KF #28. Drives Results Archives - Page 4 of 10 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

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

Celeste Headlee
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat again. And, first, I was very curious, as you filled out the form, you mentioned that your dog has a best friend whom your dog texts. Please explain.

Celeste Headlee
Well, I mean, obviously, I text on behalf of my dog.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Celeste Headlee
But they have a very close relationship, and my dog has a very expressive face, so I read the facial expressions and then I text it. My neighbor across the street has a dog named Choco, a lab mix, and they took her away for three months. They went on a road trip, and so Sam has missed Choco horribly, so the dogs would text back and forth to each other for the three months while Choco was away. Their reunion was lovely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is lovely. Well, that explains a lot. I mean, I was very intrigued, like, “How is this working in terms of texting? And is the best friend another dog or is it a…?” Now, that’s all good and clear. I’m curious how they got to be so tight to begin with. What forges a bond between the dogs?

Celeste Headlee
I really don’t know. My dog is pretty particular about which dogs she likes and which she just tolerates. The vast majority of canine kind belongs in the second category, she’s fine with them but she just tolerates them. But something about Choco, the very first day they met, she just fell in love. That was her puppy, and they have been bonded. They’ve been a bonded pair ever since.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so talking about pair bonding, the last time we discussed, we had a great conversation and listening and such, and that was a fun one. So, listeners, that is over at Episode 221 if you’d like to resurface that one. But now you’re onto some new territory, or maybe, I imagine, there’s some interrelationships there. You’re talking about doing nothing, well, your book title I love, “Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.” Captivating and I think resonant for many. So, boy, there’s lots to say here, but maybe I’ll just put you on the spot. What’s maybe the most fascinating and surprising thing you discovered when you were researching and putting this book together?

Celeste Headlee
I think that number one is how long this has been going on, right? Because this sort of modern hustle culture that is making so many of us unhappy, I think we tend to associate it with technology and social media and some very recent developments. But when I started researching it, it dates back to 19th century Scotland.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s where hustling began?

Celeste Headlee
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
The Scottish hustlers.

Celeste Headlee
The Scottish engineer. Funnily enough, one of the things I talk about is how we’re always trying to have the best, the ultimate, which is, in moderation, that’s a wonderful impulse, but that Scottish engineer, he wasn’t inventing the steam engine, he had a steam engine, he thought it was terrible so he was just trying to improve it. And that’s how the Industrial Revolution began. So, that was the biggest surprise for me that this has been going on for well over 250 years.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’re saying that the start of hustle culture coincided with the start of the Industrial Revolution in that I guess there’s an optimizing mindset. Or are you also saying that individual workers are like, “Oh, wow, okay. I do more, I get more”?

Celeste Headlee
Okay. So, human beings did things and lived a certain way for most of our 300,000 years on the planet. I’m talking about homo sapiens. And when the Industrial Revolution came along, it literally changed everything, and that’s another surprising thing for me, because when you’re in history class, AP US History or whatever, and you’re learning about the Industrial Revolution, I don’t think you really understand how much changed, and how not only our work changed but like almost every aspect of our lives and our personal relationships. But the biggest thing is that time became money.

Time did not equal money before the Industrial Revolution. In other words, your task, that what you made was what was worth something. It didn’t matter how long it took you.
another thing that shifted during the Industrial Revolution is, before that time, first of all, we didn’t work very much. Medieval serfs worked less than half a year. And it was because of this idea that, number one, most people were at some level entrepreneurs. Even serfs had a certain amount of land that they farm for themselves. They got done putting their two hours in for their lord, or whatever, and then they went home, and they took care of their stuff. You had all these women who had knitting businesses and quilting businesses, and they made textiles and all these other things. The Industrial Revolution just decimated the female business owner population.

[06:38]

But, also, it sort of disempowered a lot of workers. So, whereas, you would’ve had all these different workers with their own set of tools, when they moved into a factory, they no longer owned the tools, they no longer owned the product left. It became this very centralized industrial culture, and people, for the first time in like the early 20th century, more people lived in cities than they did in rural areas. Just like literally everything changed. And it happened so rapidly that people weren’t quite ready for how dramatic that change was.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s kind of where it began. So, it wasn’t the internet, it wasn’t the iPhone, it wasn’t Instagram. It was the Industrial Revolution. So, that’s handy to orient kind of what’s going on there. And so then, if your advice is…the title is “Do Nothing.” Is that what you suggest is the answer to our overwork, overdoing, underliving world? What do you mean by that and how is that an optimal answer kind of relative to our alternatives?

Celeste Headlee
Well, the point being that idleness is not laziness. In other words, a fisherman is busy while he’s idle. Same with most security guards, right? They’re working while they’re idle. Whereas, if you’re bike-riding, you’re actually quite active when you’re at leisure. Our ideas of these concepts of leisure, laziness, and idleness are really kind of screwed up, and partly because we have this sort of work addiction so we don’t really understand that idleness is required by the human body and the human mind.

