s sleeping, he didn’t feel the internal trigger. He didn’t feel that pain point, and so he didn’t need anything to help him out in that circumstance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I’d love to talk about some of these internal triggers and pain management things on the inside because I think the external stuff, you’re right, I think we’ve hard a lot about, like put the technology away, avoid the temptations or distractions, lock it in another room or leave it in your bag or your car or whatnot. And I think I’m noticing more and more in my own life, it’s sort of like, “You know, if there is a bowl of chips in the kitchen, I will probably eat a chip. If there’s a bowl of grapes in the kitchen, I’ll probably eat a grape.”

And there you have it. It’s just that simple. It’s sort of like the environment itself is extending an invitation, “Would you care for a grape? Would you care for a chip?” It’s like, “Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I would. Thank you.”

Nir Eyal
If it’s right there, absolutely. So, this is called Lewin’s Equation, and we’ve known this for decades and decades now that our behavior is shaped by the person and their environment. So, the easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it. So, if the external trigger is right there in front of you, it’s more likely that you will do that behavior. It doesn’t mean you’re powerless. And so, this is a super, super important point.

It is true that the world today is more potentially distracting than ever, and, by the way, it’s only going to get worse. If you think things are distracting now, wait a few years until we have virtual reality and God knows what else technologies we’re going to have. However, the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.

So, as powerful as these technologies are, as powerful as these algorithms and these things that we’re carrying around with us everyday in our pockets, these minicomputers, as powerful as they are, we are more powerful if we plan ahead. If we don’t plan ahead, they’re going to get you, right? Just like that bowl of M&Ms, it’s going to be sitting there waiting for you. But we can plan ahead. We can take actions today that prevent us from getting distracted in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what are some of these most highly-leveraged actions we can take today to help ourselves in the future?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so the first step has to be mastering these internal triggers that we talked about, that very first step. There’s only two ways to do that. We either fix the problem, we fix the source of the discomfort, or we learn methods to cope with the discomfort.
I give people lots of techniques that they can use that actually come from acceptance and commitment therapy, that come from a few other techniques. It really comes down to three things to master these internal triggers, to cope with these uncomfortable emotional states. It’s either reimagining the internal trigger, reimagining the task, or reimagining our temperament. And there’s all kinds of tools and techniques that we can use to do those three things.

One of the things we need to do, one of my favorite things that we need to remember, is not to believe these myths around our temperament. This is probably one of the most common self-defeating behaviors we see. You might’ve heard of this concept of ego depletion, this idea that your willpower is depleted, it’s kind of like a gas tank. This got me all the time. I used to come home from work, I’ve had a long day, I deserve to relax, so I switched on Netflix, and I’ve got no more willpower left, it’s been depleted so I’ll open up that pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

And it turns out, this idea that willpower is a depletable resource got a lot of credibility at some point, that there was some studies done a while ago now, more than a decade ago, but it turns out it’s not true, that these studies did not replicate. This idea of ego depletion is simply not true except in one case. That one case is when you believe it is true. So, if you were the kind of person who believe that they were spent, that their willpower is a limited resource, you behaved accordingly.

So, one of these lessons around reimagining your temperament is to stop believing these myths that you have an addictive personality, or you have a short attention span, or that your willpower is depleted, unless of course you actually do have a pathology, which is the case for some people but of course not the majority of people. But these traits, these beliefs that we have, that our temperament is somehow making us do these things are really self-defeating. We have to reimagine our temperament. That’s just one technique among many, many, many others in the book around mastering these internal triggers.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give me, perhaps, the most compelling study or evidence bit about willpower being depletable is a myth and, in fact, you can go on and on and on?

Nir Eyal
Right. So, the right way to look at it, so this is an idea that was proposed around it. If that’s the case, if willpower is not a depletable resource, then what is it? It turns out that willpower, and this was proposed by Michael Inzlicht. He said that willpower is simply an emotion. We wouldn’t say, “Oh, I was having a great time until I ran out of happy,” right? That’s ridiculous. So, we don’t run out of an emotion.

And so, similarly, that the antidote then is to not to give ourselves this excuse that we deserve a break, that we’ve run out of willpower, but rather that this is a passing feeling. And so, I give techniques in the book around how we can deal with these uncomfortable emotional states. Just like any internal trigger, we can use these techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy such as the 10-minute rule, which I use probably every single day.

The 10-minute rule says that when you’re about to give into something, right before whether it’s that piece of chocolate cake, or, “I’m just going to check out something on YouTube, or look at my email even though I’ve planned something else to do,” we give ourselves 10 minutes. Ten minutes to let ourselves feel that uncomfortable emotional state, try and get to the bottom of what’s creating that emotional state, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, whatever it might be. And then, in 10 minutes, if we still want that thing, we can give into it. So, that’s just one tactic among many.

In fact, I have people kind of track their distractions throughout the day so that they can figure out the three categories of, “Is it an external trigger that caused the distraction, an internal trigger that caused the distraction, or was it a planning problem?” The planning problems are the things that we didn’t properly plan for on our day. That’s probably one of the most common problems that I see these days, is that, in this day and age, if you don’t plan your time, someone else will.

And so, you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from, right? Think about that for a minute. How can we call something a distraction if we didn’t plan something else to do with that time, if we didn’t plan the traction in our day? So, I actually have an online tool that I built specially for this, anybody can access it, it’s free, where you can go and actually plan a template for your ideal week.

Now, it doesn’t mean you’re going to follow it rigidly, and if you go off track, you’re going to beat yourself up. No, no, no, that’s not the answer. The idea is that you have a template that you can look at and say, “Okay, what did I plan to do with my time, even if it is going on YouTube or Reddit or whatever, what did I plan to do with my time? And if I did anything that’s not that, that’s a distraction.” But you can’t do that unless you make time for traction, unless you do what I call turning your values into time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the reimagining there with the willpower consideration. And how do we do the reimagining of trigger attacks?

Nir Eyal
Right. So, reimagining the trigger is all about changing our perception of that uncomfortable emotional state. And this comes back to self-talk. A lot of people, when they feel these uncomfortable emotional states, they’ve been conditioned, because of many of these distractions all around us, to impulsively jump to it. And the idea, instead, is to reimagine how we think about those internal triggers so that when we feel the uncomfortable state, we tell ourselves a different narrative. And people tend to fit into two different kinds of narratives. I call it the blamers or the shamers.

The blamers say, “Ah, it’s the distraction doing it to me. It’s the technology’s fault. It’s doing it to me.” The shamers say, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong about my temperament,” as we talked about earlier. And the answer is neither of those things. The answer is that it’s not about blaming or shaming. These are actions that we take and our actions can take, or can change, that is.

So, if we respond differently to these internal triggers, if we see them as, “Okay, this is difficult, this is boring, this is hard. I’m stressed right now, but that’s how we get better.” That’s my path to improving this skill, for example. It’s a much healthier way to look at it. And then reimagining the task, I draw from the work of Ian Bogost who’s done this amazing research around how we can make anything fun. And he actually hates, you know, we probably remember as a kid, the Mary Poppin’s method of putting a spoonful of sugar on stuff, and he says, “That’s actually terrible advice,” that we don’t want to layer…

Pete Mockaitis
Sugar is unhealthy.

Nir Eyal
Sugar is terrible enough. Right. Exactly. And it’s a purely extrinsic reward. And we know the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. When something is extrinsically pleasurable, we don’t stick with it for that long. We do it just for the reward. That’s the only reason we do it. So, when you pay people, for example, to draw a picture, if you pay them, they actually draw less creative art than if you say, “Hey, just do your best at drawing something creative,” because if they’re doing it for the extrinsic reward as opposed to the pleasure of doing something creative.

So, what Bogost suggests is to focus more intently on the task, add constraints to the task, so that is, in fact, the element of fun. And fun, ironically enough, doesn’t have to be enjoyable. Now that sounds weird, right? Isn’t fun supposed to be enjoyable? Well, not necessarily. We can use this idea of fun, focusing more intently on something, looking for the variability, what changes in the task. We can look for those elements to help us focus. And if we can focus on something, we can stick with it longer, we become better at it, and we do our best work.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you give us an example of how you would add some constraints or find the variability to make it more enjoyable?

Nir Eyal
Sure. So, for example, in my work, so as a writer, writing is really, really hard. I constantly feel this internal trigger of boredom, of stress, “Is what I’m doing good enough?” And so, the idea here is that I want to focus on the task more intently. So, what I do, whenever I feel myself feeling stressed about my work, I, instead, look for the variability. And this comes straight out of the techniques that many of these tech companies are using to keep us engaged, right? It’s called the variable reward. What makes a slot machine engaging, what makes television something that we can’t stop watching, is the variability, the uncertainty.

So, in my work, for example, when I find myself getting bored or stressed about the work I’m doing, I try and reassess, “What is the mystery here?” I try and look for the uncertainty, and I add in my own variable reward, my own intermittent reinforcement. So, what drives me to do my writing, in my case, but, of course, it can be different for anyone’s case, is the uncertainty, the mystery. So, you have to add some kind of challenge that you can put into the experience that makes it variable. The variability is what keeps us engaged.

Actually, this is interesting. It comes back full circle to where we started the conversation around my crazy barefoot running habit. So, it turns out that our brains are built to look for these variable rewards. If you can imagine, what kept our primal ancestors hunting, what kept them running and running and seeking was, in fact, the variability, right? Where was the animal going to go? How fast was it moving? That was all these variable elements that are core to our DNA that keeps us hunting, that keeps us searching. So, we can harness that primal instinct by looking for the variability where it may not, on the surface, exist.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, your running example, when you’re trying to add variable rewards for yourself, what are you choosing? You’re just looking for the mystery and so what else are you doing?

Nir Eyal
So, I’m looking for the mystery and focusing more intently on the task. So, it becomes about, “How can I answer this question? Where will this lead me?” You can also add various constraints. Bogost calls this a sandbox, so to speak, that, in fact, the worst thing a writer can look at, the worst thing an artist can see is a blank canvass, or a blank page. And so, what you want to do is to try and add constraints, a time constraint, for example, some kind of constraint around how you’re working to add that sandbox element to reimagine the task.

Pete Mockaitis
So, time is one. What would be some other constraints?

Nir Eyal
Yes, so output can be a constraint as well that you add, “How quickly can I do this task based on how much output is created?” All sorts of ways. So, Bogost talks about how cutting his grass is a great example that I talked to him about. Cutting your grass is not something that you would expect to be very entertaining, right? That’s something that typically people find it a chore. Well, he got super into cutting his grass. He learned about which type of seed grows best in his particular climate, and the different mechanisms of cutting the grass. It seems totally ridiculous at first, until you realize that people can focus intently on all kinds of crazy stuff. Right?

Think about that car buff that can’t stop obsessing and thinking about his cars, right? They’re totally into it, right, because they focus more intently on it. Think about the barista who’s crazy about coffee, and he wants to know every little detail. Think about the person who’s a knitter and loves and is totally engaged with all the variability and the intricacies of creating something. Now, for most of us, these specific tasks are work, but for these people, they’ve harnessed the power of reimagining the task so that it becomes play, it becomes fun.

Now, by the way, everything I’ve just told you is only one of four parts. We didn’t get to how to make time for traction, how to hack back the external triggers, and how to prevent distraction with pacts. So, there’s lots more in this book, there’s a lot that we didn’t get to yet.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s intriguing to think that you can become fascinated by something that you previously were not fascinated by, and I guess you do so by focusing more intently and finding the mystery.

Nir Eyal
And it’s such a superpower. I mean, think about it, right? What if you could do that? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Like, what if you could make all sorts of tasks that are currently drudgery to you into something that actually holds your attention? To me, that’s just such a superpower as is becoming indistractable itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess it might help if you could maybe do a little bit of modeling of other people in terms of why is it you’re fascinated by knitting, and then they point out some things that you never noticed or thought of, and you go, “Oh, okay.” So, almost like you get a head start if you’re just really clueless about where to get going there.

Well, in our final minutes, I think there’s a couple things I need to cover. One, did you ever get the answer on your daughter’s preferred superpower?

Nir Eyal
Yeah. So, interestingly enough, I went back to her, as I was writing the book, and I actually was giving my first talk. The book wasn’t finished yet but I was asked to give a talk on what I’m working on these days so I decided to share some of the early findings from Indistractable. And I know my answer, my answer was, of course, I would want the superpower to become indistractable. I would want the power to always do what I say I’m going to do, to strive to have personal integrity. It doesn’t mean I’ll never get distracted. Being indistractable does not mean you never get distracted. It means you strive to do what you say you’re going to do.

But then I asked her, I sat down with her, and I said, “You know, I’m really sorry. I didn’t listen to what you said last time. I apologize. Can you tell me what your superpower would be because I’m going to give this talk and I’m really curious to hear what your answer would be?” And, honest to God, this is what she said, she said she would want the power to always be kind. That’s what she said. And, of course, I wiped my eyes, and I gave her a big hug because I was expecting her to say fly or be invisible, I don’t know, but she said to always be kind.

And I just thought that was so perfect because the fact is that being kind is not really a superpower, right? We all can be kind, can’t we, right? You don’t need to be born on some alien planet to have this power. Anybody can be kind. And the same goes for being indistractable. And that’s the message I really want people to hear with this book, is that when you understand the root causes of distraction, and you understand the techniques and strategies to manage distraction, anyone can have this superpower, anyone can become indistractable.

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

Nir Eyal
Here’s one of my favorite quotes, by William James, it’s, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” And I think that’s a really fantastic quote because what I found in my years of researching the psychology of distraction is that understanding distraction is an underutilized trait, it’s an underutilized skill because it’s not good enough to just know what we should do, right? That’s not good enough, is to know what to do. It’s also about knowing what we should not do.

How do we keep ourselves from getting distracted? Because, at the end of the day, we all know, big picture, what we should do in our day, how to get fit, how to have a better relationship. Big picture, we know the answers. And, yet, we don’t do them. Why don’t we do these things? So, I think this is a great quote, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook,” what we shouldn’t do, what we should not get distracted from.

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

Nir Eyal
Yes, so I think the challenge that I would ask people to consider is, “What is taking you off track?” Maybe I can actually give your listeners a tool, a distraction tracker, that I would challenge them to simply keep track, without judging, without beating yourself up, with being kind to yourself the way you would be kind to a friend. What is it that is taking you off track in your day? When you plan to do one thing, what are those things that distract you?

