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Each week, I grill thought-leaders and results-getters to discover specific, actionable insights that boost work performance.

650: Boosting Happiness at Work: Ten Tips from Chris Croft

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Chris Croft says: "Try to evolve the job, evolve it towards what you like."

The Happiness Tips author himself, Chris Croft, distills and shares his top ten tips for more happiness at work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The myths about happiness at work 
  2. How to rewire your brain to choose happiness 
  3. The affirmation to add to your morning routine 

About Chris

Chris is one of the top authors on Linkedin Learning, with 34 video courses recorded during 11 visits to Los Angeles, on subjects including Project Management, Time Management, Process Improvement, Assertiveness, Surviving Organisational Change, and Happiness, with 25,000 views a day and over eleven million views in total. His Happiness course is one of the most viewed happiness courses in the world, with nearly a million views on lynda.com and linkedin – its 52 practical things you can do to increase your happiness. 

He has published 15 books including The Big Book of Happiness, and he has produced a number of free apps including JobsToDo and Daily Happiness Tips. His free monthly email tips are sent to 20,000 people (www.free-management-tips.co.uk). 

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Chris Croft Interview Transcript

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

Chris Croft
Yeah, thanks for having me back. I, obviously, got away with it the last time. So, that’s great to know, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m excited to dig in again. And to kick it off, I want to hear about you are a saxophone lover. I’ve played the saxophone back in the day. What’s the story?

Chris Croft
Yeah, somebody said to me once, “The definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the saxophone but doesn’t.” And I think that’s probably pretty good. I do, I like listening to it, to people like John Coltrane and Bruce Springsteen’s fantastic sax player who died recently, Clarence Clemons. So, I love listening to it but I do play it as well in rock and jazz bands. But I don’t claim to be very good.

But I find it very therapeutic. It makes me happy to play very loudly, just to blast away. I tell people I’m the Jimi Hendrix of the sax but, of course, I’m no way near as good as him. But playing any instrument, I think, is a source of happiness. It’s creative and you get to show off. So, yeah, what’s not to like?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, happiness that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Well done. Happiness at work, you know a thing or two about it. Can you maybe, first, give us the lay of the land? To what extent are professionals, in general, happy at work? Can you illustrate the state of affairs there?

Chris Croft
Yeah, most people are not very happy at work. When they’re asked the biggest source of unhappiness, it’s usually their boss or their job. And happiness at work is not really treated very seriously by most organizations. They think it’s a bit of luxury. They understand motivation which is sort of linked a bit to happiness. And, in fact, when Maslow was creating his hierarchy of needs, he was actually studying happiness, not motivation.

So, he found that happiness required things like security and social links and being valued and all those sorts of things. And that was sort of twisted into motivation, just how to get people to work harder. But there is a link between happiness and how people work. And I saw some research that said that unhappy people tend to be about 50% engaged with their jobs, whereas happy people are 80% engaged. So, they spend more time working and they work harder if they’re happy.

But it’s hard to untangle cause and effect because it could be if you loved your job, then you’re happier, and then you work harder. But it could be if you work harder, that makes you happier, and it’s hard to un-pick the whole thing. But, certainly, if there are things you can do to make your employees happier, you’ll get more out of them and you’ll make more profit. So, why don’t organizations think more about happiness at work?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so happiness at work, I think we’d like some more of it just in and of itself and for the performance and productivity boost that it generates. Are there any sort of misconceptions associated with people think this makes them happy or unhappy at work but, really, that’s not the case?

Chris Croft
Well, the big one is money.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Croft
The huge one is money, and there’s been a lot of research done into happiness related to money. And, certainly, below a certain point, money is related to happiness. If you’re so short of money that you’re worrying about where your next meal is going to come from or whatever, then clearly happiness is reduced by not enough money.

But when you get to a certain point, it really starts to level out and eventually you get to a point where more money doesn’t make you any happier. And it’s interesting because we put so much effort into earning more money. We do jobs that we don’t like because they’re better paid and we sort of sacrifice lots of time, personal life, even relationships and marriages and things get sacrificed in order to make more money. And all the research says more money isn’t going to make you happy.

And I know everyone’s listening to this thinking, “Yeah. Well, it would make me happy.” But, actually, if you look back over the jobs you’ve done in the past, if you’ve had a steadily increasing income as your career has gone on, then it’s hard to know whether it’s made you happier. But if you’ve had a career like mine where the money has gone up and down, you’ve done all kinds of different things, looking back, so times I’ve been happiest when I was earning very little money. And some of the jobs where I’ve earned quite a lot were really stressful and I wasn’t that happy.

And my theory about why this is true is I do think money makes you a little bit happier. If you earned twice as much, and you spent twice as much on your car and the wine you drink and things, I think you would be 10% happier. But the problem is that you pay a 20% price to earn that money, to earn more money. Why will somebody pay you more money? And there’s got to be something wrong with the job that they’re paying you to do. They have to pay you more in order to get you to do it, and it’s usually stress, or working longer hours, or a lot of travel.

And so, yes, the money makes you slightly happier, but the price you pay to earn that money outweighs the gain that you get.

But there’s good news because it means we don’t have to search after money at work. We can think about doing a job that we’re going to enjoy. You could start thinking about work that’s going to be satisfying and make a difference, and all of those things. And that’s good news, I think, in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious, you mentioned that after a point, the incremental happiness for extra money levels off. I’ve seen some studies on that. Do you have a sense for what that point is, like, dollar terms?

Chris Croft
Yeah, I saw one and it said $60,000. And I remember being a bit disappointed because it hoped it would level off at like 20 or 30 because then I could say to pretty much everybody, “Don’t look for more money,” but, of course, a lot of people don’t earn 60,000 and, of course, it’s personal, so for some people it may level off at $40,000 or $50,000, and a lot of people are at that kind of point there.

And even at 30,000 or 40,000, it’s levelling off fast. So, if you can earn a whole load more, it won’t make much difference to your happiness. It’s completely leveled above 60, that’s the numbers I saw. But I think it varies depending on the country and your personality, and there’s a lot of factors going on in there.

Pete Mockaitis
And maybe your zip code and size of family and such.

Chris Croft
Yeah, but certainly it’s not millions. It’s not your second million doesn’t make you happier, although I’m sure that’s true. It levels off a lot sooner than that so don’t chase after the money. That’s not going to make you happy. But lots of things can, and that’s what I’ve got some tips for you in this podcast. I’ve got some practical things people really can do to get more happiness at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, lay it on us. What do you think are sort of really the big levers, the things that make all the difference?

Chris Croft
Yeah, so I’ve got a list of ten here and I’m planning we can zoom through them. They’re not really in any particular order and I think different ones will work for different people. My first one is a really quick one which is projects. And all the people who know me will laugh when I say projects because I am quite obsessed with Gantt charts and project management and things.

But it’s not project management that makes you happy but it’s having a project. It’s a feeling of moving towards a worthwhile objective.

And any project that you’re working towards gives you a nice feeling of progress and that your life isn’t being wasted. And we probably all had the feeling of driving home at the end of a day and thinking, “Where has that day gone? I’ve achieved nothing today.” But if you’re working on a project, you have that feeling of moving forward and you have that feeling of a worthwhile objective.

So, the first thing you can do at work is make sure you’re involved in a project, not just processes which is the same every day but a project, something that’s going to take a few months or a year where you’re working on something big. And I think it probably has an extra spinoff because you’re in a team, you’re working with people on a team, and that’s always good as well. That’s sort of a secondary benefit.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it sounds like when you say projects, some will say, “Hey, I’ve got too many projects and it isn’t doing it for me.” It sounds like it’s something you can own and observe your efforts are creating improvement, advancement, like a house you can see or, maybe, I don’t know if sales numbers…

Chris Croft
It could be a website. It could be an exhibition that’s going to happen. Yeah, it could be a piece of software. It could be an app that you’re working on but something where you’re going to get closure in the end and you’re going to think, “I did that,” or, “I was involved in that, and there it is.” That’s the thing.

And, yeah, you don’t want to have too many projects. Stress is bad. But a lot of people are really stressed out by the processes. For example, I used to run factories for a living before I escaped. That’s quite a tough job to do. We were just churning out stuff and we were trying to churn out 1% more stuff every month. And it was just stressful and you just felt like you were running to stand still.

But every now and then there’d be a project and we would get a new machine installed or extend the factory or start making a new product. And that was great because we could get our teeth into something new. And then after possibly a few months, there it would be working, done. And it was the projects that I used to enjoy. And the projects were a little bit stressful because there was often a deadline but it felt good when you finished them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great distinction with the manufacturing world because it’s sort of like, in a way, at the end of each day, like, “Hey, there’s a warehouse full of stuff that I contributed to,” but it’s sort of like, “But that was happening before I got here and will happen after I got here and I see it every day, so it’s not distinctive in terms of that’s mine.”

Chris Croft
That’s right. Yeah, I really think ownership is important. And that’s actually part of my second one I’ve got here actually, but to have ownership of something, even ownership of part of a process would be fine, even if you were just sweeping the streets, let’s say. If it was your street and you always swept the same street and you could take pride in it, then that would increase your happiness.

So, I think ownership of anything is good but, you’re right, ownership of projects is the best thing to have because you don’t have that futile feeling of doing it over and over again, Groundhog Day.

But my second tip, with ownership as part of it, is to work hard. And I know this sounds like an old thing and people may think I’ve been put up to saying this by some sinister boss behind the scene somewhere. But, actually, if you work hard, you’ll be happier. And I know people whose job it is all day just to skive and do the minimum. They’ve set themselves the challenge of doing the minimum amount of work. And I can still remember I’ve got my daughter a work placement at a garden center when she was about 18, and at lunchtime she said, everyone at the garden center, when they had their half-hour for lunch, they went into the mirror room and they just sat there and either fell asleep, which is sort of stared at the wall and just did nothing for half an hour. And she said, “I was totally bored so I went out and volunteered where I could help on the till, and was there anything, some plants that needed repotting or something.”

And they all thought she was mad to volunteer to work. But she said, “What’s the point of just sitting there? It’s not going to make you happy in the end because you’re just not achieving anything. And deep down, part of you knows you’re wasting your life.” So, I actually think having decided to do a particular job for a particular wage, having decided to do that job, you might as well work as hard as you can and absolutely do the best you can.

And people have said to me, “Oh, it’s different for you, Chris, because you’re self-employed. You’re working for yourself.” But everybody is self-employed in a way, and you’ve decided to turn up to work today and sell your time for money, and you might as well do a job that you can be proud of. And I think that that, then, means you’ve got to find a job that you believe in because it’s much easier to work hard at something you do believe is making a difference.

Pete Mockaitis
And before we dig into that one, in terms of hard work, it sounds like part of it is that it’s, I don’t know, you do honest work in terms of like you’re really doing some stuff as opposed to just showing out or trying to dodge or staring at a wall. So, it sounds like it’s a matter of focus or kind of really plugging into it as opposed to sheer number of hours. Like, it’s hard work.

Chris Croft
Yeah. It’s not the hours at all, no. In fact, don’t work long hours because that’ll make you less happy. And, in fact, there’s been research that shows that every half hour that you commute takes 10% off your happiness. So, half an hour each way that is.

And if you take an hour to get to work, an hour to get home, that’s two half an hours, that’s 20% off your happiness your whole life. So, working longer hours is a really bad idea. But when you’re at work, you should absolutely do the best you can, best quality, but also put maximum effort in. And the time will go quicker, you’ll feel happier, the customers will be happier, and they’ll give you a better response back to you.

And a sort of little subset of that is to try to evolve the job, evolve it towards what you like. So, if there’s 10% of your job you really love and 10% that you just don’t like at all, say to your boss when you get your appraisal, or if you don’t have appraisals, just say anyway to your boss, “I’d like to do more of this. I’d like to spend more time directly with customers,” or, “I’d like to spend more time coding,” or whatever. And they’ll go, “Yeah. Well, that’s great. I was looking for somebody who wanted to do that.” And you can move your job towards the stuff you like and away from the stuff you don’t like.

And even if you only move a 10%, after three or four years, you’d kind of really transformed what your job is like, and you can actively influence what your job consists of. And most managers are delighted when their employees say, “I’d like to do more of this and less of this.” Sometimes there’s unpleasant work that has to be done by somebody, and they say, “Well, look, sorry, you’ve got to do that.” But quite often, there’s some other crazy person who wants to do the bit you don’t like. So, you say, “I don’t want to do the filing.” There’s somebody else who’d probably love to do filings, so win-win.

So, it’s to think about what your ideal job would be like and influence your boss, to just slowly edge it towards that, and then it’ll be easier to work with your heart and soul into whatever it is you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, just as simple as asking. Just like that.

Chris Croft
I think so. If your boss isn’t interested in your happiness, then you can start to think about whether you want to do something else and vote with your feet, but it’s definitely worth a try. And I think most bosses are pretty amenable to being asked about that kind of thing. We’re not asking for everything to be totally different. We just want to do a bit more of that instead of a bit of this, and just evolve it towards in that direction.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Croft
So, that’s my second of my, gosh, ten sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Although some of these are shorter. Shall I go on to number three?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Chris Croft
Creativity. So, we get happiness from creativity. And we were talking about the saxophone earlier, and one of the great things about music is it’s a challenge to be creative. And actually, funny enough, in the band I’m in, sometimes they give me a fixed line they want me to play, “Can you play this rift all the way through the chorus?” And I’m thinking, “Well, yes, I can play that but it’s boring. And even if it’s a really good rift and it’s better than anything I could think of, I still want to play my own. I like my own better and I want to vary it.”

And so, there’s something in us that makes us want to be creative. And I would say even if you’re not very good at something, do it anyway. Even if you’re not very good at playing an instrument, play it. Or if you write poetry, even if it’s not very good poetry, or art, just do some paintings.

But once you get into management, then creativity becomes really important. I think it’s probably the most important thing a manager can do actually is to be creative. Because if you’ve got a process you follow as a manager, then what’s the point of you because anybody could follow that process? You could just get anybody, any old person in, and they could just, you know, “If this problem happens, do that. If a customer is unhappy, give them a refund, or whatever.” So, the purpose of management is to think about how to improve things, and that’s creative.

So, you need to find a job that’s creative and find creative parts within your job, and do as much of that as you can because creativity is a big source of happiness. And we talked about projects earlier, and I think projects have a creative element always, don’t they, because they’re always to do with doing something new. So, creativity, that’s the next thing to think about.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah. And I hear you that it’s not purely about sort of art and music. Creativity, I guess, the core of it is you are inventing or putting something into existence out of you.

Chris Croft
Yeah. And where does creativity come from? I mean, there’s a question.
And, by the way, never say, “Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t do it,” because everybody is. Everybody can be. So, you must never just give up and think, “I’m not a creative person. I’m just not,” because you can do it. And with practice and with nurturing and a good boss, because you don’t want a boss who just tramples on your ideas, “Oh, that will never work.”

Look at kids. Kids are always really creative, aren’t they? So, we’re all born with creativity, and you can see it in kids. Kids are always inventing stuff, aren’t they, and imagining, “This stick is actually an airplane,” and all that. So, we’ve all got creativity within us and you can rekindle it, and it’ll make you happier if you can use it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. What’s next?

Chris Croft
What’s next is learning. And I like asking people, “How long could you do a job for if you weren’t learning anything new? If it was quite easy and it was quite well-paid and you were good at it, how long could you do that for?” And answers vary from a couple of weeks to a year or whatever. I worked, part of my apprenticeship when I was an engineer, I had to make washers on a lathe.

And you would make 10,000 in a day. And I had to work there for six weeks which is part of my apprenticeship, and it just drove me absolutely mad. I couldn’t stand it. Within a week, I had become quite good at making washers, and I’d made, I don’t know, 50,000 by then. And after two weeks, I was just climbing the walls. It was so boring. And I tried stacking them in pyramids and trying to calculate how many were in the pyramid, and how many seconds till I can have a cup of tea at 10:00 o’clock, just to keep your brain going.

And I think we all have a built-in need to keep learning because that’s going to be a survival quality, isn’t it? Suppose you were making podcasts, for example, but if you get bored with making podcasts, if that day ever came, then you’ve got to do something else. And it won’t be as obvious as the washers but there will be a point where you just think, “I’m just not feeling it anymore, you know. It’s just yet another guest, and I just go, ‘Oh, how interesting’ after each thing he says.” I know you’re not there, Pete, but you know what I mean.

And, funny enough, I’d been doing training courses for years and I wondered at what point would I get bored with training, teaching people project management or something. And I notice I never got bored because the groups are different every time, and, also, I learn stuff every time from the audience. And so, you have to keep learning. And if you get to a point where you’re not learning, then you’ve got to go off a level or go sideways, volunteer to do something different. Just find something else where you’re going to keep on learning.

And I think it’s easy to avoid the effort of learning, and, “Oh, I can’t be bothered to learn something new.” And I have found if you move somebody to a new job, they’d go, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I’d have to learn new stuff.” But once they start learning it, they love it. And, of course, learning allows you to be creative as well because it just gives you more ideas you can use so there’s a link there, isn’t there, I’m sure between learning new skills and being creative.

So, learning is something that anyone can do. You can volunteer to go on training courses. Your company is bound to have training going on so just volunteer to go on the next course and learn something that you just don’t even think you’d need, like project management or assertiveness or anything, Excel, and just volunteer and go and learn something. And I’ll bet you, you’d feel good when you’re doing it. So, learning is number four on my list of easy ways to increase your happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’m convinced. And number five?

Chris Croft
Number five is to come out of your comfort zone. And this follows on a bit from learning. But to come out of your comfort zone and push yourself, volunteer for some things that are a bit scary. Maybe they want someone to give a talk at a conference, or maybe they want somebody to open a new office in Cincinnati or something. Just put your hand up and say, “I’ll do that.” And afterwards, you’re thinking, “Oh, why have I volunteered for that?” but just push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit.

Now, ideally, you’d have a boss who would do that, who would encourage you to gradually move on up and not give you huge scary things but just things that are a little bit beyond what you normally do. So, you just keep expanding your comfort zone. And the reason this increases our happiness, of course, is because we get achievement, because we get a bit of an adrenaline rush at the time, “Oh, I’ve got to give a talk to a conference.” And afterwards, it’s like, “Yeah, I did it. I feel good,” and you’ve increased your skills, you’ve learned some things as well.

So, volunteer. It’s a bit counterintuitive because we don’t think it’s going to make us happy but actually it does. And there’s that great sort of quote which says, “We only regret the things that we didn’t do.” So, if you do come out of your comfort zone, you won’t regret it. It’ll lead to something or other, and even if it ends up being a bit different to how you thought and it turns out to being tougher, you’ll look back and think, “I’m glad I did that.”

So, I don’t think you should do things that are really stupid at work but things that are just a little bit beyond what you would normally do. And, obviously, you can do that conference talk. Of course, you can.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’m with you. And so, I guess I wonder, do you have any pro tips with regard to what is a risk worth taking versus it’s too risky?