The human mind just doesn’t persist. That’s not how it works. It pulses. It needs regular breaks, it needs rests, and in order to do its absolute best work, it needs short bursts of focused attention. And at this point, very few workers really get focused time when there’s no distractions. You walk through an office and you’ll see everybody with like 50 tabs open on their browser, and their email open, and their smartphone there, and their Fitbit, and their Slack going.

People don’t work without distraction, and yet that is the most fertile ground for the brain in terms of creative problem-solving and productivity. So, number one, we’re not as productive as we think we are. That’s a delusion. And, number two, you need downtime. That’s how you keep your brain working at its best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I think I buy that in terms of that’s what would make for some great outcomes during the course of doing your work. And so then, when we talk about doing nothing, what does that look, sound, feel like in practice?

Celeste Headlee
First of all, I’d say try out boredom. Try to feel bored again. And in order to do that, you need to put away your smartphone. I am not the person that’s going to tell you to get rid of your technology. I think technology is fine. But I do think you have to put limits on how much you use it. So, every once in a while, put your smartphone away, go take a walk without your phone. Sit down on the couch and just sit there for a little while and see what comes to mind.

Every once in a while, I say, “Oh, my God, I have a porch,” or I remember my porch. Maybe I’ll go sit on it for a little while, and I just force myself to sit. And if you do that, frankly, you can’t do it for a really long period of time. Your brain just doesn’t like to be bored, and so things will come to you. You’ll start thinking about stuff. You’ll maybe remember that kit you bought to make your own, I don’t know, apple hard cider or whatever, “Oh, yeah, maybe I want to do that. Maybe I want to do work on playing the guitar,” or whatever it may be. But things will come to you, and you’ll remember things, and there’ll be new thoughts.

All the time that you’re idle or bored, your brain is still working. It’s working almost exactly as hard as it does when you’re trying to make it do productive work, right? So, when it’s idle though and not focused and directed, what it’s doing is like sifting through memory, sifting through information that you’ve taken in, thinking of things that you haven’t thought in quite some time, and it’s making new connections. It’s making surprising connections.

And so, you’re going to have, perhaps, thoughts you’ve never had before. That won’t happen if you’re always directing your mind to do something and produce something. You need to let it sort of sit back and kind of browse through the shelves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. So, you’re saying it’s key that we have some time for this idle stuff as opposed to being go, go, go, go, go sort of constantly, and that’s counterproductive to our ends. Could you share some of the most striking, I guess, studies or data points or numbers that reinforce this for the workaholics who need a little bit more encouragement?

Celeste Headlee
Well, we have a lot of different case studies that prove this point, and one of the ones that I revisit a couple times in the book is Sahlgrenska Hospital. And one of the reasons I think it’s so striking is because we think of the medical profession as just requiring punishing hours. They have cots in their break rooms for a reason. And so, Sahlgrenska Hospital was having a huge productivity problem. Their staff was working incredibly hard, and yet the wait to get a surgery done was months long, and they were just completely overwhelmed, and they decided to experiment with cutting hours.

So, in this one orthopedic unit, they cut everybody’s hours down so they never worked longer than six hours at a time. Six hours at a time. I mean, think about that in a hospital. And they had all these funds set aside prepared to hire on a bunch more people to cover the gaps. But what they found was they didn’t have to hire anybody. In fact, productivity went up, the wait for surgery went down to just a few weeks. You could get in within two or three weeks. And they actually found they were not only getting more done in less time but the morale went straight through the roof. Why? Because they were actually getting rest.

Surprisingly enough, when the brain is rested and the body is rested, you make way fewer errors. And errors is wasted time, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I see, yeah.

Celeste Headlee
You’ve done work that has to be corrected.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess that’s kind of a spooky thing if all the surgeons were making errors previously.

Celeste Headlee
I’m not trying to give you nightmares.

Pete Mockaitis
The United States error situation. Well, I buy that in terms of you make the errors which require fixing. Or even if it’s not an explicit, “Ooh, you did A when you should’ve done B,” I think about it sometimes like you just didn’t have the idea that would’ve been five times as fast as what you did instead. It’s like, “Oh, I could’ve done that.”

Celeste Headlee
Think about it this way, the way that we’re working right now where we’re either in burnout or on the edge of burnout. What’s happening neurologically is that you’re so stressed and overwhelmed that you’re in fight or flight. That means the part of your brain that is ruling your brain in making decisions is your amygdala. Now, your amygdala is the oldest evolutionary part of your brain. It is your monkey brain. And that is the one that you want if you’re being chased by a tiger. You want absolute pure instinct to take over. Like, you need that one to take the wheel when you’re in crisis, and then hand the wheel back because that is the toddler in the room.

Then you want the rest of your brain, especially your prefrontal cortex, which is right behind your forehead, that’s what you want generally making your decisions. That’s the part that thinks twice. That’s the part that considers. It’s mature. It’s your executive thinking capacity. But when you’re in burnout, it’s your amygdala all the time. You’re in fight or flight all the time, which, number one, means you’re stressed. Your cortisol levels are quite high. Your heart rate is usually elevated. And, again, you are making decisions based on fear. You’re not making decisions that are carefully considered. You’re making decisions instinctually, gut instinct, which means you’re making bad decisions.

