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KF #38. Optimizes Work Processes Archives - Page 2 of 12 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Sep 12
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993: How to Boost Your Focus by Streamlining Your Priorities with Marcey Rader

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Marcey Rader helps us discover how to declutter work and life to make time for the things that truly matter.

You’ll Learn

  1. A key belief that pushes us to burn out 
  2. Top tips that make achieving your goals easier 
  3. The magic number of priorities to stay on track 

About Marcey

Marcey Rader is an award-winning keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and author focused on health-powered™ productivity after a preventable medical diagnosis shifted her relentless pursuit of more.

As the founder of RaderCo, she’s inspired over 100,000 people across five continents. As a Certified Speaking Professional®, Virtual Master Presenter®, and TEDx speaker, Marcey helps individuals and companies discover what truly matters, fostering sustainable habits to work well and play more!

Resources Mentioned

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Marcey Rader Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marcey, welcome.

Marcey Rader
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be on your podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to be chatting about stuff, productivity, feeling good, working well. That’s a lot of stuff we’d like to chat about here. I’d love to kick us off if we could, could you share any particularly extra surprising, fascinating discoveries you’ve made over your years of researching and teaching about this stuff?

Marcey Rader
I would say that the theme that I see among high achievers, high performers, and I would think that would be people that listen to your podcast, if you’re listening to a podcast called How to be Awesome at Your Job, then you’re trying to achieve something that we tend to think that we will always have time, and that if we get X promotion, then we’ll have time to focus on our health; if we make this amount of money, then we can relax; if we hit this milestone, then we’ll pay more attention to our family. Like, there’s always something that we’re striving for instead of just living in the present.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s intriguing, this notion of “If this unfolds then Y will be the case.” Tell me, is that true?

Marcey Rader
Well, in my circumstances, I would say no. I’m almost 50, I’ll be 50 in September, and my 20s and 30s, I would say to early 40s, I was always chasing more and I actually have a TEDx Talk that I released in April called “The Relentless Pursuit of More” and I lived my whole life that way. It was always waiting for something. My husband and I had been married 26 years, and on our 25th anniversary, we went back and read all of our love letters that we had ever written to each other. And I could not believe that even starting in my 20s, I was always saying things like, “When I get my graduate degree, I’ll be home more,” “When I get this promotion…”

I mean, I was saying that back then and it was such a theme. And reading them all at once, I’m seeing that I had this notion throughout the years of always thinking that if I achieved something else, then I could actually focus on what should have been the most important thing to me, my health and my relationships, it really just hit me over the head. And it wasn’t the first thing to hit me over the head, but it might’ve been one of the last things to make me kind of wake up and smell the coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is rich and juicy and I think worth lingering upon a bit in terms of like the thoughts we believe, the things we say to ourselves here before we get into your beautiful lineup of many swell tactics in your book, Work Well, Play More. So, yeah, this notion is, like, after this happens, then that will be how things will be different. Let’s see, I’m not even crystallizing this so well, but is there a shorthand version we would say to this lie we tell ourselves, like, “After this, after X, then Y”?

Marcey Rader
It’s almost like that app, If This Then That. And it’s just like that. And, as an example, a lot of people will think this as, I’ll give an example from a work perspective, an example from a health perspective. So, with work, if I throw myself into my work and I really prove myself now, I work late, I work weekends, I’m the fastest to respond to emails, and I show them that I can do this, I get the promotion, then everything in my life will be great, because I’ve gotten the promotion.

But I’ve now trained people that this is how I work. I’ve trained people that I work at night, I work on the weekends, I get to inbox zero, I’m there all the time and nothing’s really changed. I’m still on the hamster wheel. From a health perspective, and when you’re in your 20s and 30s, we’ve all heard this, like, “Oh, take care of yourself now. It’ll catch up with you,” but you’re never going to believe it. You’re never going to believe it.

And it absolutely caught up with me. I was probably looked at as one of the healthiest people in the room. I was a triathlete. I competed in over 100 ultra and endurance races throughout my 20s and 30s. I even have a degree in Exercise Science, a Master’s in Health and Exercise Management, but it’s hard to look at yourself with a discerning eye, and I actually triggered Hashimoto’s disease, which is an autoimmune disease.

I also put myself into what’s called hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is where you stop having a menstrual cycle, and affects about 1.6 million American women, and it took 12 years for my body to recover from it, 12 years. And I always thought I had time to fix it, to fix myself. And when I talk to anyone that is experiencing burnout or overwhelm, or they are just kind of pushing, pushing, pushing because they think, “If I get to this, then that will happen and everything will be okay,” there are no guarantees that the that that you’re looking for is going to turn out the way you think it will.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s a powerful story. So, these health conditions, you say you triggered it like. Is it just like the sheer intense effort of work and endurance, exercise feats, triggered these ill health effects inside your body?

Marcey Rader
Yes. So, I traveled 48 weeks a year for almost a decade, and so it was a very high-stress lifestyle traveling all the time, and never went to bed at night until I was at zero inbox, didn’t sleep well, exercised a lot, and it also took a real toll on my relationship with my husband. I’m fortunate that we are still together. And it’s funny, I love the book, The Power of Regret.

And he talks about how when people say things like, “No regrets. No regrets,” we really shouldn’t think about it that way because when we do things that we regret, it means that we have failed at something, that we pushed ourselves, we’ve gone outside of our comfort zone, and things like that. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t learn from something or that you wish you hadn’t even done it. But my biggest regret is pushing myself in those areas so much and losing the focus in my relationships with my friends and with my husband.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and it seems this foundational lie is something that gets in a lot of our heads, “If this, then that.” And I’d love, since you’re on the other side of this now, having gained some wisdom from having been there, how do we prudently discern if we’re fooling ourselves? Because some things are accurate, “If this, then that.” Like, “Hey, if I get a promotion and salary increase, we will be able to afford moving to a better neighborhood or a school district or whatever.”

Like, sometimes that’s really true, “This cause does lead to that effect,” and that’s made perhaps a sensible goal we could feel great about pursuing. But there’s other times we’re just chasing a ghost and it’s to our detriment, we’re like, “What have I been doing with my life here?”

Marcey Rader
Yeah, that is an excellent point, and you are right. If you make X amount of money, then maybe you can move to a better neighborhood, you can buy a different home, you can hire a house cleaner even to help take some of your daily tasks off your plate. You can hire a personal trainer, you can hire an assistant, whatever that is.

And one thing that I work on with my clients is reviewing those goals that we’ve set for ourselves because sometimes those goals are completely arbitrary, they’re not even our goals, and they may have been something that we always thought, like, when we were 25 years old, like, “I need to make six figures,” or, “I need to make this level. I need to make director level” and so on. And we get there, and then for some people, it’s like, “Well, that’s not enough. So, then I need to get more and more and more and more.”

And I’m not saying to not shoot for higher dreams or for higher goals, but it’s just really thinking about, are these your goals, and revisiting them regularly, and thinking through what those are going to get for you, or bring for you. Because, like, I had one client that I worked with that she had a director position, and she was offered a job at a smaller company, and she wouldn’t take it because it was a decrease in title, and she said, “My goal was always be, you know, I want to be a director, and this would be an associate director, maybe even a senior manager.”

And so, she didn’t take it. And two years later, that company had doubled in size, they were sold to another company. The person who she knew, she knew the person that took the job that she interviewed for, cashed out big time, and it was all because of the title that she didn’t want to lose, which was really just arbitrary in the end, and she would’ve gone much further in that smaller company if she would’ve really thought through and not just been stuck on, “I have to have that title.”

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, yeah, this is good. And you’re bringing me back to, I think, maybe high school is one of the first times I thought I had fallen for this myself. And I think I told myself that if I had six-pack abs then I could get the ladies I was interested in in high school.

Marcey Rader

Of course.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s so off because, well, one, apparently, as I’ve kind of learned, most women there didn’t really care about men’s physiques as the selection criterion for their romantic boyfriends. So, there’s that. Just totally misguided.

But it’s funny, it’s sort of like we have a desire, we have some motivation, and there’s something I think natural in the human person, the human psyche, to want to achieve more, to do more, to have more, to be more, and winning. And I love my little competitive in some domains. Winning, in general, is just kind of fun, and in growing and improving just sort of feels good, and so we just kind of go after it. But somehow along the lines we get tricked into thinking that this is much more important and impactful than it truly is.

Marcey Rader
Yes. I had a business coach once that her mantra almost on all of the group coaching calls were, “You’re just not that special.” And it was really funny because her message to us was we’re thinking that people care about us so much more than they actually do. And so, are we doing something for ourselves or because we care about what people think about it so much, and about that title? Like, “What is it going to look like if I have now a title of senior manager instead of director?”

But one of the questions that was posed to me, and I use this all the time now with my clients, I use this in my TEDx, and I actually just released a podcast episode about just this very question, was, “If a journalist were to be following you around all day, writing a story about a day in the life of you, would they say that you are living in alignment with your priorities?” So, if you tell the journalist that, “Oh, my priority is that my health, that I exercise and eat healthy every day, that I’m present with my two young kids, and that I’m very present at work. And maybe I’m a manager, and that during my one-to-ones, I’m very focused on the person. Those are my priorities.”

And then this journalist is following you around, and they see that you sleep in, and you grab a Nutri-Grain bar on your way out the door, and you eat your lunch in front of a screen, you’re sitting there all day, during your one-to-one, you’re multitasking, and you’re also reading emails, or during your meetings, you’re also reading emails.

And then at the end of the day, during dinner, you’re also checking your phone every few minutes. That journalist would not be writing a story about your priorities. And so that’s something that I ask myself, that question, multiple times through the week, “If they’re writing about me right now, would they say I’m living what I say my priorities are?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a handy way to cut through it, indeed. 