Chris Croft
I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a rule for that because I think everyone is going to be different. I think you want it to be kind of 10% more difficult than what you normally do and not twice as difficult. I guess you can look at the, “How big will the downside be?” When you do risk analysis, you look at the probability of it going wrong and how bad it will be, don’t you? And you can weigh up the upside and how likely that is, and the downside and how likely that is.

But I think I would mainly focus on, “Will you die if it goes wrong?” So, if you’re thinking of giving a talk at a conference, what’s the worst that’s going to happen is your talk is going to be really boring and some people are going to go to sleep because they’re not going to throw things at you, or you’re not going to get fired. So, that absolutely is the risk worth taking.

And so, I think assess how likely it is to go really badly and how bad would it be. And, quite often, when you start thinking about what’s the worst that could happen, it’s actually not that bad. We mostly have fear of looking bad in front of other people, and that’s just not a problem, really. So, I think that’s what I would do. I think that’s probably how I would assess risk.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what’s next?

Chris Croft
Well, number six, we’re onto the second half now. I’m really interested by this one because this one says that when you’re thinking about what makes you happy, your brain doesn’t know what’s good for you. This is based on some research by somebody called Sonja Lyubomirsky who I’m a big fan of. I think her research is fascinating. I think she’s great.

And they found that our brain doesn’t know what will make us happy. And we’ve already said that we think money will make us happy, and it doesn’t. And how can your brain be wrong? And the reason is because we’re really still stone age people, our brains are stone age.

So, for example, we have certain rules programmed in. Like, for example, eat the maximum amount of food while it’s there because we think that will make us happy because, in the stone age, if there was a dead dinosaur, you had to eat it as quickly as you could or whatever.

And then we have other simpler rules, like laziness is more efficient. And, yet, in real life, laziness doesn’t make you happy. You just underachieve and feel bad. And, yet, we think that if we do nothing all weekend and just read the paper and drink some alcohol at lunchtime and fall asleep in the afternoon in front of the TV, that that will somehow make us happy. But, actually, you look back and you think, “That wasn’t a great weekend really.”

And then our brain tends to focus on problems because if you’re trying to survive in the jungle, you’re always thinking, “Is that a tiger over there? Why is that there? I haven’t seen that before.” So, we tend to be quite negative, and that makes us unhappy in the modern world where in the modern world there aren’t that many things to be frightened of, and, yet, we still focus on the negative things. We watch the news, we want all the bad news that’s happening around the country, and we focus on the bad news. And that is a survival thing that is now out of date.

And the final thing that our brain does that’s bad is that it drifts away from the present. So, it frets about the future, it worries about the future, what’s coming up even though it can’t do anything about it. And it goes back to the past and it sort of thinks, “Oh, if only that hadn’t happened and I wish that wasn’t like that.” And sometimes it thinks the past was great, “If only I could go back to the past.” But, of course, you can’t change the past. So, our brain is obsessed with the past and the future even though that isn’t where happiness lies, because happiness is only in the present. And you can only be happy when you’re living in the present.

And that’s why we’re happiest when we do things that absorb us completely in the present. So, if you’re doing something, it’s called being in the flow. If you’re doing something where you’re really concentrating on doing it, and it might be, say, paddling a canoe or something, and you’re really concentrating on the canoe and the balance and the water, and you do it. And you just forget everything else.

And so, our brain is not our friend. And so, number six, really, is to say don’t trust your brain. Don’t think, “Well, I’m sure I must know best for myself,” but to actively take actions that go against what your inner nature is telling you. And don’t be lazy, don’t think that money will make you happy, don’t think that eating loads of food will make you happy. Don’t take the easiest path.

One of my favorite books is The Road Less Traveled. And the road that’s less traveled is the high road, the hard road. And he says in there that laziness is the biggest problem. He says that’s the root of everything, actually, is laziness. And why would we be lazy? And the answer is, in the stone age when we were short of energy, short of food and warmth, we had to be really economical. But, now, if we’re not careful, we can just lounge around all day, and we mustn’t. So, don’t trust your brain is number six.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think that hard work piece, that’s sort of why that helps is because you’re not able to be thinking about other things at the same time when you’re working hard and, thusly, you are engaged in the thing.

Chris Croft
You’re in the flow.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I dig that. Well, just to accelerate a smidge, could you give us seven, eight, nine, and ten in a sentence or two each, and then maybe we’ll dig into one of them?

Chris Croft
Okay. Well, number seven, it is a biggie but we can dig into it, is you can be happier by getting rid of your negative emotions because your negative emotions, and whether it’s sort of frustration and anger, or sorrow, regret, guilt, worry, you’re actually choosing all of those negative emotions. Your brain is choosing those for you, and you’re choosing it because you think you’ll get a payoff. You think that worry will make you perform better but, actually, it’s a substitute for planning. And you think that getting frustrated will make things go quicker but, actually, you just do things worse and you end up taking longer.

And so, negative emotions are always unhelpful, and you’re choosing them, and you can, therefore, not choose them. And you may think, “Well, I can’t choose my emotions. They just well up from within,” and they do well up, but you can choose whether to give them house room or not. You can choose whether to fan the flames, and think, “Yeah, God, that guy did it, is annoying at that meeting.” Or, you can think, “I’m not going to get annoyed with him. He means well. It doesn’t matter. There’s no point.” So, number seven is you choose your emotions, and you can choose not to have negative emotions.

Number eight is to not be focused completely on achievement but don’t forget enjoyment at work. A lot of people think that enjoyment is for outside work and then achievement is for work, and that’s the split. But, actually, you should enjoy your work as well.

And so, it’s worth thinking about, “What would enjoyable work look like?” Have goals for that. If you think that you would enjoy going out to visit customers, have that as a goal at work, “I want to find a way to get into doing that somehow.” And it might be the 10% evolving of your job but it might be to just go to a whole different department, and say, “I’d like to work here.” I mean, I don’t know. So, think about what you would enjoy at work, and have some goals for enjoyment at work. And linked to that is self-talk, to say to yourself, “I love my work.”

So, as you drive to work, don’t be thinking or even saying out loud, “Oh, not work again. I hate my work. Oh, I bet it’s going to be awful today. It’s the sales meeting, that’s always awful.” But, instead, say, “I love my work. It’s great.” And the first few times you’ll say that you’ll think you’ve gone mad and don’t let anybody else hear you because they’ll think you’ve gone mad. But it becomes true surprisingly quickly because your brain is really quite malleable. And if you say, “I love my work. I really do, I love it.” And, by the way, you have to say it like you mean it. You mustn’t just go, “I love my work.” That won’t work. You have to say, “I really do love my work,” and it will become true.

Number nine is to help other people. And this, again, this is a quick one to explain. But take every chance you get to help other people at work and outside work, of course. Because not only does that make them happier, but it makes you happier as well. For some reason, we are wired to help other people. And you’ll know this if you’ve traveled abroad, if your car is broken down, anywhere people will help. People help, they love helping.

So, if you help other people, you get kind of a triple win because you feel good and they feel good. And then later, they’re more likely to help you as well. So, helping other people is one of those things which a lot of people don’t do but you absolutely should take every chance.

My last one, number ten, is you can choose to set the temperature in every encounter you have with people. You can consciously be nice or not nice. And why would you not be nice with everyone that you deal with? Just be the nicest person.

A very quick story about this. I was doing a customer care call a while ago and there’s a guy, he was actually the carpenter, he’s to fix people’s desks and doors and things. And he said, “Well, I’m only nice if they give me tea. When I’m working on a job in someone’s office and they give me a cup of tea, I’ll be nice, but otherwise, they can get stuffed.” And I said to him, “How often do you get tea?” And he said, “Oh, about one time in ten.”

So, I said, “Okay, so nine times out of ten you’re not nice.” And he said, “Well, no, but they don’t deserve it.” And I said, “But what if you set the temperature and went in really nice every time? You’d be more likely to get tea. You’d probably get tea half the time. You’d probably get five times as much tea, which clearly is your objective in life.”

And he said, “Well, yeah, but if I was nice ten times, and I got tea five times, that means I would’ve wasted half of the times. I’d have wasted being nice half of the time.” And I was like, “Yeah, but it doesn’t cost you anything to be nice, and you’re going to get five times…” He’s going, “Yeah, no, no, I’m not going to do it, not unless I know they’re going to be nice; I’m not going to do it.”

And I’m just thinking, “What can you do with a guy like that?” So, put it out there and be the first one to put it out there. And there’s a little circle called do-get-feel. So, what you do affects what you get, and what you get affects how you feel, and then how you feel affects what you do. So, if you’re a bit lazy and you sort of do the minimum, then what you’ll get is sort of hassle from your boss and hassle from your customers. And then you’ll feel unhappy about your work. And then what you’ll do is even less work.

And you can break that circle by thinking, “No, even if my boss is maybe not treating me that well, I’m going to do the best job I can,” because then you’ll get better results and you’ll feel better about it, and you’ll be in the good circle, and you might even win over your boss. But, in a way, who cares what your boss says? Do it for yourself and do it for your customers to an extent too. But mainly do it for yourself because you’ll enjoy the work more.

If you’re nice to people, you’ll win in the end. So, that’s number ten, set the temperature in every interaction that you have.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I appreciate this rundown, and I guess I’m thinking, you mentioned get rid of negative emotions. Is there anything else that you think we should stop doing? Like, there’s a number of things here that we should make an effort to do and to pursue. What are some things we should just cut out?

Chris Croft
The first thing that springs to mind, actually, for me is comparison and competition which are related because comparing yourself with other people is a road to nowhere. There’s always somebody who’s going to be more successful or richer or a higher achiever than you are. And if you compare yourself with people like that, it’s just going to make you unhappy. And if you try to compete with colleagues it’s the complete opposite of helping them.

So, I really like the idea of the abundance mentality. If you help somebody else, they’ll help you and you’ll both gain. And, funny enough, I visited a friend of mine a while ago, and he’s got this great big house and it’s on the edge of London. It’s beautiful. And I said to him, “So, you’ve done really well in life, haven’t you? You’ve achieved.” And he said, “No, I don’t feel like I’ve proved myself at all.” And I said, “But you’ve got a house that’s worth five strokes six million pounds.” And he said, “Yeah, but my brother has got a house that’s worth 20 million.” His brother is the chief executive at Accenture.

And I said, “Yeah, but why compare yourself with him? Of all the people you could pick, why don’t you compare yourself with me because my house is only worth about half a million?” And he said, “You?” He looked at me and he went, “You? Why would I compare myself with you?” And I said, “To make yourself feel better.” But it was really interesting that he felt it was productive to compare himself with somebody on the level above. And, yeah, that might pull him up, but will it? Or will it just make him feel bad about himself?

So, I think comparing and competing are really unhealthy. And just do it for yourself. If you’re a salesperson, you don’t have to be the number one salesperson. Just feel good about every deal that you get and feel good about the fact you helped a customer and feel good that you’re getting better at selling, and you’ve learned some new techniques. But don’t start thinking, “Oh, that person sold more than me. And, oh, that person earned more bonus than me.” Just feel good about the amount of bonus that you’ve got.

So, I think that’s definitely something to stop doing, is comparing and competing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, let’s hear some of your favorite things. Can you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Croft
Yeah, I’ve got two happiness-related quotes I really like. The first one is from Albert Schweitzer, and he said, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” And so, if you love what you’re doing, you will be successful.

The other quote I like is totally different. And it just says that, “Allowing yourself to feel hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Chris Croft
Well, if I was a real egotist, I would say my Big Book of Happiness isn’t a bad place to start.

But there is a book that’s better than mine, and it is The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. I really think she’s nailed it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you a lot?

Chris Croft
I think it’s probably that you choose your negative emotions. People are always fascinated by that.

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

Chris Croft
ChrisCroft.com. Just go to my website. I’m always putting stuff on my blog. And from my blog, you can get my tip of the month, which is a free email I send out every month. I’m on YouTube as well and things, but ChrisCroft.com would be the starting place.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Not to be confused with Chris Cross.

Chris Croft
Yes, that bass player. I do get address, caught up letters addressed to Mr. Cross, but it doesn’t make me angry because anger is a negative emotion and you don’t think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re not cross about it. Ha ha ha.

Chris Croft
Yeah, it’s not worth it, is it?

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

Chris Croft
I think the easiest call to action is probably start a project. Yeah, what are you going to do? What projects have you got on the go? But if you’ve already got a project, then my sort of fallback call to action would be learning. What have you learned recently? How are you going to improve? Because all you’ve got is what’s between your ears really. What’s in your head is that’s your main tool nowadays, isn’t it, for earning a living, and you’ve got to keep improving your ticket.
They’re easy things you can do and they will lead to other things. So, make a start with a bit of learning and some sort of reasonably ambitious project that give you a sense of achievement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Chris, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and happiness in your adventures.

Chris Croft
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me again. And I really hope it makes a difference to people listening.

649: How to Persuade through Better Listening and Adapting with Brian Ahearn

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Brian Ahearn says: "The skill of listening starts with a choice, and when you make that choice... it becomes a habit."

Brian Ahearn shares how to improve your influence by listening well and adapting to different personality types.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What every professional can learn from insurance agents
  2. The 5 critical ingredients of listening STARS 
  3. How to DEAL with the four different types of people 

About Brian

Brian Ahearn is the Chief Influence Officer at Influence PEOPLE. A dynamic international keynote speaker, he specializes in applying the science of influence in everyday situations. 

Brian is one of only 20 individuals in the world who currently holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer designation. This specialization was earned directly from Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D. – the most cited living social psychologist on the science of ethical influence. 

Brian’s book, Influence PEOPLE: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade that are Lasting and Ethical, is an Amazon best-seller and his LinkedIn courses have been viewed by more than 75,000 people. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors! 

  • FSAstore.com. Use your flex spending account funds with the greatest of ease! Save $20 on a $150+ purchase with promo code AWESOME. 

Brian Ahearn Interview Transcript

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

Brian Ahearn
Thank you for having me back on. Third time is a charm, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
It is. Well, you’re in rare company there. That doesn’t happen very often. Maybe like three-ish times. Well, the listeners can’t see this but I’m charmed by your background. You have a screen which has the How to be Awesome at Your Job logo, cover art, and it says, “Hello, Pete.” And then you have a tasteful backdrop. I guess you got an Amazon, which looks pretty realistic. What’s the story here?

Brian Ahearn
So, in the COVID lockdown world that we’re in, I knew that I was going to need to do something to differentiate myself, and I saw a friend who’s a bigtime National Speaker Association speaker and he had put a studio in his house, and he was kind enough to spend about an hour with me one day to walk me through everything that he did, and we converted our daughter’s old bedroom.

And so, I’ve got a beautiful backdrop and a 55-inch TV and I can give standup presentations where I’m walking up to the camera and moving. It’s not just a face-on Zoom, and clients have loved it, and potential clients are blown away when they see their logo and their name up on the screen on a Zoom call.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and it’s different I don’t know why but it is. It’s different than sharing your screen with an image of that with you like in a corner. It just is and I don’t know why or how it matters but it does.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think clients are going to see me from like the waist up moving back and forth and turning towards, and getting a sense of, “Hey, this is a little bit what life was like prior to the pandemic. I’m seeing this person really interact with us.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it does. It’s more three-dimensional literally because it’s behind you in the third dimension. So, Brian, not that I had any doubts but this just reinforces that this was the right choice to have you on a third time.

So, you’ve got a fresh book. It’s funny, I was a little slow, as you may recall, to reply to your email because your book is called Persuasive Selling for Relationship Driven Insurance Agents. And I’m like, “Well, you know what, most of my listeners are not insurance agents.” But, nonetheless, I think you’ve really identified some universal skills and principles that benefit all professionals, and so we’re going to zoom into a couple of those.

You’ve got some good acronyms, kind of STARS and the DEAL model, we’re going to talk about. But, first, maybe you could just tee it up broadly, what can and should non-sales professionals learn from insurance agents?

Brian Ahearn
Well, everybody is selling all the time, and so when people say, “Well, this book is for insurance agents.” Well, it’s really for all salespeople because we look at the entire sales cycle and how the psychology of persuasion applies throughout each of the steps. But even somebody who might say, “I’m not in a formal sales role,” they’re still selling themselves, their ideas, and things, especially if they’re working in a large corporation. So, understanding the deal model of how to interact with people is critically important for those folks. So, I feel like anybody who knows that moving forward with getting a yes, selling themselves, their ideas and things, they’re all going to benefit from the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you’ve got some great perspective on listening and a helpful acronym STARS, which is funny because I think of STAR for interviews: situation, tasks, action, result. But you’ve got a different STAR associated with listening and I think it makes a ton of sense. So, can you lay it out for us, when it comes to listening well, why should we do it and how should we do it?

Brian Ahearn
Well, when I worked in the corporate world and I was involved in sales training, a critical component of being a good salesperson is the ability to listen. And, unfortunately, a lot of people haven’t experienced this, but good salespeople only talk 25% to 30% of the time. They ask good questions and then they stop and they listen, and they ask more questions. But you have to be a good listener and you have to be confident in those skills. And while we are taught to read and write and speak, almost nobody goes through a class on how to be a more effective listener.

So, as I was interacting with our field sales team back in the day, I came up with this acronym to make it very easy for people to understand what it takes to be listening stars. And it’s simply this: stop everything you’re doing, that’s the first letter, the S; pay attention to tone of voice, T, because it conveys emotion; A is ask clarifying questions; R is restate your understanding of what you’ve heard; and then S is scribble, take notes.

And I think if everybody could do those five things and just work on doing those things better all the time, you would be blown away by how much more effective you could be as a listener. You’d become listening stars.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, I love this in that it makes a lot of sense. Those seem to be five critical ingredients and often overlooked ingredients. Help us out with some of them in terms of it sounds easy to do but most often people are not doing it. Maybe tell us, how can we do each of these better? Like, how can we stop excellently? What should we really look for in the tone, etc.?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. So, when it comes to stop, you cannot give your attention to more than one thing at a time. You could try to fool yourself, and you could say, “Well, I can finish this email while I’m listening,” but you’re never really giving your attention and, therefore, you’re missing things. And we saw this when we were running little workshops and experiments, and we saw that people who gave their full attention to listening, they weren’t distracted by a second task or taking too many notes. They were catching 75% more of the facts that were being shared as compared to other people.

So, if you think about that, if you are a salesperson, or any position you’re in, if you discipline yourself to stop so that you can fully pay attention, and you’re catching 75% more than your competitor, you have a huge advantage. So, I think anybody who is listening to this podcast will catch themselves doing other things, and that’s okay, that’s a slap on the hand like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.” That’s your first step in awareness. And if you keep that up, eventually you’ll find yourself stopping all those other things for longer and longer periods which is going to certainly help you be more effective in terms of what you’re receiving through your ears.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brian, I love it when you drop a clear number like that. Boy, I’m thinking about there are just so many opportunities. Like, 75% more facts, I mean, that’s huge because someone might grab 10 facts, and then a listening star, could grab 18 facts, and those incremental 8 facts can make all the difference in terms of I’m thinking of it like in negotiation, like, “Huh, that thing I captured could surface a win-win opportunity that we could totally overlook had we not captured that upfront.”