You’re not just making bad decisions about what to do at any moment at a time, you’re making bad decisions about your priorities, you’re making bad decisions about what to eat, how much sleep you need. All the things that you need to do, you’re making bad decisions. And so, of course, it’s wasting your time, of course it’s not leading you to the kind of creativity and innovation most of us want. If we could just relax a little bit and create an environment in which your body and brain can do their best work, you will not lose productivity. In fact, you might find, just like the hospital did, your productivity will go up.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, recently, we had Michael Hyatt on the show who told a similar story about free to focus and his executives, and they grew revenue, and they worked less, like 11 hours a week less. So, I mean, that’s a message that I love hearing because I would like to work less and achieve more, so it sounds very appealing. Do you have a sense for what is the sweet spot either on a weekly work-hour basis or a daily kind of on/off rest cycle basis? Like, what’s your hunch for productivity maximization? What’s the ballpark range of how much is too much versus not enough versus just about right?

Celeste Headlee
So, we do have a lot of these records. Some of the most productive people in history worked maybe four or five hours a day. They ran a study at the University of Illinois in which they followed…

Pete Mockaitis
I.L.L. That’s right.

Celeste Headlee
That’s right. Is it your alma mater?

Pete Mockaitis
It sure is.

Celeste Headlee
They followed, and this is a while ago, I want to say it was the 1970s. It could’ve been the ‘50s. In any case, they followed a whole bunch of scientists around for quite a length of time, and they found the least productive among them were the ones who worked more than 50 hours a week. The most productive were those who worked between 12 and 20 hours a week. Charles Darwin worked four hours a day. Charles Dickens worked four hours a day. Prionka Ray worked four hours a day. We happen to know, just based on anecdotal evidence, that the average person has maybe four hours of focused work in them on any given day.

Now, that said, obviously that’s an average. I had to figure it out for myself. And, anybody, I explain how to do that in the book, but you’re going to have to find out for yourself what is the amount of time that you can work before it starts becoming counterproductive. But if you think that it’s eight hours or, God forbid, 10 or 12, that’s wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s intriguing. I guess with the examples that you gave us, I think that makes a ton of sense in terms of like scientists. Like, those who need a breakthrough, or a great idea, or an innovation, then that totally adds up, “Hey, you need more idle time so your brain can do all those things you were describing that can lead you there.” And then, as opposed to when you’re in an Industrial Revolution type mode, it’s sort of like you don’t need to get a great idea, but you do need to, I don’t know, tighten a bolt or kind of whatever, stick this thing in that thing. Although, those jobs are fewer and fewer, and not ones that mostly is less some tasks.

Celeste Headlee
Fewer and fewer but also, remember this, Henry Ford didn’t shorten his work hours for his workers to eight hours because he wanted to be generous. He shortened those work hours because he found that if they started working more than that, they started making errors and screwing things up to the point where productivity went down. We have known, even going back to the 19th century, we have records of businesses that when they shortened work hours, actually saw productivity go up, and that’s partly because of accuracy, it’s partly because the brain and body just worked better and they’re more fluid, and they’re just better fit to get things done when they’re well-rested and they’ve had breaks. So, it’s not just the knowledge worker. It’s pretty much any worker, you need rest.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And so, with those four hours, are there some themes or patterns in that they are more so in the morning, recently after sleep, or are they kind of like all over the place based on people’s unique cycles and ways of working?

Celeste Headlee
Interesting enough, again, we’re talking about averages here. So, the average person is actually better first thing in the morning if it requires any kind of real thought, and that’s especially true of people who are not morning people. So, the more tired and groggy you are, actually the more innovative you are first thing in the morning, oddly enough. Again, these are averages. You have to figure this stuff out for yourself, which means you can’t read some article on the web that says, “Oh, successful people wake up at 4:30 a.m. and immediately do hot yoga,” or whatever it may be. You need to figure out for yourself what works best for you. On average, mornings are good.

But there’s wide variance in the end. Maybe you have the kind of home situation where your mornings are noisy and chaotic. That used to be my life, in which case mornings were very difficult for me, and I would do some of my best work in the afternoon. That’s not true anymore, and now I’m back to doing my best work in the mornings.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny, when you mentioned chaotic mornings, I don’t know if you can hear the toddlers screaming.

Celeste Headlee
I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, ahh, that’s good feedback about the microphone selection.

Celeste Headlee
I remember.

Pete Mockaitis
The door blocks a lot but not everything. Anyway, okay, so that’s handy there. And so then, I want to get your take, when it comes to sort of the rest, the rejuvenation, you mentioned, hey, just being bored and trying that on for size is good and cool and helpful. What are some of the other perspectives or best practices in terms of really making the most of your rest time?