And just keeping that log, just keeping that record, and understanding that there are only three types of things that can take you off track, either it was an external trigger, an internal trigger, or a planning problem can help you start to categorize, and then effectively manage these distractions in your life so that you can make sure that you can use these technologies to empower you as opposed to being a slave to them, for example.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Nir, thank you. This is fun and I wish you all the luck in the world as you pursue your superpower here of perfect integrity.

Nir Eyal
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.

Aug 26
0

482: David Allen Returns with the 10 Moves to Stress-Free Productivity

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David Allen provides an approachable overview of his legendary Getting Things Done (GTD) system.

You’ll Learn:

  1. GTD in a nutshell
  2. The saving power of an external brain
  3. Two power questions for prioritizing

About David

David Allen is an international best-selling author who is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. He wrote the international best-seller Getting Things Done, which has been published in over 28 languages. TIME magazine heralded it as “the defining self-help business book of its time.” He and his wife Kathryn run the David Allen Company, which oversees the certification academy and quality standards for Global Partners offering Getting Things Done courses and coaching around the world.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsors!

David Allen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
David, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

David Allen
Pete, thanks for inviting me again. Yay, glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, I am too. And I’ll tell you, boy, it’s been quite a ride since we had you in Episode 15. That’s over three years ago. And so, I’d love to get a quick little update in terms of how is Amsterdam living and then what’s been sort of your new learnings over the last three years?

David Allen
Wow! Let’s see, you got a couple of years and I can fill you in but, look, I can probably tell you a freeze-dried version of all that. We loved Amsterdam from the beginning. We’ve been here a couple of times. We moved here five years ago. We didn’t know how long we’d stay but we kept falling in love with the city and haven’t fallen out of love with it and absolutely love the lifestyle here, love just lots of things about it. Kind of the perfect storm for us in terms of what matches our interests and our lifestyle and our age. So, we intend to stay. So, it’s wonderful, yay.

Pete Mockaitis
And you have a new puppy, Anouk? How is that going?

David Allen
Anouk is fabulous. She’s four months old and we found a good breeder. Catherine was sort of, “Well, we could rescue a dog, maybe,” but I so love the Cavalier King Charles kind of breed that was our last dog that we had to put down, and so I said, “I’ve got to get another one of those,” so we got another one.

She’s very shy. She grew up in the country. We found a good breeder but they were in Germany. But she had grown up for 14 weeks on a farm, sort of the noisiest, busiest thing was a goat farm next door, so we had to integrate her into the city. I mean, you don’t realize how many noises and things and moving things, and whatever there are in the city that a puppy has to deal with.

Anyway, long story short. But she’s great. She’s learning day by day, getting more comfortable with all kinds of stuff. So, we’re in the process of socializing. Today I sat out for half an hour on a bridge right on the canal that we live on, and sat there for half an hour, letting people greet her and treating her if she didn’t run away from them, and sort of helping socialize and train her. So, that’s a whole job in itself.

Anybody listening to this who’s ever been to the dog world, you know what’s involved in all that. So, that was a bit of my day today and other things. We’re cleaning up some old stuff. I kind of ran into an abrupt… Suddenly my life became very quiet. We did the GDT Global Summit about six weeks ago here in Amsterdam and that was like a two-year project and I’m still kind of decompressing from what a huge event and huge investment and huge interest and sort of engagement that I had with what that was about and why.

So, I had a couple of other gigs that I had to do after that but, otherwise, life just kind of quieted out for a while so it was nice. So, I’m in a bit of a decompression mode and I keep going back and cleaning up a whole lot of my old “someday maybe stuff” off my list and a bunch of things just kind of old. When things quiet down, it’s time to go back and clean the drawer and curate a bunch of old stuff that’s accumulated that you haven’t had time to do or interest in doing, so I’ve been doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And sometimes it’s just very cathartic in terms of, “At last, this drawer is getting handled.”

David Allen
It’s like cleaning the boot or the trunk of your car, it drives better once you do that. Or that weird electronics drawer we all have that’s just collected all the weird strange things that you couldn’t throw away that you might need at some point.

Pete Mockaitis
Like all those cords and adapters.

David Allen
Yeah, all the cords and chargers and all that stuff. Yeah, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, did anything sort of groundbreaking occur at the World Summit with regard to the future of GTD or announcements?

David Allen
Yeah. You know, Pete, I think the major ground thing, and the reason I did it–I didn’t plan to do another one, we did one 10 years ago in San Francisco, and really didn’t plan. That’s not the business I’m in, just doing those kinds of conferences. But 10 years on, and now we’re officially represented by licensees and master trainers in 70 countries around the world so we’ve kind of grown to that level but nobody’s really raised a flag yet to kind of, “Hey, guys, we’re all in this game together. The train has left the station. GDT is a global event, so whether I fall over tomorrow or not, this will keep going.”

And so, I think the milestone was making that kind of global statement and having the incredible raft of 45 presenters that we had on their own time and dime that came that are friends of mine and all champions of my stuff, people like Marshall Goldsmith and Charles Duhigg and just all kinds of folks that are serious heavyweights in their own fields and in their own right. So, I think that really helped give the world the idea that, “Come on, the train, as I say, has left the station. So, GDT and a world where there are no problems, only projects, that’s a consciousness and it’s a cognitive sort of algorithm, if you will, and is now onto the planet. At least, I feel like I’ve done my job in doing that. And so, this is sort of a capstone event. Come on, I’m 73 now, Pete, so I figure I’m not going to do another one, but this was a nice way to sort of just put the, I don’t know if it’s icing. I don’t know what the term is would be but kind of icing on the cake or to make sure that it’s solid in the ground now as a global movement.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s just got to be very rewarding to look back on sort of the imprint you’re leaving on the world. What’s that like?

David Allen
Bemusing, really. It’s like, “Really? Did I do that? Wow! Who would’ve thought?” It was not a big strategic plan. I just kept holding the course in terms of my own interest and what I wanted to do and just staying as authentic as I could about what it was I was uncovering and discovering, and then finding, “Can I find people who are interested in doing this and understanding what it is, and better ways to do that?” And then discovering at some point, 10 or 15 years ago, that it was possible to potentially to scale this as a best practice methodology for people around the world. And so, that’s been a lot of what our job has been, our work has been over the last 10 or 15 years, to figure out ways to do that. optimize

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you got back on my radar in terms of this interview for the upcoming GTD Workbook, and so I want to talk about that. But, first, I think maybe I need to zoom out for those listeners who didn’t catch Episode 15 over three years ago or haven’t heard of “Getting Things Done,” GTD. Could you provide the, somewhere between 20 second, 2-minute overview for, “This is what we’re talking about here”?

David Allen
Sure. Well, basically, it was I uncovered, discovered, recognized the best practices of how do you keep your head clear, so you can stay focused on whatever you want to stay focused on. That’s the most productive state to operate from, it’s when your head is clear and you’re not distracted. But where do your distractions come from? For the most part, it comes from commitments you’ve made that are not complete yet.

And so, most people are trying to use their head as their office to try to manage reminders and things they need to keep track of, and relationships between things and prioritize, and your head is a really crappy office. So, a whole lot of what GTD is about is being able to externalize all those things that have your attention, building an external brain system so that, much like your calendar, your head doesn’t have to keep remembering where you need to be two weeks from Wednesday at 2:00 o’clock. You trust you have a system that does that and has the right content. But if that works for your calendar, why shouldn’t it work for the rest of your life?

So, this was a way to sort of build, “What’s the formula? What are the best practices and the steps to build an appropriate external brain to keep all of your commitments, all of your would, could, should, etc. out of your head so that your head is freed up to do what it was designed to do, which is make good, intuitive, intelligent choices, offer options, not to try to remember what your options are.”

So, that’s a lot of what GTD is about as I uncovered over all these years, it was a way to be able to build a system, how to keep your head empty, even though you have unfinished stuff, they don’t have to be on your mind as long as you’re appropriately engaged with them. So, I discovered, essentially, an algorithm of, “How do I create appropriate engagements with all these things that have my attention, whether it’s cat food I need, or a life I need, or a vice president of marketing I need, or the next vacation we need to plan and organize?”

Whatever it is that you can’t finish the moment you think of it but you have attention on it, you need to do something about it. I just figured out the best, the most efficient, effective way to make sure that you manage those things appropriately.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’ve got a great turn of a phrase, and I think it’s something like, “Your brain is for having ideas, not for remembering them.” Am I quoting you correctly?

David Allen
Yeah, it’s not for holding them.

Pete Mockaitis
For having, holding. Like marriage, to have and hold.

David Allen
Yeah. Well, come on, now, the cognitive sciences have validated the last 10 years what I uncovered 35 years ago, which is your head just does not do that very well. And they’ve now discovered if you’re trying to keep track of, just in your head, things you want to be reminded about, things you need to manage relationships between, and so forth, if it’s more than four, you’re going to sub-optimize your cognitive functions. You will not be able to function as well as if you have all that out of your head because your head is going to be distracted by it.

That part of your head that’s trying to hang on to that stuff seems to have no sense of past or future, so you’d wake up in the morning, at 3:00 o’clock in the morning by, “I need to buy cat food,” or, “I need an extended credit line,” and both of them take about the same space and show up at the weirdest random times when you can’t do anything about them. They just add stress to your life. So, just really, in a sense, it’s kind of a mechanical process. It’s pretty subtle but it’s just mechanical.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. When you talk about an external brain, that could be anything from a paper calendar and a set a list or some fancy technological stuff.

David Allen
Oh, Pete, it could be as simple as putting stuff in front of your door in the morning so you don’t forget it, taking it to the office.

Pete Mockaitis
Yep, sure. Absolutely. There it is. You can’t not see it, it’s in your path.

David Allen
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, so I want to get your take on, so I believe “Getting Things Done” came out, originally, the book, in 2001. Is that true?

David Allen
Mm-hmm.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, 18 years have passed. Have you changed your mind on anything?

David Allen
A few things. I felt that the first edition was going to start to seem a little out of date for people given some of the notations I made, some of the references I did especially to technology, as well as over 18 years, I sort of got a little more subtle and understanding the power of what this methodology was and its implications and applications. Over the years, the legions of testimonials of how transformative this has been for so many of the smartest, brightest, sharpest people you could ever meet once they ran across this. Then it’s sort of understanding a more subtle level of how powerful it was and why. So, what probably changed most, Pete, was the range of audience.

In 2001, the first edition, was really targeted to the fast-track professional. They were the ones who were getting hit with a tsunami of email and sort of the flood of corporate changes and things like that going on, and that was the world I came from or came out of for 25 doing a whole lot of corporate training and executive coaching with this material, so it’s really targeted that audience. But I knew even back then that this works for students, it worked for the clergy, it worked for physicians, it worked for stay-at-home dads, it worked for anybody, anybody who had a busy life. This was just a cataloguing of what are those practices that they want to stay clear and more stress-free about that, what to do.

So, the new edition, I literally sat down and rewrote the whole book, and saying, “Is that the way I would say it now?” And probably 50%, 70% of it, yeah, I just retyped what the first edition was because I wouldn’t say anything. I said it as good as it could be said. But there was a few nuances and subtleties and kind of change of language that I used to express a bit more of the subtleties of what GTD is and was and so forth. And I also included some of the information and the cognitive science that validates all this and some other things.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then with the Workbook coming out, what was the impetus for that?

David Allen
I’m not a great trainer. I’m a pretty good presenter but I don’t have the patience to sit and hold people’s hand and actually walk them into how to do this. I gave them the model. Basically, I wrote “Getting Things Done” basically as a manual of 25 years of my 30 years of my work and my awareness that if you really wanted to have an absolutely clear head and stay that way for the rest of your life, here are the best practices about how to do that.

And that can get pretty subtle, it depends on how complex your life is, but I handled all of that and put all that in the manual. But for a whole lot of people that is just too daunting. They can pick it up and go, “Oh, my God, there’s too much to do.” And so, I can be a good presenter and people walk out and say, “Wow, that was really great,” but they don’t do much about it because I’m not really a good trainer or instructional designer about how to get people to — there’s a big difference between presenting and training. Training says, “Okay, how do I get people actually have a different behavior?” And then presenting is, “Ta-dah,” I just want to make people get it.

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re inspired now.”

David Allen
Yeah, and get that and they’re inspired, at least, see the model and they see there is a model out there but it doesn’t help them implement it. So, for the last 10 years, we’ve been working with a lot of instructional designers and I’ve had to kind of swallow hard and go, “Okay, they want to simplify this. I’ve got to simplify. I have to get it down to lower the barrier of entry for people to be able to get into this instead of having them sort of go out and get the whole thing and how do you start, how do you get going.” And I just don’t have the patience or awareness or education to be able to know how to do that.

So, what we’ve done is engage people in various forms to help us take our educational formats and make them much more easily available for people to actually play. So, the workbook was pretty much the model of many business books out there who have created a workbook after the fact for people to help them implement what they read, and so that’s why we did this.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then I’m intrigued, so it’s more approachable and a lower-barrier entry. You can sort of rock and roll. So, if a current “Getting Things Done” practitioner is looking through it, how do you think they’ll be enriched, or really just be like, “You already know all this”?

David Allen
Well, it depends on, when people say they’re GTDers, I can give you about 6,000 levels of that, that people are and say they are but they actually aren’t. So, it kind of depends on where they are in that level of game. But, generally speaking, I’d say if you’re a really practiced GTDer, you probably don’t need it but I just got interviewed by a guy who’s been a serious GTDer, who’s read all my books, he’s implemented my stuff for 10 or 15 years, and he said, “Oh, my God, this is so cool. I now have a way to coach my wife into this.”

So, at least there’s a manual. So, it’s not something that was going to replace anything. We’re just giving them perhaps another model especially if they’ve got people around them, whether that’s kids or spouse or staff or whatever, to help people kind of get started with this, in the process. Because many people who are big GTDers are wondering why nobody around them gets it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s well-said because, in a way, I think it’s sort of like you just have to taste and see with regard to, “You know that sort of low-level anxiety that’s always around you in your head? That can be gone.” It’s like, “What?”