Or, you can say, “Hmm, that little piece could really help me deepen my relationship with this person down the road.” It’s like, “Oh, hey, I remembered you liked flyfishing,” or whatever they like, and then you’ve got a cool opportunity to engage in subsequent conversations, build connection, camaraderie, etc. wow, 75% more facts from a conversation is just like 75% more opportunity, possibility, impact.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say, too, it’s not just the positive facts that you catch. Sometimes it’s the negative facts that might make you say, “Hmm, this isn’t a deal I want to go through with.” When I worked with an insurance company, a lot of the role of an underwriter is to get as many facts to make a determination, “Do we want to write this account or do we not? And if we do write it, at what price?” Catching those things, even the negative things, impacts the decision-making on behalf of the company, so it was critically important on the positive and the negative what are you going to catch or miss.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, decision-making in terms of making those decisions optimally and the facts are just the top of the funnel, so that’s huge. So, for stopping, you notice that you’re doing something else and then bring it back. And this kind of sounds like any number of mindful practices and exercises, like with your breath or whatnot. How else can we get better at stopping?

Brian Ahearn
Make an intentional effort to do it. Just to tell somebody, like, “Hey, hold me accountable here.” If you’re sitting in a meeting and you tell somebody, “I’m really trying to work on my listening skills and I don’t want to be distracted. If you see me kind of going off or something like that, just give me a nudge.” But that accountability is probably enough at that point just to get you to do something different versus if you never said anything to somebody else. So, it really starts with a commitment.

And what I want to say about this, Pete, every step in the STARS model, it’s a skill but it’s not a skill that people don’t possess and cannot get better at, and I’ll give you an example. I’m 5’9” and I weigh 210 pounds, I was always into weightlifting and things, but I was never able to dunk a basketball. And if somebody came to me tomorrow and said, “Hey, Brian, this contract that you’re looking at, it depends on your ability to dunk a basketball.” I’m like, “I’m out. Never been able to do it. It’s not a skill I ever possessed, and it’s not one I ever will, given my physical characteristics.”

But the skill of listening starts with a choice, and when you make that choice, the more often you make that choice, it becomes habit. And that’s where you, all of a sudden, you’re finding yourself stopping more and more, paying attention to tone more and more, asking those questions, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. And if I may, I’m thinking about what distracts me from listening. It’s often my body in terms of like, “I’m hungry,” “I’m thirsty,” “I need to pee,” “I’ve been sitting for too long.” How do you recommend we address those in particular or is it all the same in terms of redirecting it right back to the person talking?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think the consciousness of it, like when you start thinking like, “Oh, I want to go to the bathroom,” or, “Oh, I’m getting so hungry,” it’s still like shake your head and say, “Well, wait a minute. There’s going to be time for me to get some food. I need to just bear down here a little bit more.” And give yourself some grace, too, because sheer willpower is like a muscle. It gets tired too. And as we are mentally tired, as we are physically tired, as we are hungry, all of those things will impact our ability to give focus and attention.

So, if you have an opportunity to do something different, like, say, “Hey, Pete, I’m loving this conversation but can I take a short break? I just need to get a little carbohydrate in me. I just need to get like a piece of candy or something.” And that person is probably going to say, “Sure, that’s fine.” They may be feeling the same way, and so that might be license for them to go do that thing too.

And I think that when you’re the person who’s engaging somebody to help them be more effective listeners, I always make sure, like when I’m doing training sessions, every hour, we have at least a 10-minute break. And I know that carves out time but if people can use the restroom, can get a refreshment, can stretch their legs, can clear their mind, that next 50 minutes that I have them, they are so much more focused than if I try to just plow through two hours.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s absolutely true. I’ve seen it many times on both sides of the presentation table there. Okay, so that’s stopping. So, tone, you say that there is a lot in it and we should pay attention to it. Expand on that, please.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think everybody knows two people can say the same thing. Two people could make an apology, and one person can seem sincere and the other one doesn’t, and it’s not so…

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m sorry.”

Brian Ahearn
Exactly. We hear it all the time when people are caught, media figures are caught, and, all of a sudden, they’re issuing that standardized apology. But I always thought about the example that my wife called me one time, and I was at work, and I could hear the wind blowing, and I said, “Are you playing golf?” And she said, “Yes.” And that three-letter word, yes, just the way she said it, I said, “You’re not playing very well, are you?” And she goes, “No,” and then she started kind of unburdening herself.

But that’s a clear indication. Three letters, one simple word, and just by the tone, I could tell that she wasn’t playing well. You’ve been married now for a little while, I’m sure that you can hear some words like, “Fine.” When you say, “How are you doing?” “Fine.” You realize, “They’re not really doing fine. There’s more behind that. I can tell,” and that’s usually based on tone of voice.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. And so, are there any tone things that people tend to overlook or a great sort of telltale indicators? Because I think that sometimes in my own tone or others, I notice…how do I say it? It’s like they’re energized and excited, and then they’re back into sort of like perfunctory, like, “Uh-oh, duty, responsibility, process, compliance.” I don’t know what words I would use for those tones but sometimes you could see they’re jazzed about this and not so jazzed about that. And so, I can pick up on that and I find that pretty handy. What are some other key dimensions of tone to look out for?

Brian Ahearn
Well, where somebody emphasizes. You can have a sentence, “I didn’t steal that toy.” If you say that to a little kid or somebody, depending on where they put the emphasis, “I didn’t steal that toy,” or, “I DIDN’T steal that toy,” “I didn’t steal THAT toy. I stole another toy.” Right? So, paying attention to where that emphasis is and that tone is coming out, starts to become an indicator too. Because if somebody says, “I didn’t steal THAT toy,” then you might think, “Oh, the way you said that, you might’ve stolen some other toy,” or something like that.

But a lot of times people aren’t aware of it and they’re a leak, so to speak, and we do this with our body, too, and how we verbalize things and how we move. But there are leaks that will really let you know more about what somebody understands. And some of this goes back to the work of Dr. Albert Morabia and in his work on communication.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like the words and the tone and the gestures. It’s the proportion of…

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. And what they say, I think, is 55% body language, 38% tone, yeah, and 7% words. And speakers get up and all the time they tout that and they say, and I was guilty of this at one point, they’ll say, “People are going to remember your tie more than what you said.” That is not what his work was looking at. His work was looking at when the message and the messenger seem to be incongruent, people will focus a lot more on how somebody looks, their body language, and their tone of voice. Because, going back to that apology, two people can say the very same words. And if somebody says it in a way that doesn’t seem sincere, you start focusing on the body language and the tone. That’s what he was talking about in his research. Not a blanket, “People aren’t really listening to your words.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Thank you for setting the record straight there. And that sounds a lot more true, certainly, in terms of if they said, “Ah, ah, ah, I didn’t steal anything.” It’s like, “Well, your words say that you didn’t but there’s something. You’re very nervous for some reason, and that’s what I want to be keying in on.” Okay, so tone. And then how about some asking clarifying questions? What are some of your favorite clarifying questions?

Brian Ahearn
Well, let me say this about questions. First is I’m never an advocate of interrupting somebody when they’re speaking, but when you don’t understand and you recognize in the moment, “I don’t really understand something,” it shows that you’re engaged in the conversation. So, if you’re telling me a lot of stuff, and I say, “Hey, Pete, can you hang on a second? When you said this, did you mean that? I’m not really sure.” It gives you an opportunity to make sure that I do understand and clarify, but it also shows that I’m engaged in that conversation because if I just button up and don’t say a word, you might start even wondering, like, “Is he even paying attention? I mean, he hasn’t said a word. He hasn’t given me any gesture. I don’t know if he’s engaged in this conversation.”

And it’s even more difficult over the phone because you can’t see the person. So, I think utilizing clarifying questions is a great way to stay engaged in the conversation so your mind doesn’t wander. It lets the other person know that you are in that, and it just helps you clarify what it is that you’re hearing.

And to your question, too, a simple one is when you say what are some of the questions. It’s, “Help me understand,” or, “I’m not really sure. Could you explain it?” But it’s a question. So, you have to say, “Well, I don’t understand something,” “I’m not clear on what you said,” “I don’t think I hear what you’re saying,” “Can you explain?” “Can you expound?” “Can you do something to help me out here?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s grand. And I do like a 90-minute training on clarifying questions alone for like collaborators in terms of what you really need to understand before you embark upon a piece of work such that you don’t end up giving them something that they don’t want, in terms of like the deliverable, the timing, the process, the resources, the audience, and the motive.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I will say this, we talk about STARS in the book in the section on qualifying. So, in the sales process, when you finally have the opportunity to meet with a client, you want to assess, “Do we want to do business together?” Not all business is good business, “Can I do business? Do I have the capacity to fulfill your needs? And do I want to?” And you’re making the same assessment of me as the salesperson, “Do I want to do business with this guy? Can he meet my needs?” Questions are what help us determine that, and that’s why we talk about the STARS model in the qualifying part of the sales process.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we’ve asked some clarifying questions. And then restating, how should we do that?

Brian Ahearn
So, whatever it is that you understand somebody to say. Pete, I know your listeners can’t see this but if I ask you, for example, about your business. You’re proud of your business and you know all this, and I’m putting my arms out really wide. You have this vast wealth of knowledge. If I’m working, for example, with insurance agents, they don’t need to know all of that. There are certain key things that they want to understand and so they’re going to hone in on those.

And as they do, those are the things that they’re going to probably come back and say, “So, Pete, your business sounds awesome. And if I understand you right…” and then I kind of come through and I lay out a few critical things about what it is that you need in your insurance protection. “If I hear you right, Pete…” and then I clarify that. And you may come back and go, “That’s exactly it, Brian. Thank you.” Or, you might come back and go, “No, you’re missing it. It’s the claim that I had. That’s why I’m upset.” And so, we can circle back and make sure that we’re both on the same page.

But no matter how well I do with listening, I will never know everything going on in your mind and so I don’t want to make that assumption that I do, so I, therefore, am going to try to restate to the best of my ability, “Here’s how it boils down for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. And then note-taking, I mean?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I use S for scribbling because N would’ve been STARN and that would’ve blown the whole model, right? So, I always encourage people to take some notes, but this is not writing the great American novel. It’s not trying to get down every word that people say. And while we can use certain tools like laptops to get a lot of information, that actually can hurt your listening because they say a lot of times students are trying to take down everything the professor is saying and they’re missing context and other things.

I encourage people to just bullet point things that they’re going to need to circle back on. So, I might’ve heard you say you had a car accident. I don’t need to stop you right in the middle of your story to say, “Tell me the details,” because you might. But if you don’t, I‘ve got that little bullet point and I can say, “Hey, Pete, you mentioned you had a car accident. Can you tell me a little bit more?” And I start asking, “When was it?” “What happened,” and all those things but it’s because I have that bullet point to remind me.

It also maybe just a few quick bullet points so there are things that I can fill out after our conversation is over. So, maybe I catch the name of your pet, I catch the name of your wife, or other things that I think will be important for me to remember down the road. And so, I bullet point those and it triggers my mind, and then I start going back, “Oh, yeah,” and I remember the type of dog that you said you had, and how long. Certain other things are triggered by that bullet point. So, that’s what I mean by scribble.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. So, there we got the listening, STARS, cool. And we’ve got another perspective, you called it the DEAL model, and you’re thinking specifically about four personality types. Well, first, lay this on us in terms of what are the types? Where do they come from? And how do we identify them?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. People are probably pretty familiar with DiSC, the DiSC model. And when I was working with the insurance company, and this was probably ten years ago, a training organization came in and used something that was similar to that. I don’t remember exactly what it was but it was similar to that, as a way to try to identify yourself, and it was a little more self-reflective than others.

And a guy I worked with came up and said, “Man, it’d be really cool if we could tie the principles of influence that you teach to the different personality styles. Are there some that are more effective than others?” So, I did a survey with my blog readers, and I took some very generic descriptions and said, “Read these and choose what you think you are,” and then that kind of funneled them in. And then I was asking them all the same questions, but I could look at the results then, and say, “Wow, people in one category seem to be different than people in these other categories.”

So, through the course of that, I came up with driver, expressive, amiable, and logical. And I like that because it’s spells DEAL and we deal with people, and the people I worked with, the salespeople, want to close deals, so it becomes very easy for them to remember. And it’s focused on, not self, not that it’s unimportant. It’s very important to understand ourselves, but it’s other-focused. I wanted to try to determine, Pete, are you a driver, that person who’s more focused on getting things done than relationships, and you like to be in control? Or, are you the expressive, the person who’s really relationship-driven but also really likes being in control?

And then that amiable, which is the relationship-oriented person who is more about self-focus and self-control. And the logical person is a task-driven individual but they’re not focused on controlling others or situations. They’re more focused on themselves, their own thinking, their own self-control. So, that’s a very basic model but it’s good because salespeople don’t always…I mean, I’m not going to go up and say, “What’s your Myers-Briggs, Pete?” And I wouldn’t be able to figure that out.

But this is a pretty simple model to assess people, and once you feel like you’ve got a handle on the type of personality, then we talk about the principles that are most effective in terms of being able to ethically influence them.

Pete Mockaitis 
Okay. So, it sounds like it’s, if I were to stick them in into a two-by-two, the dimensions we’re looking at are their level of task focus and their desire to control others?

Brian Ahearn
And situations, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, with the driver, being high-high; the expressive being, I don’t know, low-high, they care about the relationship.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I just say that, yeah, there’s a demarcation and the bottom of it is the person is very relationship-driven.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say good examples of that that I used in the book, Steve Jobs would’ve been a driver, right? That guy doesn’t care about being your friend. It is just about the work and get the stuff done. Oprah Winfrey, I think, is a great example of an expressive. She wants to know your story. She wants to get to know you and help you, but yet she is completely in control of her media kingdom just like Steve Jobs was in control. So, in the respect, they’re very alike but they’re very different in terms of their interactions with people on an individual level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And so, how about examples for amiable and logical then?

Brian Ahearn
Amiable is always a little bit tougher in terms of coming up with examples because they’re not necessarily limelight people, and a lot of the occupations that they tend to move into aren’t ones that are necessarily in the limelight because they’re very relationship-focused and a little bit more self-control, self-focused than other in terms of control. They tend to be things more like counselors and teachers and nurses and social workers, and those aren’t always positions that are in the limelight. Now, that’s not to say that because you’re an amiable you can’t lead a company. You absolutely can. But what we tend to see is people move more into those positions that are not as much in the limelight.

Brian Ahearn
Mother Teresa would be an awesome example.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And logical?

Brian Ahearn
Logical person, again, very, very task-focused but not about controlling others or situations, more on the self-focused. And a great example here would be a Bill Gates or an Albert Einstein. And I would hope that you’d agree and your listeners would agree, if you have five minutes to try to sell an idea to each of these people, I hope you would go about doing it very differently with Steve Jobs versus Oprah Winfrey versus Mother Teresa or an Albert Einstein because they’re going to respond to different things and for different reasons.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. In terms of like Bill Gates doesn’t care much about your story most likely. If you’re talking about he’s trying to save the world in some dimension, I don’t know, climate change or vaccines or something, and then you say, “You know, Bill, let me tell you how I got interested in malaria,” I have a feeling Bill doesn’t want to hear, and maybe he does. I don’t know. But I would imagine he’d be more intrigued by, “Here’s the innovative cool thing that we’ve got going on here and why it’s different than what’s ever been used before, and why it’s way more cost-effective at saving lives than the previously existing technology available,” versus, Oprah would probably not be as into that. She wants to hear the story about how you got into malaria.

Brian Ahearn
Well, here’s a really good example, I think, for the logical versus the driver. According to the research, the survey that I did with blog readers, both of those personalities responded to the principle of consistency. And that principle says that we feel an internal psychological pressure and an external social pressure to be consistent in what we say and what we do.

I would think that somebody like Albert Einstein or Bill Gates, when they say something, they believe they’re right because they trust their intellect, they’ve thought it through, they’ve been methodical, and they’ve come up with a decision, and that’s why they believe what they believe. And if you can tie your request into that, then it makes very logical sense for them to say, “Absolutely.”

You go to the driver who is also driven by that principle of consistency but it’s a lot more ego-based. When Donald Trump was on “The Apprentice,” when he said something, he believed it. Even as president, when he said something, he barred the door on the facts just because he uttered it, he believed it. And I think to a great degree, a lot of people who are in that driver situation, they trust their gut, and so when they say something, they believe they’re right but it’s not for the same reason as the logical. But, nonetheless, if I can tap into what they’ve said, what they’ve done, or what they believe, it becomes easier for them to say yes. So, same principle, but very different reason on why it’s so compelling for each of those personalities.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting. I’m reminded of I heard there’s like a legendary story, and I believe it’s true, the person doing the interview wasn’t lying, about Bill Gates, Microsoft, the XBOX, like they’re having a meeting about this thing. And, at first, Bill says, “What you’re proposing is an insult to everything I’ve done in my career in terms of like how it’s going to work and how it didn’t utilize the DOS/Windows, whatever stuff that he built up.”

And so, the meeting wasn’t going well for a long time until someone said, “Well, what about Sony?” He’s like, “Yeah, what about Sony?” And then it sort of totally changed his thinking associated with dominance and market share and influence and being in the living room, and how Microsoft and Sony were both kind of growing on these dimensions, and Sony has got this PlayStation, and they’re like, “Yes, we’ll give you everything you’ve asked for. Go for it and do the XBOX.” And so, that’s interesting in terms of like the set of facts that he’s focused on, logical, sure enough, was the persuasive thing that got it done when those were brought front and center for him.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say, too, that contrast phenomenon, right? He’s being compared to Sony, somebody that he looks at as a peer, a competitor, somebody he doesn’t want to be beaten by. If they had made the wrong comparison, maybe there was a little upstart company that was doing something, and he might’ve looked at it and said, “Who cares?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or like Nintendo. Like, “Yeah, okay, Nintendo has got Mario. I don’t care.” But Sony, “Oh, that’s a different story.”

Brian Ahearn
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well so then, maybe if you could give us an example of some things that you might hear out of someone’s mouth that would make you go, “Hmm, driver,” “Oh, yeah, expressive.” Just a couple of telltale words, phrases, sentences that kind of cue you in to thinking, “It sounds like this is where you’re landing here.”

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think a lot of times, and I don’t like always making generalities, generalizations, because they’re always exceptions, and I absolutely recognize this. But I think a telltale, a lot of times, for drivers is they don’t stop talking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Brian Ahearn
You really have a hard time getting a word in, edgewise, because they want to be in control of the situation, they have an opinion on everything, and, therefore, they’re continually going. And so, that can be a clue right there that, “I’m dealing with somebody who’s not giving me any space to step in and share what I need to share.”