Celeste Headlee
So, I think the first thing is that you need to stop multitasking because the human brain can’t multitask. You need to stop trying to multitask. You need to start learning, and it is a learning process, learning to do one thing at a time. That is the way the brain works best. And when I say one thing at a time, let me be totally clear. That having your email inbox open all the time is distracting to your brain. Your brain sees that as you try to multitask, because even if you’re not actively looking at the email inbox, your brain is preparing for a notification to come in, it is devoting energy to that.

The same is true as if your smartphone is visible. Your brain is then trying to multitask, preparing for an alert to come in. It does not make a distinction between a notification coming on your phone and somebody knocking at the door. Same thing for your brain, so you have to put it out of sight. And if you really want to make the best use of what you have, your big, meaty, homo sapiens brain, give it its best environment, meaning that let it do one thing at a time. You will be shocked when you do that, how much you can get done. Close out your extra tabs and focus. Say, “Right now, this is what I’m working on,” and work on that.

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

Celeste Headlee
The last thing I would mention is that you may not actually have a great handle on how you’re spending your time. Time perception is generally low. Time perception is the accuracy with which you know how your time is spent and it’s, in general, fairly low. So, the first thing I had to do was track my time. I had to like spend a couple weeks, every couple of hours I would go back and say, “Okay, here’s what I did for a couple hours.” And I realized I was spending time on stuff that I really didn’t want to spend that much time on it. So, when you feel overwhelmed and overworked, it may just be that you’re not fully aware of where your time is going.

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

Celeste Headlee
I think it really relates in terms of becoming very focused on any one thing, and it’s a quote from Nietzsche, which says, I want to make sure I get this correct, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” So, I like that because sometimes we become so obsessed and focused on something, we sort of think the ends justify the means, and you can become a monster.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Celeste Headlee
So, I’ll tell you about one of my favorites which is this one in which they were testing stress responses. And they got this group of young girls together and they’d made them do a very stressful thing. They made them solve math problems in front of an audience. And, not surprisingly, the cortisol levels of all these girls went through the roof. They were very stressed out. Cortisol is your stress hormone. And they divided them into four groups.

One of the groups had no contact from their mother after this was over. One of the groups, their mother was waiting for them backstage. Another of the groups got a phone call from their mother, and the last group got a text from their mom, right? So, not surprisingly, the group that had no contact whatsoever, their cortisol level stayed completely elevated, there was almost no change. They were very stressed out. The girls whose moms were waiting backstage, they saw massive drop in their stress, they started to relax. Both of those were unsurprising, right?

But here’s the thing. The girls who got a phone call from their moms, saw their cortisol levels, their stress dropped at almost the same amount as those who had their mother waiting backstage. The girls who got a text, no change. That text did nothing to their stress levels. So, when we’re saving time and we think that we’re checking off the box by sending the text to someone, as far as your brain and your emotions are concerned, it doesn’t do it. We don’t recognize that as authentic social contact.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s so…man, this is really hitting home because, just yesterday, it was my buddy Brent’s birthday, he listens to the show. Hey, Brent.

Celeste Headlee
Happy Birthday, Brent.

Pete Mockaitis
And I thought, “Oh, I should give him a call. But I’m hearing a thing, hearing a thing, hearing a thing, I don’t know.” And so, I texted him and didn’t call him, and I’m like, “I really should’ve called him.”

Celeste Headlee
Yeah, you should’ve called him. Sorry, Brent.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brent, know I was thinking about you, but it did nothing for your biochemistry when I sent you that text message, okay.

Celeste Headlee
Exactly. Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you.

Celeste Headlee
Fascinating, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Humbled and corrected and learning. All right. How about a favorite book?

Celeste Headlee
A book I just finished reading not too long ago is called “The Paris Library,” and it’s a novel but it’s based on the true story of these librarians at the American library in Paris during the German occupation who hid away a lot of the books and made sure they were sending out books to all the soldiers. It’s just kind of like, I think the tagline is something like “Sometimes heroism comes from the quietest of places.” And it’s a war book in which there’s no violence, but there’s no lack of heroism because of that. I just really loved it.

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

Celeste Headlee
My favorite tool is my little GPS collar for my dog because when we’re walking in the woods and she’s not coming when I call her, I know exactly where she is, and I don’t have to worry.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is handy. Thank you.

Celeste Headlee
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you stay awesome at your job?

Celeste Headlee
I make sure that I meditate every day. And I know it’s kind of like the gym, if you don’t go to the gym, you kind of feel icky. It’s the same thing for me for meditation, is that if I don’t do it, I can tell the difference, so I make sure that I do it usually in the morning.

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

Celeste Headlee
So, one of the things I’m always talking about is how human beings are a hive mind, and I write about this in this new book, that we do our best work in groups, not alone. And there’s tons of evidence that even the uneducated or ill-prepared group will outperform the most educated and experienced expert. So, one of the ways I explain this is I say, “There’s only two species that can take down a bison.” Have you ever seen a bison actually in person?

Pete Mockaitis
I think from a distance, like I’m in a train, so not up close.