David Allen
Yeah, and most people don’t realize that they have that or even if they do, they don’t realize they could actually get rid of it, and so that’s kind of the marketing problem we have.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m curious then, you lay out 10 moves to stress-free productivity, what are those 10 moves?

David Allen
Well, they’re actually, you know, I talk about them in the book. If you really wanted to implement this, in part two of “Getting Things Done” it actually walks people through the very specific 101 coaching process that I spent thousands of hours working with senior executives actually walking through that process. So, this is just kind of a starting version of what we would do with that, so there’s nothing different here other than what the real implementation is.

But, for instance, the first move is just go, “Okay, make sure you have an entry, some place to do it. Look around your desk, in and around your desk and whatever is around you, if stuff doesn’t belong wherever it is apparently, throw it in your IN-basket. Post-Its, the papers sitting on your desk, the things that are hung up on the first flat surface inside your door in your house, any of that stuff, just gather it together.” So, that’s move one.

And then move two has to do with, “Well, wait a minute, a whole lot of other stuff is in your head so you better have some sort of tool to capture stuff that internally shows up, so you need to make sure you get your capture tool.” That’s move 2.

And then you do move 3, is to empty your head into those capture tools or into that capture tool, do a mind sweep, right?

Then once you’ve done all that, then you need start to get that stuff to empty. You don’t just pile it up and leave it there. You then need to move to the, “Okay, how do I clarify what are all the notes that I took, all the stuff I gathered around that’s sitting on my desk?” Making those decisions. And then how do you do that to your email, because email is the bugaboo for a lot of people out there. If there’s some stuff they’ve captured, it’s been captured for them but they haven’t clarified or organized it yet.

And then how do you create some list, once you make the decisions and clarification of what are the actions needed, what are the projects embedded in any of this, then you need to create some list.

Moves 6 and 7 and 8 are about, “How do I organize now all the results of that?”

And then move 9 and 10 are about, “Okay, how do I kind of keep this going and make sure this stays alive and well system?”

So, nothing new, it’s just we tried to reduce it or freeze-dry it, if you will, to the basic moves about how to get started. So, you don’t need a huge investment to do what I just said but you do need to do something with it and we need to walk you through the process of how to do that pretty easily.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I do want to touch on email for a moment here because, well, I guess, over the course of my life, I have emailed you on three separate occasions, and every time you’ve picked it up and ran with it and we made something happen, so you walk the talk. You are, in fact, getting things done.

David Allen
Believe me, I’m a fellow student. Trust me, I have to do this as well as anybody just to keep their head clear.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then I’m curious, like what is the — so we talked about the benefit, sort of the outcome. It’s like, okay, there’s a sense of peace, of maximum cognitive function, the stress and malaise of constantly remembering stuff is gone, and your mind like water, I believe is a phrase you like to use there. So, that’s a real good outcome when you’re on the wagon executing it. But could you share with us, what’s sort of the cost, if you will, in terms of the investment? What does it take for you to rock your email and more so well in terms of maybe, say, hours a day or hours a week of processing and reviewing time? How do you think about that?

David Allen
Pete, this is not extra work. I would have to do this no matter how I did it. You would too. Did you want to let it pile up until it explodes and then decide what to do with it?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

David Allen
People get mad at me for their list, and like, “Excuse me, dude, that’s not my list. That’s yours.” Right? I don’t tell people to do anything extra other than what they need to do themselves. They know that. They know they need to decide what to do about mom’s birthday. They know they need to decide what to do. They know that they need to do something about that. All I’m getting them to do is become conscious about it.

So, this is not extra work. How much time does it take to stay conscious in your life? Maybe that’s the best question.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. So, you’re saying you’re going to address that email at some point.

David Allen
Yes. Or you can do email bankruptcy, CTRL-A CTRL-X and pray.

Pete Mockaitis
It’ll all go away. You’re right. I think maybe what they don’t like is that you’re showing them reality. It’s like you’re putting a mirror right up to their faces.

David Allen
I know. I know. Come on, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
“This is what you’re committed to. How about that?”

David Allen
Right. What are you going to do about it? And what does it mean to you? Is that trash? Why are you keeping stuff you ought to throw away, dude? You know, come on. So, it’s really about just becoming conscious about things you’ve let come into your ecosystem that own a piece of your consciousness until you appropriately engage with them. And that’s really the secret of what I found out about how do you do that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think, as we talk about the aggravation reaction there, I think there’s some richness to that. It’s sort of like you shine a mirror, it’s like, “Okay, this is all the stuff that you’re committed to.” And then I think it’s almost like the reality becomes all the more clear that, “Oh, wait, no. I can’t do all of those things because my time, energy, attention, sanity would be maxed out and overwhelmed to do so.” So, then once you’re in a good spot of, “All right, I got the lay of the land. All the stuff is captured,” how do you think about prioritizing well with regard to, “I can let that go now knowing what I know about the whole lay of the land”?

David Allen
Well, how many things are you not doing right now, Pete, while you’re talking to me?

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose everything else in the universe other than talk.

David Allen
Well, if you haven’t looked at what you’re not doing, there’s a part of you that has a trouble staying present with me. So, I don’t have any trouble being present with you because not long ago I looked at every single thing else I might ought to do, and I said, “You’re it.” But you can only see what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing. So most people don’t have a clue.

So, a lot of what GTD is about, “Why don’t you get a clue about all the things you’ve committed to, and then look at them and go, ‘No,’ or, ‘Not right now,’ or ‘Whatever.’ And then renegotiate those agreements with yourself moment to moment so that some part of you can feel, ‘No, it’s not time to run my errands. The stores are closed.’ Or, ‘No, I can’t talk to my wife/partner right now because he or she is out on a seminar right now,’ ‘No, I can’t do XYZ because my server is down and so I can’t even get into the internet.’”

So, just looking around, and go, “What’s my environment? What are my possible options?” But if you’re trying to use your brain to try to remember what your options are given the complexity of those contexts, good luck.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. Certainly. So, context alone makes it real easy in terms of, “Those are possible right now so no need to give that a further bit of thought.”

David Allen
True.

Pete Mockaitis
But then when you find yourself in a world where there are many things you could choose from, you mentioned, “Hey, what’s your energy level or how wasted are you?” is another useful prioritizing guideline. But what are some others? Have you found, working with clients, are there any sort of like power questions that sort of separate true top priorities from the rest?

David Allen
Well, sure. One version of that is, “Why are you on the planet, Pete? What are you here to do?” And so, which email do you think is most important for you to write first tonight? So, there’s the power question, “What’s your purpose?” Like, what’s really core to you in terms of who you’re about, what you’re about, why you’re here, any of that stuff.

On a more practical level in terms of how I manage that, it’s like, “What’s got most my attention right now? And so, therefore, what do I need to do to get back to clear again?” And the answer to, “What’s got my attention right now?” maybe, “What is my life purpose?” And I need to sit down or go offsite and spend two days in silence and figure that out. Or, what’s most got my attention right now is my dog, in which case I need to go handle that so that I’m free back up so when I cook spaghetti tonight, I’ve got a clear head.

Any one of those could be the priority. Well, how many different things do you think you’re doing tonight, Pete? How many different activities or things you put your attention on do you think you will have in a 24-hour period? Because every one of those is a priority decision at that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s good. And now I’m chewing on, say, what’s most got your attention. Is it awesome prioritizing bit because it’s like, “Oh, that might take 5, 10 minutes, dog is handled, and now you’re back and clear and ready to go.” I’m curious about what about some of those ruminating type things? Like, “What’s most got my attention?” “Well, it’s how am I going to, I don’t know, grow a business such that it is sufficiently profitable to provide for a growing family?”

David Allen
Well, as a coach, I’d give you a very simple question, “What’s your next action, Pete?”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

David Allen
“What would you need to do to get clear about that? Do you need to draft ideas? Do you need to surf the web? Do you need to set a meeting? What would you do to move forward on that as opposed to sit there and spin because you’re so bright and conscious and intelligent and sensitive, you just figure stuff out by all the things you think you might have to do in order to be able to do that, so you procrastinate?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so, and I have found this, and that’s your experience with clients is that just by having identified the next action, there is a sense of peace there because it’s like, “Now there’s no wondering what’s the thing. It’s just there for you to pick up if you’re ready to pick it up.”

David Allen
Well, you finish your thinking. So, if there’s anything you’re committed to change or to do anything about that’s not done currently, or to have different in any way and you have any commitment about that, if you haven’t decided the next physical visible action, you haven’t finished your thinking and decision-making about it. So, that’s why it’s such a powerful thing to do is figure that. Is that a phone call? Is that a surf the web? Is that, “Talk to my wife/partner”? What’s the very next thing I need to do?

Once you made that decision, it may not be the right one, there may be a better decision, but at least you can move on that one, and you can change your mind. But at least your mind goes, “Oh, okay, I’m now appropriately engaged with it.” Assuming also that you’ve also captured the outcome you’re committed to about this, so outcome and action-thinking are the zeroes and ones of productivity. What are we trying to do and how do we allocate resources to make that happen? That’s why that’s such a key element of “Getting Things Done.”

Or, “Gee, that email, what’s the next action on it? By the way, will that one action finish whatever this commitment is that’s about that’s embedded in that?” “No, not yet.” “Okay, great. What’s your project?” “Oh, I guess I need to research whether we should hire a consultant for our financial yadda, yadda, yadda,” right?

So, outcome and action, once you decide the next step, well, great. Will that finish whatever this is about? And if not, you better keep track of whatever the outcome or the project is until it’s done. So, that’s part of the clarification step, where you’d say, “Okay, how do I get my inbox get empty?” And you do it by actually having to think. You actually have to use your mind and decide, “What the hell am I going to do about mom’s birthday?” or extend the credit line.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love it how you suggest that when you’re writing out these action lists, you don’t just write “Mom,” rather it’s a verb and it’s a clear view of sort of, “Hey, decide what to do for mom’s birthday, or call my brother to see what he’s making for mom’s birthday,” and reduces a lot of the friction and resistance there.

David Allen
Right. Well, there’s magic in the mundane. So, the kind of paradoxical thing is that I figured out, “How do you manage the mundane most elegantly and efficiently?” And in turns out that there’s a lot of elegance that happens to that and to yourself when you do that. It get you to think from a much more grounded place. It opens up a lot more of your creative thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’m going to go back to the email for a bit here. So, there’s some prioritizing questions in terms of like your life’s purpose and then what’s the next action, what’s most got my attention now. And so, then when you’ve got those things clear and you’re cranking through an inbox, I mean, are you doing anything special or is that just it, you just sort of know what’s important and you just go to town with them?

David Allen
Yes. And, basically, I do, I just have a sense of what’s important, go to town with whatever I feel like doing at the moment. But the key to that is the weekly review. Once a week I step back and look across the horizon of all of these things. Because, see, Pete, you and I don’t have time to think. We need to have already thought.

So, when you get off this call with me, you don’t have time to think. You need to have already thought, meaning it’s going to come at you, you’re going to have emails that have been piling up on you while you and I have been talking. Me too. I don’t know what the dogs do and I’m going to have to figure out what the dog is doing right now.

So, I don’t have time to think. I just need to act and respond appropriately but I can only do that if I sort of hardwired my intuitive intelligence by doing some sort of a regular recursion of stepping back and looking across all my projects, all my actions, all my calendared stuff. And that’s the weekly review, and that’s what we’ve uncovered, as you probably know. That’s a whole lot of what one of the more profound habits and difficult habits to train yourself to do is once a week, take one to two hours, and pull up the rear guard, and sort of lift up and manage the forest instead of hugging the trees.

And that’s a challenging thing to do, but if you actually can do that, if you can build in that habit, and you’ve got a reasonably good system that has enough of the content for you to review and feel comfortable, you’ve seen the whole result or the whole inventory. Then that makes it much easier to then not have to think priorities on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis. You need to have already done that and then trust in your intuitive responses will be appropriate.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I find that the weekly review habit has been a tricky one in that sometimes I’m with it, sometimes I fall off, and then I’m back with it. What have you seen to be sort of the difference-makers with regard to those who consistently do their weekly review and those who do not?

David Allen
I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to that. It’s like, “Who knows?” But I think the people who really get how powerful it is, there are a few of them, have built it in very soon as just an invaluable habit where they just do not let anything get in the way of them doing that. I let it slip sometimes a week or two or three if I’m on a real roll. Yeah, I’d check in to make sure there are no burning barns that I’m going to miss.

So, it’s something to bring yourself back to because it’s one of those things you just never feel like you have the time to do. So, it’s one of those paradoxes, it’s kind of like when you feel like you don’t have time, that’s when you have to take the time to do that. It’s kind of like when you most feel like you don’t have time to plan is when you most need to sit down and plan. So, it’s one of those things where you have to sort of train yourself to say, “Wait a minute.”

A reference point inside of me, is, “When does my ambient anxiety out-pass my comfort zone?” And that’s when I need to sit down and do a weekly review.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Well, David, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear a couple of your favorite things?

David Allen
Oh, no, just that people who are more interested in any of this, and wherever you’re listening to this from around the world, we now have master trainers and coaches and folks that we’ve certified to deliver this methodology in training programs and coaching, 101 coaching programs around the world. So, you go to GettingThingsDone.com, our website, look under Training & Coaching, and you’ll see 70 countries. And kind of wherever you are, you’ll see public seminars, you can see whoever our folks are in those areas. So, that’s a way to get in touch with this. If you haven’t read “Getting Things Done,” the book, it is the manual, so I highlight recommend it.