If you’re going to try to influence somebody like that, you have to be okay with that. You have to recognize, you have to pick and choose the battles, and then step in where you get that opportunity or ask a question that might make them go, “Hmm, what do you mean? Tell me more.” Now, you’ve kind of got the platform back. But I think that’s the big telltale for a lot of drivers is it becomes kind of hard to get a word in edgewise.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And expressive?

Brian Ahearn
I think expressive is a lot of times people, and these are entertainers and politicians, people who know the importance of having a relationship, they’re probably a lot more of the storyteller, somebody who’s got a, “I met somebody and here’s a story and here’s another story.” So, they may do a lot of talking too. They’re expressive, they’re very outward, but they also allow you that space to ask about you, and you feel a little more connected to them, and some of it may just be because of the stories, but you’re like, “Hey, that’s funny. I like that person.” You don’t feel like you’re necessarily being talked to or talked at as much as maybe you will from that driver, who’s kind of tell you what it’s got to be like.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And amiable?

Brian Ahearn
Amiable is a lot of times are going to be the ones where you have to pull a little bit out of them. I’ve always pictured an amiable, if you’re going to go to the movies and you’ve got six people, and you say, “Hey, what do you guys want to see?” Amiable is probably like, “No, anything is cool with me,” because they’re very laid back, very relational. They’re just happy that they’re hanging out with everybody, and they’re cool doing whatever.

The driver would be the person who might say, “Well, if you guys are going to see that, I’m going to head home. I don’t want to see that movie,” and they’d be okay heading off by themselves. So, I think with the amiable, you’re going to see people who are very relational, very laid back, not looking to be the life of the party. You may have to do a little bit more to draw them out. You’re probably are going to get into much deeper conversations with somebody like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And logical?

Brian Ahearn
Logical person is going to be somebody, obviously, who’s very analytical and they’re thinking they’re going to be very fact-oriented. They’re going to be the people who don’t just share an opinion. They will do some research so that they can speak intelligently on something. Before they open their mouth, they want to really understand what they believe and why they believe it so that they can feel comfortable in terms of sharing it.

And that one, I would say from experience, people will say that I am an expressive just because of what I do, but I am absolutely a logical person. I’m a deep thinker about things, and I always tell my daughter, when she asked me a question, I’m like, “I don’t have an opinion on that because I haven’t really looked into it and I’m not going to just say something.”

Pete Mockaitis
I feel the same way, and particularly, in business-y situations. I remember, talking about insurance, I was buying some insurance once and it had some absurd clause, I was like, “Wait. And this kind of make it sound like you don’t pay any claims ever. So, what’s the deal here?” “Oh, no, one has ever asked that question before.” It’s like, “Well, so can you share with me some evidence that you sometimes pay out claims because this kind of reads like you never have to?”

And so, when I’m in sort of a business conversation, that’s kind of what I want, it’s like, “I want a profoundly compelling evidence that proves that you got the stuff. Like, you’re going to deliver what I’m seeking to be delivered.” And so, I think that often makes people feel very uncomfortable because usually they don’t have the evidence that I want. And so, they need to kind of like try to be compassionate, it’s like, “Well, okay, if you don’t have that set of facts, can you give me some alternative sets of facts that maybe I can plug into my spreadsheet and deal with how I need to deal with to prove it out?” But, still, it’s logical, like got to have it.

Brian Ahearn
Well, this can be a shortcoming when you’re the one trying to persuade. Let’s say you’re really good at building relationships. That’s an awesome skill to have but if you get into that situation with a logical like you, if you make a friend, okay, that’s cool. But if you don’t, that’s cool, too. You just want to buy the insurance.

So, if a person only is able to lean on what their strength is, that strength ends up being a negative, a weakness with certain people. And this is why I try to emphasize in looking at this model. It’s not about you, it’s not about what you’re good at, it’s not about your strengths; it’s about the other person. Learn what the psychology is and then understand what the psychology is that applies to them, and get good at that.

So, in a sense, be a little bit of a chameleon in terms of how you interact with people, not being a false person, but just recognizing that just because you like having these great relationships, you’re going to have some clients, and they could be great clients, but they’re just not into the relationship part. That’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, maybe since insurances is your specialty, maybe I’ll just put you on the spot. Let’s say you’re trying to sell auto insurance to these four different types of people. Can I hear a sentence or two of a custom verbiage that might be very appropriate when you’re making that pitch to a driver versus an expressive versus an amiable versus a logical?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. Well, if you’re talking to a driver, then scarcity is something that comes into play a lot. The mistake that people would make is talking about all the things that somebody might gain or save, but what you really want to talk about is what they might lose.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Brian Ahearn
So, going in and having that conversation and framing something instead of gain, like they don’t care so much about saving as what they may be losing, and framing it that way, “You’re overpaying,” instead of, “Well, I can save you a bunch of money.” That would be a particular approach.

When you move down and you’re talking to somebody who’s an expressive, understanding that they’re going to be more relationship-oriented, you’re going to want to tap a little bit more into like, “You’re going to want to make that connection.” They’re going to want to look at you and say, “That’s a person that I really like and I want to do business with people that I like.”

Another effective principle in terms of interacting with folks like that is consensus. What are other people who are like them doing? And by bringing that in, that becomes a strong decision factor. Whereas, again, the driver, they don’t care what everybody else is doing. They think of themselves as completely different and unique. So, that’s a little bit about how you’d be different with this person who’s the expressive.

When you move over to the amiable, also very big on relationship, so you’re going to want to certainly make sure that you tap into liking because they’re probably not going to want to do business with somebody that they don’t like. So, connecting on what you have in common, talking about those things, being complimentary where genuine compliments are due. But they also surprisingly respond really well to the principle of authority.

And so, by really showing that you know what you’re talking about, that’s not challenging to them; that’s comforting to them. And so, by deferring to something like, I might say, “You know, Pete, I’ve been in this business now for more than 30 years. And something that I found is really important.” That little tidbit about, “I’ve been in business for 30 years,” isn’t coming across like a bragger to them. It’s giving them a sense of comfort that, “Wow, okay, I like this guy and he knows what he’s talking about.” And so, that becomes a little bit more of the tact that I take with that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the logical?

Brian Ahearn
So, the logical, obviously they’re going to be fact-driven so you’re going to need to be able to show authority not only that you have some personal authority that you’re good at what you’re doing but bring in data, bring in information from respected individuals or organizations that would support your claim. If you don’t do that, then you come across to the logical person as just somebody who thinks they know everything. Much better to bring in that support of the information, “Where did you hear that quote?” “What did this particular report say?” That’s what’s going to give somebody, who’s a logical individual, a sense of comfort.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, Brian, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Brian Ahearn
As I said at the beginning, I wrote this book for a specific market. I wrote it for insurance agents, and that was because trying to write a sales book can get super generic. When you keep talking about products or services, and people start reading it, “That doesn’t apply to me. Well, that’s…” So, just on the counsel of somebody I really respect, I thought, “You know what, I’m going to tighten this up. I’m going to make it specific to insurance. It’s what I know.”

But then I realized, as I got into it, that every step in the sales cycle, if somebody is in sales, they’re going to benefit from understanding the psychology that applies. And that even people who aren’t selling are going to benefit from learning how to be a listening star, how to deal with different personalities so that they can sell themselves and their ideas. So, I would just encourage anybody, if you see yourself in any capacity as selling, check the book out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And, now, a favorite quote?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think the one I find myself referring to more than ever now is something that my high school football coach said, and I attributed it to him for a long time, until somebody said, “No, that was the Roman philosopher Seneca.” But it is, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” And ever since I was a sophomore in high school and heard coach say that, and recognized that if I worked really hard, good things would happen.

And even when the good thing that I want doesn’t come about, it’s amazing, Pete, how all that preparation comes in in a different way, and, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Hey, that preparation is helping me now over here.” So, it never goes untapped.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Brian Ahearn
One of my favorites, was Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. And just reading about what he and all those other people in those concentration camps endured was unimaginable. But the takeaway for me was towards the end of the book when he said, something to the effect that, “Every freedom can be taken away from a man except for the last freedom; where to place your thoughts, what you’re going to think about.”

Nobody. And he said, basically, it didn’t matter how much the guards beat them, threaten them, or do anything, they could never ever make them think what they didn’t want to. And that is incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Brian Ahearn
It’s called Voice Dream, and it’s an app that I downloaded on the advice of a friend on my iPhone. And when I write something, I have it up usually in Google Docs, and I just pull it into that app, and then I can listen to it. And it’s amazing what you catch. You write it and you think it’s good, and then you hear it, and you’re like, “Eh, it’s not exactly how I wanted it to come across.” So, it has helped my writing immensely. I’m working on two more books so I use it all the time.

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

Brian Ahearn
First will be LinkedIn. I connect with everybody and I guarantee your listeners, if you reach out to connect and you don’t put a reason, I will come back and say, “How did you find me? I’d like to understand why people are reaching out.” And if you do put in a reason, I will still respond because, as my most recent blogpost said, “Social media is supposed to be social.” And the way that we do that is by having conversations with people. And so, I will absolutely respond to you on LinkedIn.

The other place, Pete, would be my website which is InfluencePeople.biz. Just a tremendous amount of resources out there if they want to learn more about this topic.

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

Brian Ahearn
I think it would be to start dedicating time to understand the influence process. Influence, in some respects, is like listening. Very few people learn how to do it well and yet we use it every single day, I say from womb to tomb. As soon as a baby is born, he or she cries. They’ve got a need they’re trying to get met.

Some of us learn how to do it well and it helps immensely with our professional success and personal happiness. So, I hope people who are listening will say, “You know what, maybe I need to dig into this a little bit more. I could use the ability to have more people saying yes. That would be helpful in my life.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brian, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you lots of luck in all your influencing.

Brian Ahearn
Thank you. I appreciate it, Pete.

648: How to Turn Stage Presence into Screen Presence with Diane DiResta

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Diane DiResta shares expert tips to up your presence in remote meetings.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The simple change that dramatically improves your presence 
  2. Cost-efficient tips for improving your audio
  3. Expert tips for engaging your virtual audience 

About Diane

Diane DiResta, CSP, is Founder and CEO of DiResta Communications, Inc., a New York City consultancy that serves business leaders who deliver high-stakes presentations—whether one-to-one, in front of a crowd, or from an electronic platform. A Certified Speaking Professional, DiResta is one of only 12% of speakers to hold that designation. She was President of the New York City chapter of the National Speakers Association and former media trainer for the NBA and WNBA. 

 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

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  • FSAstore.com. Use your flex spending account funds with the greatest of ease! Save $20 on a $150+ purchase with promo code AWESOME. 

Diane DiResta Interview Transcript

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

Diane DiResta
It’s great to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s great to have you back. And, boy, yeah, a lot of things have evolved since our last conversation.
Well, so much of your business has now shifted to a whole boatload of virtual meetings, presentations, trainings, interactions. Tell us, how has that shift in experience gone for you?

Diane DiResta
I love the virtual world. Now, what’s interesting is I’d already started virtual coaching before COVID hit because I had some people who were from North Carolina, Canada, Texas. So, what I was doing ideally when I could is either they were coming to New York for the first visit or I was going to them. And then it worked really well virtually. But once COVID hit, it was all virtual.

And I didn’t get any pushback from people. I had one client who I started with in-person, he had one session left, and he didn’t want to do it virtually. And then, finally, he realized this might be a year or so, and he said, “Let me do it.” And so, he realized it’s working really well. So, I’ve done training sessions, speaking engagements, and coaching virtually. I really like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so you’re a pro and you have made the transition like a pro. Can you share with us any surprises in your own personal experience as you’ve made the transition?

Diane DiResta
Well, the first thing I did immediately is I went for certification so I’m now a certified virtual presenter.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting.

Diane DiResta
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Where does one do that?

Diane DiResta
Through eSpeakers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Oh, that’s right. I have seen that little icon there. Sometimes we recruit guests from eSpeakers because they have a huge database of experts. Pro tip, podcasters.

Diane DiResta
Yes. And so, well, it was important for my credibility. And a big surprise to me was how bad some of these presentations are from people at higher levels. So, the first surprise was I was watching TV and I saw this senator that I had seen many times on the news, who was a spokesperson, who was very media savvy, very good, and I witnessed her first Zoom presentation, and it was like this – side of a face, looking down. She didn’t even know where the camera was, and I’m shocked. Like, how could this happen?

[03:31]

And then someone explained to me, “Well, when you’re in the media at that level, people are doing things for you. You’re talking into a teleprompter, there’s a producer, so they don’t really learn this.” So, I realized there is a market here and people need me. So, I start to rant when I see these kinds of things happening.

I was working with a physician, I was a facilitator or an interviewer for a health summit, a virtual summit. We had a conversation beforehand, we met five minutes before the meeting, and I was shocked, once again, because here he was, in his office, with a ceiling fan, a rotating fan. So, I got rid of that through manipulation of the laptop. But then his backdrop was so messy, there were tons and piles of books and papers and files, and there was nothing I could do.

So, here’s what people need to realize. You are communicating a message, and that messy background interferes. Number one, it’s a distraction to the message but, secondly, it’s communicating another message about your presence. So, there are some people who feel or believe that if they have really good credentials and they have very good content that that’s what counts.

But, no, if you have a mess behind you, you’re communicating sloppiness. So, what does that mean? Is your research sloppy? Is your presentation sloppy? So, it’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, boy, there’s so much there in terms of, one, those associations. And I’m reminded of, well, I’ve got that book in my background, Pre-Suasion by Bob Cialdini talking about how we have associations. Like, if a resume is on a heavy clipboard, we sort of associate some weight to it. If you’re given a warm cup of tea, you might have some warmth toward the person who shared that. And so, there are some studies that point to that, and so then how much more so when it’s your entire background, that which is in my field of view as I’m beholding you, is messy. Like, that association will pop up all the more so.

Diane DiResta
Absolutely. So, this is what’s different and this is why I’m helping people translate stage presence into screen presence because the 3D world is very different from the virtual platform. So, one of the things people have to realize is they need to stage themselves. When you go into a meeting in a 3D world, the meeting room is there. You go into a conference room, the overhead lighting is there, the table is there, you don’t do any of that. But when you’re recording from your home or office, home office, you need to change the way that looks, you need to take control, so you become a producer. And the staging is very important, it’s the backdrop, the background.

And so, when I talk about staging, it’s what’s your backdrop. So, you have a few options. One is a screen. I have a room divider and what that allows me to do is hide any mess so that I can be camera-ready in a pinch. And we just had this experience a moment ago. You saw the mess behind me and there was no dial to change the backdrop so I took my screen up. So, that’s the first thing, it’s a physical screen.

Secondly, you can change your backdrop. I use Zoom a lot, and so you can upload your own backdrop. Now, here are some choices. One is, if you want to promote, if you want to communicate your brand, you can create your own. So, what I have is my logo on one side and my book and my Certified Virtual Presenter on the other side, so it’s speaking for me.

But you can have a nice scene, a beach scene, or a mountain scene, and that’s very calming. Or you can have a regular real-world backdrop. So, for instance, if you have a lovely living room or a very calm soothing office, and that’s real, use it, but make sure that it is supporting you, that it supports your brand. So, I would say be mindful and be strategic. What is it that you want to communicate?

Now, let me explain why this can impact you on your job. People take this lightly. When we first came to the virtual platform, post-COVID, people were very casual, they were showing up in their hoodies. But then we got over that because we realized this is here to stay. Well, I had a client who said to me, “Listen, Diane, full disclosure. In the beginning, we hired a vendor and they did four hours of virtual training, and I still don’t like how my team is showing up. They’re too casual. They’re too lax.”

So, I came in and I did a two-hour workshop, and one of the things we did is staging. And so, they learned how to center, they learned about lighting, they learned about backdrops, they learned about anything that would distract. So, what was fun is I had them look at still pictures of people in a frame and they had to critique it.

And then I had them do it on each other. So, I’d call on someone, I say, “All right, Pete, we’re going to have someone else look at you. So, Joe, take a look at Pete right now. What would you say about him if you were coaching him on his backdrop, on his staging?” and it was very enlightening for them, and they realized that, “Oh, this is about presence.” It affects your executive presence, so your screen presence can’t be lax.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And I feel that in many regards in terms of visually as well as auditorily. Before I go there, since that’s a whole other ball of wax, I love that technique there associated with having peers review each other because they…and sometimes they may have something they’ve been wanting to say for months, “That thing has been annoying me…”

Diane DiResta
Well, we don’t do it that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I’m sure it’s constructive and uplifting and positive and useful and so forth. So, that’s great right there in terms of a great way to get feedback because I think, a lot of times, we don’t even see that stuff because we’re just so accustomed to it. Sometimes I don’t even see my own mess in the house if it’s been there for a long time, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I guess there’s no reason whatsoever for that thing to be hanging out there.” But someone else coming in will say, if we’re good friends, like, “What’s up with that random thing shoved in the corner?”

Diane DiResta
Exactly. Well, I had another client and I had done a similar workshop for them, and then they got a new CEO, and the HR person contacted me and said, “Listen, I want you to talk to his assistant because the way he’s showing up, he really needs your training.” So, I worked with him and he said, “You talk away. Tell me what I need. I don’t have the equipment. I don’t know about my backdrop.” And he had a backdrop that he created, and I said, “No, that doesn’t work for you. Let’s come up with something else.” And, afterwards, the next day, or the next week, his assistant called me and said, “Wow, I really see a difference.” So, it really is skill-based. People don’t know, a lot of times, what they need to do and they don’t know how they’re coming across. And so, that’s where I come in.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And, actually, to also follow up on the point you brought up at the beginning, it’s skill-based. And if you are senior, you may very well have people that are handling all things for you, and so you need that skill and it could really be a blind spot. So, great that we’re shining a spotlight on that right now. But, now, I got to hear, if this person made the time to construct their own background but it wasn’t working for them, what makes a background bad?

Diane DiResta
Well, here’s the thing. He didn’t construct it, it was one of those backgrounds that you can download, and it looked like it had flipcharts on the floor, and I said, “It doesn’t look right. Let’s take it out.” In fact, when he had no backdrop and he was in a regular office, that actually looked better. So, he just needed the feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. Okay. So, yes, there could be any number of reasons why something doesn’t fit. And maybe flipcharts on the floor, I don’t know, if you’re a design-thinking coach, it might be perfect, like, “Oh, that really gives me a creative space.”