So, it’s sort of like we assess the potential arbitrariness of a thing rather than just put the blinders on and chase after it full-steam my head. A title, it’s like, “Okay, that’s the goal,” and goals are fun. Pursuing them and growing and learning and improving and getting closer feels good. But, really, what does the title mean? What does it get you? What is its foundational relevance and importance in your life? And it sounds like when you said values, it sounds like that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s how we, ultimately, assess the worthwhileness of anything.

Marcey Rader
Yes. And to be clear, I am not saying don’t have goals because I absolutely have goals and milestones. And if anybody out there has done StrengthsFinders, I’m number one, Learner, so I am always getting some kind of certification, and I’m reading books, and I’m learning about new things. It’s just I don’t feel like, in my experience with the people that I’ve worked with and then also with myself, that we can really define why we want some of those goals.

And when we look at what we think we’re going to get from them, is that really true? And then also, what do we need to sacrifice to get to those goals? Because sometimes we’re not thinking about that either. And for every yes, every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. But also, the reverse is true. If you say, “No, I’m not going to go to another party on Friday night because I need to get my sleep,” but you’re saying yes to going to bed early and waking up on Saturday feeling better. So, there’s always a yes and no, and give and take.

And knowing what you might have to sacrifice, and this is an easy one. A lot of people might say like, “I want to get up early and exercise every day, and that’s my goal,” but they’re not morning people, so they already have one strike against them. They’re getting up early, they’re exercising, but now they’re drinking coffee all day long, which is also not good, and they’re going to bed earlier, which means maybe less time with their partner. And so, really thinking through, “What are the sacrifices that I would need to make? And is it worth it for those changes that will come about from that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And any pro tips on how we can do a masterful job of making these considerations and evaluations?

Marcey Rader
Well, I’ve been doing something for the last 11 years, and I only have three priorities at a time from a work perspective and a health perspective. And I call them, like, spaceship view are my annual priorities, and airplane view are my quarterly, and then I have three for my monthly, that’s like my skyscraper view, and then I have my weekly three, and that’s what I call my treetop view, and then I have my daily, and that’s just the three total, and that’s where I’m in the weeds, like, in the daily types of tasks.

And I write them down. I actually have a playbook that I write them down in. And continually revisiting those, I’m actually looking at them on my whiteboard right now, I have my annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, keeps it top of mind for me. It’s like that journalist looking at me, writing that story, me making sure that I’m staying on track. But the biggest piece of that is I do reflections on these every, at the end of the week. I reflect on my week at the end of the month. I reflect on the month, quarter, and year.

But quarterly, I do this with three other people and I talk about my lessons earned, my smartest decisions, what worked well, what didn’t work well. I get feedback from them, they share theirs, and then I give them feedback. And so, I’m getting an outsider’s perspective, and that really helps me to kind of stay aligned with what I say my priorities are so that I don’t get kind of tunnel vision sometimes on what it is that I’m shooting for without seeing the big picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. All right. Well, so we spent some good time there. Now, tell us what’s the big idea behind your book, Work Well, Play More?

Marcey Rader
So, the subtitle is “Productive Clutter-Free, Healthy Living – One Step at a Time,” and it goes through the course of 12 months, and every month there is a behavior in the area of productivity, the area of clutter, which could include digital, physical, or mental clutter, and then health.

And in each of those categories, there are novice, pro, and master levels. So, if you think of something like James Clear’s Atomic Habits book, awesome book. It’s very conceptual and theory-based, and with a little bit of how. It’s a lot of why and a little bit of how, and mine is a little bit of why but a lot of how. And so, it’s really like a step-by-step and kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book. And I’ve had teams use it in book clubs. I’ve had several groups use it as book clubs, actually, and it’s just really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so why don’t we just get a taste there. Month one, productivity, is about notification distractions and handling those. And I love this because, well, I’ve seen research that suggests when people try this ever so briefly, they sometimes stick with it forever. So, lay it on us, Marcey, the why and the how.

Marcey Rader
The number one thing you can do to help with your focus and attention is to turn off your notifications as many as possible, because they are not on to help you be more productive. They’re on to get you to use the tool or the app more. So that is why they’re on as the default. And every time we get one, there is a dopamine response in our brain, and we start to get used to it, and we like it. And dopamine is that anticipation, and it’s the same one that gamblers get.

And so, by turning those off, one, I have never had anybody in over a decade turn them off and turn them back on again. If they did, I don’t know about it. And if you think about your email, like when you get the little pop-up in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, and you’re in the middle of another email, think about your emails like conversations. If I’m talking to you and somebody came up to me and poked me on the shoulder, and said one line and walked away, that would be really distracting, right? But that’s exactly what is happening when we let the notifications come through.

The other thing to think about is you’re not going to forget to check your email. Nobody forgets to check their email. And so, if you worry that you’re going to miss something, are you missing it for a minute, five minutes, an hour? There’s a difference between being reactive and being responsive. And what we want to be is responsive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then in practice, how do we deal with this, we just straight up get in our phones and say, “No, no, no, no,” on all of the apps and the notifications? Or what do you recommend?

Marcey Rader
I definitely recommend email notifications off, but for your phone, I recommend anything that, any kind of social media, we don’t need to see that somebody liked our post immediately.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, they liked your post, Marcey?”

Marcey Rader
They liked, and that’s dopamine, like, “Oh, somebody likes me. Somebody likes me.” And so, we don’t need to see that right away. You’re probably not going to forget to go to Instagram. Email, we don’t need. One thing you could, you know, you might want to consider it’s like keeping your phone notification, like your voicemail notification, maybe your text, something like that, but things like Target ads, Target sales, or ESPN or The Weather Channel, we don’t need all of those alerts and banners that come through.

And what a lot of people don’t realize is that you can set hours, focus modes, in your phone, and this is what I love about the iPhone because I actually don’t have badges on my phone, the little bubbles with the numbers even for text. I just check it every once in a while. For voicemail, I do. I do have the badge on because people don’t call anymore. And when somebody calls me, it’s usually important. But the thing with any kind of badge or banner coming across is that you could have it at focus mode that, only during certain times, those come through.

As an example, I don’t get any notifications between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. and that’s because in the morning I’m working out, that’s my time, I don’t want to be interrupted. After 8:00 p.m., that’s when I’m hanging out with my husband. I don’t want to be interrupted. So, you could have different zones for, like, maybe you see badges during work hours but not in the evenings so then you’re not tempted to look.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s super, and, yes, I live my life this way. I do not receive any beeps or buzzes whatsoever with text messages, unless I know, “Oh, I’m in a zone where I need to hear from people right away and reply to them right away.” So, it’s, like, I will shift out of “Do not disturb” ever so temporarily, and then shift right back into it.

And it’s really interesting when you talk about training other people, like people will know, they say, “Oh, hey, we haven’t heard from Pete yet. Oh, yeah, he doesn’t get buzzed on his text messages, so I’m actually going to call him twice so that we could get the update, ‘Hey, we changed the lunch location,’” because I would, I probably would drive to the old lunch location and then oopsies. But so that happens quite rarely, and other people are aware and adapt, and I’d say that the rareness that it does happen is so worth it in terms of what I’ve gained from my attention being reclaimed.

Marcey Rader
I’m so glad you said that, Pete, because when people are so worried that they’re going to miss something, I’m like, “So maybe you miss something once in three months, but you’ve had three months of not being interrupted, like daily, hourly, sometimes every 10 minutes or whatever.” And how you use it is exactly how I recommend using it. Like, when I’m out and I’m meeting friends or whatever, or I’m expecting a call, I will turn it off. Like, it’s so easy to toggle it on and off. It’s just a little tap with your fingers to turn that zone off and be able to get them.

Pete Mockaitis
And we talked about all the settings you can do, and there are so many. I’m still learning more and more about them and they keep updating them with each new version of the software. But I get a kick out of using the Screen Time app and the downtime feature, this is my new discovery, although it’s been around, like, forever, in terms of it’ll just say, “Hey, no, we’re shut down now because you should be sleeping,” basically, it just sort of says.

And you can override it if you want to but it’s kind of nice that, oh, you’re scrolling something, and then your phone is like, “Oh, no, now you’re on downtime.” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re probably right, phone. All right. I guess we’re done.”

Marcey Rader
Yeah, it’s just a little reminder. It’s a good nudge. It’s a good nudge to remind you, like, “Yeah, all right. All right, do you really need to be scrolling right now?” And that is one thing, because we’re talking about phones. Really think hard about whether or not you want to take your company to bed with you. Because when you look at your email in bed, or if you wake up, and before you ever get out of bed, you’re looking at your emails, you’re sleeping with your manager, you’re sleeping with your coworkers.

Like, you’re taking them into your sacred space. Do you really want your company in bed with you? I don’t. I don’t. So, now that I’ve given that visual to all of your listeners, they’ll be like, “Eww!” throw their phone across the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, Marcey. So, removing notifications is one simple thing we can do that has just a tremendous outsized results for that effort. So, that’s the kind of stuff we love hearing about, Marcey. Could you lay on us another one or two things that’s pretty low amount of effort yet just exceptionally high levels of good benefits returned to us?

Marcey Rader
Yes. So, there is nothing magical about a 60-minute meeting, but that is the default and everybody schedules 60-minute meetings, but you can’t get off the meeting and on a meeting in the same minute. It’s very hard. And we all need biology breaks, right? We all go to the bathroom. We have to drink water. We have to step away. We have to take some notes. So, you can go into your settings, for Gmail it’s called Speedy Meetings; for Outlook, you can go into your File options, Calendar, and change all of your meetings to either be 50 minutes or 45 minutes or 25 minutes or 15 minutes, and then you don’t have to think about it.