Celeste Headlee
Yeah. So, a bison is a freaking impressive animal, right? These are like 2200 pounds of solid muscle. They can run more than 40 miles an hour. With their horns, they can pick up a truck. Like, this is an amazing beast, and not stupid. There’s only two species that can really take them down. They are, of course, wolves and humans. And what do wolves and humans have in common? They’re pack animals.

And this is just sort of a way of explaining how human beings have been so successful. It’s because we have to take down this incredible beast so we sit there and we have these communication skills that allow us to find out who’s the best on horseback, who has the best aim with a spear, who thinks geometrically and can peel one of them off of the herd, who’s the best at butchering an animal, who’s the strongest and is going to be able to get this thing onto the sled to get it back to the village. That’s what we’re able to accomplish with our advanced communication skills. And no expert is going to help you with some of these tasks that have helped us survived.

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

Celeste Headlee
Go to CelesteHeadlee.com, it’s where I gather all the info in one convenient place.

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

Celeste Headlee
Yes. Find at least 20 minutes a day when you don’t have your smartphone with you. Twenty minutes. You can do it. You can survive. As of 2007, before 2007, there was no iPhone. Like, it’s been very recent that we were able to survive without them. So, find 15 or 20 minutes, and you walk away and leave your smartphone.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Celeste, thanks for this, and good luck in all your adventures.

Celeste Headlee
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

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

Joe McCormack
It’s great to talk to you again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of your wisdom about noise. But, maybe, I’ll put you on the spot and say what’s perhaps the most fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made about this stuff since we spoke last?

Joe McCormack
For me, the most fascinating thing is that this is an issue that affects a lot of people, so just talking to people about the project, it elicits almost an immediate response of something that .

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s certainly resonant. And so then, I’d love to get your take then, sort of how do we get here and what do we do about it?

Joe McCormack
Well, my journey is I wrote a book called “Brief” and it was all about the value of concise communication and being clear, and it was really targeted towards a professional audience, so people that communicate for a living. And the reason for that book was because

So, as I was really promoting that book, and teaching courses and workshops and webinars, it became really readily apparent that there’s this issue that people were still struggling with, which is, “How do you manage the noise of the information overload?” Obviously,

So, if you’re in a meeting and people strategies to handle this as a day-to-day reality, one that is not getting better, it’s just getting worse?”

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. And so then, I’d love to get your take then in terms of do you have some research or data that paints the picture for just how severe this environment is now as compared to before?

Joe McCormack
Well, if you look at it, it’s basically

So, that wasn’t like that, people bought alarm clocks. And that sort of need to be with technology all the time and information and constantly consuming it is becoming, I think, one of the big struggles and people don’t know it because it’s very subtle, maybe incremental, it’s just happening over the last decade. And a lot of people are talking about this and people feel helpless, like, “I don’t know why I’m on edge all the time.” And they feel like they’re always on alert, they’re always on call because they’re tethered to it and they can’t get rid of it seemingly, and that makes people feel helpless and they don’t know why.

Obviously, if you get up and the first thing you do is check your phone, and you find that you have an email from your boss and it’s not good, well, you haven’t had a cup of coffee and you’ve already ruined your day. And then they’re taking the phone, so

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Well, that’ll do it. And so then, I’m curious, what is the beginning of the solution?

Joe McCormack
It turns out that raising an awareness of, “Hey, your brain is not an infinite device where you could just…it’s like a battery that just goes on forever. It depletes,” so people need to protect it.

Attention is your most valuable resource.

The second thing that’s related to it is I call this an old-school solution to a new-world problem, and a lot of those answers require discipline, and being intentional, and starting to manage it like you manage anything that’s an issue. You don’t let it manage you. You manage it and you take the upper hand. And I think that’s the big point of the book, is there are things that we can do to start managing these realities and get control back of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
And you got fun little abbreviations here,

Joe McCormack
Yes. So, if you think about the old-school radio, you’ve got AM and FM, they’re frequencies, and there’s a whole metaphor in the book about dialing in and what you tune into and what you tune out of, and you set the channels. So, AM is awareness management, this is how I manage my own awareness, my own attention. It’s my personal responsibility to do this. And focus management is, once I start to do that, I can help the people around me help manage their focus.

So, if AM first stars with me, and FM means I can be the force at helping other people improve their focus. And those are sort of the two frequencies in the book that we focus on – start with yourself and then help other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. So, then you listed out some particular tactics in a noise-survival guide, ten of them. I’d love to hear a couple of those that you think offer sort of the best bang for your buck, they make a world of difference when you do them.

Joe McCormack
I think, for people, when you think about this issue and you think about how it affects people, you’re consuming information which, at the end of the day, doesn’t really make that much of a difference. If you shut it off for a day, your life isn’t going to be that much worse. So, how do you fix it?

Well, one is you have to taking aim. And it starts with a real simple sentence, which is, “In my role,” everybody’s got different roles – parent, brother, coworker, boss, leader, visionary, whatever your role is. People have three to five key roles in their lives, maybe more. “In my role as blank, the most important thing for me today is blank.” And I think people need to write that sentence every day.