Diane DiResta
Yes, but not for CEO.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Diane DiResta
It did not communicate his brand and his level. So, again, I tell people, “Be strategic. How do you want to be perceived? Because you have the power, you have the control over how people are going to perceive you by how you show up.” And we all know the studies about the visual and the impact and it takes seven seconds or less to make a first impression. And, boom, as soon as you turn on the camera, they see that and that’s their first impression, so make it positive. Make it powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we talked about sort of the visual components here. I’d love to talk about audio, and I’m going to try not to dork out too hard here because I’m pretty intense about this. Well, Diane, you’ve seen the booking process. The choices are, “Are you going to be in a professional studio or should I send you a headset?” Those are the only two choices.

And you can debate what constitutes professional in terms of audio, but that is my experience, that if something is unpleasant to hear, well, one, there’s those associations again. It’s like, “Hmm, I just don’t like the feeling of you talking.” Like, you don’t want that associated with you just because of a bad microphone.

Diane DiResta
True.

Pete Mockaitis
And, two, I’ve got hard data from podcast listeners. Bad or even a little bit worse than mediocre, so like maybe slightly disappointing audio quality, results in lower engagement. People just tune out and stop listening earlier – I’ve got hard numbers on this – when the sound is lame. So, tell us, how do we make sound not lame?

Diane DiResta
Well, you’re exactly right. If you have to air, people will forgive you, let’s say, on YouTube if your lighting isn’t great but not the audio. The audio is really key. So, how do you make your sound good? The first thing is the worst kind of sound is when you talk directly to the computer because it sounds tinny. And I know when I see these new shows and they bring in experts and they’re talking to their computers; it’s irritating for me to listen to.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, do you mean the computer’s internal microphone, talking to the computer?

Diane DiResta
Yes. In other words, you don’t have any external mic. You’re just talking to the internal mic and it’s tinny. It’s not the best quality. So, at the very lowest level, put in some earbuds. I’ve used them, they work really well. Get an external mic. The Yeti is one of the top-level mics. And, again, when you have microphones and you test them, it’ll be much more effective. You can also use a headset, and Logitech is a good brand. I actually was on a very high-level podcast, and this podcast host required a certain headset.

Pete Mockaitis
John Lee Dumas, the Logitech H390.

Diane DiResta
Yes. Yes. Yes. Entrepreneurs on Fire. It’s John Lee Dumas, yes, and he actually tells you which one to get. And I got it. And I don’t use it that often because, it was interesting, in my network group today, a question came up, “What about headsets and executive presence?” And I thought about it and said, “You know, it depends on your level. I would not recommend someone at a high level, at the senior level, to be wearing a headset. It just doesn’t look like an executive. But, at other levels, it’s appropriate. It really depends on the venue, the culture of your company.” But headsets are good because they have the built-in mic, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s all there. So, it depends on what you like. If you’re a podcaster, headsets are the best. Usually the best choice.

[15:50]

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, it’s sort of like, in our world, so we send headsets to guests because, it’s like, “Hey, we’re only recording the audio so it doesn’t matter to listeners what you look like and it doesn’t matter to me.” You look great with your backdrop there. That’s really lovely.

Diane DiResta
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I think that’s great. I will make a shoutout. We’ve spent dozens of hours testing many, many headsets and we love the Sennheiser or IMPACT EPOS SC30 or 60 in terms of bang for the buck, in terms of mic quality. Not the most comfortable or durable or best headphones, but, darn it, for a great-sounding mic at a great price, that’s, I think, the best game in town.

And I got to comment on the Yeti, and I think the key to using that well, and please chime in, Diane, if you’ve got some perspectives on this, is that you want to set it to the cardioid pickup pattern and speak pretty close to it and have enough stuff in the room so it’s not super echoey because I’ve seen a Yeti in a closet is a dream come true, a yeti in an empty room is echoey and unpleasant.

Diane DiResta
Yes, there is the acoustics factor and there are certain microphones that are unidimensional or multidimensional, and you need to know which they are so that you can speak differently. So, there are certain microphones where you speak right to the head, and there are others that are standup and you speak to the side of the mic, depending on which kind of microphone it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. So, I think that’s great. And that notion of just stepping into your thought process is excellent in terms of thinking about the headset and the presence and the impression that that gives. I can totally see what you’re saying with regard to if you are a CEO or a senior executive, a headset kind of makes you think call center, like, “Wait a minute. That doesn’t feel quite right.”

But then, again, if you are an analyst, I’m thinking about like with Jack Bauer, CTU, the 24 TV series, like CIA analysts who are like fighting terrorism and using computers and being brilliant at them. That can kind of fit in terms of, “Oh, look at you. You’re a hardcore and you don’t have time to waste. You’re going to be clear and get right back to coming up with brilliant insights from your analysis.”

Diane DiResta
It goes back to your style, the culture, what you’re trying to communicate.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. That’s cool. Okay. Well, we’ve got a lot of great tips here. Let’s talk more about maybe sort of like mindset or thought process or key questions to go through because we can get the particulars in terms of what’s a great background and what’s a great meeting platform, software, and what’s a great microphone. I just want to hear about how we should go about thinking through these questions to make the perfect choices for ourselves.

Diane DiResta
Well, the first thing, is people are not familiar with the technology, and there are so many different platforms. There’s Zoom, there’s Teams, there’s Google Meet, there’s WebEx, and so you need to know which one you’re on and get familiar with it. And, in fact, I went to a seminar that was virtual court, yeah, the virtual courtroom. It was for lawyers but I thought it’d be very interesting.

And one of the things that they said, the judge said, is, “We offer jurors, or people coming for hearings, the day before, to meet with a court officer who will train them and take them through the process.” That’s really important because, too often, people are on mute, and people don’t know it. And, in fact, there’s a coffee mug I’ve seen, it says, “You’re on mute,” and I think that is brilliant because it happens on every call. So, you need to get familiar with the technology. You need some help.

One of the worse situations, there was a professor recently, and he was giving a lecture and it was really interesting, but he started out and he didn’t even know he was on mute. And because there was no video, they were trying to let him know, and it took a while. And then, finally, “Oh, the wife is coming. She knows technology.” And then he said, “Well, you know, I’m a technophobe.” You’ve got to be prepared. You can’t let that kind of thing happen. So, that’s really key.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. Either you got to have the skills or you have to have a team immediately available whenever the situation calls for it.

Diane DiResta
And even then, things can go wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. You’re talking about virtual court, we’re just going to have to link to this because it’s the funniest thing I think I’ve seen this year. Have you seen the cat?

Diane DiResta
Are you talking about, “I’m not a cat”? Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my gosh.

Diane DiResta
I blogged about that and I said the same thing, it’s like, “Get there early. Test it out.” Because that so embarrassing and it was funny but it was embarrassing. So, we don’t ever want to be at a position. For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, there was a viral video, there was a lawyer in court, and he couldn’t get his video to work except for an animated cat. So, every time he spoke, it was his voice through this cat. And the judge was saying, “Well, check your filters,” and he still couldn’t get it to stop. And that’s an embarrassment, you don’t want that to happen on the job.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, I’m here live, judge. I’m not a cat.” And it’s the funniest thing I have seen, thus far, in 2021, so do yourself some favor and pull that up.

Diane DiResta
I will tell you, one of the things that people don’t realize is, and this is my rant, the talking head is dead. Truly, the talking head is dead. So, if you think you’re going to come online and lecture, you’re not going to be successful. People will tune you out. So, I talk about the two Es which are very different in the virtual world, and that’s eye contact and engagement.

Eye contact, when I coach people in the 3D world, I tell them, “Look at one person at a time and spread it around so you’re looking at the whole audience.” The reverse is true online. You want to look directly at the lens of your camera. Now this is hard because it’s like having a satellite interview. So, here’s what I do.

When I’m speaking, I look at the lens. When you’re speaking, I look at you so I can catch the nonverbals. But if I don’t look at the lens when I’m speaking, I’m not making a direct eye connection. The second thing is I always encourage people to start out with interaction. A poll is great or a question where they respond in the chat.

Because if you don’t do that and if you don’t engage them immediately, they’re on their phones, they’re going through their papers, they’re doing other things because they think they can just flip you on and listen as if it was on an ongoing webinar. So, don’t do a slide show where you’re just a voiceover slides because you will not have an audience paying attention. So, those are key.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is big. And that’s a great point on the eye contact with regards to just getting into that habit in terms of, “Now, I’m looking at the lens, and now I’m looking at you.” And I’m sure, someday, one of these tech people are going to make a lens inside a screen so that…

Diane DiResta
It’s happening. I think it might be Invidia. It’s already happening but it’s not going to be available for us, but, eventually, it will.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, here we are and I think that’s a good point with regard to conscientiously choosing that because it makes an impact in terms of, like, “I have a different feeling when you are looking right at the lens and I’m seeing you do that than the reverse, even though it’s so weird that we are not actually able to both make eye contact with each other at the same time.”

Diane DiResta
I know. And that’s one of the downfalls of the virtual world. But just think of yourself almost as a broadcaster or an actor, and you’re talking to the camera, and I can see you, I cannot see your face but I see you there in my peripheral vision. But, now, when you talk, I’m going to look at you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great.

Diane DiResta
And that’s what I do these days.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, let’s talk about the engagement piece in terms of interactive, a poll. I would love for you to just rapid-fire share your favorite tips, tactics, tricks, brainstorms on how to engage virtually. I think a poll is great. What are some other ways you can do that?

Diane DiResta
Well, it depends on your platform. Some are more robust than others. I have the enterprise version of Zoom, and you can do a lot of things. So, polls are great. It can be a question-and-answer, a one-word or a sentence response, or it could be multiple choice. What’s great about polls is they’re fun because we can see them in the moment.

One of the things I do after a presentation is I raffle off a digital copy of my book Knockout Presentations. And the way I do that is there’s a virtual wheel, and I input everybody’s name before the presentation, and then I go to that wheel and spin it so they can see it and they can see their name, the spindle landing on their name, and it’s a lot of fun. It keeps people engaged and it also keeps them engaged to the end because they know that they’re going to get a prize. So, you have to have something at the end that they’re looking forward to.

There are some other ways that you can engage people. And, of course, we have breakout rooms, in that way people are getting into small pods and they’re talking to each other which is great. I love some of the icons, the hand raising. Now, you can do this a couple of ways. One with the icon or you can just have people raise their hand for a visual aid.

Sometimes when you need an icebreaker, if you see there’s a lull in the conversation, what you can do, I have a friend who does fabulous footwear, she’ll say, “All right, everybody, take off your shoe and hold it up and let’s see who has the most interesting shoe.” And, again, that can be something fun. You can use music. And I like to do something called square dancing when I want to get energy going. And so, you put on the music, you crank it up, and then people start dancing in their squares. And, again, people are moving to the music.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s kind of fun to watch in the gallery view, everyone moving at the same time. Okay.

Diane DiResta
Yes. Now, of course, if you’re talking to an investor, you’re not going to use that technique, but it depends. Now, here’s something that is a lot of fun. It’s an investment because you have to pay for this. But you can go online and download software games such as Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Let’s Make a Deal, whatever those are. And then you can use them as part of your learning.

So, let’s say you’re doing sales training. Instead of the typical lecture and who has the answer, you can have two teams and you can input different answers beforehand and then you call in the team, they give you an answer, and either they get it or they don’t. So, it’s a lot of fun and it’s very engaging.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is cool.

Diane DiResta
So, some of the software games are fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love to zoom in on a couple of these in particular. So, software games, there’s a training company that does this. Is there one in particular that you can mention here?

Diane DiResta
The Training Arcade.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, The Training Arcade. Okay. So, they have like a Jeopardy piece over there. Okay. Excellent.

Diane DiResta
You can download them. You’re going to pay for them but it’s worth it if you have a lot of people. So, I would say, if your goal is to train or to have fun or to motivate, if you’re in a sales culture, a training culture, you might want to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. And then your little spinney piece.

Diane DiResta
The spinning wheel?

Pete Mockaitis
What was that?

Diane DiResta
That is called WheelofNames.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Wheel of Names. Okay. Very cool.

Diane DiResta
And what you do is you input the names in advance. So, let’s say I have 20 people who are coming, I would put those 20 names in. And then, when I was ready, I would go to that page online and I would start spinning. It’s so much fun.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s so cool, it’s that just the ability to share your screen enables tons of things to be possible. And this is very rudimentary, but I remember when I have my mastermind meetings with my fellow podcasters, who are awesome, everyone has been on the show and vice versa as it should be with the mastermind, we have…even just someone having the notes and the timer, and then sharing that screen so we’re looking at the notes and the timer, makes it more engaging than, hey, we’re just kind of talking.

So, those little things can make a world of difference even when it’s nothing fancy at all.

Diane DiResta
Using a whiteboard and actually drawing in real time. You see, here’s the thing with the brain. Every time you do something different, it stimulates attention. So, even the act of going to share your screen to show a document, people are, “It’s something new.” They’re going to go and look.

Pete Mockaitis
Great point. It just feels good to task-switch or multitask, even though that has its perils, which we’ve discussed several times. So, too, the switching it up feels good in that way. And I’m thinking about, I think, Miro – hey, they were a sponsor once, they’re awesome – has a lot of cool ways to like whiteboard and engage interactively there.

And I’m also thinking about even just like a Google Sheets. We’ve had some moments where it’s like, “Okay, guys. We’ve all talked about these options and now it’s time for us to, each on our sheet, rank or rate how well we think each of these options hits each of these criteria.” And then there’s sort of a top-level sheet that summarizes.

And, sure enough, I find that supremely engaging because my heart is stomping and I’m kind of wondering, “What number are they putting? What number am I putting? Should I check what number they’re putting? No, Pete, don’t be like the Olympic judge. Stand by your own opinions. Don’t sneak a peek.” It’s like, “I wonder if the one I’m supporting is going to be the winner.” Anyways.

Diane DiResta
Yeah. And, also, video clips. You can show a quick video clip that everybody watches and then can comment on. So, there are a number of ways you can do this. You can actually have people write their responses in the chat or you can open up the mics. Call on someone and say, “Let’s hear your voice,” because people want to talk. They want to hear their own voice. So, a number of techniques help to engage.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Diane DiResta
So, the more variety, the better.

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

Diane DiResta
I would say a couple of things. People don’t realize that this is a skill. And I always say that gifted speakers are born but effective speakers are made. So, make a commitment to learn these skills because, years ago, I used to say that tomorrow’s speakers would need broadcasting skills, and we are here. We are way beyond that. So, you need to start thinking of yourself as a broadcaster, not just a speaker presenter.

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

Diane DiResta
The quote that I put in my high school yearbook, which is, “A quitter never wins. A winner never quits.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite study or a piece of research?

Diane DiResta
I like some of the research that’s coming out about women. The one I read recently was, you know, the belief that women are talkers, and yet when they show research, I believe it was Harvard or Stanford, women actually talk less than men do in meetings. So, it really blew away a stereotype.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Diane DiResta
The Science of Mind and Think and Grow Rich. The Science of Mind is a huge textbook-like book by Ernest Holmes but it’s all about spiritual, mental training which really helps people understand the power they have when they use the power of their mind.

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

Diane DiResta
A favorite tool. I love Zoom. I use Zoom all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Diane DiResta
I don’t know if it’s a favorite habit but I have a habit of getting up early now, and that makes a big difference in my productivity. I get up at 5:30 in the morning. To me, that’s early. And that allows me to create certain rituals, so prayers, affirmation, and I read one page of something spiritual before I look at my phone.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate and get quoted back to you frequently?

Diane DiResta
What I said earlier, that gifted speakers are born and effective speakers are made.

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

Diane DiResta
The best place is my website DiResta.com. And I want to tell people that I’m going to be starting a group coaching for women, for women business professionals so that they can feel more confident and have the support of a group as well as work with me in a coaching capacity. So, that’s coming up. If you would like to learn more about that, send me an email through DiResta.com. And you can also get my book Knockout Presentations on Amazon or any of the online stores.

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

Diane DiResta
The final challenge is commit to being a good communicator. I don’t think there’s any skill that’s more impactful or important than communication. It doesn’t matter how technically proficient you are or how smart you are, you need to be able to be a good communicator. So, make a commitment. And make a commitment to be able to do that on a virtual platform because this is not going away.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Diane, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you lots of luck with all presentations, virtual and in person.

Diane DiResta
Thank you. And I wish you success on the platform of life and may all your presentations be a knockout.

647: Cal Newport: How to Break Free from Your Email Inbox

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Cal Newport says: "You don't need advice for how to deal with your overflowing inbox... You need to change the structure of your business so that your inbox is not overflowing."

Cal Newport reveals how the rise of email led to a productivity disaster and what we can do to change that.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How email changed the way we work for worse 
  2. Simple strategies for cutting down the email back-and-forth 
  3. Why we feel guilty when we don’t respond—and what to do about it 

 

About Cal

Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. In addition to researching cutting­ edge technology, he also writes about the impact of these innovations on our culture. Newport is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Digital Minimalism, which argues that we should be much more selective about the technologies we adopt in our personal lives, and Deep Work, which argues that focus is the new I.Q. in the modern workplace. 

Newport’s work has been published in over 25 languages and has been featured in many major publications, including the New York TimesWall Street JournalNew YorkerWashington Post, and Economist, and his long-running blog Study Hacks, which receives over 3 million visits a year. He’s also a frequent guest on NPR. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Cal Newport Interview Transcript

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

Cal Newport
Well, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom but, first, I got to hear one of the most noteworthy things about you, which is an interesting comment to make in this day and age, is that you have no social media accounts. Can you tell us why and how it’s going for you?

Cal Newport
It’s true. I think I’m the last person under the age of 65 and above the age of 12, for which that’s true. I don’t know. I’ll tell you what, this has not been that bad of a period to not be on social media, I think, if you could measure cortisol levels and graph it somehow, you would have all of American culture, all American society, and then me, probably a good 50% below it because I’m just not exposed to the up-to-the-minute fretting and doom-scrolling. So, it’s been good.

So, basically, it turns out it’s allowed. Just for idiosyncratic reasons, a long time ago, I’m talking 2004, I just decided, “I think I’m not going to use social media,” which at that point that was not a fraught decision in 2004 because there was not that much social media but I just sort of stuck with it because, why not? And it’s given me this really interesting vantage point. I’m like an anthropologist able to look around me and watch the impact the social media on everyone’s lives with a little bit of distance. I mean, I’m the last people who’s actually never had an account who can actually study it with some distance.

And here’s what I’ll say, I know what’s going on in the world, I still have friends, I still find ways to be entertained, I still manage to sell books and run a business, so it might not be as bad as people fear.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’ll take it. And have there been any downsides, any regrets, anything you miss? Maybe you can’t miss it if you’ve never had it.

Cal Newport
No, not really. I’ll tell you what happened that helped reduced regret is the big social media platforms, they had initially had this claim that, “We’re valuable because of network effects. We’re the best way to connect with friends and family and we’re the platform where all your friends and family are, so if you’re not on Facebook or if you’re not on Instagram, you can’t connect with your friends and family.”