Because I am all about systematizing everything and not having to think about too much. And so, if you do that, then any meeting you schedule is automatically going to be shorter. And you need that time for your brain especially if you are on back-to-back video meetings, because they actually have done brain scans and they show stress, how stress builds up in the brain with back-to-back meetings.

Because as that meeting that you’re on now is starting to get towards the end, you’re already starting to be stressed, “Am I going to get off in time to get on to my new meeting?” So that would be another one that I would say just make it simple for yourself. Go in, change your settings, and make your meeting shorter.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And tell me, if we do have five minutes in between meetings, do you have any pro tips on what are the best means to recover energy, de-stress, motivation boost in a jiffy?

Marcey Rader
Look away from your screen, get up if you can. And the reason why it’s important to look away from your screen is that it’s drying our eyes out, we blink less when we’re staring at a screen. If it’s a TV far on a wall, we tend not to do it. But when we’re staring up close to a monitor, we blink less so it makes our eyes dry. But also, when we’re staring at a screen that’s close, we can get what’s called screen apnea, like sleep apnea, but screen apnea, and we actually are breathing shallow.

And when you know this, I’ll have a lot of people say like, “Oh, my gosh, I caught myself breathing really shallow,” and you might find yourself even holding your breath. And people tend to do this even more when they’re doing things like social media or checking email. And so, when we’re breathing shallow, it creates tension in our shoulders, our neck. It can also cause headaches, but it even affects our digestion because we’re not taking deep breaths or our diaphragm isn’t moving up and down as it should.

So even though you might think, “Oh, I’m going to use these five minutes just to check my email real quick,” it’s best to actually get up and just move around a little bit and look away from the screen, and then come back to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then so, each month, we got the productivity piece, we got the declutter piece, we got the health piece. Can you likewise share with us, what’s a top practice that you have found in yourself and your clients is just transformational in terms of the amount of energy, attention, focus, good moods that we can bring with us to everything we do?

Marcey Rader
It’s hard for me to narrow it down to one, but I’m going to just choose this one, and that is narrowing down your priorities to no more than three. And, Pete, most people now are just overloaded with work. I hear that everybody’s under-resourced and “I have eight priorities,” “I have ten priorities.” You can’t. I’m only going to give you three. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have eight tasks to do, but it is, you know, you have no more than three priorities.

And the way to think about, like, “Well, how do I choose which are my priorities?” There’s a couple of ways. One, if I were to go on vacation tomorrow, what would I absolutely have to get done today? Because that’s everyone’s most important or most productive day, the day before they go on vacation because you’re not going to mess around doing silly stuff. Or if you think about it, like, you took your laptop to a coffee shop, and you only have 30 minutes of juice, or an hour of juice because you forgot your cord, what would you work on? And thinking through it that way, and then prioritizing your day around those top tasks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when we prioritize our day around the top tasks, what does that look like in practice?

Marcey Rader
Well, for most people, doing at least one of those top tasks first before you hit your inbox is how I would say to start your day, because your inbox is another person’s agenda. And so, if you go there first, then your whole day can be derailed right then. And so, doing at least one of your priorities to at least feel accomplished and check the box for something that is just for you is really important to have that feeling that you’ve done something, and you’ve accomplished, and you’re more likely to stay on task the rest of the day.

The reason why I say for most people is that, if you are like a night person, like a night owl, then you actually need to warm up a little bit first, and doing more like admin type tasks in the first part of your day might be better for you. But because that’s a minority of people that are night owls, that’s why I say for most people.

The other thing about going to your inbox first is that so many people are remote, and if you start work at 8:00 or 8:30 or 7:30, most people don’t know exactly when you start work for the day. So, if you feel like, “I have to check my email first, I have to check my email first,” and it’s 8:00 o’clock, well, how are they going to know that you started at 8:00 if you end up processing your email at 8:30? So, spend that first 30 minutes on something for you instead of another person’s agenda.

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

Marcey Rader
I love the quote, “Talk doesn’t cook rice.” It’s a Chinese proverb, and I’ve had a T-shirt, I say it all the time, because I’m a very action person. If I say it, it’s going to happen. And so, “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

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

Marcey Rader
This is something that I just learned from a neuroscientist, and I never knew why, so now I know the why, and it’s called the cathedral effect. So, if we want to be creative, or we’re trying to solve a problem, you want to go outside, that’s best. But if not, be somewhere with a very high ceiling in a big room. But if you want to get really focused on a certain project or just get stuff done, then you want to be in a room with low ceilings and more closed in.

I used to belong to a co-working space, and I would go and stand in the telephone booth for two, three hours there. But I would get so much done standing in this little tiny booth, and I didn’t know the words why, and it’s because of the cathedral effect. And that is something I just find fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so what’s the neuroscience behind it? Like, I’m in a tiny room and then it’s, like, I just make it happen.

Marcey Rader

It’s something about, like, the low ceiling and the closed-in space makes you stay more on task and focused. And when we’re outside or in a room with really high ceilings, we’re more likely to come up with creative solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think Walt Disney, allegedly, the legend goes, would have his people in different rooms based on the task. If they were dreaming big thoughts and stories, they’d be in one space versus if they were really editing down and drawing hundreds of images, then they were in a much less beautiful, more cramped contained space. I don’t know if that’s true but that is the legend.

Marcey Rader

Well, I want to look that up because that would be a good example for me to use.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Marcey Rader

Yeah, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. And Rina Raphael is a journalist, and she did such an amazing job. 

But she just debunks so many myths in the book from marketing of wellness products and so on, but also how marketing towards health, wellness, and cleaning products and different things like that, have affected women, and goes into like medical research and how women are.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool?

Marcey Rader

ClickUp. So, our company uses ClickUp project management system, and we hardly ever email each other internally. Every bit of communication is within ClickUp.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear them quoted back to you often?

Marcey Rader

I talk a lot about movement opportunities and finding opportunities, or movement snacks during the day. And so, a lot of people will say, after they hear me speak, because I talk about movement opportunities from a productivity perspective, not just from a health perspective, but how it can affect your creativity and make you more alert in the afternoons and so on. And so, a lot of people will message me after presentations that I give, and talk about movement opportunities that they found.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marcey Rader

HelloRaderCo.com, H-E-L-L-O-R-A-D-E-R-C-O.com, or the book website WorkWellPlayMore.com.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marcey Rader

I have a gift.

Pete Mockaitis

Please.

Marcey Rader
If people want to go to HelloRaderCo.com/gift, the first chapter of the book, the whole month one, with the productivity and turning off notifications, the clutter, and also the health habits for novice, pro, and master are in there, and they can download that for free.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Perfect. Thank you. Well, Marcey, this has been lovely. I wish you much fun, work and play.

Marcey Rader
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Aug 22
0

989: Training Your Brain for Maximum Efficiency with Dr. Mithu Storoni

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Mithu Storoni goes behind the science of how focus works to use your brain to its maximum capacity.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to identify and get into the best mental gear for your work
  2. What to do when work gets either boring or overwhelming 
  3. The trick to resetting your brain 

About Mithu

Dr. Mithu Storoni is a University of Cambridge-trained physician, neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon. She advises multinational corporations on mental performance and stress management. She is the author of the forthcoming book Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work, out on September 17, 2024.

Resources Mentioned

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Mithu Storoni Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mithu, welcome.

Mithu Storoni
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
I am excited to chat about becoming hyper-efficient. And I’m imagining, well, it’s in London where you are, so it’s been a few hours in the day. Have you hyper-efficiently already taking care of tons of tasks today, Mithu?

Mithu Storoni
I’ve tried to be as hyper-efficient as I can. Every day is a different one. If you have a different kind of day, depending on the kind of day you have, it’s all about tailoring your tasks and fitting them around your own rhythm. So, every day I do different things, and so every day I have a certain different timetable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’m so intrigued to hear about that, and I understand that’s one of your core theses here, is we want to align our work with our natural rhythms of our brain as opposed to trying to contort ourselves to what is externally imposed upon us. Is that a fair synopsis?

Mithu Storoni
That’s absolutely fair. And if you want a little bit of background, so I wrote the book when I realized how the way we work today is very much a hangover from the era of assembly lines. So, when we had the Industrial Revolution quite a long time ago, we had assembly lines, we were producing quantities of things, of refrigerators, of cars, of hair dryers. And during that time, the number of items you produced decided how productive you were, and the longer you stayed on the assembly line, the more productive you were, because the more items you assembled.

When we then had the shift into knowledge work, post-Second World War, around the 1950s, where the majority of the work became office work, became sort of what we used to call white-collar, we actually changed the work but we didn’t change the way we did the work. So, our work hours, the way we measured work, continued in pretty much the same way. We still looked at how many hours we were sitting on the seat, we get paid on overtime, productivity is all about targets.

We then had another shift, which is the kind of shift we still have now, where we started producing intangible goods rather than tangible refrigerators. And so, when intangible goods, such as a software solution, such as other solutions, ideas, it created the bottom line, so they become principle. The principle thing you try to make a difference to your company, to your organization, you need to think about the quality, not the quantity.

So, it no longer matters how many software solutions you manufacture, or how many software solutions you think of, or how many ideas you think of, you could have a thousand mediocre ideas, they will be just as unproductive as having one mediocre idea. We now need to shift to thinking extremely well, so producing one exceptional quality solution, exceptionally creative idea, rather than a hundred bad ones.

In order to do that, the brain can no longer sit and work continuously as if it were producing, or assembling its idea parts on an assembly line. How long you sit on your chair and the way you sit influences how well your mind performs. But we have created a template around that, which is a hangover from the past.

