KF #28. Drives Results Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Anna, welcome!

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Hey, Pete, how you doing?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m lovely. How are you doing?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’m doing great. Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear some of your time management wisdom. You have had some cool experiences from wrangling some hectic schedules in your professional world, so, I’d love to hear any really surprising insights about time management that you know and we don’t, but we should know?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll tell you an insight that I learned very early in my, I guess you could call it time management career. My first job straight out of college was as a scheduler to a United States Congressman.

And my very first week on the job, I was so excited to dive in and create the most perfect schedule anyone had ever seen. And on day one, mid-morning on Monday, our chief of staff Clayton walks up to me, and he says, “Anna, we have a problem.” And my heart absolutely sank, I had no idea what I could have done wrong. And he points out that I’d forgotten something very important, and it’s something that a lot of us actually tend to forget.

And he shared with me that the boss was not a robot, and that he needed bathroom breaks built into his schedule. And I was absolutely mortified. And it was such an important reminder very early in my career that we are all human, and that taking breaks is just as important as making sure that there’s time allotted to get things done.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, we are all human, and time needs to be allotted. As we’re having this conversation, this is the day that, well, President Jimmy Carter’s funeral is occurring in the Washington Cathedral. And I caught some of the news showing that live broadcast. And it was sort of a unique moment watching all these presidents.

Just sitting and waiting. Just like the rest of us, like there are times, it was like, “No, a funeral is about to start. We are sitting and we are waiting for things to occur because even though we are super powerful, wealthy, important, that’s just kind of a reality. Like, they, too, need bathroom breaks and need to eat and sleep and do all the things, though that’s not put on the news stations.” So I think that’s a great point right there, is that whether or not you’ve scheduled it, these things must happen.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you’re in a highly scheduled environment, it sounds like that was your duty to literally put a line item in the calendar, which says, “Restroom.” Or, how is that operationally executed, if I may ask, Anna?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You know, that’s a great question. It really looked like making sure that there was 15 minutes of buffer. Between every two meetings, there needed to be 15 minutes of buffer just in case, so often, when we think about time management, we tend to think about getting as much accomplished as possible and squeezing in as many things as possible into our day. But if that is the only lens through which we look at time management, we’re setting ourselves up for failure because the perfect day, maybe on paper, where you maximize every single minute of your day, it just doesn’t work in real life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, I’m so fascinated by the notion of scheduling every minute of another person’s life and what that experience is like for you when you’re fresh into your first kind of professional role there.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I know it’s a crazy concept to think about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so I guess help me out, literally, in that calendar, you’re having sleeping, waking up, and showering. Like, you have this written in there for every piece?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yes, that was all completely time blocked. So, I know your audience is no stranger to time blocking. It’s creating a block in your calendar that represents how you’ll spend that time, and we essentially knew that in order. So, as a congressman, as anyone in a high-powered, high-responsibility position, you have to divide your time in a lot of different ways. 

And so, without having a minute-by-minute itinerary for the day, it’s nearly impossible to divide your time between all of these different pieces that have to be tended to.

And, of course, it took a really important upfront conversation of, “What do you want your day to look like? What type of breaks do you need?”

But it really had to look at, “Okay, so you want to work out, in the mornings. How long do you need to work out? What does that transition time look like from the gym back to the office? How much time do I need to block out?” I got really acquainted with using Google Maps and traffic projections in order to understand transition time from point A to point B because that was so key in making sure that buffer time was included.

Really, every single thing had to be thought of and accounted for to ensure that the day went smoothly and that we were able to have him show up everywhere that he needed to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what I find intriguing about this notion is, I guess maybe I’m just sort of like a creative, free thinking, I like to get into my flow. Like, that’s my favorite is like, “Oh, there’s nothing this afternoon. Let’s just dream up some things.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, you should not be a congressman then. I would not recommend that path for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think for several reasons, but I guess what’s funny though is if you are proactively taking into account every minute and the travel time, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that having a schedule that looks visually jam packed actually feels emotionally stressed, rushed, hurried, exhausting. It’s like, “What’s on my calendar? Oh, 45 minutes for strolling to the gym, exercising, and strolling back. All right then, I’ll just enjoy doing that now. Cool.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I mean, what’s so interesting is that. A lot of my work as a time management coach now incorporates your personality and the way that you think, the way you make decisions, the way you approach structure, closure, open-endedness, all of those things, it deeply impacts the way that you spend your time and manage your time.

And for many people, a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule feels freeing because everything has been accounted for, and they’re not having to make minute-by-minute decisions as their day goes on because everything’s been planned. All they have to do is adapt as they need to. But for other people, having a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule is just an opportunity to rebel and do the opposite of what is on the schedule.

Like, “No, nobody is going to tell me what to do, not even me and my calendar.” And so, it’s really important to understand. I mean, you mentioned, “Hey, if I’m a creative type, I want to have time to think.” Having that minute-by-minute schedule probably wouldn’t be the best route for you to take. I would recommend something else for you. But if you have that type of personality where the structure feels like freedom, then time-blocking the heck out of your day or your week is going to feel right for you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. Well, I’d love it you could perhaps share with us a cool story of someone who saw a transformation with regard to their relationship to time management, where they were, what they did, and where they landed.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, it really makes me think back to a client that I worked with a few years ago. I’m going to call her Amanda. And when Amanda and I started working together, she was completely overwhelmed to the point where she felt hopeless. She was working in a job that honestly had her working 24/7. She was never putting her laptop away. She was missing out on spending time with her family and friends. She felt like life was completely passing her by and that she was completely just drowning in work, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

She reached out, and she said, “I feel like this is my last hope. Let’s work together, let’s figure this out.” And so, working with Amanda, we started, step by step, sorting out what it is she actually wanted her life to look like. And the thing is that, for so long, she had just been kind of swept up in this wave of everyone else’s expectations, of what her parents wanted for her, of what she thought that she was supposed to be doing.

And she realized that she wasn’t really doing anything that she truly wanted to do. And so, for the first time in her life, she actually started to create a vision for her life and what she wanted. And she started getting really clear about what she wanted for her future. And a lot of times you might think, “Wait, what does this even have to do with time management?” But without a vision for your future, you have no direction, you have no decision points about how to spend your time.

And so, I encouraged Amanda to write a letter to herself from a future version of herself. So, we worked together in 2020, and she wrote a letter to herself from 2025 Amanda. And in this letter, she poured into all of the things that she was currently doing, that she owned a home, that she was in a job that she loved, that she worked in an office with exposed brick and huge windows, that she had time to spend with her family and friends, and that, more than anything, she was happy and proud of herself.

Now, staying in touch with Amanda over the last five years, because it’s 2025 now, I’ve had the opportunity to watch her set boundaries in how much time she spends working. I’ve had the opportunity to watch her take care of herself by leaving work in order to actually go to the gym and work out. I’ve watched her invest in her health. I’ve even seen her, she called me the day that she bought a new car, the car that she had always wanted.

And it was such a huge step for her because she was finally doing something for herself that she wanted. And she reached out to me a couple months ago, and she said, “I’m about to step into 2025 Amanda, and almost every single thing that I wrote in my letter five years ago has come true. And it’s come true because of the vision that I created and the way that I shaped my time to match that vision.”