But they basically gave that up about five or six years ago, and said, “No, no, what we’re really about is entertainment. We’re kind of leveraging your social connections to learn the type of stuff you’re interested in but what we are is a stream of things to look at,” and most of these digital interactions with friends and family began to shift from social media over to tools like text message, or Zoom calls, or other types of tools like that which I do use.

And so, I’m not missing out on the original promise, which is, “This is how you keep up with friends and family,” because that is largely moved off of social platforms. Now, they’re just a highly addictive form of entertainment and, I don’t know, I think I found other ways to entertain myself so, so far so good.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s talk about your latest work, A World Without Email. Provocative. Could you kick us off maybe with one of your surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made as you’re doing your research there?

Cal Newport
Well, I was surprised to discover the extent to which how we work today, which I call a hyperactive hivemind workflow, which is, put simply, work unfolds with a constant unstructured stream of ad hoc messaging, whether that’s delivered through email or Slack or whatever tool you want to use. I was surprised by the extent to which that way of working is basically arbitrary.

So, we assume all of this emailing and Slacking, like we do this because it’s a pain but it’s more productive, or this is how work gets done. If we didn’t always communicate with each other, if we weren’t constantly, “Here’s a message,” “Here’s an email,” “Here’s a reply,” “Here’s a CC,” that we’ll somehow be less productive. And it was rationally decided by managers and consultants, and at some point, people figured out this is a better way of working. It turns out that’s not true.

It largely emerged somewhat haphazardly, more it’s just a side effect of what this new tool made available and it interacted in an unpredictable way with just human nature, and you can document this. But, basically, we stumbled into this world of sort of constant, ongoing, unstructured conversation. And then we look backwards and try to justify it and live with it.

And one of the big claims in this book is that there’s nothing fundamental about, “Let’s put an email address, associate it with every person. Let’s put everyone on a Slack channel and just rock and roll to figure things out.” There’s nothing fundamental about that being the best way to do knowledge work. And, in fact, when you really look closely at it, it’s actually a pretty terrible way of doing it for a lot of factors. There are many other ways you could approach it. So, I think that degree to which this is just, in some sense, email is decision that we work this way and not our own was definitely a liberating discovery for me as I got deeper into this topic.

Pete Mockaitis
That is intriguing. All right. So, we just kind of fell into it. And so, lay it on us, so why is it terrible? What makes email so detrimental to knowledge worker productivity?

Cal Newport
Well, the first thing I’ll further clarify, just so we have like a foundation for the discussion, is the title is sort of provocatively succinct when I say A World Without Email, but what I really mean, and this would be a less sexy title, is a world without the hyperactive hivemind workflow that email introduced. So, when I say a world without email, what I mean is a working world in which constant unstructured unscheduled conversation is not at the core of how we get things done.

The problem with that workflow, that hyperactive hivemind workflow, is that it forces us to switch cognitive context constantly. Say that four times fast. Because if you have to be maintaining dozens of these ongoing asynchronous, unstructured, unscheduled conversations, all these different threads, because that’s how everything gets figured out, from figuring out how to deal with a new client, to scheduling something, to pulling together bullet points, I mean, all this is happening on asynchronous threads, unstructured, unscheduled, just messages going back and forth, the only way for work to move forward is you have to constantly be monitoring and tending these threads.

That’s why when you look at the data, you see that people check their email inbox, on average, something once every six minutes. It’s not a rational behavior, it’s not a lack of willpower, it’s the only way you can keep up with so much ongoing concurrent communications is you have to keep checking. The problem is every time you check an inbox, you check a Slack channel, you induce a context shift within your brain. So, you’re switching your attention from the primary thing you’re working on to an inbox full of messages, most of which you can’t address right there in that moment.

And then you’re trying to bring your attention back to the main thing, that creates a huge pileup within your brain that reduces your effectiveness, that stresses you out, it makes you anxious, it makes it harder for you to think. So, we basically designed an approach to work that accidentally really reduces our ability to actually do work. We just cannot maintain these two parallel tracks of constantly monitoring communication while also trying to work on other things. We’re not wired for that, it goes against our sort of fundamental neural architecture, and I think it’s been a real big hindrance to both productivity but also people’s happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then I’m curious. We had Dave Crenshaw on the show recently talk about the myth of multitasking and talked a bit about switching costs. Can you dig into that a little bit sort of just how costly is it when we do that? Do we lose a few seconds or something much greater?

Cal Newport
I would say it’s much greater. It’s hard to exactly quantify but every time you’re doing one of those email checks, you might induce 10 to 15 minutes of notably reduced cognitive capacity, where one-half of your mind is still trying to figure out, “Well, what about this message from our boss?” And we’ve all had that experience of writing emails in our head, which is like a real indication of our mind. It sees these open loop social communications. It wants to have to deal with that.

Now, the issue is if you’re checking your inbox on average once every six minutes, that means you never escape that effect. So, the typical knowledge worker is basically spending the vast majority of their time in a significantly reduced cognitive state. It’s almost as if every 30 minutes, you walk by and gave everyone in your office a shot, “Here, take some whiskey,” right? It’s less fun but it kind of has a similar effect. So, we’re talking about not, “Oh, I’m wasting a few minutes.” We’re talking instead like maybe you’re at 50% of what you could produce.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in that ballpark of 50%, okay, that’s striking. And could you share, is there any provocative studies or experiments or bits of research that can put an exclamation point on this?

Cal Newport
Well, the idea that there are these switching costs goes is something that goes back to research from even the early 20th century. But there was a researcher named Sophie Leroy who more recently really applied this idea of switching costs to exactly the context of working in an office. And she had a really interesting background.

I tell her story in the book because I spent some time interviewing her. She had actually been in academia, she had been working on her degree, and then she went and worked in industry. And then when she came back to academia from industry, she said, “Man, there’s this thing going on out there that wasn’t like it was before with all of this messaging,” this was the early 2000s, “We have to study that.”

And so, she had this dual background where she had a business background, she was an organizational management but she’d also trained in psychology so she understood the brain, and she exactly was quantifying what happens when you do this context switching and you’re trying to do actual office work. So, she had subjects come in to do this research, and they were giving them office work style tasks like reading resumes and trying to summarize and rank candidates, like the type of stuff you would really do in knowledge work, and they would interrupt them.

So, the researcher would come in and they would interrupt them. They had various ways of doing it but it would be, “Hey, you forgot to fill out this form that we need for our research.” And they could really precisely measure the impact on their performance, so the groups that got interrupted and the groups that didn’t. And you could just see that performance, you can see it drop, and you can just watch the numbers as it drops.

They recall less information. When they’re working on puzzles, they make more mistakes. And so, Sophie Leroy’s research really makes clear the degree to which these switches, boom, you just watch performance graphs just drop.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so then tell us, what is the superior alternative?

Cal Newport
So, once we understand the issue is the workflow, the good thing about that is that it takes off a lot of sort of common responses off the table. So, when you understand, like, “Oh, the hyperactive hivemind, this fundamental way that the way we organize work and identifying and assign and review tasks, the way we do this is just messaging back and forth.”

Like, when you understand that is the underlying way you do work, then you realize that superficial fixes won’t get you there. Let’s say, “Let’s talk about etiquette, let’s talk about norms, let’s talk about turning off notifications, let’s talk about checking your email in batches, let’s talk about having a rule that says don’t expect you to answer emails after 5:00 or whatever.” None of that is going to solve the underlying problem so long as the underlying way that you organize work is unstructured ad hoc messaging.

So, in the book, what I really push is forget those superficial fixes, forget the etiquette, forget the norms. You got to actually replace, you have to replace the underlying workflow, “This is how we do this type of work. This is how we identify, assign, and review tasks.” You have to replace it with something better than the hyperactive hivemind. You don’t need advice for how to deal with your overflowing inbox more efficiently. You need to change the structure of your business so that that inbox is not overflowing.

And, basically, two-thirds of the book gets into principles for how to redesign whether it’s in your own life as an employee, or if you’re an entrepreneur that runs your own company, or if you’re an executive of a big team, “How do you begin this re-engineering process? How do you begin seeing your work in terms of these different processes?” And we can actually talk about each process, “This is how we’re going to do this. This is how the information is going to flow. No, we don’t just figure this out on email. For this, we have weekly status meetings. We have a shared document. We have this…” whatever it is.

There are tons of examples that you begin to explicitly engineer how work happens in a way that minimizes all this ad hoc unscheduled messaging, stops all the context shifting, and makes work much more sequential, “This then this, then this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s really beautiful in that I personally had some experiences with that, it’s like, “It seems like I was sending a lot of emails back and forth about this. That needs to stop. How would I go about stopping that? Well, I guess we’re going to make a standard process associated with boom, boom, boom.” And it’s worked. It’s so funny, like you and I, that we have this podcast interview, like we could’ve had a lot of emails between us. We had zero which makes me feel pretty cool, I’m talking to the no-email guy.

And we pulled that off because of the systems and the processes and the automation. It’s sort of like there’s an invitation, you pick a time, and then you get all of the info. And then, on my end, me and my team are thinking about, “Okay, what do we want to ask Cal? Okay, and then you’re going to send me the draft of some things, and I’m going to edit those things, and then I’m going to study it up the day of, and away we go.”

So, lay on us these principles and some examples for, hey, before we’re emailing about this thing, and after, here’s how it gets done.

Cal Newport
Well, let’s make it really proximate to what we’re doing right now, right? So, I’m doing a book launch, so there’s a lot of podcasts to be done, and I have someone at my publisher that I work with to help sort of schedule the podcasts and keep that calendar, or this or that. We had to figure out a process. So, the very easy thing to do would be she could just email me, like, “Oh, here’s one. Does this time work? Here’s another podcast. What do you think about this?” But I said, “Okay, that’s not going to work. There’s going to be so much back and forth emailing that I’ll constantly be context shifting.”

So, we created a process where I thought about the problem. And I had tried before with a previous book. Just to be concrete, I had tried giving the publisher access to a calendar, or I had made open, like, “Okay, here’s times I’m available,” and they would schedule things directly. I didn’t quite like that because I wanted more control over when I schedule things because I have a more nuanced understanding of my calendar.

So, what we did this time is we have a shared document and it has different sections. And what happens is I check it a couple of times a week. She’ll put into the top section, like pending, “Okay, here’s a podcast,” or, “Here’s the link to schedule it,” or, “Here are some time you’re available. Which one works for you?” And I just go into that shared document and just annotate it, like, “This time works for me. Okay, I went to the link and set up this interview. Here’s a question.”

So, I basically go into this shared document twice a week, spend about 20 minutes in it, and all of this happens. Now, it might seem like, “Well, what’s the point? Is it really that hard to just have figured this all out on email?” And one of the big principles, to argue from the book, is, yes, that matters. So, to take those two checks that are 20 minutes and to spread it out over 20 emails is a huge difference in terms of the impact on your cognitive performance because those 20 emails are unfolding throughout the week. It’s a conversation you have to keep tending. To tend it means you have to keep checking your inbox, and it’s a thread that’s kind of an open loop in your mind. There’s a huge drag to having you go back and do those back-and-forth communications.

Which brings me to a larger point about this type of process engineering is that it’s annoying, it’s almost always less flexible and convenient than just emailing that’s why this hyperactive hivemind is so entrenched because it’s easy and it’s flexible and it’s really convenient. But flexible, easy, and convenient in the history of business and technology rarely is the formula for getting the best work done or getting the most work done.

And so, example after example in my book come back to the same point which is it’s like often a pain to say, “Let’s actually think about the right way to do this in a way that minimizes all these messages.” It’s a pain. It might generate some hard edges. There might be some exceptions where bad things happen. Still worth it. Still almost always worth it because, again, the way to get the most value out of your brain is almost differently going to be something different than what would be the easiest way to organize work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I dig it. So, we think through it. And do you have any particular prompts or guidelines or steps associated with how we might do some good structured thinking and collaboration about, “Hey, what is the process by which this thing gets done?”

Cal Newport
Well, one thing I talk about is when you’re trying to optimize a process, think about context switching as being something you’re trying to minimize. So, just like if you’re optimizing a manufacturing process, you might try to minimize like the time required to produce a car. In knowledge work processes, you want to minimize context switches, “So, how many times am I going to switch my attention to this thing in order to get it to completion?”

And so, if your process involves back-and-forth emails and there’s going to be a dozen back-and-forth emails to figure something out, you’re now context shifting a dozen times to complete this process. So, if you could come up with an alternative where maybe, “Okay, I spend some time in a shared document for 20 minutes twice,” you’ve now reduced the amounts of times you have to shift your attention to this and back significantly, and that makes a big deal. And then the other thing to try to optimize is the degree to which you have to keep track of things in your mind or you feel like things are somewhat unscheduled or out of control.

So, the more you can actually have a sense of comforting structure, “Oh, I know how this works. It’s in the system. It’ll come up automatically. I don’t have to keep track of it in my mind. I don’t have to hope that I’ll just wait to get an email at some point, that’s just like, ‘Hey, what’s going on with this thing?’” That you feel like, “This is controlled. It’s not just in my mind. I don’t feel overwhelmed by various things,” that’s another thing to optimize.

So, those are the two general metrics you want to push people: less context shifting, less sense that things are just up in the air, in your mind, or ad hoc, or out of control.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. So, those are the things that we’re optimizing for in terms of let’s minimize those bits. And so, I guess there’s probably a million different ways we can make a process to get something done. But could you maybe share a few of your favorites in terms of, “Wow, these are maybe pretty flexible. They cover a wide array of stuff, work that needs to get done, as well as they’re pretty darn time-leveraged when you do it”?

Cal Newport
Well, one thing that seemed to come up a lot was making task assignments more transparent. So, we often use email to assign tasks and to check on tasks, we keep track of tasks just because they’re messages in our inbox. That’s where we keep track of everything on our plate. When you look at companies or groups that have moved all these tasks out of just people’s individual inbox and onto shared like task boards or project management systems, there’s often huge wins to be had.

And you can go and look at a Trello board for your team, or a Flow board, or an Asana board if you’re more techie, and you can actually see, like, “Here are all the things we’re doing, and here’s their status, and here’s who’s working on what.” Once a day you get together and you all look at it, and say, “Okay, where are we? What do you need? Here’s a new thing. Who should take this on or shall we leave it over here?” That seems like a basic thing but it makes a huge difference.

I profiled a guy who runs a marketing company and when they shifted. I talk about how they shifted from their inbox, just everything was kind of in there, to these Trello boards, one per project. And I actually had them show me the Trello boards, and I go through them, and I kind of go through, “Okay, here’s specifically what the columns are and here’s what’s under it.”

The relief they got when now their workflow is not about, “Open your inbox and rock and roll with messages,” but, instead, “Go to the Trello board for the project you want to work on, look at the status of things, take what’s assigned to you, make some progress on it, update the information. All the information you need to make progress is here on the Trello board attached to different cards. You don’t have to go find it in an inbox.”

Just the relief they got from that being the workflow, “Oh, I’m working on this project now. Here’s all the information on this project. Here’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Here’s everything I need to know to do this. Let me work on this. Let me update this board. All right, I’m done. Next project.” You switch over to that board. It was so much more relieving than, instead, just having this inbox open where, “Yeah, you’re hearing about that project but also other projects, and everything is coming in, and the whole thing is riled together.” So, task boards come up a lot in groups and teams that have moved away from a hivemind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, I’m wondering if we zoom into the individual contributor, if they don’t feel they’ve got a whole lot of power or influence to restructure the fundamental processes of how stuff is flowing, do you have any pro tips on how to navigate those conversations or bring it up?

Cal Newport
Well, one of the things I actually talk about is running your own shadow processes individually and having basically an invisible interface to everyone else. So, let’s say you’re at a big company and your boss is a jerk, he’s like he’s not going to want to hear this. He’s like, “I don’t care. I want you to answer my emails. It makes my life easier.” You can internally have these processes. And I talk a lot about this, like personal task boards or personal communication protocols where you really work out your various processes and how information comes in and out of them, how you keep track of things to try to keep yourself out of your inbox.

And instead of actually trying to explain it to everybody and say with autoresponders, like, “Here’s how I’m doing it now and this is how it’s going to work,” you just do it internally. And they don’t even maybe realize that you have these processes, they don’t even really realize that, “Oh, I was ready to just send a bunch of messages back and forth with you to, whatever, set up this meeting or pull together this report. Andfuiltwhen you replied, it was actually there’s a list of times, you had a Calendly schedule app, it was like ‘Choose one of these times and I will have this information ready, and it’ll be in this folder. Look it up before. We’ll meet at this time.’” You’ve described some process in an email. They don’t even realize it’s a process, they go, “Okay, whatever. Great. That saves me some messages.”

But internally you have it all processed, or you have different Trello boards internally for your different roles, and you’re keeping track of who you’re waiting to hear back from, and things you need more information on, and what you’re working on this week. I talk about how I ran a stealth ticketing system for a while when I had an administrative role where I had to answer a lot of questions from students in my department at Georgetown for an administrative role I ran. I didn’t make them use a ticketing system but I was moving all their messages into a ticketing system so I could much better keep track of them with my program manager, we could see what was going on where, who we’re waiting to hear back from, we can annotate them with notes, and then we’d just email people to get back to them again.

So, that’s one of the things I talk about just how to basically structure all of the process in your own life. Even if all the people around you aren’t restructuring how they do it, even if they’re still bothering you without constraint, if all that incoming goes into internal structured processes, you can still have a massive win in terms of how much context shifting and email wrangling you have to do.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I don’t know about all the listeners, but as I think about this, I’m super excited, like, “Heck, yeah, let’s get processes up and going for everything.” How do you recommend thinking about where to start or how to zero in on your first couple wins here?

Cal Newport
Use your inbox as a guide. So, you’re in your inbox, you’re overwhelmed, that you’re annoyed at all these messages. Start asking the question as you’re answering these messages, “What is the underlying process that this is a part of and that this message is trying to help advance towards completion?” And so, you just let the messages you’re getting be a guide. Then you can start saying, “Okay, this process kind of comes up a lot. Like, a lot of these messages have to do with whatever, like pulling together the weekly client memo. Or a lot of this have to be like answering questions from clients about the status of the project.”

So, now, you’ve let your inbox be the guide, “Oh, a lot of my communication is about this.” Then you can ask the key follow-up, “What would be a better process for accomplishing the same thing?” So, then if you see a lot of your messages in your inbox or your clients asking you questions kind of ad hoc, “What’s the status here? What’s that?” you might realize, like, “Maybe what we should do…” and this is just an example from the book, “…is like schedule a weekly status call with each client, we let them know where things are, we listen to them, and we immediately send them, after the call, a record of everything we committed to during that call, and they know that we are going to be on the phone the next week.”

You do that, for example. You may reduce your back-and-forth emails from a client down to basically none. Just the same thing done. The client wants to know what’s going on, to make sure the ball is not being dropped, to make sure that you’re actually doing the things you said you’re going to do, that’s a lot of what client emailing is, it’s just that they’re not sure, like, “I don’t know. Are you really doing this? Do I need to keep bothering otherwise I don’t know what’s going on?”