And, again, I’m not sure when this is going to air, Pete, but September, Getting Things Done Workbook will be out and available, at least in the US and I think in the UK as well. And so, those are ways to kind of stay in touch and what to do. So, that’s what I’d let people know. If this rung their bell about anything, yay.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

David Allen
Oh, my God, a favorite quote. Dang it. I have 14,000 that I’ve collected in a quotes database.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

David Allen
How do I find a favorite one of those? I don’t know. Anything that Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain has said is favorite.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

David Allen
I love Mark Twain’s, “My life has been full of all kinds of troubles, most of which never happened.” I guess that’s a pretty favorite one of mine.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I can think about all the arguments I’ve had with only myself. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

David Allen
One I read recently I highly recommend, it’s called “The Antidote” by Oliver Burkeman. He’s a Brit. The subtitle is great, it’s “Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.” It’s a lot about, and actually the book is much more sophisticated than the subtitle may represent. He goes into a lot of what was the essence of the stoics and stoicism. The whole idea that, he’s kind of railing. He’s got a little bit of a rant against all the rah-rahs,
“Don’t have any negative thoughts, everything is going to be cool. Just think positive things. Whatever in life will be cool.” And yet those churches that are preaching that went bankrupt.
And so, a whole lot of it is about acceptance, kind of what you resist you’re stuck with. So, don’t try to pretend that you don’t have troubles and anxieties and stuff you got to deal with in your life. You need to accept them so you can actually move past them, move beyond them, because what you resist, you’re stuck with. So, in a way, it just validates why a lot of people resist “Getting Things Done” simply because, if we started this conversation about, a lot of it is about accepting all of your commitments and who you are, what you’ve committed to. And a lot of people don’t like that.

But, anyway, it’s a great book. It’s fun. My wife burst out laughing while she was reading. She does that very seldom with any book. And it’s well-written, fun, interesting stuff. So, Oliver Burkeman, “The Antidote.” Highly recommend it.

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

David Allen
I’ve got a bunch. Favorite tool. I don’t know. There’s my labeler, there’s my iPad, there’s my iPhone, my Mac, my stapler, right? God, I’ve got all kinds of favorite tools around here.

Pete Mockaitis
Can I hear, is the stapler special? What makes it amazing?

David Allen
I could bang it. It’s one of those, it’s an ACE that has the little sort of where you can use your fist and bang down on it and staple it. I so much like that as oppose to those where you have to squeeze it to staple it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, gosh, yeah, I hear you.

David Allen
I love it. I love to bang and staple. That’s really cool. And my DYMO Plug and Play labeler is fabulous. I couldn’t live without it.

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

David Allen
Yeah, your head is for having ideas not for holding them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. David, thank you. This has been lots of fun. Keep on doing the great things you’re doing.

David Allen
Thanks, Pete. Been fun. Yeah, indeed.

Aug 23
0

481: Easy Ways to Have More Fun at Work with Drew Tarvin

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Drew Tarvin says: "Would you rather do something that is fun or not fun? You're going to pick fun pretty much all the time."

Drew Tarvin shares how to bring more humor and fun into the workplace.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The power of humor on your work-life productivity
  2. How to craft good work humor that considers medium, audience, and purpose
  3. The 3 specific situations when NOT to use humor at work

About Drew

Andrew Tarvin is the world’s first humor engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. Combining his background as a project manager at Procter & Gamble with his experience as a stand-up comedian, he reverse-engineers the skill of humor in a way that is practical, actionable, and gets results in the workplace. Through his company, Humor That Works, Drew has worked with more than 35,000 people at over 250 organizations, including Microsoft, the FBI, and the International Association of Canine Professionals. He is a bestselling author; has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company; and his TEDx talk has been viewed more than four million times. He loves the color orange, is obsessed with chocolate, and can solve a Rubiks Cube (but it takes like 7 minutes).

Resources mentioned in the show:

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  • Blinkist: Read or listen to summarized wisdom from thousands of nonfiction books! Free trial available at blinkist.com/awesome

Drew Tarvin Interview Transcript

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

Drew Tarvin
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on such a nicely-titled podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Yes, I like the direct approach. I want to hear all sorts of things from you. But, first, I want to hear about how you’re left-handed except when it comes to shooting pool. What’s the story here?

Drew Tarvin
You know, I don’t know. Growing up, everything would go left-handed, which is not so great when you’re doing handwriting. And then I tried shooting pool and I could not shoot left-handed. It was just weird and awkward. So, then I switched to the right side and it worked, which is bizarre. So, everything, I write left-handed, I throw a baseball left-handed, I cut paper with left-handed scissors and all that, but shooting pool, it’s on the right side. I don’t know what that says about me. I don’t know what that means for coordination but that’s just a fun fact.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I wonder about like darts or bowling.

Drew Tarvin
Darts, yeah. You think of like the pool hall game, it’s mostly, yeah, darts is still left-handed. I try to act like I’m ambidextrous, that I can use right-handed, and, in fact, my handwriting is almost as good with my right hand as it is with my left hand, but that’s just because my left-handed writing is so terrible that whatever the right hand does isn’t that bad in comparison.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, handwriting was, I believe, my worst subject in my entire academic career.

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, and people are like, “You’re going to need this for your entire rest of your life.” And now our computers are like, “No, no, actually.” I mean, I sign things but, aside from that, I don’t really do much handwriting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to dig into your career. You are a humor engineer – intriguing – and you’ve studied humor in the workplace for many years. Can you share with us what’s perhaps one of the most fascinating and surprising discoveries you’ve made as you’ve dug into this topic?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, I think that it’s a surprise for many people especially when they hear my background. So, they maybe see me speak, and like, “How did you get into this?” I’m like, “Well, I got a degree in computer science and engineering.” And they’re like, “That doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t seem like the background and then get into standup comedy and do speaking and all that for a living.”

But I think that’s part of what led me to one of the biggest realizations, is that humor is a skill. I think a lot of times we think of humor, making people laugh, being jovial in certain ways is kind of something that you’re born naturally able to do, and if you can do it, great, but if you can’t, you’re kind of out of luck. But that’s a big learning, is that it’s something that we can learn, that there’s an art and science to using humor, which means that we can teach this, the humor side, the science part of it, while also allowing people to practice the art side of it as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so, I want to dig into the art and science and the skill-building, how we can all have more of it but I want to hear a little bit about the why first. So, you make an argument that humor is not just kind of, “Oh, nice to have. It’d be a little bit more fun if we could have it.” But, rather, like a must-have or a critical source of advantage. Can you share some of these benefits with us?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, absolutely. And so, part of it comes from the realization that 83% of Americans are stressed out at work, that 55% are unsatisfied with their jobs, and that 47% struggle to stay happy. And so, it leads to this recognition that with 70% of the workforce being disengaged, it costs the US economy an estimated $500 billion in lost productivity every year.

If you do that math on that based on the number of people working and the estimated cost, that costs a $4,638 per disengaged employee. And so, to me, as an engineer looking at all that, what it’s saying is that the current way of working isn’t actually working. And, for me, I discovered that humor was a way for me to stay more engaged in my work. And when I use it, other people actually got into it as well. And so, there’s all these benefits to it that have been backed by research, case studies, real-world examples, so evidence-based examples of why humor is valuable.

So, it leads to things like an increase in productivity, a decrease in stress, an increase in happiness. At a company level, when organizations embrace it, you see an increase in positive workplace culture, an increase in engagement, a decrease in turnover, an increase in profit. There’s all these different benefits that are factually based that speak to the value of using humor in the workplace, and that’s why I say it’s a must-have.

And the way that we work today, where work-life balance is no longer is a thing, and it’s more about work-life integration, and the challenges that we have day-to-day of always feeling like this need to do more with less-type thing, humor is a skill that can help us with all of those, the changes that are happening in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued in that world of do more with less. Some might say, “Hey, Drew, we can’t burn all this time just joking around and being goofy. We got to produce some stuff.” So, how do you think about that?

Drew Tarvin
I would say, yeah, that’s 100% right. And if you were working with robots or cyborgs, yes, agree. But even something like, imagine running your phone down and being like, “All right. I need to be efficient with my phones so I refuse to charge it,” you would be great for about 24, maybe if you have a newer phone, maybe 48 hours, and then the phone is going to be burned out, it’s going to be dead, and it’s not going to work at all.

And that’s one of the things that I joke about is that, as an engineer, I’ve done a lot of research on productivity. I’m a huge fan of getting things done and thinking about that mentality and all that. But I’ve learned that it is very difficult to be productive if you are dead, or if you feel like you’re dead too, if you’re sick, if you’re tired, if you’re burned out, if you’re stressed out, if you’re worn out.

And so, recognizing that this was a huge aha for me in the workplace is that there’s a difference between being efficient and being effective. And you can be efficient with things like computers. You don’t need to motivate a computer to work, you don’t need to convince it to turn on, it doesn’t need a cup of coffee before it starts in the morning, right? But you can’t be efficient with humans because they have emotions and feelings, and because they have to eat and sleep, and because they get sick and tired. And so, instead of being efficient, we have to be effective and recognizing that humor is a way that we can be more effective.

So, you’re absolutely right. Maybe it’s not the most efficient thing in the moment, but it is long term more effective. And when you think about it, what’s efficient longer term, you explaining something once where people actually kind of get it, they remember it a little bit more, they understand it, or you having to explain it eight times down the road because you’re trying to do it as efficiently as possible?

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve heard, and maybe you can unpack this for me, Mr. Humor Engineer, that when we have recently laughed, our brain state, the neurochemical, biochemical situation is that you are more receptive to receive and hear and absorb information. Can you unpack that a bit?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of both physiological and psychological benefits of using humor. And part of that receptivity is you can kind of explain it more simply with a dumb question. And the dumb question is, “Would you rather do something that is fun or not fun?” It’s a dumb question, right? But you’re going to pick fun pretty much all the time. So, that means if you were to make your content a little bit more fun, do you think people would be a little bit more open to wanting to hear it?

And I see this all the time as a speaker. So, I speak to a lot of maybe sometimes dry or more conservative organizations, so engineering groups and accounting firms and things like that, and so they’re used to a certain type of speaker. And so, I might go up towards the end of the day, a lot of the times I’m a closing keynote speaker, they’ve had a lot of content, a lot of great content, but it’s been on the drier side.

So, when I first go up, you’ll see a lot of people kind of on their phones or looking through their notebook or whatever, and then I say a line and it makes a couple of people laugh, and you’ll see people look up from their phones and be like, “Wait, I want to laugh. Why did that guy laugh? Oh, I’m going to listen to this guy to see why he made people laugh. Oh, okay.”

As a great speaker named Tami Evans says, “Once you give people laughing, you get them listening. And once you get them listening, you get them learning, you get them taking action, whatever it is, because you’re making that process a little bit more fun.” And, yeah, there’s some science in some of this stuff too in terms of showing that getting people to laugh makes them less defensive, you’ve kind of lower their defenses, or they’re a little bit more likely to see things from a different angle, because part of humor is also changing perspective.

So, if you get people to look at things a different way. So, for example, maybe a silly example is I don’t like mint chocolate. Are you a mint chocolate fan?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I do. I very much like them.

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, you’re a mint chocolate? Okay. See, I’ve never been eating chocolate, and then like, “You know what would great with this? Toothpaste, right?” And so, that’s not necessarily going to convince you to be like, “Oh, I don’t like mint chocolate anymore,” but it’s expressing that rather than me just saying, “Oh, I don’t like mint chocolate and it’s dumb,” right, it’s just giving you a slightly different angle that you now laugh about, and you’re like, “All right, well, I can at least kind of see that perspective,” right? So, it’s lowering your defenses because humor started it.

And that’s kind of one of the many benefits to using humor in the workplace is that, one, it gets people listening because they want to laugh, and then, two, once they’re listening, it helps them understand something a little bit more and maybe changes their perspective around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, Drew, I have to ask, what’s that line, not that it’s the end-all-be-all and applicable to all circumstances, but we want to hear it? I think one of my favorite humor moves, I saw that to start a speech was this speaker was being introduced and they were sharing all of the great accolades, like, “Featured in the Wall Street Journal,” and all these things. And he just said, “Oh, my, that’s impressive.” I thought that was awesome because, like, anytime you’re being introduced you can pull that schtick a little bit because they know you wrote the bio and it’s being read about you, and for you to pretend that you’re surprised and like, “Hmm?” it just made me chuckle. So, what was your line?

Drew Tarvin
So, I have in my bio, in my introduction, one of the ones that I like, and it’s maybe not necessarily super hilarious, but like I give my client list as Microsoft, the FBI, the International Association of Canine Professionals is kind of my comic trip which, because it’s one of the most interesting groups that I’ve ever presented for.

And, of course, kind of my joke about it is that, and it’s kind of I had that split second when I first got the emails, it’s like, “Is this an association for dogs who have jobs?” I was like, “Oh, no, it’s an association for people who are dog trainers.” And that’s one of the things that I love about speaking is that I get to work with all of these different groups that, “Oh, yeah, of course, canine professionals, one, have a title like Canine Professionals, and, two, they have a conference where they get together and get to know each other a little bit better.”

And so, yeah, anytime you can kind of incorporate those types of things it helps. The other thing that I’ve started doing is in the bottom of my bio, I include that I love the color orange, which is kind of a random aside, and I love chocolate. Because what I found is when I spoke in Europe for the first time, I shared, “Oh, he’s obsessed with chocolate,” I started getting chocolate as my speaker gift because sometimes people are like, oh, not that I’m expecting a speaker gift, but if people are going to be like, “Hey, here’s a bottle of wine,” or, “Here’s X, Y, or Z,” I love chocolate so I’d rather inform them to say, “Hey, here’s something that you can get me that if you present me with a box of chocolates, I’m going to be delighted by.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. Well, so there we go. We got some good benefits, and it’s possible for anyone to learn this art and skill. So, I guess, where do we start or how would you orient us to sort of the components of what makes humor work?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, I think that the starting point is probably around the definition of humor and making sure that we’re kind of aligned on that because I think we have a certain mindset when it comes to what we think of with humor. And that definition is really important. I kind of relate it to—so I was recently in the UK, and it took me going to the UK for the very first time to realize that I don’t speak English, right? I speak American because British English is different than American English. There are certain words that they say versus what we say.

Like, we say in the US, we say elevator, they say lift, right? We say fries, they say chips, and chips is something different for us. We say, for the most part, we say like bathroom, they say toilets, right, or the loo. And so, when you’re out in the public, I think that that’s more accurate because if you are out in the public and you say, “Hey, where’s the bathroom?” there’s typically no bath in that room. And as an engineer, I’m like, “Okay, that’s more specific, that’s accurate.” So, I was like, “I’m going to start using that in my language.” I’m going to start asking, “Where are the toilets?” or refer to them as toilets.