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. All right. Well, I think we’d all love a little more of that going on in our lives. That’s delightful. So, tell us, I think we’ve all heard some tips or tricks, some listicles, maybe we’ve got an app or some tools that we dig, can you share with us perhaps, fundamentally.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, a lot of times when we want to make a change to the way that we’re spending our time, we want to go straight to our calendars or our to-do lists and start rearranging things. We want to download an app or try a habit tracker. But the thing is that, whenever you go straight to trying to rearrange things or add a new hack or an app, you’re starting in the wrong place. The biggest mistake that most of us make when it comes to improving our time management is that we skip the most important first step.

And it’s exactly what I shared about Amanda. It’s creating that vision for your future. And the thing is that, when you have that vision, you have a direction to move in. You know where you’re going because every single decision you make about how you spend your time either gets you closer to or further away from that vision. But let’s say you have that vision, you know what it is that you want, then what? How do you actually make that happen?

So, that’s where I like to share basically my time management Swiss army knife. I really think that there are three core tools that really serve as the foundation for time management once you have that vision in place. And that’s time blocking, task batching, and theme days. Time blocking, task batching and theme days. When you are able to pull one of these tools from that time management Swiss army knife, you’re able to do a couple things.

So, there are two productivity pitfalls that all of us are constantly fighting, whether we realize it or not. One of those is Parkinson’s Law. So, Parkinson’s law tells us that work expands to fill the time available. And you might be like, “No, Anna, I would stop working at some point. Work’s not going to expand all over the place.” But the thing is that it does.

When we don’t have a clear understanding of what done or complete or enough or success looks like, there’s always something else that we can tweak or adjust or edit in order to get ever so much closer to impossible to reach perfection. And so, we just kind of keep going without a limit. But when you use time blocking, you’re able to beat Parkinson’s law because a time block gives you a set start time and a set end time. And it helps you contain that work within a specific timeframe.

Anybody who has ever said, “I am so good at working under pressure. You give me a last-minute deadline and I can crank it out.” That’s Parkinson’s law making that happen. Because when you have that set deadline, you find a way to make it work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, when it comes to the time blocking, I totally hear you that the work will expand to fill the time allotted for it. Although, I don’t think that the reverse quite works, in the sense of, if I say, “I’m going to accomplish this thing in 12 minutes,” but, like, it’s actually impossible. How do you think about setting an appropriate amount of time for a thing?

Because I’ve heard studies show that we humans are not the best at estimating how long something actually takes. But at the same time, I see there is value in having a number there that keeps us from spinning our wheels and going to unnecessary layers of iteration that are really not that helpful. So, I think you can assign too much time, you can assign too little time, and we’re not that good at it. How do you go about blocking an appropriate amount of time?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Okay, I love that because you actually stepped right into the next productivity pitfall, which is the planning fallacy. So, that thing, that study show, it has a name. The planning fallacy states that humans are terrible at estimating how much time things take. And when you know that that exists, then you can do something about it, right? Because it’s kind of like the first step is acknowledging that there’s a problem. Our first step to getting better at estimating how long things take is acknowledging that we’re all naturally pretty terrible at it.

So, I really encourage my clients to kind of create their own formula. My rule of thumb is if you think something is going to take an hour, add an additional 30 minutes. If you think something is going to take 12 minutes, give yourself an additional 12 to 30 minutes, just in case. Because most of the time we are going to underestimate. So, anytime you think, “Hey, I think it’s to take me about this long,” add more time. You’re probably going to need it.

And if you want to take it even a step further, so let’s say that it’s something that you do on a regular basis, maybe it’s submitting invoices, or doing some type of report, or just something that you’re doing on a regular basis, time yourself. Next time you do it, time yourself. See how long it takes because that’s going to give you a much better example to refer to in the future is when you have some actual data to work with.

Me, personally, I am not a huge fan of time tracking for the sake of time tracking. But sometimes one of the most valuable exercises that we can do is a time study where you spend time tracking how you are spending your time for the course of a week in 15-minute increments because it is so telling and it exposes all of those places where we waste time, that we don’t even realize that we’re doing things that we don’t even realize that we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that is handy, yes. And I also like the notion of when you put more time than you estimate is necessary, I think that creates just really nice psychological feedback things going on because sometimes I get frustrated with like, “Ugh, this thing is taking way longer than it ‘should.’” And that makes it more aggravating as opposed to, “Oh, wow, I allocated an hour and a half for this thing. And by good fortune, it only took 52 minutes.” Well, then, one, I feel like a winner, like, yay me. And, two, it feels like there’s a little bit of a present, like, “Ah, well, here we have this extra time right here.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Bonus time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, “What shall I do with this surplus?”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I love that. I love that. You know, that actually reminds me of something that I shared with a client yesterday called the shiny things list. So, we can have the most pristine organized environment to work in, we can turn off all of our notifications, put our phone in airplane mode, but we still have ourselves and we can sometimes be the most distracting thing in the room. We’ll start working on something, like you said, “I gave myself an hour and a half to work on this and it only took 52 minutes.”

And in that 52 minutes, we remember that we need to order toilet paper and have it shipped, and that we need to get a birthday card for our mom, and that we need to follow up with Tony about the Jones report. And so, what we tend to do naturally is we stop what we’re working on to order the toilet paper to have it shipped from Amazon, and we stop what we’re working on to order a birthday card, or to make a note, or to stop what we’re doing and we check in with Tony about that report.

And we end up ping-ponging around to all of these different things, which ends up slowing us down, causing us to make more mistakes on the thing that we’re trying to focus on and just making it take a lot longer. And so, what I encourage people to do is to have a notepad right next to your desk so that, as you are working, let’s say that you have an hour and a half to get something done, so at the top of our notepad, we’re going to write down, “One o’clock to 2:30 because, boom, that’s the time that I’m committing to work.”

And then below that, we’re going to make a list of the three things we’re going to accomplish in that timeframe. Now, you might only set out to do one thing, but what if you finish it in 52 minutes? Then you have this bonus time. And what do most of us do with bonus time, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Social media. News.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You got it. We just kind of flop into default mode when we could transition that focus time into something else useful. So, I love to recommend, “Okay, what are the one, two or three things that you’re going to accomplish during that focus time so that you’re able to go straight into the next thing without having that waffly decision mode?” And then once you have those three things decided, you draw a line underneath it, that’s your line in the sand, and then you write, “Shiny things.” The more scribbly you can write shiny things, the better because it really emphasizes, like, the frivolity of them. And then you get to work.

And every time something pops into your head, instead of acting on it immediately, you write it on your shiny things list. You contain your shiny things instead of chasing them. And so, after you finish this work block, and you have this list of shiny things, now you have some decisions to make. You can decide, “Do I need to do these now? Do I want to defer them to later? Do I want to delegate them to someone or delete them altogether?” But the point is that you didn’t go off on a million different rabbit holes. You stayed focused because you didn’t chase your shiny things.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s a good feeling, too, because there’s a little bit, again, psychologically, when I have the idea, it’s like, “Ooh, there’s a thing that I should do,” and it comes into mind, we do tend to do them right away, because there’s a little bit of a tension. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to forget. This is in my mind, and that’s the way to relieve that pressure of it being in my mind.” But you could also just write it down, and then it’s like, “Oh, and here they are all captured here. How handy.” Super. Okay, so we got time blocking, task blocking. And then theme days?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Theme days, yes. So, I love theme days, and theme days are especially a good fit for people who want flexible structure. So, if you’re the kind of person who, having a minute-by-minute time blocked schedule, makes you feel itchy, then a theme day is probably going to be the best bet for you. So, it’s basically choosing a different theme for each day of your week.