That’s just a case study but now that you’ve seen that’s what a lot of your emails were, you could actually come up with a better process that has a lot less back and forth. So, let the messages in your inbox influence you, “What is this message about? Is there a better way to get that general type of work done?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I dig it. And how about some of the internal emotional guilt stuff in terms of, if folks, they have incoming messages and they feel, from habit or compulsion, the need to frequently check the inbox? You say, “Well, hey, part of it that’s kind of how it has to be done because your processes are so unstructured, what alternative do you have?” But if we’re starting to move in this direction and there are some emotional guilt or resistance or trickiness, how do you recommend folks address that?

Cal Newport
Well, that guilt is really important because it’s at the core of why email makes us so miserable so I really get into those studies where basically the way we’re wired as social beings means it is really hard for us to see an email message in our inbox from a person we know and to not answer it. And it’s a deeper part of our brain. So, if you feel guilty about these things, as a general notice to your audience, that’s not a flaw. That’s a deeply human reaction because there might be, let’s say, a prefrontal cortex part of your brain that says, “I know I don’t have to answer that email right away. We have norms, they’re not expecting an answer right away. It’s okay if I write them back next week.”

That’s fine but there’s a deeper part of your brain that says, “Someone in my tribe is tapping me on the shoulder. If I ignore them, that’s a problem. If I ignore someone in my tribe who’s tapping me on the shoulder, what’s going to happen when we come into the famine? They might not share their food and I might starve.” We have a huge genetic compulsion to take otherwise communication very seriously. So, email really contradicts that instinct because, again, our paleolithic deep brain knows nothing about email etiquette. It’s just like, “Here’s a person I know, they want something from me, I’m ignoring them. Danger! Danger! Danger!” and that’s why we feel this anxiety about our inbox and the fact that it’s always growing.

So, that’s a really real thing and it’s a problem. It’s also a problem because this guilt is not equally distributed among people. So, there’s research I talk about in the book where they could look at how you scored on the big five personality scale, and based on how you scored on various attributes of that scale, they could measure real differences in how stressed you get about batching email.

So, for some people, your personality type is naturally such that you get incredibly stressed if you say, “I’m going to wait to check my email till the end of the day because all these people need me.” Other people have personalities in which they don’t mind it that much. Now, the issue is the people who are probably more willing to ignore their inbox till the end of the day are probably going to get more important things done, which means they’re going to move ahead probably faster than other people.

And what you’ve now done is accidentally selected for in your company that people that are essentially more jerks from a personality scale, less conscientious, are going to do better in your company. And so, now you’re selecting for the executive ranks to be less conscientious and more like jerks, which is not what you actually want to happen. It’s an unintended consequence.

So, I think that is also an issue and so, I don’t know, this is probably not the most optimistic answer but this is why I’m saying until you fix the underlying processes, this is going to be a real problem and it’s going to apply unequally. As long as there’s a lot of messages that you’re not answering, you’re going to be stressed, and that stress is going to vary dependent on your personality. So, your best bet is to figure out how to reduce the number of messages that end up in that inbox. It’s just not the right tool for doing a massive amount of communication.

Pete Mockaitis
So, lay it on us, where and when is email appropriate, when it’s something sort of new, one time, different, undefined, uncharted? What are your thoughts?

Cal Newport
Well, it’s a fantastic communication protocol, so if you need to asynchronously deliver information from one person to another, from one place to another, it solves a lot of problems. Before that, we had fax machines, memos, and voice mail, and those were all pretty ineffective and pretty high-friction ways of communicating asynchronously. So, for the delivery of information, for the delivery of digital files, for the broadcasting of information, email is a fantastic tool. You would not want to get rid of it.

Where it is a problem is where it becomes the primary medium of collaboration. So, if the primary unit of you working together with people to solve things, just back and forth messages, that’s where you get into the problem. If you want to email out, whatever, “Here’s the new parking policy at our company,” that’s a great use of email. It’s better than printing it out and having to put it in people’s mailboxes.

If you need to deliver a contract to someone, or let’s say I want to send you a headshot or something, yeah, email is great. Better than putting the mail or using the fax machine. So, it’s a great medium for asynchronous delivery of information and files but it’s a terrible medium for being the primary tool by which you actually interact and collaborate with people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Cal, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Cal Newport
I would say, more generally, when it comes to email and when it comes to the shift, at least the way that I see it, the less that I’m trying to convince people that they should move away from this type of hyperactive hivemind, everything is just back and forth messaging, it’s more giving the message that that shift is inevitable. There is a lot of money on the line.

Just like when Henry Ford figured out the assembly line, no one made cars the same way again after that. The same thing is just beginning to happen in knowledge work. There’s no way ten years from now we’re all still just going to be plugging into email inboxes and checking every six minutes. There’s just so much productivity and value and human happiness on the line.

This transformation to a world in which we have more sophisticated ways, less convenient maybe, more annoying, more overhead, but more sophisticated ways of actually collaborating, that means we get a lot more done and we’re a lot happier in general, that’s going to happen. So, the only question is, “Are you going to be ahead of the trend or not?” And that’s the way I like to see it.

So, I’m kind of prognosticating that we’re in a very early stage of knowledge work in the digital age. The way we work today is just our very first rudimentary attempt to figure out how we should work in an age of computer networks. The history of commerce and technology tells us that transformations take a long time, but then the phase shifts can be pretty rapid. We’re going to have a rapid phase shift away from this world of constant communication. So, again, hopefully, this is a book that’s predicting the future, more so than it’s trying to convince people that we need a better future.

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

Cal Newport
A favorite quote that came up kind of in the context of this work came from Neil Postman who was a really well-known sort of philosopher and social critic and technology critic. And he had this really important quote for at least my own thinking about technology and the world where he was saying, “Technological changes are not an addition; it’s ecological.” It’s not addition, it’s ecological. I’m a little bit messing that up but the basic point is when a new technology comes along, it’s not just like, “Oh, you’re in the world you were before, plus the addition of this new technology.”

Instead, a lot of technologies tend to change the entire world, change the whole ecology. So, he famously said that when the printing press came along, it wasn’t like you had medieval Europe plus a printing press. Like, no, you had a whole different Europe. It just changed the way everything worked. I like that quote. That’s the way I see a lot of technologies.

In 2001, we didn’t just have the 1991 office plus email; we had a completely different type of office. What worked meant the ecology of work completely transformed once this tool is here. And so, that quote is important to me because it tells us we got to be pretty self-aware of the way that new technology can completely change things often in ways that no one planned or no one intended. And once you realize that, then you might say, “Maybe we should step back and push back a little bit.”

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

Cal Newport
There’s a bit of research I enjoyed in the book because it was devious where they’re trying to understand exactly what we’re talking about, how communication is something that’s really deep in us, we get really anxious when we can’t communicate, when we know someone wants our attention and we can’t give it to them.

And so, there’s this great study where they brought people in and they hooked them to heartrate monitors, and they told them it’s a study about something unrelated. And then they had a confederate come in and say, “Hey, your phone is interfering with our machines and we’re just going to move it to get the electromagnetic radiation.”

And when they moved the phone to the other side of the room, they turned off the silent mode. So, they could only do these with iPhones because iPhones have the switch on the side. And then they would call it. So, you’re in the room, you’re doing this experiment, you’re all hooked up to all these heartrate stress monitors, thinking you’re supposed to be working on this computer screen, and you hear your phone ring.

And it’s a really cool experiment because, obviously, they did not expect to be able to communicate, they didn’t need to communicate, they had turned their phone on silent so they’re completely comfortable with the ideas of, “During this experiment, I will not be communicating with people.” But, still, hearing the text message buzz on the phone, their heart, their galvanic response, all the indicators of stress jumped up because they’re all hooked up to these things and they could measure it.

So, I just love that experiment because it meant they were calm even though they knew rationally, “Oh, yeah, I turned off my phone. I’m not going to hear from anyone who calls me. It’s fine.” They knew rationally that was fine, “I’m doing this experiment. It’s fine.” Still, hearing a text message come through made the stress response go up.

That’s all day every day in the world of email. It’s like no matter how you tell yourself, “It’s okay. I don’t have to answer all these emails. We have expectations. We have norms,” there’s a deeper part of you that when it just sees or hears that person’s name and it’s in bold and you can see they want something from you and you’re not answering it to them, we get stressed. And so, I thought that was a beautifully designed experiment to try to capture that real effect.

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

Cal Newport
One I like to recommend is Amusing Ourselves to Death, also by Neil Postman who I mentioned. It’s short and it’s brilliant and it’s really original. And, basically, it gets at that ecological notion. His argument is when you change the technologies with which we communicate or send information, you can actually change the way our brains understand the world, that there’s this impact between the medium and the message being delivered.

Postman studied under Marshall McLuhan who actually said the medium is the message. Simple idea, beautifully delivered, but it completely changes the way you see technology. It moves you away from this notion of like, “Heck, it’s just tools and it can do some things well, so use it in the way that it does things well. And if you’re having a trouble with the tool, you’re just using it wrong.” It’s like the typical nerd, engineer, or like our typical response.

And Postman comes in and says, “No, no, it’s way more deeper than that.” This was before email but basically you could extrapolate from him. Like, the mere presence of email can change the very structure of what work means, and his work was about television. The presence of television changed the way we understood the world. He’s really smart, really accessible, and I recommend it, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

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

Cal Newport
I’m a big believer in time blocking where you actually schedule out what you’re going to do with your time as opposed to going down a list. And so, having a good notebook in which you’ve schedule out what you’re going to do. Give every minute of your day a job. Don’t just go from a list and say, “What’s next?” Instead, say, “From 1:00 to 2:00, I’m working on this and I have a meeting from 2:30 to 3:00.”

Having a good notebook in which you do that is a complete gamechanger. So, in the fall, I put out my own planner called a Time Block Planner that helps you make these plans. But whether or not you use my planner, I have used notebooks and I’ve built these analog plans for my day for whatever it’s been, about eight years now. So, that simple of a piece of a paper in which I see the whole plan drawn out is, by far, one of the biggest impactful things I have in my professional career.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Cal Newport
I do a shutdown ritual and I’m a big proponent of this, that when you’re done with your workday, you have a shutdown ritual where you basically close all of the open loops. So, you look at your inbox and make sure you’re not missing something, you look at your calendar, you look at your plan for the week. If you’re captured like notes or ideas on scraps of paper, you get them into your system. So, you close all the loops, “All right. There’s nothing else I need to do for work tonight. I have a plan for tomorrow. I’m not forgetting anything.”

And then you have some sort of phrase or ritual you do to indicate that you’re done with that routine. So, like I used to actually say the phrase, “Schedule shutdown complete,” which was like purposefully nerdy. I talk about this in my book Deep Work, and there’s a whole subculture of people who, when they see me now, are like, “Schedule shutdown complete.”

But it was weird on purpose because what happens is that later in the evening when you begin to feel some work anxiety, instead of going through it, instead of…

Pete Mockaitis
A schedule shutdown has been completed.

Cal Newport
You say, “Why else would I have said that stupid phrase unless I had actually gone through the whole thing?” Now, in that planner, I actually added a checkbox that says, “Shutdown complete.” So, instead of having to say that out loud and risk the mocking of everyone within earshot, you can put a checkmark next to the phrase. But the whole point is you have something really weird and clear you do to indicate you’ve done the shutdown ritual. So, if you get anxious, you just say, “I did that weird thing, which means I did a ritual, so I’m not going to get into the particular anxiety. I’m just going to trust myself that I would not have said something so dumb unless I’ve actually gotten things under control.”

I love that ritual. I’ve been doing that since 2007. I started it as a grad student and it’s incredibly effective.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you say or have written that people quote back to you frequently? It sounds like “Shutdown ritual complete” is one of them. Any others?

Cal Newport
Yeah, I get “Shutdown complete” a lot. For some reason, so I have this podcast Deep Questions where I answer questions from readers. And, for whatever reason, we went down a rabbit hole of…I don’t know how I encouraged this. It’s just like one of these cycles of superfluous references to Greek mythology. So, I do these mini episodes once a week where people kind of call in with questions, and now it’s become kind of a competition to see who could work in like the most superfluous reference to Greek mythology in trying to set up their question about workplace productivity. So, I get a lot of that from people now. I don’t know how that started, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
“How could I soar like Pegasus to new heights of productivity?”

Cal Newport
Oh, yeah, Hydras. Earlier today, I had a Bacchus reference. That’s a good one. I had a question from a classicist recently, a classicist professor, so that was intimidating because she actually knew the whole canon. So, yeah, I don’t know, but I get that a lot. I get a lot of Greek mythology.

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

Cal Newport
So, you can go to CalNewport.com if you want to find out about the books and sign up for my newsletter. I’ve been writing a weekly essay there since 2007. If you want to hear me instead of read about me, Deep Questions is my podcast. If you want to find me on social media, as we’d mentioned, you’d be out of luck.

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

Cal Newport
It is a hundred percent possible for almost anyone or any job to get to a place where your email inbox is something like it was in 1995. It’s something you check maybe once a day, “Hey, here’s this file I needed,” or, “Here’s a reminder. Let me look at it,” and that’s the only role it plays in your life. This idea that you have to constantly be checking and communicating to do your job, that might be true about your job as constructed right now, but it can be reconstructed.

So, my challenge is do not give up on this utopian dream of a world without email by which I mean not a world in which you don’t have an email address but a world in which email does not play a central role to how your work actually gets done.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cal, this has been a treat. Thank you so much and keep on rocking.

Cal Newport
Yeah, thanks. It was my pleasure, like Icarus flying close to the sun on wax wings, I think. I’m trying to make the reference work. I’m trying to make it work.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe not afterwards.

646: Redefining the Rules to Make Work More Enjoyable with Vishen Lakhiani

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Vishen Lakhiani shares foundational principles to make work more fulfilling.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How the most successful people find bliss in their work 
  2. How to keep stress from fazing you
  3. Why hustling hurts your career 

About Vishen

Vishen Lakhiani is one of today’s most influential minds in the fields of personal growth and human consciousness. He is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley and behind several top-ranking health and wellness apps. He also has two New York Times best-selling books, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind and The Buddha and the Badass. With an incredible passion and drive to unite humanity and challenge the status quo, he has built a movement of growth-seekers, spanning across 195 countries, engaging more than 15 million followers on social media, and nearly half-a-million students online each year. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

  • FSAstore.com. Use your flex spending account funds with the greatest of ease! Save $20 on a $150+ purchase with promo code AWESOME. 
  • Monday.comExperience a 14-day free trial of the Work OS that boosts the ownership, joy, and efficiency of work. 

Vishen Lakhiani Interview Transcript

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

Vishen Lakhiani
Pete, thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. And, first, tell us about A-Fest. It seems like the coolest thing and I want to hear the story as to how it came about and what goes down there.

Vishen Lakhiani
Well, first, for those of you listening, A-Fest, it’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around that word. It’s A-F-E-S-T, it’s a festival I created 10 years ago because I wanted to be able to meet fascinating people, hang out in paradise locations, and grow my network. Back then I was just starting out my career, I was a kid in Malaysia, and I had bigger dreams in my tiny little country. Now, obviously, there’s no point talking about A-Fest because, like any other festival, it shut down for two years because of COVID. It’s devastating. I miss it but it’ll be back next year in 2022.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the A stand for?

Vishen Lakhiani
I’m laughing because I’m embarrassed to say so. So, the very first A-Fest started because I was fascinated by surfing. I sucked as a surfer. And in surf lingo, there’s that word, “Awesome, dude,’ so it stood for Awesomeness Fest because the very first happened at Witch’s Rock in Costa Rica, which is a famous surfing site. And I didn’t know there’d be 15 more of them all around the world but the word awesome stuck to it. Everyone got free surfing lessons when they showed up. And then when we realized that you couldn’t build a festival around the concept of surfing, we’d be awesome and it just became A-Fest.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we love awesome here at How to be Awesome at Your Job so that’s kind of why I zeroed in on this one, and I think awesomeness is a great thing that needs to be celebrated via festivals. And so, I look forward to the day that that and other awesome events return to the world.

And I want to dig into more about feeling awesome versus miserable at work. You’ve got some perspectives here. Can you kick us off by maybe setting some foundational principles? Like, what’s missing from our work lives?

Vishen Lakhiani
Rather than what’s missing from our work life, let’s talk about a different concept and then it becomes evident what is missing, okay? So, this whole podcast is about how to be awesome. Now, I gave a speech once in Calgary and the speech was called “The Theory of Awesomeness.” I love that word.

Now, “The Theory of Awesomeness” suggested this. It suggested that there is a state, back then I called it the state of awesomeness. The word awesome in 2008 meant this for me. It meant being in a state of mind where there were two ingredients in your life. Now, the first ingredient is awe. It’s awe towards a future vision. That means there is something that excites you, that tickles you, that gnaws at you, that makes you want to build, to create, to produce, and you cannot wait to get this out to the world. So, that’s the first lever.

But there’s a second lever, and that second lever is, as you’re building, as you’re creating, you are not pushing forward your happiness. In other words, your happiness, your bliss, your feelings of magic and being in the flow do not come from you hitting your goal. They come from you moving towards your goal. In short, the awe is not towards the end goal but the awe is the journey.

Now, when you combine both of these together, what happens is you have a really wonderful state of human existence. You have a vision calling you forward but you also have bliss in the present. This is the ultimate state of human existence. It is to have visions that pull us forward but to be blissful in the now. It is the merger of your future and your present. It is why so many great men and women across history spoke about life in these esoteric terms.

For example, Bruce Lee said, “The point of a goal is often not to hit the goal. The goal is simply a force of direction.”

And then there’s this poem by this historical figure. So, I’d like to read this out to you, guys, because it illustrates this point of the dance between vision and bliss. This man wrote in his 82nd year, he wrote this down:

“I was early taught to work as well as play;
My life has been one long, happy holiday–
Full of work, and full of play–
I dropped the worry on the way–
And God was good to me every day.”

Now, when you listen to that, it sounds like some beautiful farmer like plowing his field, enjoying the sunshine, but that was actually written by John D. Rockefeller in his 80s. John D. Rockefeller created Standard Oil. He was the richest man of his era, potentially the richest man who ever lived if you count for the value of money back then. That was written a hundred years ago. But, again, John D. Rockefeller doesn’t talk about chasing goals. He talks about a life which was one long, happy holiday, full of work, full of play. His worry dropped along the way.

And this is just further evidence that people who are crushing it at work are not stressed out. They are not facing extreme anxiety. They are dancing this delicate dance between visions pulling them forward and bliss in the present. The dance between the future and the now, this is what I call the theory of awesomeness. And this is the state of awe that I think all of us need to be in. Now, this is what is missing from work. Because if you look at work, we see work as separate from play. We see work as separate from living.