“In my role as father, the most important thing for me today is to call my son.” Nothing should get in between me and that. Nothing. Nothing is more important than that. That’s the most important thing. Always do the most important thing. But you have to define it because if you don’t define it, something else is going to compete for it, your attention, so you have to take aim at that. That’s the first thing. And I do that every day and it’s an interesting exercise.

The second thing, is critical, is what people do is, they’re like, “Well, when it’s quiet, I’ll enjoy it.” And it never comes. So, it’s like the play “Waiting for Godot.” Well, during the ending, he doesn’t come, right? So, quiet never comes. It only comes if you will schedule it. And I look at this as scheduled like non-negotiable.

Every day in the morning and in the afternoon, I schedule quiet time. It’s a set amount of time and I do it no matter what. Like, I take a shower and I eat. I never say I’m so busy that I can’t take a shower and I can’t eat. In our lives nowadays, we have to schedule quiet time. That’s the second thing. In that quiet time, I answer the question, “In my role as blank, the most important thing for me is blank.”

And then the third thing is, “For example, an alert or notification comes on my phone. It’s amazing how immediate my response is, “Well, I’ll just check it.” No, no, no, I’m not going to check it right now because I’m doing something else right now. If I do it, the research tells me that it’s going to take me a significant amount of time to go back and regain that focus, so I have to start getting really comfortable with the word no. And that starts with myself.

I’m not telling people to say no to everybody else, though that might be part of it. When a person interrupts you, and they’re like, “You got a minute?” You can say, “Not right now, but I will in 15.” So, you . And when those interruptions do come, we have to recognize them as something that is going to really weaken us, really, really weaken us. So, those are three things, taking aim at the most important thing, scheduling quiet, and then really just saying no when things come.

I think that empowers people. I can do something to improve in this area. I can be a force in managing this, and that’s why I call it attention management or awareness management, is I manage it. It’s my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. I like that notion. And so, you said a significant amount of time, and I’m a sucker for the numbers. I read a Microsoft study that suggested it could be 24 minutes when folks just check their email real quick for something, and then try to return to what they’re doing. What’s that from you see?

Joe McCormack
They’re all over the place. They could  But the issue is that it’s not…we think that it takes just a nanosecond to regain attention, and the research is it’s like resetting, you’ve got rebuild your mind, so it takes way longer than people think.

Pete Mockaitis
So, at least a couple of minutes and maybe nearly an hour. Got it.

Joe McCormack
Yeah. And if you think about the things that people are doing moment to moment and multitasking, and the research indicates that when you’re trying to do two things, you’re depleting your attention. Now you’re doing three. It’s, like, we’re not acrobats in a circus where we’re spinning plates. That’s a skill for the rare person that can do five things at once. Most of us mere mortals struggle to do one thing well at once. So, why are you trying to do two or three? So, I think that we have to start saying no to some of those things because

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. And so, in that quiet time, I’d love to get your take with the scheduling. What do you find, in your experience and in others who are utilizing this, are some of the most sensible appropriate times to really schedule that in, make it work well for the day?

Joe McCormack
I liken it to like taking a shower. If you like taking a shower at night or in the morning, that’s really up to the person. The issue is

So, the people listening to it right now are like, “Well, all right, that sounds great. I want to do it.” So, when you sit down for 5 minutes and it’s quiet, it’s really noisy because you’re not prepared for it. So,

So, what I’ve devised are just some suggestions of things to prepare so when it comes, you’re ready for it. So, if you think about it, how would you  It’s like listening to a podcast. In a moment I want to listen to a podcast, you curate the podcast. People set your podcast, they subscribe to it, they’re ready for it, they come to listen, they’re ready to go. You don’t just drive your car while looking for a podcast, you’ll crash so you have to prepare before you get in the car.

Same thing for quiet. Think, “What am I going to do in this time of quiet?” And I came up with categories. You can come up with an infinite number of them. One is nothing. there’s a lot of books and research that say it’s good and healthy to let your mind wander and not focus on anything.

Another one is, it might sound funny but  Or plan, or read, or be thankful. Thanksgiving is a big day, right, for a lot of people. Write a list of things, if you have a tough life, that you’re thankful for. I’m thankful for shoes, electricity, my job. I’m thankful for the car. Whatever you’re thankful for, just write a list for 5 minutes, 10. And just come up with an activity and then do that for a set amount of time. And don’t try to be good at it. Just do it. This isn’t a contest. This is like you plug in your device to recharge it. This is the recharging of your brain.

And connected to that is  Don’t go to bed when you’re done and wake up when you feel like it. It’s all part of quiet. It’s like your brain needs to restore itself. It’s under attack all day long. You need seven to eight hours of sleep. And the research tells that high schoolers and college students, they don’t get nearly enough sleep, and they’re on their phones all day long. This is a bad combination. Really bad.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so you’ve laid that out there well. And I’m curious, in terms of you schedule the quiet time, you’ve got a plan, it’s curated for what goes down. And one of the biggest things is you establish your “In my role as blank, the most important thing is blank.” Maybe I could put you on the spot, for today, what did you come up with in terms of these critical sentences?