So, let’s say you’re in a marketing role. And maybe Mondays, you want to make that social media Mondays. And that’s the day that you focus on creating social media content. It doesn’t matter if you write captions in the morning or in the afternoon, as long as it gets done on social media Monday. Maybe on Tuesdays, you call it, “Tell them all about it Tuesdays.” And that’s the day that you put together PR pitches and do media outreach and write your newsletter. Again, it doesn’t matter when it happens during the day, as long as it happens.

Go a step further. Wednesday could be website Wednesday. You can come up with a different theme for each day of the week. And what this does is that it creates some mental consistency for you. It puts you in a consistent mindset all throughout the day so that, even though you’re working on a collection of tasks that are related, you’re not jumping from one moment writing a social media post, to then sending an invoice, to then updating a website. Those are all three very different mental processes and ways of thinking.

And so, it enables you to really streamline your energy, your creativity, and your focus and to basically shape your day around each of these themes. It’s also really cool because it helps you create consistency and set expectations for yourself about when you can accomplish certain things. And it helps you set expectations with your team if you’re collaborating with others. Because if your team knows that, “Hey, every Wednesday is Anna’s website Wednesday,” they know that they’ve got to get any updates to you by Tuesday afternoon so that you can incorporate them on Wednesday, you know?

And so, theme days can be a really great way to introduce some flexible structure that helps you be more efficient with your time, your creativity, and, plus, it’s just fun to use alliteration and come up with fun names for theme days. I mean, to me, that’s like half the fun.

Pete Mockaitis
I was asking if alliteration was required.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I mean, personally, I think it should be, but you do whatever you want.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s nifty about themes is the organizing principle of the theme can be any number of things. Like, when you say website Wednesday, it’s sort of like, “Okay, on website Wednesday, there are a number of,” let’s say, “environmental context things in play.”

Like, “Okay, I’m going to be in an office at a computer with some quiet. I’m going to have a few pages or tools open and at my disposal.” And so, in so doing, there’s time savings that just shows up because I’m not logging into a new thing, and they got the two-factor authentication, you know, blah blah blah blah. It’s like, “I’m doing that once, and then, all right, and then I’m in the thing, and then away we go. Cool.” And, likewise, you are well equipped. It’s like you’ve got all your stuff for doing the thing at hand.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Your mise en place.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and you’re in the mental groove, and you have like a bit of expectation and understanding of, like, in a way, you’re almost warmed up. So, I see a lot of value in the themes. And in my experience, sometimes you can even just have like a theme half day in terms of, “Well, hey, before lunch is this theme, and after lunch is that theme.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
One hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
And in the startup communities, they talk a lot about the maker schedule versus the manager schedule, which I think is fantastic because those feel wildly different. Like, “I’m creating some stuff thinking deeply and I’m not available to anyone, go away,” versus, “I am super responsive. I am your most accessible, friendly, quick manager and collaborator you could dream of because I’ve got the slack. I’ve got the email. I got all the text, window. I got all the things to message and communicate up a storm quickly,” and they do feel totally different.

So, I would love some of your pro tips from your clients in terms of like themes, categories, contexts, mind states. What are some buckets that you find pretty handy for holding a variety of things together in a theme?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, I love this. I love this question so much. And if you have not had a chance to read the book, Mind Management Over Time Management, I think is the name of it. It’s by Dan Kadavy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, David Kadavy. That sounds like David Kadavy.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
David, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he’s been on the show a couple times. He’s a buddy.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I thought so. I loved that book so much, and I’ve actually taken a lot of what he shared and incorporated that into some of the way that I teach theme days because it’s just so good. But when we think about different ways to approach theme days, we have to think about the way that our mind works. And that Monday morning time block is when we are freshest, typically when we are most energized.

And so, any opportunity that you have to give yourself heads down work on Monday morning is going to be huge. So, that could look like thinking about what is your most important project right now, what is the most important thing that you need to do in order to move your goals forward, and stick that Monday morning, if that’s when you’re going to be at your best.

I’ve had people make that their book writing time. So, Monday is for content. Monday is for marketing. Monday is for really just that heads-down thought work because that’s when we’re at our freshest. And we decline during the course of the day. Our energy gradually drops. We have a little bit of a second wind in the early evening, but, typically, we start fresh. And so, like you mentioned, using the half day theme concept.

It’s also great to think about your day in terms of two parts, “What is your before-lunch theme? What is your after-lunch theme?” I have some clients who arrange their days based on the different industries that they support. So, I have a handful of consultants or PR advertising agency folks, and rather than, in one day working on an industrial client and a health care client and a food and beverage client, instead, they align their days with, “Okay, Monday is my healthcare day. Tuesday is my hospitality and hotel day. Wednesday is my education and nonprofit day.”

And this, again, allows them to align their thinking in a streamlined way. They get into that groove, that flow state, even though they’re performing different tasks, it’s all under that same umbrella. I have different clients who have created research theme days, if part of their work involves research or academic writing so that they’re able to identify when during their week are they at their best for that type of work, and they arrange their theme days accordingly.

I’ll say that the most consistent theme day on Friday is admin and, like, financial catchup because a lot of the time, by the time we reach the end of the week, we’re kind of spent. We need to kind of take it easy. And so, a lot of times my clients choose to make Fridays either a no-meeting day or a light meeting day, and they use it to catch up on tracking metrics or completing reports or updating databases because it’s a light lift before they do an afternoon planning session heading into the weekend.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I also like the notion of when it is, is that groove. Like, sometimes I enjoy, I don’t know what I would call it. I call it in my brain, like, task slaying in that there are many little things.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Pebbles.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go. Pebbles. That’s fun. And, I’m just going to obliterate them. And it feels so good because a lot of them, it’s sort of like they’ve been lingering for a while. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got some laundry there. I should probably handle that.” So, it’s sort of like, it’s surfaced in my consciousness numerous times. And there are things like tidying, replenishing supplies, email. I like the OmniFocus Task Manager. There’s some time management dork-ness for you.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, old voicemail clutter. It’s like there’s lots of little things and they’re kind of weighing on me a little bit, and have been weighing on me a little bit repeatedly, and to decide, “This is the afternoon in which I’m going to annihilate many of these things in quick succession,” feels just phenomenal.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, yes, it does. Pete, you would love a pebble power hour.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You would love them. So, when I’m working with my clients, we like to break down the things on their to-do list, the things in their life as boulders, big rocks, and pebbles. Boulders being those things that are important and not urgent that help you show up as your best self. Big rocks being your project-oriented tasks, the things that really move the needle in your life and work. But then there are pebbles, and pebbles are everything else. Those are those little tasks and to-dos that weigh on you.

My favorite example of a pebble is filling out a reimbursement form because I can think of a few things that are less mundane than filling out a reimbursement form, and like tidying up your email, and all of those things. And so, I really encourage people, over the course of the week, to put all of those little tiny tasks in a different place. Don’t let them swim alongside your most important tasks.