So, I’m in a Starbucks here in New York City, and I go up to a barista, and I’m like, “Excuse me, where are the toilets?” And she was confused, she was like, “Ah, in the bathroom?” Right? And so, there’s just that idea that language and how we think about it is important. We want to make sure that we’re on the same page with language. And so, when it comes to defining humor, to make sure that we know what we’re talking about, humor is more broad than comedy, right?

Humor is defined as a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement. And so, so often people think laughter, they think standup comedy. They hear humor in the workplace and, suddenly, they’re like, “Oh, does that mean that I have to like start telling jokes? Does that mean that I have to try to become the class clown or a jester?” And that’s not at all what we’re talking about. Instead we’re talking about this broader definition where maybe it’s not about making the workplace funny, but about making it a little bit more fun.

Because the bar for comedy at work is much, much lower than, yeah, if you were trying to get up on stage and rock it at a standup comedy club or get a Netflix comedy special, the level of “funny” that you need to be is pretty high. You need to be getting four to seven laughs per minute, they need to be good laughs, solid chuckles, really kind of cohesive ideas, things that you’ve probably practiced many, many, many times before, versus if you’re just trying to get a little bit more humor into a meeting. Simply having an image behind you that isn’t just a wall full of text but is kind of an interesting image that you’re speaking to might be a simple way of getting a laugh.

Or, like you said, in your bio, having a quick line about, like, “Oh, that sounds impressive.” That’s not necessarily the funniest joke ever written, but it is something different, and in that context, it makes things a lot more interesting. And so, I think understanding that definition and recognizing when we’re talking humor in the workplace, we don’t mean about making the workplace funny, but more about making it more fun, I think, is a good starting point for people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly. Well, that’s great. That’s really reduces some of the pressure and lowers the bar and it’s true, I have seen certain contexts where someone tells a joke, there’s a whole lot of laughter, I’m thinking, “Boy, you know, if that person were not…whoever they were, or wherever we were, there wouldn’t be nearly that kind of response.” So, that’s great. Okay, so it’s not too hard. So, how shall we proceed?

Drew Tarvin
Yes, so the way that we kind of frame using and getting intentional about using humor in the workplace is around what we call a humor map. And the humor map stands for your medium, your audience, and your purpose. So, your medium is how are you going to execute that humor? Is it in an email? Is it in a phone call? Is it in a one-on-one situation? Because we know that your medium impacts your message.

Something like sarcasm or satire, you’ve maybe sent a text that’s meant to be a joke before, and you learned from the other person that they took it the wrong way, or they read into it a little bit more. So, sarcasm and satire are very difficult to do, say, in a text form because people, they can’t see that you are joking, they can’t see the paralanguage of the body language and the tone of voice and everything that  you’re saying it with, and so your medium impacts it, right? So, understanding what that’s going to be – email, phone call, one-on-one, live video, or life, or video version, or whatever it is.

Pete Mockaitis
I have to chime in. Have you seen the Key & Peele sketch where they’re texting and have completely different interpretations of what’s going on?

Drew Tarvin
Exactly, yeah. And that’s a great – and Key & Peele, one, fantastic, a great place to kind of share things. And also, they’re sometimes a little bit not safe for work with language, but the other thing about understanding kind of what we can talk about this with the map is recognizing humor in the workplace, you don’t always have to be the creator of humor. But, instead, you can be the shepherd of humor, right? You can share funny things out.

So, if you wanted to make that point about the importance of medium, you can then share the Key & Peele sketch, right, share a link to it on YouTube or Comedy Central or wherever it resides, and then be like, “All right. You know, this is kind of a funny reminder how someone says something in text might be taken a different way.” And there you didn’t create the humor but you’re now leveraging it in this way to still get a specific kind of result. That’s it.

I forgot about that sketch. That’s a great sketch and really demonstrates that idea.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, we think about the medium and note that some things work well or not so well for them, such as, “Do we have the facial expressions and the gestures and the tone of voice or do we not?” Anything else to consider with regard to the medium?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah. Well, I think, and this is where things like memes or GIFs or things like that can help because they introduce a visual element to your message, and you’re seeing emojis come up even more. I was just reading an article recently that emojis are coming up in court cases as well, and judges don’t necessarily know what to do with them. But the whole point of emojis are to help you better convey a message because you can’t visually be there.

Now, does that mean you should, in a very formal email to all of your clients and your boss and all that, include a bunch of emojis after every sentence to make sure that they know what message you’re sharing? No, but in a more conversational kind of text, you might. If you’re making a joke, you might put a smiley face at the end of it, or you might put, kind of the wry kind of dry winky face or something. So, emojis can be part of the communication.

But a big thing is kind of really with GIFs and memes, you might also express humor maybe in that way. So, it’s really just understanding the medium and how it might be received, and recognizing that the safest is kind of in person. Because if someone does take something the wrong way, you can kind of react to that more in the moment, you can react to it. In text, it might be a little bit easier just to link to things, to reference other things as opposed. If you’re not a great joke writer, then maybe you’re not going to write your own jokes but, again, you can, as so and so said, boom, quote someone else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, we got the medium. And how about the audience?

Drew Tarvin
So, the audience is, who is the audience? What do they know? What do they need? What do they expect? Because part of using humor is not to replace the work, right? To borrow kind of from Office Space, if your boss is like, “Hey, do you have those TPS reports?” You don’t want to like make a quick joke, and then when they say, “No, seriously, do you have them?” you don’t want to be like, “Well, got to go. See you later.” Right?

So, it doesn’t replace the work. You still have to actually do the work. And so, you still have to deliver on what the person needs, but you might do it in a way that they don’t quite expect, right, that’s bringing some of the humor, some of the fun element to it. So, that’s what you need to understand about your audience, is, “Okay, what does this person need and then how can I do it in a way that deliver against it whether maybe not quite expecting it? Oh, they know they need this information, they’re going to hear a presentation about it, they know they’re going to see some slides, oh, but if I make those slides a little bit more interesting, now they’re going to be leaning forward a little bit more because they’re like, ‘Okay, how does this picture of a dog relate to what I’m going to talk about?’” And then you can think of connect how that interesting picture of a dog leads to what you’re talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And can you provide some more examples here?

Drew Tarvin
Another example, say, you want to build rapport with someone, and they need to get to know you a little bit more, right? So, they ask you a question. Think of maybe stereotypical networking questions of like, “What do you do?” So you could answer like, “What do you do?” with, for me, I could say, “Oh, I’m a speaker or I’m a trainer. But what I most I identify with is I’m a humor engineer. So, I used to be a computer science engineer, I used to solve problems in the workplace using things like technologies and computer-to-technology and computers. Now, I solve problems in the workplace using humor, so in that way I feel like I’m a humor engineer.”

And so, when people ask, “What do you do?” I say, “Oh, I’m a humor engineer.” That’s delivering kind of what they need in a way that they don’t expect it, and it usually leads to more questions. Because it’s a made-up term, they’re like, “Okay, what does that mean?” And that allows me to say, “Oh, well, I do a lot of speaking and training on the value of using humor to get better results.”

And so, it’s just something that stands out a little bit more, something that is a little bit more interesting. And then I might go into a story, right? So, stories, when people ask those questions like that, a story, or facts told in story form are 20 times more likely to be remembered than facts told in bullet point form. And so, if you’re at a networking event, if you want to stand out, rather than just being like, “Oh, yeah, I’m a speaker. I train on this,” giving a little bit more background, one, helps you remember things, but, two, it also builds connections.

So, I say, “I’ve always been an engineer. I’ve always been obsessed with efficiency ever since I can remember, really since before I can remember because I was born three weeks early, so apparently a human in the womb. I was like I don’t need a full nine months, I’m ready to go right now. So, then I went to The Ohio State University, got a degree in computer science and engineering. And after I graduated, I started working at Procter & Gamble, and that’s where I realized there was this difference between being efficient and effective.”

And, now, in that conversation, I’ve now answered the question, I’m getting to the point of, “Okay, how did I get to humor engineering?” And in that story, one, it’s a little bit more interesting than just kind of sharing “humor engineer,” or even just sharing “speaker-trainer,” but it also gives people a connecting point. If you’re meeting someone for the first time, you’re trying to find ways to build rapport with that person. And in that story, I’ve now told them, “Oh, I’m an engineer.” If they’re an engineer as well, they’re like, “Oh, okay, I’m mechanical,” or, “I’m in civil engineering.” Now, we have a connection over engineering.

Or, I say, “I went to The Ohio State University.” They might be like, “Oh, I grew up in Ohio as well. What do you think of like Cincinnati versus Cleveland, or Greger’s ice cream versus Jeni’s Ice Cream?” Or, if they’re not from there, they might be like, “Why do you guys say The Ohio State University?” And the answer, “I don’t know. I just know that if we don’t say The Ohio State, then we get our degree taken away, I think,” right?

Or if it’s like, “Oh, I work at P&G.” “Oh, I used to know someone that worked at P&G.” There’s all these small things that they can now connect to that build rapport that they’re getting from me, that they won’t even get if I just said, “Oh, I’m a speaker-trainer.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. And then did we hit the purpose part here?

Drew Tarvin
Yes. And then the last piece, well, the other thing that I would say about the audience piece is that your relationship to that person matters as well because a joke that you would say with someone that you’ve known for 10 years is very different than something that you might say with someone that you’ve met for the very first time.

And so, understanding what is your relationship with this person, and recognizing that when you’re first meeting someone, or if you’re doing it in front of a large group of people, if you’re using humor in front of a large group of people, you’re probably going to be a little bit more broad, a little bit more, safer kind of with your humor versus someone that you know very, very well, where it’s like, “Oh, okay, this person likes this type of humor. I know that I can say this, and I know that they know that I’m joking, that we have that rapport, we have that relationship kind of built up.” So, that relationship piece with the audience is really important as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Gotcha.

Drew Tarvin
And then the last piece, yeah, is the purpose. And this is the most important one, and this is, “Why do you want to use humor?” Because, humor, for the sake of humor is fine, I guess. But as an engineer, what I love about it is that we can use it for a specific result. And so, we kind of frame this around it’s my general belief that there are five skills at work. No matter who you are or what you do, it kind of comes down to five things.

Any thoughts on from your perspective? What do you think is included in kind of—if you have a job, what types of things are you doing?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thinking, communicating, creating stuff.

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, absolutely. Right. So, you have to be able to think, right? You’re creating strategic plans, you’re being critical, you’re also being creative kind of in that thinking mode. Like, you said, communicating. You articulate the intelligence that you have. You’re sharing the ideas that are in your head. Actually, creating stuff, right, so in a way I would call it, kind of execution, you’re actually completing tasks, you’re getting things done for sure. Any others come to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think about how you do it with regard to just your own self-management, care, and energy, and attentiveness.

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, right. Kind of a component, a little bit of that, the thinking side of things, of actually creating the plan of, “Okay, what do I actually need to work on? How do I prioritize these things? And how do I actually get it done? What’s my motivation for it?” And then I would add also like you have to be able to connect with people, right? You have to understand emotional intelligence.

We recognize that emotional intelligence is one of the strongest predictors of career success. People who, I think it’s something like 90% of top performers have high EQ, high emotional intelligence. Where less than 20% of low performers do, so it is one of those skills that does tend to stand out. Because we work with humans, we have to be able to connect with them on a human level and understand how they work.

And then you also have to be able to lead. You have to be able to influence people to some type of goal to kind of move them in. In every job is what we would say is those five things of executing, actually completing tasks, thinking, right, strategically creating a plan, critically and creatively, communicating, connecting, and leading. And so, every job kind of comes to some percentage of those five things.

And so, what we say is using humor in the workplace isn’t going to change those five, right? They’re all still going to exist. It’s simply how you do those five, kind of what you’re talking about, the motivation and things like that. So, humor can be a how across those five. And so, the purpose piece is maybe you want to use humor as a way to increase your execution, right, to execute faster. So, you might use humor as a way to increase your efficiency.

And so, one way to do that, one strategy is to play-work, is to find ways to add gamification in your work so that it’s more enjoyable. Back to that question of, “Would you rather do something that is fun or not fun?” Well, if you make your work a little bit more fun, you’re more willing to engage, and you’re more willing to do it.

And so, this might be something as simple as listening to music while you’re doing kind of a mundane task. One of the things that I like to do is I’ll start to read emails in a different accent in my head. This is way to kind of stay engaged with emails that I’m going through. You might decide to do a task with a friend and compete with them. Be like, “Hey, we both got to do our expense reports right now, so let’s set a timer and see who can get through the most expense reports in 15 minutes.”

And, again, it’s not the funniest thing, it’s not a Netflix comedy special, but it’s making the work a little bit more fun, changing your perspective around it so that you’re a little bit more engaged with it and willing to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, I would love it if you could share all the more of these. I do this when I am, I guess, proofreading. I’ve written something and I find, boy, when you read it out loud you just find stuff that reading it in your head doesn’t. So, I don’t know what character I’m assuming when I read things out loud but it’s kind of almost like a very earnest broadcaster who’s also talking very fast because it’s like, “Andrew Tarvin is the world’s first humor engineer teaching people how to get better results while having more fun.”

And so, I don’t know, I guess, and again, it doesn’t make me sort of laugh out loud, like, “This is ridiculously hilarious.” But if it gets the job done, I am proofreading by reading aloud, and I’m having a little bit more fun with it than if I were just reading the words like a school child is reading a book aloud.

Drew Tarvin
Exactly. And I think that’s exactly that makes it a little bit more interesting. And this is where I encourage in a lot of ways, you know, bringing things that are an outside passion in your work as well. Or maybe, yeah, if you were a kid and you always wanted to grow up to be a broadcaster, absolutely, proofread things kind of as a broadcaster. If you love doing accents for whatever reason, read it in a different accent and see what it would kind of sound like. Whatever it is, it’s just small tweaks.

And this is a form of humor called self-enhancing humor. And it’s kind of epitomized by, there’s a great quote from Kurt Vonnegut that said “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration.” I, myself, prefer to laugh because there’s less cleaning up to do afterwards.

And so, it’s this idea of, hey, you have to do the proofreading anyway. You could choose to say, “Hey, this is annoying and I hate it. Ugh, God, this is just the worst.” Or I can be like, “All right. I’m going to do it anyway. Yeah, let me put on a broadcaster voice to make it a little bit more fun. Or let me try to be an auctioneer and see how fast I can get through it. Or let me try some of these accents that I think are kind of fun. Or let me do it to music.”