Joe McCormack
Funny you asked. You’re not putting me on the spot because I do this every day. There’s three big things that I did. One is I prepared for this podcast, all right? That was the first thing because it’s an important thing. I’ve written a book and I need to explain it so I need to prepare. The second thing that I did was I texted my kids. I’ve got kids in college and they’re always moving around and I travel as well so I’d like to stay connected to them. I’d let them know that I’m thinking about them.

A very close family member overseas, my brother-in law’s mom passed away so I prayed for her because I just found out she passed away. And I had a meeting with a startup, which was I got some guys in special operations that have retired and started a new business, and we were talking about their company and their vision and I was helping them with that. So, those were categories. And I do that every day.

And sometime it’s hard to come up with what’s the most important thing and not have it be just a to-do list. But, really, the reason I do it is because it orients my day. It gives my day an orientation so these are things that are like…do you ever go through a day that’s just a blur?

Pete Mockaitis


Yeah.

Joe McCormack
These make the days less of a blur because it makes the days more purposeful and more intentional and less like, “Oh, it’s 10:00 o’clock at night and I don’t know what I did. I can’t remember. And it’s not just today. It’s like I go back for a week, a month, and I can’t remember anything. My day is just a…” The whole thing is just a complete, like, “I’m in my life but I don’t remember any of it.” And that helps orient the day towards those things. And I think, for me, it’s been extremely helpful to do that and I’d like to suggest to other people to do the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And just to be able to feel like a winner in terms of, “Okay, I had, I don’t know, hundreds of potential to-do items land in my world, and I did 40 of them. Is that good? I don’t know.” As opposed to, when you’ve established, “All right. In my role as this, the most important thing is that,” and you do those things. You say, “All right, that feels good.” You can feel victorious with the day and ready to take on the next one.

Joe McCormack
You’re absolutely right. There is a book, actually a speech that was given by Admiral McRaven. As you may recall, he was the head of joint-special operations command, and then he gave a speech at the University of Texas. And the point of the speech was, “The first thing you need to do every day is to make your bed.” So, he wrote a book about this.

And what struck a lot of people was when he said that, his point was start your day with a success, and even if your day is a complete failure, when you come home at night, and this is brilliant, and you see that you did the first thing well, your day would not have been a total disaster. And it’s funny, when I was a kid, my dad would always tell us, “When you wake up, get up. And when you get up, make your bed.”

And McRaven, he wrote a whole book about making your bed, and I think the most important thing, do the most important thing. Do that and you’ll feel like you’re making progress in your life because you’re doing the most important thing and not forgetting that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s dead-on. And so, let’s talk about roles for a second. I mean, I imagine we could generate potentially dozens of roles and names for them. What are some of the biggies that come up again and again for you and clients?

Joe McCormack
Yeah, you have your role as leader, subordinate. I mean, everybody has got a boss. You can go to different characteristics like visionary, helper. You can go to partner. You can go to friend. You can go to brother or sister, parent, neighbor. I mean, there’s just things of

So, you think about your role, like during the day, it’s not like the great schizophrenia, that’s not the point. who am I today and what am I doing and what are the expectations? What’s important?” And once those get defined, it brings a lot of clarity. Next it brings a lot of the noise down because I’m clear in this moment right now, I’m not trying to be a father. I’m trying to be an author of a book and you’re the host. You’re not the host and an investment banker, even though that might be something you would do.

So, it gives people clarity about trying not to do ten things at once.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. You have a fun turn of a phrase weapons of mass distraction. Can you give us some examples of those and what do we do about them?

Joe McCormack
I think if you just look at your life, there are…a

If you look at it as almost a threat and a reward, but it’s both, it can be helpful but it can also be very, very damaging at the same time. And it has to be managed as such, that it’s not…like, if you look at people bring their phone to bed. It doesn’t belong in bed. It belongs on a table in another room. Put it in another room. Buy an alarm clock.

I’ll tell you a funny story about that. I used to use it as an alarm clock. Well, what happens was I used it as an alarm clock, but then I want to check something, and the next thing you know I’m online, and two hours later I don’t know what I’m doing. So, I put it in another room and I bought an old-school alarm clock. So, the clock just changed a few weeks ago. I don’t have my phone to automatically update. I need to remember to change the clock. This was pretty old-school, right? So, I‘ve got an alarm clock, it sits six feet from me, and I didn’t change the time. So, I get up, set the alarm, wake up, it’s on a Sunday, I go to church, I go there, there’s nobody there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Joe McCormack
You know what’s so funny? There’s an old lady sitting there, and then there’s a guy sitting in the back, and it was kind of cold, so I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe people didn’t want to come because it was kind of cold.” I mean, I just said this in my head. So, I sit there, and then this old lady, she comes up to me, and she’s like, “Where is everybody?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s cold.” And I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “Oh, the clock’s changed. I’m using an alarm clock. My iPhone didn’t tell me. Oh, I guess that’s not the worst thing in the world.” I sat there for an extra hour.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah, there you go.