Now we have technology doing all the monotonous, the routine, the sort of quantity-heavy jobs aspects of knowledge work, so now we need to be even better at creating ideas, at forming solutions. And in order to do that, we need to change the way we work in a radically different way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. That all seems to check out in terms of the way the world used to work and the way things are working currently. I’m curious, when it comes to us working at our finest to come up with these exceptional ideas and solutions, is there anything really striking or surprising you’ve discovered about what holds us back and what unleashes us to this greatness?

Mithu Storoni
Yes. So, I approached this subject from my background, which is in neuro-ophthalmology and neuroscience, and I’m very aware of the very, very exciting research field at the moment, looking at the brain’s dynamics. What we know is that the brain is a complex system, it changes state, and there is a network in the brain called the locus coeruleus norepinephrine network, which influences how alert you are, it influences how you pay attention. That’s one angle of the story.

We have uncovered quite a lot of data about this network and how the faster it fires, the more alert, the more sort of wired you become; the slower it fires, the calmer you become. If you take that, I’m diluting it a little bit, but if you take that you add in the cholinergic network, you add in the dopaminergic network, you know, you create the whole map. You realize that when you are performing mental work, knowledge work of any kind, your brain has to be, or your mind has to be, in a certain configuration in order to perform one particular type of task particularly well.

So, for instance, let’s take two examples of knowledge work. Let’s take creative idea generation and let’s take a different kind where you are focusing on something. So, if you imagine an organization, it has lots of teams but it has two sub-teams, one focusing on innovation, the other focusing on implementation. The team focusing on innovation is going to focus on coming up with ideas, original ideas. What do we know about how the brain works or what is optimal for the brain when this happens?

Well, we know that if you make the brain focus on one single target in front of you, such as a computer screen, your brain state is not going to be optimal to come up with those “aha” ideas because of the temporary structure of the brain at the time. Focusing is not conducive to gentle mind-wandering.

It’s not conducive to letting your attention wander and pick up fragments of data, fragments of thoughts wandering in your head, which you then assemble, or to just waiting for aha moments, for moments of insight to spring up inside your head. That’s one angle to it. So, detaching your attention is important. Not focusing is important.

The second angle to it is there is data that the time of day you work influences how well you work when you’re doing creative work. So creative insights, creative idea generation seems to be better first thing in the day and last thing in the day, not in the middle of the morning, and not in the middle or late in the afternoon. So, in order to really, really optimize idea generation, creative idea generation, perhaps working in a slightly different way for this particular sub-team is going to be more suited for their performance.

Similarly, if you take the second sub-team, which is working on logistics implementation, there they need to zone in, converge on ideas. Now if you are converging on ideas, focusing does help. So, their focused attention is going to be absolutely pivotal. We know focused attention, similar in the opposite way to creativity, focused attention, there seem to be some peak hours for that during the day. The middle morning, middle to late morning is one of them. Immediately after lunch is not one of them and later on in the day is a second slot.

When you’re doing focused attention, when you’re paying focused attention or doing work that involves focused attention, you have to, it helps to sit undisturbed, sit in a very, very attentive state of mind and get that work done. So, if you also think about how your mind is, when you’re creative, your mind is sort of very gently, slowly mind-wandering. When you’re focusing, you want to be sharp, you want to really zone in to what’s in front of you.

These two states of mind are very, very different. So, if you put all of that together, it shows you how you need to be in a certain state of mind that you can tell by looking at how well you focus, how well your mind can, or how easy your attention can wander, a particular time of day is also helpful. And the third thing we haven’t talked about is, as soon as you work continuously, and you measure this as time on task when you measure this aspect in psychological experiments, when your brain works continuously on some kind of intense work, it becomes tired.

When it becomes tired, its information-processing pathways inside your head become inefficient. And when they become inefficient, you can actually measurably or you can visibly see the effect that has on mental output. So rather than coming up with lots of original ideas, you’re much more likely to come up with ideas but they’re not going to be original. So how long you work for is a huge factor here, which is why you also have to put in this 90-minute, 90- or 100-minute ultradian rhythm where you work in slots, and even within those segments of work you pace how you work. That’s a very long answer to your question.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s really beautiful and it matches my own experience in terms of the groove, the flow, the rhythms, the vibe of work. And you talked about the creative and innovative side of things versus the implementation side of things, and sometimes I think of this as creating versus destroying. And I don’t know if it’s just my raw kind of attitude, but it’s like, “I’m going to destroy my inbox,” and by that, I mean I’m going to process it with vigorous speed. We’re going to do a three-second sweep per message, a 20-second sweep per message, and we’re going to watch that baby shrink from 200 to 20 in short order, and that’s good, and that’s kind of fun for me.

But sure enough, that does require that I’m not distracted by other things, and my mind isn’t wandering to interesting, fun things to pursue that’s counterproductive to what I’m after, is shrinking this inbox in a hurry and dispatching messages so people would get what they need from me, etc. Which is totally different than the vibe is like, “Oh, this would be kind of cool if we tried this thing. And here’s a fun idea. And, oh, that sort of connects to this thing I’m hearing on a podcast over there.” And so, those are very different vibes. So, tell me, just to make this contrast all the more crisp and clear for us, do you have a name that you apply to each of these modes of brain operation?

Mithu Storoni
I have. So, in my book, I have created a metaphor, which is very helpful, and I describe the mind as being in three states in the specific context of knowledge work. And these are, I call them three gears: one, two and three. And in a very easy way of imagining them is slow, medium and fast. The mind-wandering state, so the seek and destroy that you just described, which is going through your inbox – I love that analogy, I think it’s a great way of describing it, creating and destroying – that state would be right in the middle of gear two, which is the middle zone.

Gear one – is the kind of state of mind you have when you are really daydreamy. So, maybe the first thing in the morning after you’ve woken up after a deep night’s sleep, you haven’t quite reached that sort of sharpness, you haven’t reached for your coffee yet, you are kind of in a slight daydreamy zone, there’s a sunrise in front of you, you’re sort of halfway, halfway, and your mind feels quite slow. Your attention is floating a lot. You don’t have the ability to make it focus. It’s very, very floaty. You think of thoughts, they come, they go.

Gear two is when you can focus. This is the middle zone. As soon as you reach gear two, you’re able to focus. Within gear two, you have a kind of a slow pace and you have a fast pace. The slow pace gear two is when you can both focus and you can let your attention wander alternately however you want. That is optimal for creativity where you can just detach from what you’re doing, let your attention wander a little bit, but soon as you come up with an idea, with an insight, you can quickly zone your attention spotlight on there, focus on it and bring it to fruition. That is gear two, a slow gear two.

And then you have middle gear two, which is what you described as really intense, powerful focus. And then you have, you leave gear two and you go into gear three. And gear three has, correlates with what is sometimes termed sort of a hyperarousal state. So, in gear three, your thoughts are faster, your actions are faster, but you can’t perform analytical difficult thinking and you cannot focus as well.

So, these are the three gears: gear one is where you just wander; gear three where your mind is very fast and you can’t focus; gear two is right in the middle. And in gear two you can navigate by playing with your attention, detaching it, letting it wander around to go into kind of a light, creative gear two or a really deep focused gear two.

Pete Mockaitis
Now when you say hyperarousal gear three, just to make sure I’m understanding this, I’m thinking about, is this like I’m enraged at a situation? Or what are some of the scenarios or illustrations of hyperarousal?

Mithu Storoni
We are diluting these into single terms, but these are all scales. These all have a range. So, if you look inside the brain, people in a state of hyperarousal, this particular network in the brain is firing very fast, and the faster it fires, the more your physiological arousal increases. But just outside this zone where you can focus, the moment, so let’s just say you’re sitting there, you’re focusing on your email, you’re doing really well, and then a colleague keeps making herself or himself a cup of coffee, and every time they do this, they come and give you one because they’re really kind, and so you inadvertently just keep sipping those espressos while you work, just because they happen to be there.

After one espresso, it’s great, your focus is even better. But after another five, which you don’t realize you’ve had, suddenly, the noise that you heard behind you, the noise of the drilling outside, or the traffic outside, or someone speaking on their phone, suddenly seems really sharp. You couldn’t hear it a minute ago, but after five espressos you suddenly can, and so your threshold for being distracted is suddenly lowered, so you can become easily distracted.

Then, by this time, you haven’t realized you’ve had those five espressos, some more espressos appear and you keep drinking those. And as you drink them, eventually, you reach a point where your focus is completely gone, and you’re simply just reacting to the situation. You’re doing very low-level cognitive stuff, and every sort of small distraction around you is grabbing your attention away.

And as you increase that, you can eventually get into the stage that we do term that falls under the canopy of the banner of rage. But that sort of gear-three state is where you become easily distractible, subtle things become amplified. You become more anxious, more vigilant, so it’s a hyper-vigilant state. And the more, the faster this network fires, the more you go into this state, the more amplified it becomes. So, it’s a scale. This whole thing is a scale. Gear one itself is a scale, gear two is a scale, gear three is a scale, and within those, you’re modulating yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. It’s like we just got one very long continuum. It’s like the entirety of human experience, and we’re segmenting it into three-thirds to make it a little bit more workable to discuss and interact with. So, I guess I’m wondering now, this might be dangerous talking to neuroscience about this, but you mentioned, so we got some choline, some dopamine.

What is the, shall we call them biomarkers, or biochemical things, or heart rate, or brainwave frequency? What’s the stuff going down at our brain-body level within each of these three things in terms of it’s like a little bit in one, a medium amount in two, and a whole lot in three of these fundamental ingredients?

Mithu Storoni
So, very basically, let’s look at norepinephrine. So, norepinephrine, many of you will have heard of it, it’s associated with exercise. We talk about how we’ve got to get that adrenaline pumping or get that norepinephrine. 