We want to separate out your pebbles because, let’s say Friday afternoon, you schedule a pebble power hour for yourself. You’ve got just set a timer for an hour and knock out as many of those little bitty insignificant tasks as you can. You’re going to feel amazing heading into the weekend because you’ve just done this total dopamine burst of accomplishing so many little things.

And you’re clearing your plate and you’re lightening your load because individually each one of those tasks is small, but they add up to weigh on you, and they pull you down and they hold you back from really giving your all to what’s most important. So, hey, maybe you need a Pete’s pebble power hour on Friday afternoon to knock out all those little things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, even more alliteration. Okay. And Anna, I’d love your take on what is some common advice that is just wrong or bad or ill-advised and you recommend we disavow entirely?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’d say that the worst advice that’s out there, really, can be applied to any, so any time management system, okay? If you do not follow it 100 % and correctly and by the book, the way that it is written, then you are failing. And let me make sure that I’m super clear about that. There are so many different ideas and books and thoughts and methods around time management and organization. And what is so disheartening to me is to talk with someone who has tried to follow a system, but it doesn’t work for them. And they think that they are the problem.

But what’s really happening here is that the system as written is not a match for the way that they think. It’s not a match for their lifestyle. It’s not a match for who they are. And I hate to see people think that there’s something wrong or broken about them because a system that worked perfectly for someone else didn’t work for them. And so, the flip side of that advice is, adapt. Take what’s out there and use what works for you.

If you find an amazing book on time management and you try some things, but maybe part of it doesn’t work for you, it’s not a you-problem. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. Just adapt it, treat it like an experiment, keep trying. The more self-awareness that you have and the better you’re able to understand yourself and how you think.

I mean, this is exactly why I have my clients take the Myers-Briggs as soon as we start working together because it’s so incredibly revealing, and it’s such a boost to their self-awareness, which helps them take what they need and leave what they don’t to create a system that works for them instead of trying to copy and paste something else that’s out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Anna, I love that a lot. It reminds me, we had a conversation with BJ Fogg from Stanford, who’s fantastic, and he wrote the book Tiny Habits, in terms of he likes to think about it as, I believe he calls it behavior design, which is just fun because design conjures images of whiteboards and Post-it notes and Sharpies. And it’s, like, we’re trying to design something that works. And if what we have done hasn’t worked, it doesn’t mean it’s a moral failure, “Oh, I’m lazy. I’m insufficiently committed. I have an addiction to social media,” or whatever, and, hey, maybe we do.

But it’s not like, “Through my fault, my own grievous fault, I’m bad and evil.” It’s just that, “No, this design isn’t quite fitting. It’s not quite working.” And I like to think about it sort of like when you’re organizing a space, if an item does not fit on a shelf, it’s not because the item is bad or the shelf is bad. It’s just that these shapes and sizes of these things are not compatible with each other. There’s no value judgment. It just means that shelf is not the ideal place for this item and we have to figure out where is a better fitting place.

And, likewise, with some of this tiny habit stuff or these systems, I likewise feel that satisfaction just as it is, at least I find it, and I’m not that organized of a person, it is delightful when you have an item that fits perfectly into a place. 

So, too, I think about that when you’ve got a real great lock for an activity and a schedule. It’s, like, “Oh, this matches my groove and my mode and my flow and my energy and the time available. Like, this activity matches this space in my calendar, oh, so just right and it feels delightful.” But the flip side, I’m thinking also about David Allen, Getting Things Done, and he’s been on the show, and I think he’s phenomenal.

But he will mention, and I think it’s kind of a tough reality that the mind-like-water mental clarity amazing space is primarily achieved when, in fact, you have completely absolved your brain from the task of remembering things. And so, if you do not have a system that you sufficiently trust and have sufficiently downloaded all of the stuff from your brain into that system, then you will not experience the peace and freedom that comes from exercising the Getting Things Done, GTD system.

So, it’s a little bit tricky because it’s almost like, “If you’re not doing it perfectly, you’re not reaping the benefits.” And yet, I think it’s semi-true that there are tremendous diminishing returns from being able to completely trust your system and having all contents downloaded out of your brain than being able to 92% trust your system and have 92% of the contents downloaded out of your brain.

But at the same time, it’s not like a shame-on-me value judgment thing. The answer is more of a, “Okay, how could I tweak my system to get that lingering 8% out of there and experience all the wonders that can be enjoyed?” What’s your hot take on all this distinguishing, Anna?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll never forget, I was listening to an episode of Beyond the To-Do List podcast. Love that one. And David Allen himself said that he does not follow GTD 100% all the time. And hearing him say that felt like such a wave of relief washed over me because, to that point, I was struggling because I’d implemented a lot of what was in GTD, and it was before I’d become fully confident in taking what worked and leaving what didn’t.

And it almost felt like permission to customize it to the way that it worked for my life. And I’ve had so many clients come to me feeling like failures because they were unable to use another system 100% copy and pasted. And so, I aim, instead of for, “Hey, let’s go all in on whatever this is.” Let’s not focus on all or nothing behavior, or all or nothing implementation. Let’s look at all or something. What’s the good, better, best?

You know, like you said, the 92%. What if I trusted 92%, and I have 92% of my things downloaded? Sure, there’s still that 8% there, but, like, is it even worth it to struggle and push to get that remaining 8% out of your head when 92% is really freaking good? That’s nice. That’s awesome. And so, like, let’s celebrate getting really far, and let’s celebrate the progress, and let’s be really happy with how far we’ve come instead of how we’re not doing it perfectly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, sounds good. Well, Anna, let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, my favorite quote of all time is “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” by Albert Einstein.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, actually, I think that instead of jumping straight to something that a scientist has done, I just want to give a shout out to Laura Vanderkam and the work that she has done with collecting time studies and what she has learned about the way that women, professionals, people actually spend their time during the course of a week.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
The One Thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And a favorite tool?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I can’t live without Asana.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Every Sunday evening, I like to refill all of my supplements while doing a face mask. And I like to pair those, like do some habit stacking, habit pairing, and it’s such a really nice way to take care of myself heading into the week. You should try it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
It’s that time management doesn’t start on the pages of our planners. It starts by getting to the heart of what matters most.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, so I would love for you to head over to check out my podcast. It’s called It’s About Time. It’s a podcast about work, life, and balance, with new episodes that go live every single Monday. You can find it in your favorite podcast app. So, that’s where I would love to keep in touch with you.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah. So, if you’re looking to be awesome at your job, my challenge to you is to think about what do you want your life to look like five years from now? What’s that vision that you have for your life, and not just at the job description level? What do you want your house to look like, your relationships, your family, your fitness, your wellbeing, what’s going on inside of your head? All of that is what adds up to create your vision. And when you’re clear on your vision, every single decision you make about how to manage your time becomes so much easier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anna, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many beautiful days.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Thank you, Pete. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me.