And I remember once hearing Richard Branson say this, he was asked, “How do you balance life between work and play?” And he said, “Work? Play? To me, it’s all the same thing. I just call it living.” So, this is what I believe is missing from the way we’ve been trained to show up at our jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, I’d love some more of that for sure. Tell us, what is the path by which we land there? Because I imagine if you’re Richard Branson or John D. Rockefeller or any professional, that they had some issues. I’m sure there’s some lawyers saying, “Hey, we’re suing you,” there are some acquisition targets they wanted to get but then the price was higher than they wanted to pay, whatever. So, like, they’re playing the business game at a higher level and they have disappointments, things that they want to happen but don’t happen, and things they don’t want to happen that do happen. So, how do we get into this rocket mindset where it’s all good?

Vishen Lakhiani
Beautiful question. So, to answer that question, particularly what you said, “I’m sure they have things that they want to happen that happens, I’m sure they have things that they don’t want to happen that happens.” I want to share with you a conversation I had with a famous business school professor. His name is Professor Srikumar Rao. And Professor Rao used to teach classes at Columbia, at Kellogg, at other famous business schools like London Business School, and there was something really unique about Rao. His classes were not on business. I mean, they were on business. This was an MBA program. But his classes, rather, explored the art of living. They were called classes on personal mastery.

And what Rao did was he would bring in wisdom from ancient sages like Confucius or ancient sages and saints from India, and he would implant this wisdom in the minds of his MBA students. Now, his classes were so popular, there was a line to get in through the door. Students who graduated from his classes would form alumni groups because they would bond so firmly with other students. I sought out Rao as a mentor after I saw a video of him giving a talk on Google, and that video blew my mind.

And so, I sought him out as a mentor, and as we became friends, I remember one day he came to me and he said, “You know, Vishen, all of this stuff that American business schools are teaching are bull.” Now, he didn’t actually say bull. He’s a very polite man. He used a far more polite word, I think, but I’m not a polite man so I think my brain changed it.

So, I said, “Rao, what do you mean?” And he goes, “What they need to teach is consciousness.” And I said, “But they do teach consciousness.” And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re confusing consciousness and ethics. Since Enron, all business schools teach business ethics. Consciousness is beyond ethics.”

And I said, “Well, do explain. What do you mean by the need to teach consciousness?” He said, “To be truly conscious, you have to understand one thing.” And I said, “Well, tell me, what is this one thing?” Rao went on, he said…Now, Rao, he’s a man of Indian origin. He’s American. He lives in New York but he speaks in his Indian accent so you can picture this in his Indian accent.

He said, “Business schools need to teach that the most important thing is not your business. If your business hits a billion dollars, it doesn’t matter. If your business fails, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is, ‘Did you grow?’ If you become a billionaire, I don’t care. Did you grow? If you go bankrupt, you shouldn’t care. Did you grow?”

And he said, “The point of life is growth. When you make growth the number one thing, and you measure everything in, ‘Am I better today than I was yesterday?’ in some way, your life takes on a whole new meaning. Growth has to be the number one goal but we don’t teach that, do we? We teach chase the money, chase the career, and that is the problem with how we are training today’s business folks.”

So, that’s a very important lesson. Growth should be the number one thing. Now, back to the theory of awesomeness: vision and bliss. A core concept of growth is to make yourself better and better at being you. Now, when you make yourself better and better at being you, what happens is that all the bold things that you’re seeking to do, they come to you faster. As you grow, your business grows. You’ve read that from countless books on personal growth.

But the other aspect of growth is mastery of yourself. It’s not just becoming better; it’s becoming more comfortable in your own head. Now, what mastery of self means is being able to navigate the complex ebbs and tides of being human, being able to navigate extreme emotion, being able to deal with anger but not have anger consume you, go through failure but not have failure define you, see everything as “Is this helping me grow?”

Now, when you do that self-mastery plus constantly seeking to become better and better, That is how to be in a state of perpetual awe.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s awesome in terms of the mindset there in terms of, “Is this helping me grow? It’s all about the growth whether I hit the goal or I don’t hit the goal. It’s all good.” Well, so then let’s talk about some of this emotion self-mastery stuff. So, we’re just going to have to duck some of the naughty words and just say them freely so we can do this. So, for example, in your book The Buddha and the Badass, you talk about how we can master the art of unf-withability, which sounds like something I want for myself.

So, we’ve established some of the foundational ingredients for that. How do we move forward in terms of really developing, I don’t know if you want to call it a skill or a set of skills in the realm of emotional regulation self-mastery so that we get there? Because I imagine, Vishen, right now, if listeners say, “Okay, that’s my thing. I’m going to say, ‘Hey, is this helping me to grow? Am I making growth my number one thing? Okay, I’ve got that decision made internally and, yet, if a curveball gets thrown my way, I’m probably, the first time or two or many perhaps dozens of times, going to be feeling some of the stuff.” So, how do we take our first steps here?

Vishen Lakhiani
So, first, let’s set a vision. Remember what I said, right? You must have a vision. You must have a direction pulling you forward. Let me paint a vision of what I mean by self-mastery. And to understand this vision, I want to read you a poem from the Rumi, it’s called “The Guest House.” Now, the poem says this:

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

This is the epitome of truly being able to have mastery over your emotional states. Our natural state should always be bliss. But this doesn’t mean that we push away sadness. This doesn’t mean that we don’t get annoyed by failure. It means we embrace these emotions. We open our doors to them, we welcome them as guests, we feel them, and then we move beyond them.

When you cultivate that, what happens is that you develop what, in psychology, they sometimes refer as resilience or grit. And this is one of the most incredible things you can have. Even if you look at people like Elon Musk, I once actually asked Elon Musk, like, “If I could put you in a blender and distill your essence, what makes you Elon?” And he said, “You know, I think what makes me who I am…” and so he answered this in 2013, he said, “…was my ability to endure extreme pain. I have high tolerance for pain.”

Now, high tolerance for pain simply means that if you go into the darkness, you embrace it and you move beyond it. Elon can accept his pain and then bounce back. But not everybody can. Many people, they sit in that pain. They make that pain define them, “I’m a failure. I suck. Why does this happen to me?” But that is not in the criteria of truly being able to become awesome at your job or at work. You must see pain as your friend.

And if you go through pain, what you want to ask yourself is, “Is this pain helping me grow?” Now, it turns out that one of the most powerful ways we grow is through pain.

In Zen Buddhism, they call this Kensho moments. Most of us go through Kensho or growth through pain. If you’re listening, ask yourself how many times has someone broken your heart. But because of that act of your heart breaking, you gained a better understanding of what you want in a relationship.

How many times have you been fired from a job – I’ve been fired twice – or been near bankruptcy? I’ve been there nearly three times. But it led you to greater fiscal responsibility or to finding a job that was even better for you. How many times have you ended up sick or in a hospital and it made you realize, through growth, that you go to take better care of your health?

So, you see, when you understand, when you make growth your number one goal, that’s the first rule, you start to see suffering and pain as Kensho, as a lever for growth, as the great educator, as the wakeup call. And that mindset shift is one of the key ingredients of people who are really doing awesome at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. So, I’d love to get your view then, when it comes to growth “Am I better today than I was yesterday in some area?” do you have any particular ways that you love to capture, measure, gauge, quantify that growth? We talked about the business metrics not mattering so much, but they’re so easy to measure. We can see in the bank account, we can see in the income statement, the revenue growth. What is trickier to graph or measure or see or appreciate can be some of the internal growth things. How do you recommend we get our arms around that?

Vishen Lakhiani
So, firstly, if your audience is on MindValley, they would already know the answer. Now, on MindValley, there’s a free tool that you can use. It’s Life.MindValley.com. It’s a 22-minute assessment that has you measure your life from 12 aspects of personal growth.

Emotions, for example, is one, “What are your persistent emotional states?” That’s like what the Rumi poem spoke about. Finance and career are two common ones that are very much spoken about in the American education system. But then there’s also relationships, there’s character, “How are you with your habits, with your routines, with your values?” There is your physical fitness, your spiritual states. There are 12 different things or dimensions of life. And by taking this survey, Life.MindValley.com, you get a score and you also see where you stand among the hundreds of thousands of people who have also taken the survey.

Now, what the survey tells you is where you might be crushing it and where you might be lagging behind. And when you see where you’re lagging behind, that is what you want to start exploring further.

Vishen Lakhiani
Now, the thing about your career is that you want to specialize. If you’re a designer and you want to increase your hourly rate, you go deeper and deeper and deeper into design. You become the best designer you can be. You don’t jump from design to, say, copywriting. But in your personal life, you don’t specialize. You have to be balanced.

You cannot be crushing it at work, be making millions of dollars but have a messed-up relationship with your family, nor can you be the ultimate mom or dad, the ultimate family person but be completely broke. You need balance. There’s a certain wheel of life that has to be balanced out. And this is why this assessment that we made free helps you identify where you might be off kilter.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then we talked about different areas of life. And when we used some of the words like crushing it versus lagging behind in a performance-achievement-y world, kind of bring me up to another point of yours I wanted to discuss. And you say that hustle as the path to success is a myth. And we get some things wrong about hustle. Can you set us straight?

Vishen Lakhiani
Absolutely. So, there’s this prevailing theory out there that hard work is what makes you successful. There are many people like Gary Vaynerchuk who speak about hard work. But hard work only applies if you’re a lazy bum and you’re just hooked on computer games. Then get off your butt and hustle and put in some work. But most of us are not like that. The typical person listening to this podcast isn’t some guy hooked on computer games.

In that scenario, hard work is actually dangerous. You see, we have to move in life in a balance, and all the most remarkable people who are really successful do not work hard. Jeff Bezos just gave an interview, and he said, “You know, I sleep eight hours a day.” That’s a lot more than the average American. The average American sleeps 6 hours 52 minutes a day. Jeff Bezos, eight hours.

I’ve spent significant time on Necker Island with Richard Branson and I observed how Branson works. He has this beautiful balance between work and then play. He will be on his mobile phone on a hammock. He doesn’t have a laptop, everything is on his mobile phone, and then he’ll go swim in the ocean and kite surf for an hour, then go back to his mobile phone. It’s a beautiful balance. Now, I call that dance the dance of acceleration and navigation.

You got to accelerate at your work but you got to step back. People like Steven Kotler who wrote a book on high performance says that after about three and a half hours, you got to go from acceleration to navigation. And navigation is where you sit back and you think. In my case, I like to relax with a cup of tea and just think, or even take a nap, or meditate, or read a book on poetry or personal growth, then you go back to work. That dance, acceleration and navigation, happens in the day but it also happens in the month.

For example, I’m going to be working a 60-hour week this week but following that, I’m flying to the Maldives to spend eight days in a paradise island in navigation. Now, in navigation, I’m not doing what we think of personal work. I’m writing, I’m journaling, I’m reading books on personal growth. I’m working on new manuscripts. This is how, it turns out, the top performers work. When they work, they are protective of their physical state. And now, science is starting to back this up.

For example, Shawn Achor who wrote the book The Happiness Advantage cites study after study after study that shows that happiness, or positive states, directly correlates with work performance. Examples, doctors who are happy are 19% better at diagnoses. Salespeople who are optimistic, 55% better at closing sales.

Now, Shawn Achor’s work has been developed further by another researcher called Shirzad Chamaine. He wrote a book called Positivity Quotient, and what he did in his studies is he found that the number one factor of high-performing teams is they are positive states. The more often the team is in a positive state, the better the performance of the team. And it turns out that to create these positive states, you don’t overwork yourself. You got to play that dance.

Now, in America, we’ve created this awful rule that hard work is a path to success. You know who created those rules? The robber baron, the titans, the factory owners who want people slogging away at a factory.

It is a lie that hard work results in success. It is an awful lie. It breaks lives. It destroys relationships. It messes up with your health. Work and productivity is the dance between focus, between acceleration, moving towards your goals, and watching your emotional states, and putting yourself in the optimal states where you can think, you can create, you can ideate.

Pete Mockaitis
You used rule, which is one of the main things I associate with you – brules. And one them is that, hey, hard work is the key to success. And you say, nope. In fact, adapting that mindset is problematic. So, can you define for us brules, and give us some other examples, and make sure how we conquer them?

Vishen Lakhiani
So, a brule is what I coined in my first book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind in 2016. Brules are a simplification of a complex world. When we look at the world, we create rules to help us navigate this complex world of human dynamics. These rules come from culture, from beliefs, from religion, from a country’s government, from our teachers, our preachers, the media, and these rules have a purpose. They help us navigate.

We know that when someone greets us, to say, “Good morning.” We know to say “Thank you” to a waitress. Easy rules. We learn these as kids. But then there are brules that serve not much of a purpose but are just blindly carried forward from generation to generation to generation. What are brules? Well, hard work makes you successful is a brule.

Another example of a brule might be, in terms of how we define relationships, how we think about our health, how we think about money. The question is what may be a brule to one person, may not be a brule to another. The way to understand is to look at your life. And Alan Watts, the great philosopher, suggested this exercise. Ask yourself, “What do I believe? Because I learn through my own experience is true,” versus, “What are my beliefs that I were told is true?”

Now, when you start putting this together, it’s a disruptive exercise. Let me ask you this question. What is it that you came to understand as true because you discovered it to be true?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, there are so many things. I mean, it is disruptive in that it is so all encompassing. We could talk about it small and big in terms of like the nature of reality and human existence, or productivity strategies. So, yeah, I’m just looking at a glass of water right now, and so one thing that I believe to be true, from a lived experience, is that drinking plenty of water feels great in terms of making me feel alive and vital and healthy and smart and sharp, and it’s also very easy to forget to do, and then wonder, “Why do I feel so crappy?”

Vishen Lakhiani
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s just like a visual stimulus, there’s a cup of water there, so that’s one thing.

Vishen Lakhiani
Yeah, exactly. That’s great, right? Now, what is it that you took to be true because you were indoctrinated into it?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I guess, this is so small stakes but while we’re on the topic of hydration, like someone said, “Oh, you need to have eight glasses of water a day.” And that’s just something that’s just repeated and I’ve sort of dug into the science behind it. It’s not really founded anything, it’s like, “How big is the glass? Who says eight? What if you’re like a tiny 80-pound woman or a Mr. Olympia hulking bodybuilding man, like, one size does not fit all? That’s silliness.”

Vishen Lakhiani
Well, here’s a bunch of other brules that most people believe not because it’s real but because they were told to believe it. One is, “A woman’s place is in the home.” Another one might be, “You need a college degree to get a job.” And so, there are so many brules that we blindly take on without evidence simply because that’s the way it’s always been.

Remember that great quote from Steve Jobs? He said, “At a certain point in life, you come to realize that everything we think about life is made up by people no smarter than you. And you can change things, you can poke things, you can make things happen. And once you understand that, your life will never be the same again.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And so, let’s just take, “Well, hey, you’ve got to get a college degree to get a good job.” I think that that’s something that, yeah, that’s just sort of in the air, and there are some truths to it in terms of we could look at some stats to show that, on the whole, people with college degrees earn more than those who don’t, or we could look at many individual job posts that claim “Must have a bachelor’s degree in these or related fields.” So, there’s a smidge of evidence that can point you in one direction, although I know of truckloads of evidence that say that that’s not true at all.

So, yeah, what’s the next step? We take some time to say, “Okay, hey, what are some beliefs that I’ve come to understand in my own experience?”

Vishen Lakhiani
Well, what you’re asking me to do is to simplify life, is get the great secret of life in the tiniest soundbite as possible, and you can’t do that because everybody has to discover their own secret.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that’s probably a fine transition point, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Vishen Lakhiani
“The most extraordinary people in the world do not have a career or a business. What they have is a mission.” And what I mean by this is that you would do the work that you do even if you didn’t get paid. It is your mission. It is your art of living. It is your contribution to the world, and this sums up that idea I said earlier.

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

Vishen Lakhiani
One of my favorite experiments, and this actually has to do with what we were talking about earlier, that positive states, that positive emotions, amplify your productivity at work. So, Shawn Achor did an experiment, I believe it was at the company First National. The CEO Gary Baker, he said was not a numbers guy, and Shawn wanted to suggest to Gary Baker that if he wanted to transform his company, he needed to do a simple 2-minute exercise with all his managers every day.

So, Gary Baker thought it was a joke but he decided to try it. Now, this was the 2-minute exercise. The managers, when they started their day, would set a timer for two minutes, and in no less and no more than two minutes, they would open up their email and write an email of appreciation to someone else in their company. Shawn Achor said anything beyond two minutes is too much of an obligation, less than two minutes is ideally too short.

So, Shelly might write an email to Tom and say, “Hey, Tom, just wanted to appreciate you for the wonderful idea you gave me last night and helping me improve my keynote presentation.” That’s it. Now, what they found is that in one year the company started to go through like a radical transformation. They went from 650 million in revenue to 950 million in revenue with no new headcount.

The number of job applications went up 237%. All of this because employees were spending two minutes a day appreciating each other. And it goes to show that emotions and our states of bliss really have a massive impact on our job. Shawn Achor said, “What was going on is that as you appreciated someone, you were actually practicing a form of gratitude. You were recognizing elegance, beauty, like great work. And then when they replied, you were getting another dose of happiness because you are being recognized for appreciating someone. It’s a beautiful cycle.” But that surge in positivity that it caused within an organization was transformative for Gary Baker’s company.

And this is probably one of the most interesting studies I’ve come across. I wrote about it extensively in my book The Buddha and the Badass.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Vishen Lakhiani
I’m holding it up right now, The Poetry of Rumi.

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

Vishen Lakhiani
Airtable. You got to love Airtable. It’s a no-code coding software. It allows me to build any application I want to make myself more efficient in any way.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Vishen Lakhiani
Well, taking supplements every morning, but also meditating to “The 6 Phase Meditation” which is a meditation process I pioneered. There’s going to be a book coming out on it. It’s a meditation process used by super performers in just about every field. And it’s about retraining your brain to operate in that state, that dance between vision and bliss. It’s called “The 6 Phase Meditation.” You can find it on MindValley or you can Google it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. And not to go too deep down this one, I’m sure we have a full episode on supplements, but give us the hitlist, top daily supplements that Vishen swears by.

Vishen Lakhiani
Magnesium to help you go to bed. I believe in healthy sleep. 5HDP, wonderful in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget you share that you’re known for, people quote back to you frequently and ascribe to you?

Vishen Lakhiani
People love some of the words I created to help us navigate the world, words like brules. Conscious engineering. All of these you’ll probably find in my book.

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

Vishen Lakhiani
Follow me on Instagram @vishen or go to MindValley.com.

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

Vishen Lakhiani
The most important thing you can do, which will transform your life, transform your job, is to get a MindValley membership. It will just freaking change your life. Go check it out.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Vishen, this has been a treat. Thanks so much and I wish you lots of luck in your growth adventures.

Vishen Lakhiani
Thank you. Thank you for having me.