And very, very loosely, these three gear states describe or correlate with three ways, patterns of firing of this, of a network in the brain, that is the brain’s headquarter of norepinephrine. So, in a very simple way of saying that, as norepinephrine levels vary in your brain, there’s a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex that sits right behind your forehead. The prefrontal cortex is your brain’s seat for focus, attention, any kind of higher-level cognitive work. Analysis, thinking, remembering, working memory, you name it, the prefrontal cortex is the seat of higher thinking, okay? This entire region of the brain, prefrontal cortex, it’s absolutely pivotal for knowledge work and it becomes very, very active at middle levels of norepinephrine.

So, when you’re in gear two, it’s the Goldilocks zone of norepinephrine that brings your prefrontal cortex completely online. When you have too much norepinephrine, when you enter gear three, your prefrontal cortex goes partly offline, and this is why being in gear two is ideal and essential for focused work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is cool, and so I’m curious. So, putting it in these terms, I can see that if you’re in gear one, yeah, that’ll bring you to gear two or gear three, the jumping up and down, the smacking your chest, you’re screaming, “Yes, yes, yes.” That’ll do it. Go for it.

Mithu Storoni
I was just going to say, so I think the three gears are a metaphor of three different mental states. But I would not think of it like a racing car. So, when you’re in gear one, it’s simply a description of a different state. So, when you’re in gear one, and you’re in this kind of slow, mind-wandering state, you can’t focus because you are just not sort of awake enough to focus then. Gear two is when there is more norepinephrine, your prefrontal cortex is engaged, you can focus, you can do high-level cognitive work. And gear three is when there is more norepinephrine, you can think faster, but you can’t do high-level cognitive work because your prefrontal cortex is partly offline. Now, when you’re doing any kind of knowledge work, you’re actually shuttling between these three states, in the sense that, for instance, if you are solving a problem, you have to be mainly in a state of focus, all right?

But as soon as you hit a wall, or your mental slate gets crammed with data, you have to briefly move out of that state into gear one to wipe your slate clean and to refresh the angle that you’re taking. So, if you’ve hit a wall, your brain needs to step back and look at the problem from afar, or from a different angle, that’s when you need to briefly foray into gear one to do that, and then you might see something you were missing, you might feel a little bit more refreshed, then you go back into gear two.

So, although your baseline is gear two, you’re going to keep coming back into gear one every now and again to change your mental state in order to overcome a wall or to just refresh your mind. So, it’s not like you are getting into these fast, high-powered, kind of racing track scenarios. It’s very much a way of your brain is mainly in gear two, but gear one is essential. And that’s why gear one is the mental state you have when you take a break.

So, as an example, if you’re focusing on your inbox, in your email inbox and you’re working through it, every time you close your eyes, your brain immediately goes into gear one for a bit. And then when you open your eyes, you’re back into gear two. What I’m describing here is the baseline you’re in for the majority of time.

The whole thing isn’t a flat line, and that’s how the brain is but the overall general state of the brain when you’re in a mode of focus versus when you’re in a mode of gentle daydreaming are very different, and these are the states I describe with gear one, two, and three.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, then I imagine one of the things you want to do in order to accomplish a whole lot of stuff is to just schedule the kinds of activities when things are naturally going to be great for that. If I need to have some brilliant epiphany, aha, eureka moments, well, then let’s schedule some thinking, daydreaming, wandering time in the early morning or late at night, etc. So, there’s kind of working with our schedules and our rhythms and, you know, 90- to 100-minute cycles of stuff. That’s cool. And then, I’m curious, if the situation calls for us to be in a bit of a different gear than we find ourselves in, what do you recommend we do?

Mithu Storoni
So, if I give you a typical day, so just say you are a writer, you are looking for an idea. So, if that’s your job, if that’s your task for the day, what you would do is you’d wake up probably in the morning quite early, and once you’re up in the morning, you would tackle the creative aspect of things there and then. You wouldn’t wait for later in the morning. You’d use the kind of very gentle, relaxed, not quite committed state of mind you have, which would be perfect for that kind of work, that kind of idea generation.

And then once you have your idea, later on in the morning, you’d find you feel a little more alert, you can focus a little bit more and your mind is wandering a lot less. You’re kind of much less in that kind of gentle daydreamy more. There, you sit down, you focus and write or type. And then you continue that pattern as I describe. It changes slightly for the rest of the day.

So, if you’re entering one of those sessions, one of those work sessions, and you’re in the wrong gear, so let’s say you are doing focused work, you’re starting at 9:00 o’clock in the morning, and you are still in that kind of distracted, mind-wandering state of mind. If that’s the case, there are a couple of ways you can use your body’s physiology to make your mind think differently. So, for instance, we know that if you make your body active and alert, your mind becomes active and alert too. Intuitively, you know that to be true.

Physiologically, we know that if you do, for instance, a few sprints before you sit down, when you are feeling a little bit kind of slow and lethargic, that immediately wakes you up. It doesn’t have to be sprints. Any kind of exercise will wake you up. We know that intuitively. And when we say wake you up, it also changes your mental state. You go from feeling lethargic to feeling more alert, much more able to focus.

Conversely, we know that you can also use your body to relax your mind. So, if you are feeling very, very wired, if you’re working in an office where things are very, very, sort of deadlines are very frequent, activity is very fast, everything is very hectic, and you really need to calm down and you need to focus and you need to think about something, in that sort of situation you can use your body, you can use three elements actually, you can use your environment to calm you down.

So, we know that if you bring elements of your environment to be slow, low and soft and dark, your mind also climbs down. So, if you have, for instance, a background music or background sounds which have low frequency beats, sounds which are low pitch, not high pitch, like very slow drum beats or like ocean sounds. There’s a reason why we’re attracted to ocean sounds. So, slow beats, slow rhythms, low frequency, low pitch around you.

So, as an obvious example, if you listen to radio shows or breakfast shows first thing in the morning, people will be speaking very fast at a higher pitch. If you listen to radio shows very late at night, people will be speaking slower with slightly lower pitch, and that is to really match the viewer’s state of mind, but in the morning it’s to really draw the viewer into a more alerting state of mind to wake them up essentially. So, your environment can change in this way.

Colors and intensity of light also have a role to play. There is data that shows that warm, so redder, reddish tones, soft, warm hues are better for creative idea generation, whereas blue light or blue dominant white light, the kind of light you get in the middle of the day or in the middle of the morning even in most latitudes, that’s conducive to being focused and alert. So, if you’re doing a night shift and you really, really need to focus, then using light can help you be in the right state of mind.

So light, sound, your physiology, so muscle. When you contract muscle, you feel more alert, but when you release it, you feel more relaxed. Similarly, when you stretch muscle and release it, you feel more relaxed, and we know that people seek this kind of activity, whether PMR, whether yoga, any sort of stretching-relaxation activity also relaxes the mind.

We also have a third thing, which are breathing exercises, and there is now a lot of data to show that if you breathe at a frequency of around five breaths a minute with long exhalations, and Mara Mather, in California, has done amazing work on this with her team, you can also lower this, the gear, of your mind. So, bring your mind back to an optimal state.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, this is beautiful. So, then I’m thinking then, if we’re in a state where it’s just like, “Ugh, I don’t feel like doing anything,” that’s sort of like the sleepy state, and so more arousal would be helpful if what needs to happen is some smart focused work. And if, likewise, it’s like, “I’m freaking out about this thing,” you know, well, then we want to maybe do with some more of the stretching, the slow breathing, the low lights, etc.

Mithu Storoni
Adjust your environment. Modulate your environment.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now you got me wondering, it’s so funny, I’m thinking about mindfulness meditation stuff, and there are times when it feels so amazingly wonderful, like, “Yes, this is just delightful.” And there are times in which my brain is just furious, which is like, “This is so boring! I can’t stand it!” And so, it seems like, is this kind of the fundamental dynamic at work? Or do you think there are some other dimensions to be considered in this context as well?

Mithu Storoni
So, I’m so happy you brought up the word “boring” because this is really, really important. Now when you’re working on something, when you’re doing knowledge work, you’re working on something, you can, in gear two, you’re in peak focus, you’re engaged, all right? But if what you’re doing is boring, then a little while through, a little while along, 10, 15 minutes, whatever, you suddenly feel your mind wandering and your focus slipping off, slipping away. Not because you’re tired, the work isn’t tiring at all, or let’s imagine the work isn’t tiring at all. You’re just noticing your focus just slip away.

In that sort of scenario, you’re sliding into gear one because you are bored, and there you need more stimulation or a bigger load to get you back into gear two. So, one way is, as you say, you need more stimulation, so maybe change the environment, go to a place that wakes you up. But you can also do it through the work, through the work you’re doing. So, for instance, multitasking gets bad press, but if what you’re doing is boring and you’re sliding into gear one, multitasking can actually keep you in gear two.

Because any form, anything that engages your mind, engages your brain, causes you to put in cognitive effort, will raise you back, will raise your gear. And it’s for the same reason that if you’re working very well, but you have an enormous workload, or you’re getting information you don’t want and you’re being forced to process it while you’re doing the work that you’re doing, you’re having to put in, you’re having to really step on the pedal.

You’re putting in more cognitive effort, and that requires norepinephrine, and there you’re shifting up to gear three to be able to cope. So, actually, you can modulate your gear with the work you are doing. So, if your work is very boring, actually multitasking and doing something in parallel can put you back into the right frame of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so, I guess I’m wondering if we don’t have the option of changing the thing that we’re doing, maybe we’re in a meeting and we think it’s boring, I suppose, internally, in our own brains we would maybe make up a game. Or what do you recommend there in terms of if it’s like here we are, we’re in a meeting, we’re supposed to be polite, and not whip out our laptops or phones or something? Any pro-tips there?