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

Richard Medcalf
Pete, it’s a pleasure to be back. Thank you for inviting me on the show again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom and your book Making TIME for Strategy: How to be less busy and more successful. I’d love to hear your take. It’s been three years, and what a three-years it’s been since we last spoke, any particular discoveries that have really struck you in this time?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, actually, one thing that’s really struck me is this whole shift of virtual work, which, obviously, blah, blah, blah, everyone’s talked about time and time again, too much now perhaps, but it has exacerbated the problem that I saw everybody was having before, which is being overloaded and being overwhelmed because the barriers have really gone down for so many people.

They’re at home, they’re at work, or they’re everywhere, and there’s more and more stuff coming, and more and more pressures at any one time. It’s the Zoom call phenomenon. You’re on a call one minute, your baby is crying the next minute, everything else. So, I think people have felt a lot of pressure to deliver a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And so, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, I’d love to hear any novel insights you’ve picked up along the way as you’re researching and assembling this?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, one of the studies that I talk about there, this sense, especially over the last two, three years, there’s just so much coming at us all the time from every direction. I realized this is something which almost every leader and every individual contributor, frankly, is feeling these days because the boundaries aren’t there. I call it the infinity trap because we have an infinity of things, Pete, now.

You want to chat with somebody? You’ve got infinite social media opportunities to go and speak to somebody. You want to consume content? You’ve got an infinite amount of videos, podcasts, books to read, blogs to consume, you name it, movies to stream. You’ve got an infinite number of messages coming into your inbox, tasks from your manager, from your colleagues, from clients, or from anybody who wants to get an email into your inbox or message into your Slack or Microsoft Teams, so, it never stops.

We think we can just kind of plow through it but you can’t beat infinity, and I think that’s what people have been suffering from, and why I see everybody around me is crazy busy these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Infinity trap. Well-said. I think it was Matthew Kelly, in one of his books or talks, said, long and ago and it hit me, he’s like, “You’ll never…” and he’s Australian so he’s got a charming accent, and he’s like, “There’ll never be a moment in your life…” and he’s like, “All right, I’m all caught up now. All the things that are on my list are now off of it. Like, that just will never happen, and it’s good to just see…”

Richard Medcalf
But we say this, though.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, hear it, say it.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, we say this all the time. We don’t say it quite like that. We say, “It’ll be quieter next quarter.” A number of people say that, “Oh, Richard, I’m really crazy busy right now, so busy. Yeah, it’s a bit difficult time but next quarter, I’ve got some time opening up in my diary.” I’m like, “Of course, you’ve got time. It’s 12 weeks away. Of course, it’s not full up yet,” and we just keep telling ourselves that, somehow, it’s just a bit busy right now, and it’s going to get better. And does it ever get better, really?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a really good reality check right there in terms of “Is now really especially busy?” And I guess, I think sometimes that feels true in terms of cyclical industries like, I’m thinking, accountants in the US near April. All right. Fair enough. It really is a particularly crazy busy time. And you know it, and you’ll feel it. But in more of a typical workflow world, it’s sort of just always true that many stakeholders are requesting many things from you, and that’s just every day of the year.

Richard Medcalf
And when you least expect it, you get, even your accountants or your finance team that you’re talking about, they get past the yearend, and then, “Oh, no, there’s an M&A going on. Now there’s an order.” Who knows? So, I agree there’s a cyclical part to business but, actually, when we’re on the down cycle, there’s always other projects that come in. So, yeah, I think we have this.

And I talk about the perfect day. We often say, “It’s not the perfect day right now to get started on whatever. So, you know what, I’ve got more important things I need to get to. I know that but today is not a great day because I’ve got my year end, because I’ve got this project going on, because COVID has just hit, because there’s a macroeconomic shakedown happening somewhere in the world.”

So, we kind of keep waiting often, we say, “Well, I’m really busy right now but I can’t quite sort out that busyness. It’s just happening to me, but give me next week, it will be better, or next month, it will be better, or next quarter, it will be better, and then we’ll get there.” But that’s like me, I’m going on a diet. I struggle to do these things, take on new habits sometimes because I’m waiting for the perfect day, like, “Well, now is not a good day to lose a few pounds because there’s a massive chocolate cake in front of me.”

“Now is not a good day because it’s the weekend,” “Now is not a good day because I’m in a restaurant,” “Now is not a good day because it’s your birthday,” or it’s my birthday, or the weather is nice, or whatever. We keep creating excuses sometimes for not dealing with some of the issues in our life, and it’s a myth. It’s a mirage that we put up. So, when it comes to this subject of busyness, I think we often put off dealing with it because we’re so busy we haven’t got the bandwidth.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s just true. And it’s really kind of potentially vicious cycle there in terms of to do wise prioritization, for me at least, it feels like, emotionally, I need some, I guess I’d call it space, in terms of my brain. Like, there’s the mental-emotional state of being besieged by lots of stuff, it’s kind of like a stress, a narrowing, a tightening vibe. And then there’s the opposite, which is like, “Oh, hey, we’re on a retreat, and we’ve got wide open views and whiteboards or something.”

It’s like, “Ahh, here I can dream and think big, and zero in on what really matters.” And it’s tricky because when you need it most is when you have too much stuff to do, and yet that’s when it’s hardest to execute that kind of thinking.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think that’s right. I talk about war time and peace time. We often think, “Yeah, I’ll do all that stuff in peace time when I haven’t got all this stuff,” just as you said, “when I’m on a desert island and I can just kick back and muse.” The reality is most of our lives is lived in that high stress, high pressure busy environment and we have to make it work there. I think that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, first of all, how are we defining strategy or strategic time here?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, strategy doesn’t have to be corporate strategy, so this is something that we can apply at any level in the organization. We might be the CEO, and I worked with some of the most incredible CEOs on the planet, and it does apply for them doing corporate strategy, but it also applies to the individual contributor and anywhere in between.

And the reason is I’m talking about this strategic, “So, what’s going to move the needle for you?” Let me give you an example. Most of our days, we spend basically doing the same old thing, we do the same thing every week, or every month, or every time we get a new client or a new project.

And so, we get caught into the operational, keeping the lights on, turning the machine. And the strategic is going to be what breaks you out of that pattern, build a new capability, creates a new relationship, basically changes the game for you so that things become easier in the future.

I like to say that this idea of strategic time, it’s actually your number one KPI for your future success. It’s your key performance indicator. If you want to know how successful you will be in the next three years, or one year, three years, five years, then you need to look at how much time you’re investing in your future success, and that has to be looked at week on week, “This week, how much time did I spend, did I invest in making the future better? Or, did I just use all my time on all the day-to-day stuff?” I think that’s the big shift that we need to focus on.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much, investing to make the future better or make things easier. And this brings me back to one of my all-time favorite books that we had one of the authors on the show, Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing, that magical question, “What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?”

And so, here though, you’re really making me think of, I don’t know, compound interests, finance, planting acorns, getting huge trees kinds of things. So, another way to conceptualize it, so that’s really cool.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, that’s right. I like to say, imagine that you’re a business, and, basically, you’re making zero profit, you’re bumbling along month by month, and you’re spending everything that you make, and you don’t have any money left, any margin, to invest in the future. Well, that business is a very precarious business. It can’t really respond to shocks. It’s not really going to get much better because it can’t invest in growth. Growth takes capital.

And so, a business that has no profit isn’t going to be a very successful business. It’s going to keep going very incrementally. Now, compare it with a business that can generate enough extra margin that it can invest in its future, build out new factories, do marketing, do customer acquisition, create new technology platforms, whatever you want. That business is going to go places.