Joe McCormack
I had built in quiet time. I had another hour but I didn’t go anywhere. My kids were like, “What did you do?” And I’m like, “I just sat there. I mean, why not? There’s worse places to be, right?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Nifty. Well, understood. So, the phone is one of them. And what else?

Joe McCormack
elusive 600. And, basically, the research tells us our brains are great processors, so they process, let’s say, at a rate of about 750 words per minute. This is conscious and subconscious thinking, how fast you can think. People can speak about 125 to 150 words a minute.

So, if you take 750 words per minute processing minus 150 words per minute speaking, you have about 600 extra words. That’s what the brain is thinking while you’re talking, and thinking while you’re listening. And we gave it a name, it was given by a friend of mine, Sharon Ellison, and it’s called the elusive 600. So, in that, those are the thoughts that go through our mind all day long.

Now, if you think about this, so when you’re listening to somebody, or you’re talking to somebody, or you’re just talking to yourself, you’re just walking from thing to thing, what are we saying to ourselves while we’re doing that? And you look at conversations that go bad. So, one of the things we talk about in the book is listening, and I call it you have to be in the moment and give listening as a gift. So, I have no agenda, I’m just listening, like you’re listening.

So, in the moment, thoughts can pop into my head. And if you’re a bad listener, I can’t listen to that thought right now. I just have to ignore it. I have to stay focused. So, random thoughts, negative thoughts, useless thoughts, thoughts that are just not timely thoughts, like, “Oh, I’d love to check this sport, this score in the game.” Well, I’m right in the middle of writing somebody’s evaluation. That’s not a good time to go check the sports score. Like, the quality of that evaluation is going to be in great part how much concentration and focus I gave it. But if a thought pops into my head, it doesn’t have to be prompted by technology,

In the example I used, it’s like if you’re in an office, walk from one side of an office to another to do something and see what people do along the way. They’ll be like going to the copy machine to get a copy, and then they stop to do this, and it’s all random thoughts. Stay focused. Are you getting a copy? I just did this today. I’m getting a copy then I go and get a cup of coffee. It’s like, “No, get the

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the shutdown, say no. What is the answer to untimely thoughts? Maybe that’s a big question many meditation teachers have wrestled with for millennia.

Joe McCormack
I just think Just keep on saying no. Like, there’s a power to the word no. Say no to things that are irresistible. No. Because there’s a power to it.

When you hear a person say it, it’s powerful. “Would you like to go to the game tonight?” “No, I can’t. I have something else to do.” I’m not encouraging people to walk around and tell their workmates and their colleagues no all the time because that would be anarchy.

powerful one at that. And people who are successful do this all the time so there’s nothing new about this. This is an old-school answer to a new-world problem. But this new-world problem presents itself as an irresistible problem. Like, “I can’t say no.” Well, we have to learn to or relearn to say no.

And this is why I call it attention management. I’m managing my attention.

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

Joe McCormack
I think for people, I think a lot of people struggle with this. It’s certainly a big work thing where there are so many things competing for our attentions but it’s really, this competes in all facets of your life. So, it might be discouraging or difficult for people, and I just want to tell people that

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

Joe McCormack
My father was a huge impact in my life and one of his quotes was, “Do something even if it’s wrong,” and he would always qualify it, not morally wrong or legally wrong, but just his impetus was just do something. Just don’t stand around waiting and thinking. Just keep on moving, keep on doing something, which is one of my favorite quotes from him.

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

Joe McCormack
The elusive 600 that I mentioned before we shared, I don’t know exactly where the original research came from, but it came from a woman, a consultant. And what I love the most about it is it gives a word or a name to a reality that people live with, and now they have a name for it. Like, “Oh, that’s my elusive 600.” And I’ve taught our courses at the Brief Lab for now over seven years, and that term has got a stickiness to it, and I owe a lot to that consultant who shared that with me.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Joe McCormack
One of my favorite books, the book is called “Isaac’s Storm” and it’s a book about a hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900. It’s a tragic part of history but it was a storm that nobody knew was coming. And we look at today like everybody knows in advance what bad things are going to happen, it’s like predicting the future. And this was a story about the technology and the science was advancing but it wasn’t quite there yet, and nobody knew. It’s a tragic story but it’s one about like our world is imperfect, and no matter how much technology we think we have, we’re always a little bit behind.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with listeners and clients; they repeat it back to you?

Joe McCormack
Well, in the work that we teach at the Brief Lab, one of the big ones we do in the world of being clear and intentional as communicators, “it gives people a sense of clarity and purpose when they talk, that I just did this day. I just love when people get that concept and use it because it makes them so much easier to understand.

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

Joe McCormack
Go to TheBriefLab.com and we have resources there. You can download two free chapters of the book “Noise.” We have tools that people can use. There’s a treasure trove of resources. We teach elite military organizations and corporate leaders and teams not only how to be concise communicators but now with noise, how to be clear thinkers.

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

Joe McCormack
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Joe, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you lots of luck in managing the noise and enjoying all the fun that comes with having that handled.

Joe McCormack
Thank you so much for having me.