Mithu Storoni
So, if you’re in a meeting and you just have to attend the meeting, but not contribute or not take anything away from the meeting, then it’s a great opportunity to get into a creative state of mind, be in gear one, let your mind wander, and just use that as a break. So let your mind wander, let your attention wander, try not to dwell on anything, and just use that as a refresher, as a refresher palette for your mind.

If you have to stay awake during a meeting, and simply stay awake and not necessarily contribute, then doing something while you are in that meeting, so solving a problem with pen and paper discreetly while you’re there is another way of dealing with it. So, you add your workload, you increase your cognitive load to stay in the right state of mind.

So, the bottom line of all of this is really that we all function the best. We don’t just work the best when we do knowledge work. We actually function and we feel the best when we’re in this kind of middle speed, is a good way of imagining it, in this kind of middle speed, Goldilocks speed. And in order for the brain to put itself into that middle speed, you need, the brain needs, first of all, some kind of external stimulation, or the external urge to raise its own gear for some other reason.

So, for instance, if it’s receiving a lot of load the brain is going to work harder to cope with it. If cognitive load is very low, it’s going to get very bored and slip out of gear two. So, if that happens, then you can bring in extra cognitive load or bring in extra stimulation to keep the brain in this middle zone. Your mind, your brain is really an information-processing machine, and its optimal pace of processing that information is gear two. So, you need to give it enough information to keep it there. And if you swing over, if you overshoot, you end up in gear three.

So, if you’re going down from gear three to gear two, another way to look at it is you’re going down from gear three to gear two, then reduce the number of tasks you’re doing, reduce the difficulty of the task you’re doing, remove time pressure, remove uncertainty, and then adjust your environment to make it lower, slower, slower-paced, and then, of course, you can add in these physiological buttons through your muscle relaxation, through your autonomic nervous system.

So, ultimately, your brain, your mind is most efficient when it’s moving ahead at this middle speed of processing information. And the key, the art of being able to navigate yourself and stay in that zone while you’re doing knowledge work is a secret to hyper-efficiency because when you’re in that zone, the kind of work you’ll be doing will be the best you can do.

You can still do a lot of work while you’re bored. You can also do a lot of work while you’re in gear three. You can type hundreds of emails. You can even type them faster. But you won’t be able to solve a difficult differential equation in gear three, or plan a killer chess move in gear three. You’ll be able to play chess, but you’ll probably lose in the first 15 moves.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty-second bullet games.

Mithu Storoni
Exactly. Exactly. In gear one, you’re not engaged enough to think, to analyze either. But in gear two, in this middle zone, when your brain is just awake enough, alert enough, but not too wired, that’s when it processes information the fastest, and hence, it does it in the best possible way.

Pete Mockaitis
You said the word “refresh” earlier, and I’m curious, if we’re doing these 90- to 100-minute bouts, a break is just necessary. Do you have any suggestions on what is a supremely, or hyper-efficient, or excellent means of breaking to restore our brains’ capacity and capabilities quickly?

Mithu Storoni
Yes. So, when you’re thinking of a break, just to give you a little bit of background, we now know through some very elegant forms of brain imaging that when you’re doing intense mental work, something that requires you to pay attention, something like solving math equations, as your brain cells work, they produce byproducts because they have little factories in them, they need energy to work, they break, they use ATP. They produce byproducts.

And as you’re working, these byproducts accumulate and then they get cleaned away. Now there is some evidence, and I mention where this data comes from, in the book, that one reason for fatigue may well be that the rate at which you’re producing these toxic byproducts is faster than your ability to clear them away. And so, when you take a break and you stop the intensity of work, you’re immediately giving your mind, your brain an opportunity to recover. So that’s a bottom line.

Now how should that break be? So, in this context, think of the difference between the brain and muscle. So, if you’re lifting weights in a gym, the moment you stop lifting weights, your muscle relaxes. So, when you stop working your muscle, your muscle rests. But when your mind is working on its office chair, as soon as you move from the office chair and you even go and sit on a beach, your mind has not moved one inch. It carries on working. There is no stop switch on your mind.

And so, the kind of break you take has to be tailored to the state of mind you are in when you were working. So, if your work was just very, very tiring, it wasn’t in any way emotionally draining, emotionally triggering, just very, very tiring, and as soon as you stop, imagine you’re having to read a hundred boring emails that don’t really mean anything, but they’re just, your eyes are glazing over, that sort of state. If that’s the case, then as soon as you take a break, as soon as you stop what you’re doing, your mind will be able to relax.

So, in that sort of scenario, you can break and just do nothing. Just relax, you don’t have to do anything actively. But if your work was, or is, in a situation where you have a lot of emotional tension, you have a deadline you’re working for, you have a problem you really can’t solve you’re still struggling with, the moment your break approaches, you’re very likely to be what I call tired and wired, which means you are tired, you’re physically tired, you’re mentally tired, but your mind is still trying to process that information, so it has stepped on the accelerator, taking you right up to gear three to work through and your gear just won’t slide back.

And, intuitively, your listeners and you will realize what this is because it’s the kind of feeling you have at the end of a day when you’ve just really pushed yourself to keep working beyond when you were tired by having coffee, by carrying on. And so, by the time you get home, you can’t really switch off. You feel tired, but your mind is still buzzing. That’s what I describe as tired and wired.

If that’s the case, and you’re taking a break in the middle of the day, and you’re feeling like that, then for the first few moments of your break, it’s much more helpful to do something really absorbing that distracts you completely from the work you are working on. So, play a game on your phone. Something like Tetris has been shown to be very effective in this sort of context, other games like Tetris. Play a game on your phone or watch a video, watch something immersive, until you momentarily forget the work you were just doing. As soon as you do, stop and then you relax.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, first, we get into the forget zone and then we stop and relax. Is there any way to relax better or should we just chill?

Mithu Storoni
So, if you are in that forget zone, you can relax. I mentioned two kinds of breaks in the book. So, I mentioned a break at the end of 90 minutes when you just need to refuel. I also mentioned a type of break, which I call a kind of a reset break, and this is the kind of break you would take within your work segment. So, if you’re doing a 90-minute block of work and your work is really intense, you would probably need to pause for a little while every 20 minutes or so, if your work is really, really intense.

Or if your work is really, really boring, you will be forced to just kind of take a step back every 20 minutes or so and just be like, “Okay, I need to kind of wire my mind back up to cope with this.” When you’re taking a break in that context, what you’re trying to do during the break is put your mind back into gear one.

So, as an example, imagine you are just watching paint dry, okay, you’re doing some kind of work, which is really, really boring. Your mind, you’re in the right zone when you started that work. But about 10 minutes, 15 minutes into the work, your attention just floats away. You cannot bring it back and everything just gets very slow, lethargic. At that point, take a quick five-minute break and do something to bring you back into that zone. So that can be something physical. Physical is usually the easiest.

So, at that point, doing a quick bout of exercise will put you back in the best kind of mental zone where you can go back to doing that work focusing. So, an applicable real-world scenario of this is anything that requires you to keep monitoring something. So, monitoring a camera, monitoring other machines working, monitoring a system. Every 20 minutes or so, your attention is going to float, melt away, and there you take a very quick break to actually not relax you but to actually excite you back into the right mental zone.

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

Mithu Storoni
Certainly. So, another aspect of work today, as well as these three gears, is the idea of how everything we’ve always used to motivate us in the past are changing because the whole map of knowledge work is drastically changing at the moment. We are having to retrain, we’re having to reskill, we’re having to learn on the job, so there’s a huge amount of change taking place, and so this is a really great time to bring in the idea that has long been known as intrinsic motivation, and kind of repackage it and rework it for our era.

Because right now, we are working and living at a time where your job might not be guaranteed, the goal that you’re working towards might change tomorrow, a new LLM might come about tomorrow, a new version of the existing one might come about tomorrow, and everything you’ve been learning suddenly becomes obsolete the next day.

So, in this sort of landscape, you have to work with a different kind of motivation. So, we have to learn and we have to tailor and curate our jobs. Managers should be curating workflows, workloads, to generate as much as much of this intrinsic motivation as possible. And one way that seems to be a pretty powerful way of deriving it in any context, and intrinsic motivation is notoriously difficult to create, is by this phenomenon called learning progress.

It’s called learning progress mechanism. And one of the researchers behind Pierre-Yves Oudeyer from Paris, who is working with artificial agents, and his team has found how, whenever you’re working, you’re doing any kind of work, it’s really, really important to have physically kind of something that you can really physically, tangibly feel, obvious progress.

So, you have to be making rapid progress in something towards a goal and improving through skill or knowledge yourself in some way as fast as you can, as regularly and as solidly as you can, while you work. If you can engineer an element of this into one what you’re doing, you will have sufficient intrinsic motivation in your work, and that is going to be key in the workplace moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, that rings true. That gets me fired up, no doubt. Well said. Now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mithu Storoni
What I would say is my book was really heavily influenced by the work of Marshall McLuhan, who looked at technology and the effect it is having on our brains. One of the quotes that I really love, is that we have had a way of working all this time, where we’ve really been working like a marching soldier. We’ve been moving forward in regular steps in order. We need to change, and we need to now add flair to the way we work because that will help us get into these unique brain states and produce our best.

And he describes that as a transition from a marching soldier to working, spinning like a dancing ballerina. And that is really a metaphor for how our work needs to change in this new AI-assisted age of the knowledge age.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Mithu Storoni
So, The Medium is the Message is a great book that really gives you a wonderful overview of technology.

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

Mithu Storoni
So, I have a website, my name, www.MithuStoroni.com. I’m on LinkedIn, Mithu Storoni. I’m also on Twitter/X as @MithuStoroni.