And it’s like, individually, we’re that business. Often, we have no spare margin of time in a week, so how can we invest making the future better? We can’t. Which is why, in the book, I say, you’ve got to start small but you’ve got to start to find a little bit of time that you can reinvest in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you share with us a particularly inspiring story of a professional who found themselves enmeshed in any number of infinity traps, too busy, and then made some changes, invested, put some time into strategy and saw some cool results?

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll give you an example, actually, from my own career, at the very start of my career. I started my career as an analyst in a strategy consulting company, and we were working long hours, like, building basically Excel financial models for our clients, and this is how we got successful, which was bill all sorts of hours to clients, made the company money, and deliver some good piece of analysis.

What I realized after a few months, “You know what, every time we get a new client, we build one of these models, and they’re always different but they’re always kind of similar, and yet we’re building them from scratch each time. They take a long time, there’s lots of potential errors or bugs.”

Pete Mockaitis
I made those errors before, Richard. Flashbacks for review.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, this thing can happen. It also takes a lot of time building out a model from scratch.

So, what I realized is I needed to actually invest in building myself a framework, a template that allowed me to build these models quicker than before. So, when my colleagues were doing all their billed hours, I took some time off customer billing to work late at night sometimes on building my own template. My colleagues thought I was geeking out, that I was just have lost the plot, “Richard, what are you doing? That’s not how you’re going to be successful in our company. You’ve got to bill to clients.” Well, fast-forward two weeks, I’d built a model which would suddenly allow me to do in a morning what they were taking a week to do.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Richard Medcalf
And it was more beautiful, it was less error-prone, it had all the charts built in, it’s more flexible, we could do analyses and scenarios, all the rest of it at the fracture of the time. With that time that I’d freed up, I was then able to invest it in project management, learning how to do business development, sell projects, generally use this time on the next level of activity because I’d already got the base level nailed and systematized.

Now, it wasn’t just because of this, but I ended up becoming the youngest ever partner in that strategy consulting company. I had a great trajectory because I’d figured out, “This is stuff which I shouldn’t be spending my whole life doing. It’s not going to get me to the next level. No one ever gets made partner because they’re spending all their time building the basic Excel models.” And so, it’s that kind of shift, I invested a bit of time, a couple of weeks, and then it freed me up forever after then.

I had another client I was working with on one of my programs recently in finance. He was a finance manager, kind of mid-level, and when he came to me, he said, “I’m just overloaded. I can’t do anything. I’m completely overwhelmed.” And then when we started to get into it and we looked at his time, we found 30% of his time was doing all the finance processes every month – payroll, and sales commissions, and these things, and it was incredibly complicated in his business.

He’d become successful because he had nailed those, he’d mastered it, he’d actually figured out the whole mess, and was able to process it and do it all well. So, he’d become successful because of that but it was now holding him back. So, I said to him, “You’re not going to be made CFO because of your ability to do the monthly payroll.” And he realized this was a gamechanger for him, and he had to shift, otherwise, he was going to get stuck.

So, 30% of his time, where that’s, I think, almost two days a week, a day and a half a week was being stuck on all this stuff. So, we figured out a plan, he didn’t think it was going to be possible to start with, he didn’t think his had what it took, everything else. But within about two months, two or three months, he was able to go to his manager, and say, “Hey, what else shall I take on? I’ve a bit of a spare end here. I’ve got some time.” And he took on extra responsibility in the commercial part of the organization. He got this promotion.

He couldn’t believe at how much he managed to free himself up. It’s because he thought it was just a question of a few tactics that he had to sort, but it wasn’t just a question of tactics. He had to address his mindset, he had to address his influence with his team. These are the deeper-level issues that keep us held back.

So, after we think we can’t do anything else, because we’d looked at the productivity, we’ve applied our Gmail filters, we’ve got a good to-do list, and we think we’re doing all we can, but there’s a whole level of other things that we need to be working on if we’re going to actually free ourselves up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. Thank you. And I would like to see this miracle model template, as the former consultant dork in me would just like to see what that looks like in practice. So, that’s cool. Well, yeah, let’s hear about some of these deeper mindset belief stuff before we get into some tactics associated with shortcut keys or email filters. What’s going on internally that we should really address?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, when you’re really busy, you haven’t got much time, by definition, so you have to work on the number one limiting factor holding you back right now. And that’s really how I structured the book, because the first part of the book actually talks about “What do you actually want to put your time on?” Most people, they don’t actually know what they want to do if they had a free hour, or a free morning, or a free week. They’re not really clear.

And so, when faced with a vague, ambiguous idea of being more strategic versus concrete, specific, and rewarding actions like getting an email off your list, or taking some low-level easy activity done, we’re going to gravitate to the latter. So, the first thing is to really get clear on what is your strategic agenda, what are the questions you want to be asking yourself, the projects you want to do if only you had time.

So, once we figure out what we want to actually focus on, then we have to figure out what’s stopping us from focusing on them, and naturally we tend to go to tactics. We tend to say, “I need to get a better workflow,” and there’s a lot there that we should do but we can never beat infinity with increased productivity. We can’t. It doesn’t work. As I said, infinity is the realm of the gods, and productivity is a mortal’s weapon, a sort. You can’t defeat it, and so we need a different strategy.

And so, actually, in the book, I focus on these four areas, and I was very impressed with myself, I must say, when I realized that they spelt the work TIME. So, there you go, four easy strategies to focus on. The first is tactics, and so there are things we need to focus on there. And perhaps some leaders do it very well, other people, you know what, they do need to kind of get a bit sharpen up on how they deal with meetings, how they deal with incoming tasks, how they deal with incoming messages, what their workflows are.

And, also, whatever you are, if you are over-busy, you do need a tactical plan to extract yourself from all of this in a very short space of time. It’s, like, if your business is losing money, you can’t wait too long. You have to make big changes now so that you become profitable and you can start to grow again. So, the first is tactic.

The second is influence, because if you want to go on a diet, the people that are going to stop you tend to be your family by waving the chocolate cake under your nose, or offering you the alcohol, or whatever it is you’re trying to stop, because the people around us have a certain stake in how we operate. So, at home, if you want to eat differently, well, your family, well, their share their meals with you so it affects them, or they feel guilty if you’re not eating something that they want to eat, if you’re not opening the bottle of wine if they want to a drink or whatever it is.

And so, in the work situation, it’s the same. We have all these stakeholders and no matter what our plan is for being more strategic, we have to face the reality that all around us, we have our boss, our peers in the organization, perhaps our team, who require and expect things from us and have a certain way of relating to us, so we need to better influence and renegotiate their expectations. We need to say, “You know what, you’ve been getting this from me but, actually, it’s not my highest use of my time. To have a bigger impact in the organization, I need to do something differently, so let’s talk about that and figure out a way forward.” So, influence is a big issue.

And then there’s mindset, which is what we believe and think. I can give you a story about mindset, but perhaps one from the framework first. Mindset is clearly important because, often, we just don’t believe we can, or we believe we’re optimum in some ways. Mindset is basically so important because what we believe is necessarily possible or desirable is what governs our behavior. So, if we think that what we’re doing is basically necessarily, basically the only thing we’ve got, the only choice we have, and it’s also kind of desirable in some way, we won’t actually change our behavior.