In fact, I’ve just started doing this, because I have a bit of a nasal voice, getting over a sore throat, so it’s a little bit deeper now. And at times it is a little bit monotone. And so, someone was saying, “Oh, when you’re practicing your speeches, practice it to inspirational music.” Like, put on an inspirational instrumental behind you, and that’s going to automatically, kind of, you’re going to start to add musicality almost to your voice.

So, these are just small things that you can do to make the process a little bit more fun. And the other beautiful thing about these as examples is that no one can stop you from doing them. So there’s all these benefits to humor in the workplace, but not everyone was using humor. And so, I wanted to understand why.

And the number one reason why people don’t use humor, at least according to the survey that we ran through our site, was that they didn’t think their boss or coworkers would approve, right? They didn’t see that as a culture in the workplace. And the reality is that 98% of CEOs prefer job candidates with a sense of humor and 81% of employees said that a fun workplace would make them more productive.

Most people want it but they haven’t necessarily created a culture of it and so people think that it’s not welcome. And a lot of times it’s just because people haven’t tried, so a lot of times you can start out and it’s usually received pretty well. But even if you’re in an organization where like, “No, my manager has like explicitly told me no fun whatsoever. If you’re laughing it means you’re not working hard enough. They call it work because it’s work not because it’s play, and it has to feel like it.”

Like if you work in an environment like that, well, maybe consider kind of why you’re continuing to go to that, but also recognize that no one can control how you think. No one can stop you from if you’re proofreading these things to yourself, changing the voice in which you do them. If you have a commute that you have to go through, no one can stop you from listening to a comedy podcast, or making it a regular thing of, “Hey, every day or every Monday or whatever, I’m going to make sure that I’m listening to the Awesome at Your Job podcast because it puts me in a good mood, and I have a good time, and I’m going to relieve some stress to show up more presence for my family when I get there,” right? No one can stop you from doing that in your car.

And so, these are all things that you could choose to do no matter the work environment, and that’s why it’s a starting kind of first strategy that we share is that it is something that you are entirely in control of.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to hear when it comes to we’re worried about it may be unwelcome, what are some of the easiest little baby steps for, “Okay, I’m entering a meeting, I’m doing a presentation, like, here are some safe things you can do that will make it a little bit more fun and have extremely low risk of folks flipping out about it”?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah. Well, I think going back to if you’re clear on the map piece, because I think that when people tend to get in trouble with humor in the workplace, it’s usually one of two reasons. One, it’s inappropriate humor. So, it is important to understand there is a difference, say, bad humor and inappropriate humor.

Pete Mockaitis
The joke which is not funny versus, “What? Why are you discussing these lewd sexual acts?” Not the place.

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, a bad joke, yeah. And they’ve done studies where if you share a joke that is appropriate but people don’t laugh, there’s no real negative gain to a person, there’s no like perception change or anything like that, especially if it’s a positive-inclusive and a positive-inclusive joke that doesn’t get a laugh just becomes a positive-inclusive statement, so it tends to be okay.

However, an inappropriate joke, even if it’s successful, even if it makes people laugh, can have a negative impact on people’s perception of your competency in the workplace. It doesn’t affect their confidence in you, but it does affect their perception of your competence, right? And so, inappropriate humor is typically inappropriate for one of three reasons.

One, it’s an inappropriate topic, exactly what you were talking about. Using humor is not an excuse to talk about sex or drugs or rock and roll in the workplace. It’s not going to be, “Hey, this is typically a taboo subject, but because I’m saying a joke about it, it’s okay.” That’s not true. It could be inappropriate because it has an inappropriate target. So, some humor has a target that is someone else. And so, if you’re using humor as a way to make fun of someone, or if it’s a racist joke, or a sexist joke, right, that’s still very much inappropriate in general, but particularly in the workplace.

And then the third time is that it could in an inappropriate time, right? So, humor is just one tool of many tools that we can use in the workplace, and it’s not to say it’s always going to be the best tool to use so you do have to recognize that there might be inappropriate times. So, if you’re firing someone, that’s not the time to like bust out your “Frozen” parody and be like, “I’ve got to let you go, let you go. I’m not going to pay you back anymore,” right? Like, I can’t sing at all. But it’s not like, “Oh, this is going to make it more fun.” That’s an inappropriate time.

So, I think understanding that is one way to make sure that we keep things appropriate and that we don’t run into trouble, to make sure it’s more positive-inclusive. And then I think the other thing is going back to the map piece and specific to that purpose piece, that it’s not just, “Hey, I want to be fun to be just so I’m seen as funny.”

So, sometimes people ask me about, “Okay, but what about Michael Scott in The Office? He was always trying to have fun.” And the problem is that Michael Scott, you know, he’s a fictional character, his primary motivation of humor seems to be validation, right? He just wanted to be liked by everyone, and he wanted everyone to see him as a funny person, and that’s not a great starting reason for using humor. You want to be more specific about it, like, “Okay, I want to use humor in this meeting to keep people engaged in the content and help them understand it better.” That’s going to change the type of humor you use over, “I want people to see me as really funny.”
And so, some simple ways around to do that is I’m a big believer in if you’re doing presentations, rather than having a wall-full of texts, do include more images because the images themselves can be part of the punchline and you don’t have to be the one that created the humor. If you go to, like, Flickr.com and do a Creative Commons search for, hey, if you’re talking about new initiatives in the workplace around stress management, go in and do some searching for stress. Or if you recognize, “Oh, yeah,” and smiling is something that can kind of help in the workplace, find a picture of a dog that’s smiling and it makes people laugh.

Or, in my TEDx Talk, I share a picture of – I say that I work with some pretty conservative organizations and will admit that sometimes when I’m talking about the benefits of humor, they are a little bit skeptical. And when I say skeptical, as I click to the next slide, and it’s a dog that kind of looks skeptical. And so, people are now laughing, and goes, “Oh, yeah, that is kind of funny. That dog kind of looks like it has that expression that it is a skeptical-looking dog.” And so now they’re laughing, and it’s just an additional kind of punchline, and I didn’t have to put the word skeptical behind me. I didn’t need to put all the research and everything there. It was just kind of one way to keep it, and make it a little bit more engaging. So, I think images can be a great way to do that.

I think activities is another way to incorporate some humor in a way that everyone is included. And so, another form of humor, so we talked about self-enhancing humor. Another form of humor is affiliative humor, and this is positive-inclusive where everyone is part of the end group of that humor. So, I think of kind of Ellen DeGeneres.

And so, when you’re starting a meeting, as a project manager, I used to start meetings with a simple question that people could answer pretty quickly to go around the room, if it’s a group of like eight people or so, to be like, “All right. Just before we get started, I want to…” and I’ve set this up before but, like, “We’re doing these questions as a way to get to know each other a little bit better, remind ourselves that we work with fellow humans and not just resources. So, today’s question is, very quickly, go around the table and reply with the first thing you remember buying with your own money.” Or something that you think is, “What’s something that you think is true for you that you don’t think is true for anyone else in the room?” Or just these kinds of specific questions that get people to kind of share a little bit more about them because it goes back to this resource piece.

Like, as a project manager, I labeled people as resources, and most workplaces label people as resources. And, over time, you start to forget that the other person on the other side of an email, or the other side of a phone call, or the other side of a conference desk, is a fellow human being with human lives and human emotions and, maybe, just maybe, the reason that they’re email is late to you is not because they secretly hate you, but because they have a sick kid at home.

And that’s part of what humor is doing, is it’s reminding us kind of our humanity in the workplace, and saying, “Hey, we’re all in this together as people.” And so, small things that we can do that can remind people, that can be a great way to kind of introduce humor in a safer and easier way.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’ve also talked a bit about how to use humor to diffuse conflict. How does that work? Can you give us a demonstration?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, so a lot of times it’s just kind of becoming a reminder of that situation of kind of what the situation is and creating a pattern to interrupt. Because so often our conflict is we get so kind of narrowed in on a focus, or a problem that is coming up, or a conversation that’s happening, and we need to be just kind of interrupted from that to kind of take a break and step back. And sometimes just observing, kind of giving an observation or sharing an observation about the room can help or the situation.

For example, I was at a meeting at P&G and it was getting pretty intense, we were a little bit behind on a project and so there are some kind of blame, kind of calling out and blaming people and things like that. And my manager, at one point, was like, “All right. Everyone, listen. We need to remember that at the end of the day, we sell soap.” And that wasn’t to discount P&G’s mission, it wasn’t to say what we were working on wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things, but it was to remind us, “Hey, we’re in this very intense argument about selling soap. This isn’t World War II, this isn’t the Civil War. We can take a step back, we can take a breath,” and that was enough to make us laugh and for us to kind of recharge.

And so, sometimes it’s like to say, okay, you use a comment, or get people to take a break, and then say, “Okay, maybe let’s take five. Let’s take five minutes, let’s relieve some stress, let’s use some humor, whether it’s watching comedy video, or do a quick activity, or everyone just go for a walk and then come back,” because you need that kind of space between the stimulus and the action that you create, and humor can help you create that space.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Drew, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we talk about some of your favorite things?

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, so I would say there’s two quick things that I would say. One, kind of given the audience that I know is listening, recognizing that there is a difference sometimes in how humor is received between men and women. So, in one study they found that when men use humor, now, I’m going to mess up the percentages but they’re kind of close. When men use humor, it was met with a positive response 80% of the time, I think. When women use humor, it was met with a positive response 20% of the time.

In that same study they found that 90% of the humor that men use was off-the-cup humor, kind of conversationally in the moment, and 70% of the humor that women use was self-defeating humor or self-deprecating humor. And so, that brings me to a third style of humor. So, we have affiliative humor, we have self-enhancing humor, there is a self-defeating humor. And self-defeating humor is where you kind of poke fun at yourself. It’s a negative form of humor that you poke fun at yourself which can be great in a high-status position but it’s not great, one, if you’re low-status position.

And so, there’s obviously some challenges certainly with women in the workplace in terms of how status is sometimes perceived that something that we, as a society, need to work on, but it’s something that people should be conscious of. And, two, self-defeating humor works when it is used sparingly. Like, if you constantly always use it, so the women that were using self-defeating humor 70% of the time, the problem is that people stop laughing at it, because they’re like, “Ah, does this person have kind of self-esteem issues or is this a pity party? I don’t think that I should laugh.”

And so, recognizing just the style of humor that you’re using and who you are, how it’s perceived, it is an important thing to keep in mind. So, that’s just one thing that I want to say. So, stick to typically more affiliative and self-enhancing humor is going to be a little bit more helpful for you.

And the last thing that I’ll say before we get to the five questions is if people are feeling a little bit overwhelmed, like this seems like a lot, it seems like there’s a lot to go into, the last strategy, so we have 10 humor strategies that we talk about in the book, the last bonus strategy is to simply practice or strive for one smile per hour. Just try to think about one thing that you can do each hour of the day that brings a smile to your face or the face of someone else and that gets to a starting point, right?

Just think about, “Okay, I’m going into this meeting. How can I elicit one smile?” Or, “I’m getting ready to have my commute home, what’s one thing that I can do to make myself smile?” And that starts to help you develop your humor habit, then you can get into some of the more complex details stuff that we talked about a little bit later and that we talked about today, but it really starts with kind of that choice and choosing to kind of practice one thing each hour.

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

Drew Tarvin
Sure. So, a favorite quote I would say, I heard this many, many years ago, and it’s a cliché but it’s the best career advice that I’ve ever been given, which is that, “It is better to beg for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Drew Tarvin
So, there’s a great humor and problem-solving study that, they took three groups of kids. One group of kids watched a comedy video, one group of kids watched a math video, one group of kids watched no video whatsoever. They then had to do a pretty known problem called the candlestick problem, and the kids who watched a comedy video were nearly four times more likely to solve the problem than the kids who watched the math video or no video at all. So, it just kind of showed that, one, comedy is a way to warm up the brain. It helps you see different solutions and different ideas, and it introduced me to the candlestick problem which I think is kind of a fun problem.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Drew Tarvin
Favorite book? My favorite book of all time is The Complete Anthology of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Drew Tarvin
Evernote. One of the big things for being a humorist is to keep a humor notebook. Anytime you’re going throughout the world, and something kind of piques your curiosity, write that down in a notebook somewhere. And I personally use Evernote so that it’s always on me whether I’m on my computer or on my phone.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Drew Tarvin
Favorite habit? I would say if I can complete it in five minutes, I actually do the task rather than putting it on the to-do list or waiting to save it to do it later.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and they quote it back to you often?

Drew Tarvin
The one smile per hour, I think, is sometimes popular and I think the idea that, again, that humor isn’t about making the workplace funny. It’s about making the workplace more fun.

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

Drew Tarvin
If they want to learn more about humor in the workplace, they can go to HumorThatWorks.com. We’ve got plenty of free blog articles and resources there, free newsletter they can sign up for, also access to the book, the online course, some of the workshops that we offer. If they want to connect with me, if they like puns, I like tweeting out puns and things like that, so if they want to connect with me on social media, if they have specific questions, they can find me @drewtarvin on any of the social media.

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

Drew Tarvin
Yeah, I would say just start, right? You choose every single day how you’re going to do your work, so why not choose to be more productive, less stressed and happier, why not choose to get better results and have more fun, why not choose humor that works?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Drew, this has been fun. I wish you lots of luck and laughter in all you’re up to.

Drew Tarvin
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

Aug 22
0

479: How to Slash Anxiety and Keep Positivity Flowing with Anne Grady

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Resilience expert Anne Grady shares how to decrease anxiety and stay in a more positive, productive zone more often.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How the negativity bias hijacks us–and how to fix it
  2. Quick ways to put your lizard brain back in its place
  3. How to better savor “delicious moments” and enjoy each workday more

About Anne Grady

Resilience expert Anne Grady is an internationally recognized speaker and author. Anne shares humor, humility, refreshing honesty, and practical strategies anyone can use to triumph over adversity and master change. A two-time TEDx speaker, Anne has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Inc., FOX Business, Entrepreneur, and more. She is the author of “Strong Enough: Choosing Courage, Resilience, and Triumph.” Learn more at www.AnneGradyGroup.com.