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

Mithu Storoni
Tomorrow, whatever your routine is, just think about this conversation and tailor your day completely differently, adjust it to your routine, and then give us a feedback the day after as to how it went.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Mithu, this is fun. I wish you much hyper-efficiency.

Mithu Storoni
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Jul 25
0

981: Using AI to Enhance Your Reading, Notes, Memory, and Decisions with Kwame Christian

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Fellow podcaster Kwame Christian giggles with Pete as he shares his insights and lessons learned on a novel notetaking approach.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to listen and understand audio at 3X speed 
  2. How notetaking improves your decision-making 
  3. How AI can make a fun soundtrack for your life 

About Kwame

Kwame Christian is a best-selling author, business lawyer and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute (ANI). 

Following the viral success of his TedxDayton talk, Kwame released his best-seller Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life in 2018. He’s also a regular Contributor for Forbes and the host of the number one negotiation podcast in the world, Negotiate Anything – which currently has over 5 million downloads worldwide. Under Kwame’s leadership, ANI has coached and trained several Fortune 500 companies on applying the fundamentals of negotiation to corporate success. 

Kwame was the recipient of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2020 and the Moritz College of Law Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award 2021. He is the only person in the history of The Ohio State University to win alumni awards in consecutive years from the law school and the masters of public affairs program. That said, Kwame’s proudest achievement is his family. He’s married to Dr. Whitney Christian, and they have two lovely sons, Kai and Dominic.

Resources Mentioned

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Kwame Christian Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Kwame, welcome back.

Kwame Christian
Hey, thanks for having me, buddy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is fun. We are not going to talk about negotiation, or persuasion, or psychology directly, or diversity. We’re talking about taking notes, and we both are so excited.

Kwame Christian
So excited. So excited because we’ve been friends now for like five, six, seven years, and one of the things that brought us together is our nerdiness. And so, this is an opportunity for us to talk about this stuff we talk about all the time offline, so I’m pumped about this.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so you told us something that blew our minds in our podcast mastermind group, we got together. You were playing a text-to-speech audio on your phone at super high speeds, such that a couple of us said, “There is no way you understand what is being said there.” And you said, “I absolutely do.” And we’re like, “What? What is the story?” So, tell us, you started doing a note-taking thing. First of all, why? What were you trying to accomplish by doing that? And then we’ll walk into a little bit of the details of what you’re doing.

Kwame Christian
Yeah, man, it’s a fascinating story because it goes all the way back to undergrad. I had a friend who was blind, and he became blind in undergrad. So, he had to learn how to be blind, which was a really tough thing for him. And so, he was shadowing another lawyer, and instead of reading using Braille, she was reading using text-to-voice. And he said it was so fast that he wasn’t even able to identify that text, that voice as words. It was that fast.

And so, what I learned from him telling me that story is that you’re processing speed is a skill. With time, you can get it faster and faster and faster. So, from undergrad, I’ve been training myself to go from listening to things in regular speed to 1.25 to 1.5, and now, on Audible, it’s up to, I think, 3.5. That’s the max. But then, with the note-taking apps that I use, you can go up to, like, 600 words per minute.

And so, for me, the reason why I do this is because I’m an avid note-taker. When I read books, I take tons of notes, like 20, 30, and sometimes up to 60 pages of notes, size 12, single space. But I recognize that reading is nothing without retention. So, I want to make sure that I’m reviewing those notes with regularity, but I want to do it quickly. And so, this helps me to really not just consume a lot of information, but also retain a lot of information because I can review it really quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, so 600 words per minute, I think you said, which is about 4x, if we’re thinking about 150 words per minute as a typical speaking rate. And so, first of all, it just sounds amazing, like for a superhuman ability. So, you are telling, you’re going on the record, this is, as you know, being recorded, that you can understand words played at 600 words per minute.

Kwame Christian
Yes, and let me put a little caveat here, because you will, for sure, miss a couple of words every sentence. So, if it’s a text I’m completely unfamiliar with, with zero context, I won’t be able to do it. But, if it’s notes that I’m somewhat familiar with, and that I have some idea of what it is that we’re talking about, then I can follow it enough to retain the meat of the information. And if you want, I can pull it out and show listeners kind of what it sounds like. You want to do that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, let’s do it.

Kwame Christian
You want to?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I do. I do.

Kwame Christian
Okay, cool. Let’s see. Ah, philosophical articles. Great. And let me make sure the tempo is at the right thing. This is 605 words per minute.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right now, Kwame, what did he just say? Or she, I can’t tell.

Kwame Christian
You can’t tell. So, he was talking about Socrates and his philosophical approach, and then going deeper into other philosophical like ideologies, mindsets, thought process, things like that. And so, for me, it’s like, “All right, I read that previously, and so I just want to make sure I’m getting refreshers so I can keep it top of mind because I know that memory decays after time.” So, I know for the things that I really want to retain, I need to revisit them with regularity in order for it to really become encoded in.

So, for me, I know that this is something that I have visited before. So, this is me revisiting these notes, and so for me, memory is nothing without retention. So, I want to make sure that I’m going over these things with regularity so it becomes encoded in my memory at a deeper level.

Because, for me, as a content creator, so as a podcaster, it’s helpful to be able to go back and talk about studies and different methodologies for negotiation, and then also as a speaker too, and a recovering lawyer, I feel the need to cite my sources. So, if I’m talking about different perspectives and different approaches, I can say, “Well, this person approaches it this way, but on this topic, another person approaches it this way. And here’s a book reference for each of those so you can go deeper if you want to.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and I think that really is distinctive in terms of making content great, so that’s super cool. So, if anyone’s in disbelief about the speed thing, I have been playing. So, you use the, I believe, Voice Dream Reader app, and there’s a few I’ve seen out there. This one has a lot of history and a lot of street cred, it sounds like, with the blind community from the reviews I was gathering.

And so, I started doing it in terms of reading books, which it can do as well, and I was fascinated to see it didn’t take years to develop the skill of being able to understand rapid speech, but rather I was able to crank it up pretty good, like over 400, sometimes 500, so well over 3X, and understand what was happening. And it was fun for me, I was training that skill by also looking at the text because it highlights the text as you move down at the same time.

So, what I found interesting was it’s almost like when you can ride a bike in different gears and go faster depending on how much energy and oomph you’re ready to put into that thing. And so, too, I found, “Hey, my brain is ready to go. Let’s do this thing. I can go fast.” And I actually appreciate going fast. Like, it matches my state, and I’m not bored by what I’m reading. Instead, it’s like, “Hold on tight. Here we go.” And it’s cool.

Or other times, it’s like, “You know what? That just seems overwhelming right now. I don’t want to go there. That’s fine. We’ll slow it down to something a little bit more reasonable,” which still might be like 2x, 300 words per minute. So, that was eye-opening for me, just playing around with that a little bit and feeling like, if your brain is tempted to distraction, which mine certainly is, when you’re reading and you start thinking of something else, like, “Oh, wait, what did I just read?”

When I’m looking, the line is being highlighted and I’m hearing the audio, it’s like we’re not deviating from this text, and it’s very effective when you don’t want to read something, it’s like, “No, no, we are powering through this, every line right now.”

Kwame Christian
Oh, that’s smart. I’ve never thought about looking at it as I go, but I think that multimodal form of digesting would lead to greater retention, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think so. I think it has and I dig it. So, okay, we know it’s possible to listen at rapid speeds. You’ve done it. I’m kind of doing it. Blind people have done it for a long time, and it’s been helpful for you to retain stuff. So, give us a picture for like how is life different as a result of you having this as a regular practice? You take a lot of notes and you listen to review those notes at rapid speed. Is this just another Kwame quirk? Or to what extent is this truly enriching you and how?

Kwame Christian
Well, I think, like I said, the retention is big but it allows me to consume more information more quickly. So, I’ve shifted from not just doing audiobooks in this way, but also doing everything. Like, when we hung out in Washington, a couple months ago, you heard me reading my emails that quickly, and so it allows me to consume more information just in general, because now I’m putting everything through a program like that.

But the other thing that I found was an interesting side effect is that I feel like it helps me to be a better listener because, for me, I can listen and still be fully engaged with that person while thinking of what a follow-up question could be. And a lot of times, when people are acting like they’re listening but not really listening, they’re thinking about what’s going to come next, but now I’ve found that I can actually wholeheartedly engage with what the person is saying while anticipating what might be coming and then coming up with a follow-up question.

So, it’s made me a better podcaster because it feels like everybody is talking in slow motion. It’s really, really fascinating. And so, that also comes with a little comical downside, too. It also makes me incredibly impatient with content that is not accelerated. If something is just in one-time speed, I’m like, “I am wasting so much time here. Can you please go faster?” But in everyday life, when you’re actually engaging with people, it really does feel like a superpower, because listening feels less effortful.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. Let’s hear more about the potential downsides. So, you’re irritated by 1x content sometimes. That happens. What about just like the potential toll? I’m wondering, if feels like if you’re reading fast or listening to things fast, like you’re demanding more of the machine that is your body and nervous system and brain.

It’s almost like you’ve had a huge workout and you’re maybe fatigued afterwards. Is that a thing you’re noticing, in terms of like, “Whoa, more of my energy was sapped in that hour because I consumed more words in that hour,” much like more of your energy would be sapped on a fast bike ride of an hour than a slow bike ride of an hour?

Kwame Christian
Pete, I wish we would have had this conversation years ago because that was an element that I never considered. But this last Christmas break, every Christmas break, I take time to review my notes in 500 times speed and think through everything that I’ve done because I don’t just take notes from the books that I’ve read and the articles that I’ve read. I am kind of like my life stenographer. I’m sitting here just writing down every thought that I care to revisit, anything that I’ve learned that I want to retain, any insight.