And then the final part is environment, because if we have a team, then we owe it to ourselves not just to work ourselves but to free our team up so that if we want to delegate, they can actually receive our delegation, or if they’re getting pulled left to right by busy work in the organization that they get to free themselves up and work on their high-value activities. So, environment is all about shaping a culture across the broader organization and being a force of change in the wider business.

So, you have these four areas – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment – and the point I made before is really important. You have to focus on the right one to start with, otherwise you just get frustrated because nothing is changing. If you’ve got the wrong mindset, then all your tactics aren’t going to really make a big difference because you can be locked into the wrong way of working. Or, we haven’t got enough influence, then you might have the best plan possible but you fail to implement the plan because you get pushback from people around you.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you talk about the number one limiting factor, it seems like that rule applies here as well in terms of, “Okay, is it the tactics, the influence, or the mindset, or the environment, that is the number one limiting factor at the moment?” and then you can dig in.

Richard Medcalf
You’re right, really figuring out what the number one limiting factor is really important. So, I’ve actually built a little assessment, I’ll probably link to it later on as we think about it. But what we actually have is about 20 questions, you give a sense of your score on the journey, and you actually can then choose, you’ll actually find out, which score you have into these four areas, and then you can go, “Oh, look, it’s actually mindset. I need to start on mindset.”

And so, the book is actually written to be nonlinear. Now, if you want t o jump straight into mindset, go there if that’s what’s going to be more important. Or, it’s actually, you’ve got the tactics sorted out but influence is holding you back, then perhaps open the book at that chapter and jump in there. So, I think I felt it’s really important because I don’t want to give people another big book to read when they’re very busy. I wanted people to be able to jump in and get pretty quick results.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess this sort of feels like mindset, and it kind of feels like tactics, but I’m thinking of a scenario in which, sure, we’re overwhelmed by requests and firefighting and all of that, and yet, at the same time, I think, often, speaking at least for myself, there’s a thing going on where it’s like maybe it’s kind of energy levels are maybe on the mid to low side, motivation levels or focus levels also on the lower side. It’s like, “You know, I could do that thing but I kind of don’t want to, and there’s something else that’s more interesting at the moment,” even though that thing may well be the most strategically valuable. So, how do you think about this challenge here?

Because I think, in a way, most of us, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we could probably say, “All right, with a little bit of hustle, or staying a little later, or pushing back wisely and diplomatically on a couple of things, we could find that hour to do the thing that’s high, that’s leveraged.” But then it’s hard to actually do it, it’s like, “Ooh, I found an hour, I just want to sleep or relax.”

Maybe this is me talking with three young kids at home. So, how do we think about that vibe in the world of mindset, motivation, energy, focus, just the ability to summon our personal power to go forth and crush it?

Richard Medcalf
Well, probably, if you leave it to the end of your day, it’s probably not going to be a good point because you’re going to go, “Oh, I’m tired.” So, I think you do need to know when you’re energized and make your success early. So, if you figure out what’s that high-leveraged activity, get it in your diary before all the operational tactics come, all the operational issues come.

If you can say, “I’m just going to not even be on the radar, not even be on communications activities for the first hour of my day,” imagine what you could do if you did an hour a day, that’d be five hours a week, on this activity that’s going to move the needle. So, I think respecting energy, I think that’s one place because then, actually, the things which fall off the, “Ahh, I need to go home now,” or, “I’m too tired,” they’ll happen later on in the day, and, hopefully, those will then be the lower-value activities that you end up pushing back or procrastinating on.

But I think, Pete, to your point, the first thing I would ask in that situation isn’t so much when in the day you’re doing it, though I think it is important for the reasons I mentioned, it’s more, “Are you really sold on the value of doing it? Are you really sold on the value?” because the first sale is always to our self. One of the things I say in the book is the most important project is the one that no one else is asking for.

No one asked me to build that financial model in my consulting company. Nobody was asking that finance manager I mentioned to actually delegate the payroll activities and the sales commissions activities. He was doing them fine, but that was his pathway to more impact as it was mine. And so, if we’re going to do that, we really have to sell ourselves because no one is going to make us do it. That’s almost the definition of the strategic, is no one is asking us to do it. We are taking the initiative.

So, we really have to go, “Is this really important? And what’s the picture of success? If I don’t do this, what’s my trajectory going to be like? If do do this, what becomes possible?” We need to really understand the stakes. And if it doesn’t inspire us, it probably is the wrong project in some ways.

So, I always start by inspiring ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that notion, the most important project is the one no one is asking for, that’s heavy. It seems often true. I guess, occasionally, the most important project might be something someone happens to be asking for. That’s my intuition. You can challenge me on that, Richard, if you like. But for the most part, yeah, that really seems to track.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I’m sure there are examples you could come up with, of course, but I think, often, it’s we’re being asked for one thing but, often, what we need to think about is, “How am I getting better at getting better? How am I getting more of this in the future? Or, how am I going to do this without burning out, or whatever?” So, there’s normally something that isn’t being asked in the direct request to us very often.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And so then, when it comes to mindset, any other kind of critical beliefs that you think we need to face head on and readjust?

Richard Medcalf
Well, there’s so many, there’s a bunch of them, and I talk about different ones in the book. It’s personal. Some of us, the people-pleasers, if we’re people-pleasers, we find it hard to say no, but, actually, that’s because we got a tunnel vision. We’re just looking at the person in front of us and what they’re looking for, and we don’t realize that every time we say yes to them, we’re saying no to somebody else.

If I have an idea of serving stakeholders and not pleasing people, pleasing people means I’m just going to say whatever makes you feel good in the moment, or helps the person opposite. So, I think stakeholders means thinking about the bigger picture, “What’s the highest contribution that I can bring?” I’m a big fan of this, contribution rather than fear, rather than anything else, really. If we figure out how we maximize our contribution, make an impact, I think everything else flows from that.

But when we get stuck into perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsiveness, sometimes people get over-responsive, they feel they need to be responding to anything that comes their way, but I’d like to say, “Well, you’re an important person, and if I was reaching out to some other important person, like the president or the CEO, well, I wouldn’t even expect them to drop everything and respond within seconds.” In fact, you’d be worried if they did that. You wouldn’t respect them more; you’d respect them less. And so, why do we think that people will respect us more if we respond immediately to everything?

Actually, we should be focused. Strategic leaders working on big projects, making big things happen, they’re not just waiting around for people to be sending us messages. Now, again, this requires influence. Even with your boss, you can change this but you have to perhaps go, and say, “Look, I’m working on some big projects that we’ve agreed are key for our success. To do that, I need some focused time. And to do that, I need to ask your permission to not reply to all your messages that you’re sending me on Slack on a Monday morning between 9:00 and 11:00. Is that okay?”

And either they’ll say, “Yeah, fine. I’m glad you’re really focusing. That’s great,” or they’ll say, “No, no, no, I can’t live without you.” If they say that, then you might say, “Okay. Well, what else could work so that I can differentiate the urgent from the not quite so urgent?” because you perhaps agreed, like, “Pick up the phone and call me on a Monday morning if you need me, and I’ll leave you on my VIP list. But if you send me a message, I’ll get back to you at 11:00 o’clock.”