 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsor!

Anne Grady Interview Transcript

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

Anne Grady
Hey, Pete, thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I’m glad to have you and we’re talking about resilience and gratitude and more. And I want to kick it off by hearing a story from you about a time when you found some resilience and how you found it.

Anne Grady
Well, you know, resilience is one of those things you don’t find until you realize you need it. And, in my case, my journey started with my son Evan. So, Evan is now 16 years old but when I was pregnant, I knew something wasn’t right. He would like kick me so hard I would just fall to the ground. And my doctor joked he was going to be a soccer player. He cried all day and all night.

And when he was 18 months old, my husband left, and so I was a single mom, I had just started a consulting career, could not figure out what was wrong, and just things continued to escalate. And when he was about three years old, I know this is unbelievable, but he tried to kill me with a pair of scissors, and he was on his first antipsychotic by the time he was four.

By seven, he was in-patient at his first psychiatric hospitalization in Dallas. By 10, he was hospitalized again. And at that point, I got diagnosed with a tumor in my salivary gland that resulted in the right side of my face being completely paralyzed which, two days later, scratched my cornea, and was told by my doctor that my face probably wouldn’t recover, and I needed to have a gold weight implanted into my upper eyelid and a stitch put into my bottom eyelid, and I needed to do that before I started six weeks of radiation.

So, the weekend before my eye surgery, my husband and I went to Vegas. He had recovered from a motorcycle accident and we went to Vegas, and I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my foot in four places, and then he fell off a ladder, breaking his arm ribs and hip. And so, it’s just kind of been a constant state of needed resilience.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and that is quite a lot.

Anne Grady
And my face came back, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, with stories. Yes, people wonder how they ended. And so, that’s a lot. Wow! And, tell me, how did you find the resilience, the power, the courage, the gratitude, the something to keep on going such that you’ve been able to get to a good place?

Anne Grady
You know, it’s fascinating. My background, I have a master’s degree in Organizational Communication and, similar to you, I spent 20 years in the organizational development space, so training and professional development, communication, leadership, emotional intelligence, productivity, lots of soft skill type training.

And then, after everything that happened, I got contacted by a couple of different TEDx organizations wanting me to speak for them and the topic of resilience was really what they were curious about. They had heard my videos and seen me on YouTube or read articles, and so they wanted to hear about my story.

And I had never told the story before in terms of resilience. I had told it in terms of I was having opportunities daily to practice what I was teaching because of my situation with my son. And once I started digging into the resilience research in 2014, I realized that there were some things that I was doing naturally do build resilience without even realizing I was doing them, and there were things that I was not doing that were really hindering my ability to build those habits and skills.

And so, I started pouring over the neuroscience. I’ve studied the brain since Evan was born trying to understand how to help him and have learned a lot along the way, but then I really got and sort of geeking out on all of the neuroscience behind resilience. It’s incredibly powerful and it’s one of those things that most people think you have to wait until you need it to develop the skills, and it’s exactly the opposite. These are skills and behaviors and habits that you can proactively cultivate so that you have them when you need them.

Pete Mockaitis
And what are some of the most potent practices there when it comes to building those in advance?

Anne Grady
Well, things that sound like common sense but are not common practice. Self-care is huge, and people kept telling me to take care of myself, and I thought, “Well, okay, I’m raising…” I got remarried when Evan was nine years old, and I was like, “Okay, so I’ll go ahead and take a spa day while I’m raising two children and running a full-time business. I don’t have time for that.”

And what I learned is that, one, self-care doesn’t have to be a spa day. There are lots of different tools that you can use, but it’s also not selfish. It’s a requirement for resilience. My mom is a flight attendant and she started when she was 51. She was a court reporter for 30 years. And when she was 51, she became a flight attendant. She turned 70 this June and she’s still doing it.

And I’m not supposed to tell which airline so we’ll just call it Southwest. But she basically does these great announcements, and the one for the oxygen mask is my favorite. And she says, “In case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, please place your mask on and then assist your child. And if you’re traveling with more than one child, please pick your favorite or the one with the most potential.” But there’s a reason they tell you to put your mask on first.

It’s nice to think, “Well, I’ll sleep when I’m dead and I don’t have time to take care of me. I’ve got to take care of everybody else.” But life has a way of stopping you. Gratitude, mindfulness, humor, social connection, making meaning out of challenging events, values, goals. These are all different tools that you can use to build resilience. And you don’t need to use every single one all the time but it’s nice to have an arsenal or a toolkit that you can pull from.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then if you’re not taking the spa day but you are doing self-care, what are the things you found that made a world of difference when you did them?

Anne Grady
So, I was diagnosed with depression when I was 19 years old, and every doctor, every therapist, everyone I talked to had said, “Anne, you really have to exercise.” And I thought, “Yeah, that’s the last thing I want to do. I’m not an athletic person, I don’t want to exercise.” And my grandmother said, “Annie, if enough people tell you you’re tired, maybe it’s time to lay down.”

She also used to say, “If you act like an ass, don’t be surprised if people try to ride you.” But that was my grandmother. But enough people told me to do it, and I was so desperate at one point, I was really having a hard time. It was after Evan’s first hospitalization, and I was really struggling, and then my husband was in a motorcycle accident, and I just felt lost.

And we moved into a neighborhood that had a junior Olympics-sized pool. And so, swimming was always something that I didn’t hate. It was the only exercise I didn’t hate. And so, I started swimming four days a week, and I noticed such a drastic improvement in my mood. Medications didn’t change. The exercise was the only thing that had changed.

And so, I dug into the research. You know, I’m an academic at heart and I realized it’s not just like lose weight, be healthy. It’s literally changed your brain. So, that was one of the things that just blew my mind. I was saying all the time, “I don’t have time to exercise.” But I always had time to watch Law & Order. I like SBU because I like my crime, especially heinous. But, really, that made a huge difference.

Sleep. It’s a non-negotiable for me now because I don’t do well when I have less than 7, 8 hours of sleep. And so, I don’t care what I have to do to make that happen. I very rarely go without it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. So, exercise and sleep, indeed, common sense but often not common practice, and it makes a world of difference not just in terms of weight. But tell us a little bit about the rewiring of the brain.

Anne Grady
Well, let me first just really quickly back up and say, self-care could be something as easy as not eating lunch at your desk. It could be as simple as strategically stopping during your day and taking three really deep breaths. It could be giving yourself the same grace and compassion you would give your best friend. It could be not should-ing on yourself, “We should. I should’ve done this. I should do this. I should be here. I should be that.” And we should on ourselves all day long. Self-care is going, “You know what, I have permission to be human and, no, I’m enough.”
So, it doesn’t have to be the same types of things that we – sleep, exercise, diet, all those things are important for sure. But it doesn’t have to be those. It can be taking 10 minutes to sit and snuggle your dogs and drink coffee before looking at social media. So, it’s really subtle things that you can do that end up making a very big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you sort of zoom in to the professional work life, many of the slights and offenses and challenges we encounter, not nearly as difficult as many of the things that you tackled but, nonetheless, we can feel threatened, attacked, stressed out, freaking out about things. Can you explain to us a little bit, like, where does that come from and what should we do about it?

Anne Grady
So, our brain is this phenomenal organ, right? It’s gone through three levels of evolution. The first one being just basically a snake brain, your reptilian brain. It’s heart rate, breathing, respiration, fight or flight. It’s the most primitive part of your brain. The next evolution is tucked in the middle of your brain, it’s called your limbic system, and it’s got the hippocampus and hypothalamus and amygdala, and so it’s got a bunch of different components, but it’s kind of the emotional cockpit. It’s where all of your emotions are generated. It’s where your habits and your memories are stored.

And then the newest evolution is the neocortex. It surrounds the outer part of the brain but, specifically, the prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead. And that’s the part of the brain that differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We’re the only species who can think about the way that we think. It’s where creativity and innovation come from. It’s where higher-level thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, cause and effect, attention management, emotional regulation, all the hard stuff comes from there.

And so, there’s, one, it’s understanding that our brain will take anything we repeatedly think, say, or do and convert it into a cognitive shortcut which is a habit so it doesn’t have to work as hard. It’s like going through the express lane. It’s just easier. And so, if you, for example, if you’re listening right now, cross your arms, right, for your listeners, cross your arms. Now, cross them in the opposite direction. You probably noticed that the second time was more awkward, and it’s because those two things happen from different parts of your brain.

The first time you crossed your arms, it came from your limbic system. You’ve done it a million times, when you’re cold, when you’re angry, whatever. The second time, it came from your prefrontal cortex. You had to work at it a little bit more. And if you were to do that all day, every day, or for extended periods of time, and you were to practice that, eventually that would become a habit.

Over 45% of everything we do every day is a habit. And our brain depends on these cognitive shortcuts to make our life manageable but it doesn’t know which habits are helping us or which habits are hurting us. It just takes however we’re repeatedly thinking or behaving and converts it. So, that’s one, is recognizing which habits.

Are you anxious because you have an anxiety disorder or are you anxious because it’s a habit? Are you worrying because there’s like something legitimately challenging that you don’t know how to navigate or are you worrying because it’s a habit, right? So, our life becomes this state of habits and we just kind of live on autopilot if we’re not careful.

The second challenge with the brain is that we have something called the negativity bias. And it’s a primitive built-in protection mechanism so that if you were being chased by predators, your brain encoded that message very powerfully to keep you protected, and you were way more able to notice the saber-toothed tiger charging at you than you are the pretty flower that’s standing next to you as you’re walking down that path.

And it was built as a protection mechanism but, unfortunately, as we’ve evolved, the brain continues to constantly search for threats, so it overestimates threats, it underestimates opportunities, it magnifies the negative, it’s like Velcro, and it diminishes the positive, it’s like Teflon. And so, we can change the way our brain is wired through, Rick Hanson calls it, experiential-dependent neuroplasticity. And it’s basically a fancy term for saying every time you have a positive experience or an experience that you want to encode as deeply as a negative message, you have to ruminate on it just like you would the negative one.

We replay the negative stuff over and over and over in our mind, but if somebody gives us a compliment, we’re like, “Oh, thanks. It’s nothing,” rather than sitting in that and truly like feeling the gratitude in that. Or, you know, when you have, I call them delicious moments. So, a delicious moment, and we all read these fairy tales growing up, or read them to our kids, and they all end with, “And they lived happily ever after,” and then you get a divorce, or you lose a job, or you have a sick child, or something happens and you feel like, “Well, great. I have completely failed at this whole thing called adulting” without realizing that there’s no constant state of happy. It happens in micro moments. It happens in blips.

And most of us are so busy focused on finding that constant state of it that we miss those. I call them delicious moments. It’s the first sip of coffee in the morning. It’s a really great hug. It’s a delicious meal. It’s a belly laugh where you can’t stop. It’s a great podcast interview. It’s just a moment that you want to savor. And I write them down and I either take a picture or put it on a cocktail napkin, or write it on a sticky note. I put those all over my office on these huge corkboards. Because every time you find something that makes you feel that moment, you get what’s called the dopamine squirt. And I know it sounds dirty.

But every time you have that moment, like, for example, yesterday I spoke in Fort Worth, and I was speaking for about 3,000 teachers and educators. And at the end of the speech, I got an amazing standing ovation, and that was just such a delicious moment for me. I felt like I really made an impact and I felt like I really belonged. I was right where I was supposed to be. So, I took out my phone, took a quick picture of the audience, printed it, it goes on my board.

And sitting in that, and going, “All right. How did that feel?” Well, I felt pride and I felt like I was legitimately making a difference and contributing. And I felt like I was paying back all of the teachers who’ve helped us along the way. “And where did I feel that?” Well, I felt it in my stomach and I got goosebumps. And I felt it by the hair on the back of my neck.

And simply sitting in that for 20 seconds is enough to embed that into the neural network as powerfully as the negative events that happen and the negative self-doubt and self-talk. But we have to be deliberate about offsetting so much of the negative with bringing in a more focused approach at searching for the positive, and then you start training your brain to find the positive in different situations. So, the more you do it, the more you find it.

The more time you spend feeling grateful and sitting in that and why and, “How can I communicate that and how can I make somebody stay better because of it?” Those are all things that if you sit in them for even 20, 30 seconds, you start to re-circuit your brain. And they say, “What fires together, wires together.” The more time you spend in these activities that are going to build resilience, the more likely you are to start your brain down an entirely different path than was intended or where it would go on its own.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that really is fascinating when you talk about the negativity bias and how we’ll just naturally ruminate on the bad stuff, and then not so much naturally ruminate on the good stuff. And so, to really take that time. And I think the turn of a phrase delicious moment is great because, you know, delicious it’s visceral and we know what that feels like with regard to, “This bite of prime rib on this camping trip was exceptional and it’s a wow!”

Anne Grady
Pete, I want to camp with you because when I go camping, we are not eating prime rib.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, they had this like acorn, like smoker, delicious. I was very impressive what these guys were doing, I was like, “I can wrap the potatoes and boil, guys, as my contribution.”

Anne Grady
I can add salt.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it was, yes, so that moment is there. And then I think it’s true in terms of, I don’t know, you’ve made a sale, you get the email saying, “Yes, Pete, here’s the order.” And it’s like, “Great!” And then you were like firing off the email reply with like, “Okay. Well, I’ll get back to you on this date with these things,” as opposed to, “No, no, no, the right answer is to just appreciate and relish that for 20 to 30 seconds is all it takes, not say, ‘I’m off for the rest of the day.’”

And so, that really makes a lot of sense to me. And I like how you’re very proactive in terms of, “I’m going to think about those prompts. Like, where did I feel it? How did I feel it? How am I going to capture it? Is it to sort of you write it down or you take a photo?” And so, that’s good in there.

And so, well, now I’m thinking about in a work scenario, I think like a little thing can happen and then it just gets you ruminating, going over it repeatedly. Let’s just say, okay, hey, you got busy and you weren’t quite doing something someone else in another department had asked you for, maybe once or twice, it wasn’t one of your priorities.

Then that someone has the audacity to email you again and CC your boss. And then you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this jerk. Well, I’m going to get to it soon enough, you know. You really could’ve called me if it was that urgent and I would’ve handled it. And now my boss thinks I’m some sort of a yogle who doesn’t ever look at his emails, or whatever.” So, your brain can just kind of spin and in a small thing. So, how do you recommend when you catch yourself in the non-delicious moment? How do you get out of there and start the rewiring?