So, you can start to create agreements with the people around you in order to address these things. But, for me, the focus is always on contribution. If you put contribution first, then that provides a lens through which to evaluate all the different activities we’re doing. So, mindset, it does really, yeah, some of us we’re addicted to the thrill of action and doing things, some us are people-pleasers, perfectionist, all these different things. But I think we need to really be honest with ourselves about what are the stories that we’re telling ourselves.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients got pledges from the C-suite of his company, very big role, and we’re working together on some transformational projects that he wanted to roll out. I was helping him onboard, really, onto the C-suite and be a more strategic transformational leader. A few weeks into our engagement, he said, “Richard, you’ve been coaching me for a while now, and this has been great. I’ve got a problem. I’m stuck in my email too much.”

And I said, “Well, okay, how do you want me to help?” “Richard, just give me some tips.” And I said, “Well, you’re paying me too much money as a coach to give you some tips but you can Google those. But tell me what you really need?” And so, he decided to talk, and I said, “Okay, so why are you feeling the need to deal with all these emails coming in your way and so quickly and they’re taking so much of your time?” And he says, “Well, I want to be trustworthy, reliable, and a team player.”

I said, “Well, that makes sense, so I can’t help you.” “What do you mean you can’t help me?” “Well, you just said you want to be reliable, a team player, and you want to be trustworthy. If I tell you not to do your emails so often and not answer them all, then you’re going to be unreliable, not trustworthy, not a team player, right? That’s your value, that’s your mindset, I can’t help you.”

He said, “Well, we’re stuck then?” I said, “Well, just answer me this. If your CEO was in the room, what would he be asking you for?” “Oh, he wants those transformational projects.” “If your investors were in the room, what would they be saying?” “Oh, yeah, they’d be the one that brought in my benefits. It’s going to be big.” “What about if the team were in the room?” “Oh, the employees, they’re so desperate for more modern workforce experience.” “Okay, and what about customers?” “Well, our customers won’t really know. It’s an internal transformation but it will free up the team to spend more time with customers. That’s the whole objective, so I guess the customers will be for that as well.”

So, I said, “Okay, so what you’re telling me is if you’ve been paid the big bucks as a C-level executive to roll out these transformational projects, and everyone wants you to do those, so I’m going to predict to you that you’re going to be untrustworthy, unreliable, and not a team player when you’re in your inbox doing the emails.” And in that moment, he got it, he had the aha moment, his mindset shifted, “Oh, yeah, I’ve a different role here. Being trustworthy and reliable is about me doing the big stuff and not all this little stuff.”

And so, when you get a mindset shift, it’s like that, then your possibilities open up. You see what’s desirable, necessary, impossible has just changed for him in that moment. He didn’t need a tip on how to filter his emails, more of the important thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. That’s good. And I think that’s super helpful when you get deep down into the core values of a thing and see, well, really, which pattern of activity best serves those. And it could conceivably be possible that, in the certain seasons of the work life cycle, yeah, those emails are going to be critical to ensuring these transformational projects unfold.

I found out, it’s like, “Hey, we’re launching a thing, there’s a lot of people with a lot of questions. Oops, something broke and we got to get it fixed really quick.” And in so doing, that is what enables this transformational project to happen. But most days, I find that the emails are mostly not all that transformational, in my experience.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so it’s back to “What you’re trying to achieve? Do you really know what this breakthrough success is going to look like, or what’s this breakthrough project?” And we know that it’s quite easy to maintain things in an incremental fashion and get a bit better, and a bit better, and a bit better, to live a week in, week out, and culture in and culture out. There’s always new stuff that’s going on. There are always things to address.

So, for me, as I help people, I really help people in two areas. One is from going from being an operational leader to being a strategic leader, which I find happens at the kind of mid to senior levels of an organization where people want to make that shift. And then, actually, with some of my top clients, they want to move from being more of a strategic leader to being an impact-centric leader, which is actually having a systemic impact beyond the company.

But if we look at these shifts, then I think it does start with an understanding that we have to play a different game as a leader. So, when you’re really good at operations, it’s putting many people are, then they know that they’re in a safe pair of hands, that they’re an expert, that they are reliable, that they basically don’t mess it up. That’s why they got where they are.

And, actually, when we become strategic, we have to start focusing on building the new, building new capabilities, forging relationships wider across the organization where we don’t have direct control. And that starts to become a bit more risky for people because it’s like, “Oh, this is a new game I’m playing. I might not be able to win it the same way.” And so, that’s like a big shift for people, and the mindset shift they have to really go, “Okay, to be strategic, I’m going to have to be a different sort of leader,” and that’s a big shift for people.

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

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll just say that if people are interested in this topic, the place I would start is by understanding which of the four pillars you need to focus on first – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment. To do this the best way would be to go to my website, you can take the test there, it’s about 20 questions, and it will give you a score in those four areas. And the best way to get there is to go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, and that will give you all the resources for this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Cool. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. What inspires me is this quote, “You don’t get what you want. You get who you are.” It reminds me that work is always on ourselves, who we are being in any moment and not what are we doing.

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

Richard Medcalf
I think my favorite piece of research is the one that Marshall Goldsmith did many years ago where he asked, I think it was 80,000 professionals where they rank themselves in terms of competency. And, basically, it was like 90% of professionals rated themselves in the top 50%, and 50% of professionals rated themselves in the top 10% in terms of competency levels and performance levels. So, we have to realize that we have a huge capacity for self-delusion and to think we’re doing better than we are, which, for me, is always a great reminder to try and get data points in how we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, recently, one of the books I’ve really enjoyed, actually, is a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It tells a story of a Madison Square place in New York and how they went above and beyond normal restaurant levels of service, becoming going from basically a three-star mediocre restaurant to the number one restaurant in the world by obsessing on customer experience, by doing absolutely crazy things, very unique one-off based on individual guests coming in.

They’d Google their guests before they arrive. They would listen in. They’d try to find things that would surprise and delight. It’s something which I try to integrate into my business. It’s an ongoing journey but I find that’s very inspiring, a very inspiring story.

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

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I run pretty much most of my business these days on ClickUp, which I have found to have taken out a lot of the complexity and chaos in my business, so I must admit that’s a tool which I use all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Richard Medcalf
I guess my favorite habit is probably meditation at this point. I’ve struggled with that for years on and off. I’ve found just getting the Headspace app and just doing 10 to 15 minutes a day at the start of my day has really helped me become calmer and more focused as I head into each day.

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

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Well, I actually have a little snail on my desk, a little pewter snail because my favorite quote is “You got to slow down to speed up,” or as the racing car world would say, “You got to go slow to go smooth, and smooth to go fast.” And what that means for me is when we slow down our thinking to think about what’s really important in this moment, then we put our focus on more important things than when we’re rushing along just to get through our to-do list.

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

Richard Medcalf
So, find me on LinkedIn. I try to write a daily post there, a value-added post around impact leadership and being strategic. My website is XQuadrant.com, and, as I said, if you go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, you’ll find a link to the book “Making TIME for Strategy” and all the details of that, you’ll find a link to the assessment I mentioned before as one of the few other goodies there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Richard, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck and time for strategy.

Richard Medcalf
Thanks, Pete.