Anne Grady
So, your brain doesn’t know the difference between a saber-toothed tiger or a snarky email. Your brain interprets perceived threats and real threats exactly the same way. And what basically happens is in your limbic system, in your reptilian brain, your amygdala basically creates cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, norepinephrine, all of these neurochemicals that are draining 20% of the blood from your brain and your heart, and placing them into your limbs so that you can fight, freeze, or run away. And even though this is a very primitive neurological response, it has not changed.

And so, when you are, one, is to know what triggers you and to be aware physiologically, psychologically what has triggered you. The next step of this is, because when that happens, you’ve been emotionally hijacked. You flip your lid, your ability to think logically flies out the window, and our emotional brain, that limbic system works 80,000 times faster than the prefrontal cortex, than the logical system. So, one, it’s recognizing that you’ve been hijacked. Do your palms sweat? Do your shoulders tighten? Do you get nauseous? Like, what has happened that lets you know that you have been triggered?

Like, for some people, it’s visceral, “I feel like I was punched in the gut.” For other people, “It’s like my neck just tightens and my hands sweat.” Whatever it is for you, it’s recognizing it’s happening is the first step.

The second is letting yourself feel whatever emotion is generated as a result. Most of us don’t like to be in uncomfortable emotional states. And so, we try to just either not feel anything or we try to fake it and flip it, and that doesn’t work. Your emotions are a neurobiological process. You cannot control them. It’s like you put your hand on a hot stove, you’ll bring your hand back very quickly without having time to think, “Ooh, that’s hot. Maybe I shouldn’t touch it.” Your brain does the exact same thing.

And so, where you do have control of this emotional management process is the thought that is generated as a result of that emotion. So, if you imagine step one is the trigger, “Bob sent me a second email, copied my boss, really pissed me off.” That emotion is anger and hurt and a little bit of fear and embarrassment. You can’t change that. The thought process is, “Bob’s a jerk. He tried to intentionally embarrass me,” which leads you to a response, most likely defensive, closed off, agitated, which ultimately has a negative outcome.

You don’t have control over the trigger, you don’t have control over the emotion, but you do have control over the way you interpret that situation. So, rather than being like, “Bob’s a jerk,” it’s, “Gosh, I wonder if Bob has got something going on personally and he didn’t mean to do this. He just copied my boss because he’s under the gun on a lot of different competing priorities. Or maybe this is the third time I’ve missed the deadline, and Bob is just getting short with me, and he’s kind of tired of it.” It’s how do I interpret that differently so it shifts my behavior?

And this is not easy at all especially in an organizational setting when someone throws you under the bus, or when you’ve missed a deadline, or you didn’t meet a deliverable. Like, whatever it is, it’s really paying attention to how your brain hijacks you and then doing some things to get un-hijacked. For example, three deep breaths from your abdomen reset your entire nervous system and gets your prefrontal cortex back online. So, when you are frustrated or angry, or you read the email, Arianna Huffington calls it email apnea when you read an email and stop breathing, which I think we’ve all done. Three really deep breaths from your abdomen will get you back online.

Counting backward from 10 or 20 will get you back online because you’re having to go to the prefrontal cortex to access higher-order thinking. Talking to yourself in third person, strangely enough, has been found to put you back online. So, like, “Hey, Anne, you got this. You’ll figure it out,” unless your name is not Anne and then you should replace your name. But there are some things that you can do to get un-hijacked. You just have to know it’s happening first.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, yes. And so then, I’m with you. So, you’re there, you have the trigger, you had emotional response, and then I like that notion of sort of feeling it and identifying it in terms of, “All right. It’s made me angry. It made me feel like I don’t have my act together when I absolutely have my act together.” And so, there we are in terms of the breaths or the counting backwards and reclaiming the control there in the prefrontal cortex.

Anne Grady
But more often than not, here’s what happens. More often than not it’s, “Uh-oh, they think I don’t have my stuff together. Now I’m insecure. Do I not have my stuff together? How do people think of me? How am I perceived by others? Does my boss now think that I’m not staying on top of things? Am I going to lose my job? What’s going to happen? Am I going to be embarrassed?”

We start down this path of these negative loops, and it’s very normal. But if you don’t catch yourself and stop it, and re-route your attention, which is why mindfulness is so incredibly powerful for your brain, then you say stuck in that habit loop, and it becomes a cognitive shortcut, and you just start thinking that way.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s talk about mindfulness in terms of, specifically, the practices that make the difference, and then what difference does it make.

Anne Grady
Sure. I used to think mindfulness was the dumbest thing in the world. Exercise and mindfulness, for me, really, the dumbest, like, “I’m not doing either of these things. I don’t care how helpful they are.” But the research doesn’t lie. You find enough research supporting it.

Mindfulness, we spend 47% of our time thinking about something other than what we’re doing right now. Like, if your listeners are driving, they’ve thought about different signs they’ve seen. If your listeners are sitting at their desk, they’re probably checking an email or two, or looking at their phone, or checking their Facebook feed at the same time.

We have this very difficult time controlling our attention. And mindfulness is simply brain training to help you be in control of what you pay attention to. So, anytime that you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s recognizing that and sitting in that, going, “Okay, what is this I’m feeling? Let myself feel it,” and then move on. It could be meditating. And this, I felt like I was playing whackable with my thoughts. Everybody told me how Zen-like this was supposed to be and it wasn’t for me.

And so, I really start digging in and realized it’s not supposed to be. Even Buddhist monks, they call it your monkey brain. Your monkey brain is going in all kinds of different directions. And every time you catch your monkey running around, and you bring it back and focus on your breath, you’re training your brain to focus on where you want it to be focused not where it actually goes.

Like, I meditate to sleep every single night. And what this does is it expands the grey matter in your brain, so does exercise, yoga does it, sleep does it. And the grey matter of your brain is the part of your brain that’s responsible for emotional regulation and attention management, and it’s the part of your brain damaged by stress.

So, mindfulness is it’s not touchy fluffy feely. It can be. You can find all kinds of, like, oh, say Om and drink tea and sit here in full lotus. But, for me, it’s simply paying attention to where you are when you’re there. If you’re sitting around the couch at night with your family, are you all watching TV and on your phones? If you’re eating dinner, are you paying attention to how the food tastes and feels? Because if you do that, you’re sitting in the moment.

When you’re sitting in traffic, instead of being angry, taking a few deep breaths, and, “All right. This is good. I have time to process my day. I can get through that so that when I get home, I can choose the mood I want to be in.” It can happen anywhere, anytime. It’s just a matter of bringing yourself back to right now. And it is not peaceful, and it is not priming. It is not this belief that we have of the perfect yogi. It’s really just being deliberate about where you want to bring your attention.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, you mentioned some ways to practice that in everyday life. And if you are hunkering down for meditation, how do you approach that?

Anne Grady
Well, one, the magical number is nine minutes. If you can meditate consistently for nine minutes a day, you will change your brain. And so, I had no idea how to do it, so I downloaded an app. There’s Calm, Buddhify, Happify, Headspace, there’s a bunch of different apps.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, don’t forget Simple Habits, sponsor.

Anne Grady
Simple Habits.

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, thanks, guys.

Anne Grady
Thanks, guys, yeah. Oh, I love them. I think I’ve done an interview for them as well. They’re great. So, it’s really whether it’s using an app, or whether it’s going on YouTube and getting a guided meditation, I suggest learning how first being guided by that. And sometimes your brain is so un-still, it’s so busy, that it’s really helpful to have a voice outside of you guide that. So, there’s power in doing it together if there’s a meditation place that you can go to. Personally, I prefer to be alone. It’s just really not rocket science. It is so hard but so easy. And it is really just focusing on your breath. Period.

You start by taking a few really deep breaths and just kind of get centered. Many programs will tell you to do a body stand. You can either feel like you start at the tip of your head, and then you feel relaxation down your forehead and your eyes, and you relax your nose and your mouth. And the way I view it as this warm blue light that’s surrounding me and I just watch it go through my head and neck and shoulders and sternum and stomach and all the way down to my toes. And that’s one way to stay present because you’re focused on your body.

And then you sit in silence and just focus on your breath. And your mind is going to go everywhere, “What are we going to have for dinner? Why does my leg itch? I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning? Crap, I didn’t send the email to so and so.” That’s normal. That’s what it’s supposed to do but you train yourself to go back to your breath, which is training your brain, training your attention management skills.

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

Anne Grady
No, I think the only other thing I would say is gratitude is really super, super powerful and it’s really, really easy. Right now, you can practice this by sending someone a text message, thanking them for something specific, whether it’s they helped you on a project, or they covered for you, or they helped you jump your car when the battery died.

It doesn’t matter what it is. You can take out your phone and just send somebody a text message and, literally, change your brain and theirs at the same time. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out thing. Simply send a one message a day to somebody in your life will change the way your brain looks at the world. So, it’s simple but it requires persistence.

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

Anne Grady
One of my favorite quotes is by Ray Wylie Hubbard. He’s a singer-songwriter from Texas, and he has a lyric that says, “The days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, well, those are good days.” And I just love that. it’s a simple reminder when our expectations don’t match reality, that’s when we’re angry, frustrated, and disappointed. And if you can control your expectations, you can control your mood.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really resonates in terms of it seems like I most often get angry, frustrated, and irritated when I’m in a rush, like I have an expectation of time that is not being delivered upon.

Anne Grady
Me, too. Me, too.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Anne Grady
The one that just came to mind right now is, when you said that it’s a study that was done with monkeys. They put these monkeys in a cage. And I am not an animal research advocate but in this particular study, what they did is they put a ladder in the cage with the monkeys, they dangled bananas from the top of the cage. Every time the monkey went up the ladder to get the banana, they sprayed the monkey with water.
Ultimately, they ended up replacing all of the monkeys that were originally part of the group and no monkey would go up the ladder even though none of the original monkeys were there. And it just demonstrates how our corporate culture just feeds on itself, our habits feed on themselves. We don’t even question why we’re doing what we’re doing. We just do it.

And really breaking away from that takes courage, which is my other favorite quote. It’s from Mary Anne Radmacher, and she says, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’” And sometimes it just takes us stopping and going, “Am I living my life on purpose or am I just reacting my way through it?”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Anne Grady
Oh, my gosh, there’s so many of those too. I think my favorite one growing up was “Where the Red Fern Grows.” I don’t know if you remember that book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Anne Grady
But, like, Little Dan or Big Dan and Little Ann, I absolutely love that book. Now, I really am geeking out over Brene Brown as I’m sure everybody is. I love Rick Hanson’s work around resilience. He has a great book called “Hardwiring Happiness.” Let’s see, what else am I reading right now? I’m looking at my bookshelf. Oh, Rachel Hollis has a couple of really great books.

And something interesting I’m reading, “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal. She has a great TED Talk as well. She basically aggregated all this research, and one study, in particular, found it’s not the stress that’s killing us, it’s the way we perceive it, and I found that just incredibly fascinating and powerful. So, those are just a few that I’m reading now. And then I’ve always got a James Patterson murder-mystery novel because everybody has got to have some brain candy.

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

Anne Grady
I’m sorry, say again.

Pete Mockaitis
A favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job.

Anne Grady
So, the biggest tool that I use is planning my day. I take time before I ever turn on my computer to think through what my day is going to look like. Or if I do have to turn on my computer to look at the calendar, I resist the urge to go check email and start working out of my inbox. And then I recap my day at the end, “What did I accomplish? What can I feel proud of? What did I not get done? When do I have time to do that?” So, for me, that’s important.

The other is a concept by Shawn Achor and I also love his work “The Happiness Advantage.” He’s got a new book out as well. It’s basically creating a mental moat around your day. The first 30 minutes and the last 30 minutes of your day are when you have the least cognitive energy, so your brain is most likely to stay in whatever state you put it first thing in the morning. And most of us turn on the news and look at social media and check our email within the first 30 minutes of being awake. And we basically just relinquish control of our entire day.

So, one of the biggest tools that I use is I sit and have my morning coffee. If I’m at home, I snuggle with my pups. If I’m on the road, I wake up a couple of minutes early to sit in the hotel room and really just be, without reading anything, without looking at the world around us, and I start being deliberate about what I let enter into my brain. The other thing is surround yourself with the right people. If you’re around constantly negative people, either you’re the common denominator or you have to find a way to get around different people.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and gets quoted back to you often?

Anne Grady
“You find what you look for.” If you look for all the reasons life is unfair and it’s tough and it’s an uphill battle, you will find them in spades. Like, I have a sign on my bathroom mirror that says, it’s written in Sharpie, it says, “What do you want to find today? Good. Go look for it.” Right? You find what you look for. And so, make sure you’re looking for things on purpose rather than just what your brain naturally will find.

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

Anne Grady
Well, there’s a couple things you can do. One, if you text the word strength to 555-888 you will get a resilient self-assessment along with a self-care sheet and a poem I wrote while sitting in a Philadelphia airport for nine hours with a couple of vodka sodas. It’s actually quite good. And you’ll also get a monthly resilience inoculation. You’ll get a tip tool or strategy regularly. You can join us on social. We have a gratitude challenge right now with our company.

The week of Thanksgiving, we will give $250 to a charity of your choice or a gift card to the place of your choice. And, basically, all you have to do is find us on social media, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, it’s all AnneGradyGroup and tell us what you’re grateful for, and we have a giant gratitude jar we’ll be drawing that from. Or you can go to AnneGradyGroup.com and Anne with an E. Check us out there. Lots of free resources and tools as well.

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

Anne Grady
Yeah, I would say spend the rest of this week, Thursday and Friday, or whenever you air this, spend the rest of that week really deliberately looking for five things every day that you would consider a delicious moment.

Well, I would say you can do this by putting five pennies in your righthand pocket, and every time you find one, you move a penny over to your left-hand pocket, and you don’t leave the office at the end of the day until you’ve transferred your pennies.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Anne, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you all the luck in the world and many delicious moments.

Anne Grady
Well, thank you. I wish you the same. And I hope you have a fantastic day. I appreciate you and your audience and I hope you guys really find lots of delicious moments.