So, I’m constantly taking notes, dictating notes into my phone, and then listening to them later. So, every month it can be over 100,000 words of Kwame notes that I’ve created. And then I started to realize a pattern. I started to realize that there was a pretty consistent cycle of burnout that was occurring at predictable times.

And so, for me, as a keynote speaker, constantly traveling, that takes a toll, and I started to recognize that I wasn’t recovering from those trips as quickly as possible. So, I need to reschedule the way that I do things, like making the days afterwards to have a little bit more space. So that helped with burnout. But I was realizing there’s still something else that’s taking a toll. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I realized that it was this pace that I was keeping with reading and retention.

And so, for the past few years, my goal has been to read – I use audiobooks, so I’m using the term reading loosely here – consume a book every week, taking those notes, and in the morning before I go to the gym, I would listen to those notes, I would review the book notes from the previous books that I’ve read, and during the day I’m listening to the book and taking notes, so it’s a lot on my brain, and I did not fully appreciate the toll it was taking. And to the point where, this year I’ve actually decided to pull back on the amounts of books that I’m reading because it was becoming just too much for me to do while still being well.

So, I’ve found that my mental health has improved as I’ve scaled back a little bit. So now I do it as I need to spot-learn specific things at specific times, but not really forcing myself to keep that pace. One book a week, reviewing the notes in the morning, it was just too much to keep up with, and it was leading to burnout. So, fatigue is real with this, because it does take a lot more to consume information in this way.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s good to know, and you have that set of options then. You could choose to listen at a variety of speeds based upon your energy and other demands for the day, for the week, and you got that going for you. So that’s pretty nifty. With regard to your note-taking, can you get a little bit precise with regard to, Voice Dream Reader is how we’re listening to or hearing the notes, but you say you’re dictating them to capture them? Or, what’s the capture side look like?

Kwame Christian
Capture side is pretty basic, just the iPhone Notes app. So, I would put it in the iPhone Notes app and then I would just copy and paste it into Voice Dream. And, actually, it might be helpful to go into the types of notes that I’m taking, because I talked about a couple of those things, but I can go a little bit deeper too.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, so it’s any thought you might care to revisit, and stuff from books that it was good. That’s what we got so far.

Kwame Christian
Yes, so those are the things, and then also decision-making. That’s been a big focus for me, because, for me, my philosophy, I believe that we just live life decision to decision, and so the quality of our life is going to be contingent upon the quality of the decisions that we make. So, if I can learn how to make better decisions, then I will have a better life. Pretty simple.

So, I would read a lot of books on decision-making, but then I recognized that those books are great and they have a lot of studies that study other people but there’s nobody studying me. That’s my job now. So, any decision that I make, Pete, like any decision that I make that was suboptimal, I write that down.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now we got here some juicy examples, Kwame, suboptimal decisions.

Kwame Christian
Everything. And, listeners, as well, this is how you know that I know Pete, because I know Pete likes to optimize. And when I used the term suboptimal, I know that word to be your fancy, okay. So, this is great. So, I’ll give an example. It goes down to the most mundane decisions. So, I was doing a keynote in Vegas earlier this year, and I was going down to breakfast, and I was closing the door to my room, and I said, “Ah, I forgot my Chapstick. It’s okay. I feel fine.”

I go down, I eat breakfast, and now my lips are dry because we’re in the desert, and I said, “I should have unlocked that door, opened it, and got the Chapstick because now I’m going to waste five minutes getting back upstairs in this massive hotel. I will never make this mistake again.” So, when I’m talking about every decision, that’s an example of how mundane these decisions go.

But then I think about business decisions, and I think about mistakes that I’ve made in the past, and then, you know, hindsight is 20/20, and I look back, and I say, “How did I not see this coming because it seems obvious to me?” But then when I review the notes, I recognize the emotions that were going through my mind, that were in my body as I was going through this process. I think about how I was feeling, I write down what I’m thinking and what led to the decision. What I was feeling, what led to the decision, who I talked to and how I felt before that conversation, and how I felt after the conversation.

And then I started to recognize patterns. I’m saying, “Okay, this was a bad decision, and I recognize that even though I had the data to make the right decision, I made the wrong decision based on emotionality. Why? Oh, in this situation, I had a conversation with this person, and then they complimented me. I’m recognizing I have a vulnerability, where if somebody compliments me, it makes it hard for me to make a decision subsequently that is not in their favor.”

And so, now I’m more mentally prepared to protect myself to separate the decision from the compliment. So, I’ll put more space between a decision if I feel particularly good about a conversation that I had about a person. And so, like those are the type of decision-making patterns that I want to pay attention to, because once you start to identify those patterns, you can start to anticipate when a bad decision will come, and then you can start to force yourself to put yourself in a better mental and emotional position to make a better decision in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
That is very beautiful. And I’m thinking, even the minute ones can pack big insights. I’m thinking about a time that I had a friend, and there was a bachelor party fun, woo, going on, and I remember I was kind of thirsty, and I thought, “Oh, I should go get some water from the bartender there.” But then I thought, “Oh, no, I don’t want to inconvenience them with just water, which is free and doesn’t produce any income for them or their establishment, or tip for them, and so I just won’t bother them. You know, I can make do and just drink some water later anyway.”

So, the next morning I was feeling very not great. Dehydrated plus, if you will, and I was thinking about, “Boy, I really should have just asked to get the water.” And I was like, “What’s that about? Why am I not doing that?” And then you realize, “Oh, here’s a pattern for me.” It’s like, “I really, really, really feel uncomfortable about putting people out, having them feel inconvenienced for the sake of my needs and preferences.”

And so, that’s good information and to really have at the fore when you’re making a subsequent decision, it’s like, “I feel not comfortable. I feel uncomfortable about this.” It’s like, “Well, maybe that’s because you’ve got this weird hang-up associated with inconveniencing other people to meet your needs, as in not asking the bartender for some water.”

And so, that kind of reflection and note-taking is handy to surface those things. It could be a tiny stimulus or prompt – Chapstick, cup of water from a bartender – and yet have a huge insight on the other side of it that has ripple implications for many decisions.

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And that’s when it becomes really fun, when you start to see these hidden patterns, and that’s the type of information that you can only get from evaluating and investigating yourself on a deep level. Because we can read all of these books, you and I both have podcasts, so we can talk to these incredible people who have incredible insights. But imagine if one of those incredible people was solely dedicated to investigating your life and trying to make it better.

And I recognize that has to be our responsibility because the ripple effects of these small things can be significant, and a lot of times you might not recognize it until you take the time to investigate it. And one of the things that’s really funny to me is when I sometimes go back to journal entries from years ago, like 2017, 2018, sometimes I will see the original thoughts that led to something that I do with regularity that I take for granted right now.

And that’s always really insightful because it shows me how you are with every decision, everything that we learn and then subsequently put into practice, we are really shaping who we are and changing our identity. So, right now, Kwame of 2024, I can listen to this and I can say to myself, “Yeah, this is how I see the world. This is how I navigate it. Obviously, why wouldn’t I?”

But then I forget how much time it took for me to build this part of myself up to make this a regular type of thing. And sometimes it takes multiple entries and multiple attempts to learn and put these things into place for it to become part of you, but I recognize that the more intentional I am about investigating things, the better I can be when it comes to making tough decisions.

So let me give a tangible example. So, for me, as an entrepreneur, I recognize that sometimes there are going to be times where, if I’m running a company, I want to have the best team possible, and that might require me to have to change the dynamics of my team by removing somebody from my team. And I remember the first time, we’ve been in a mastermind group for like five years, so you were seeing me go through this. It was like an existential crisis having to fire somebody because I had this belief that relationships should last forever. It’s an indictment on me as a leader to not be able to have this person with me till the very end.

And I recognize, through talking with you and the guys and lots of journaling, that it’s a problematic belief. It’s not true. I can overcome this. But I recognize that it took a lot of time and thought and intentionality to really evaluate those underlying beliefs that were leading me to feel the way that I’m feeling now. And so, now fast forward to this year, I had to let a couple people go. And each person, there’s a different emotional thing that was holding me back from making that decision.

And so, I was able to make, to do that evaluation much quicker, and, at the same time, at a much deeper level through this process to recognize those patterns of thinking that led me to make bad decisions in the past, to this time make the right decision. It was still very, very emotionally challenging, but I was able to get to that conclusion faster because of this process of self-evaluation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And those are definitely tricky emotional matters. And it’s funny, thinking about some of the mastermind group conversations, that’s often the case in terms of there’s a thing that we’re mostly sure should probably happen or not happen, and yet there is a little bit of uncertainty, but a lot of discomfort, and so we just stall for so long in terms of like launching this thing or shutting something down, and it goes way longer than it needs to because we are rational, cognitive creatures and also emotional creatures.

And it’s so helpful to, well, one, hey, I recommend mastermind groups for everybody, just as a general thought, as well as journaling and self-reflection. These are some of the top tools by which you can see what’s going on and, in fact, have a look in the past and see, “Oh, that’s pretty cool how much I’ve grown, how far I’ve come,” because in the day in, day out, you may not even realize it, just as you said, it seems like, “This is just how I operate. This is how I’ve always been.” No, it’s not.

Kwame Christian
Nope. Yeah, it’s powerful, man, and it’s very exciting, too. I think one of the things that was really helpful when it came to making better decisions, especially those emotionally heart-wrenching decisions, is I would journal how I would feel leading up to the decision, I would journal how I felt as I was making the decision, and then I would journal how I felt immediately after, and then as time passed. And so, it’s so interesting. It’s almost like watching a little kid jump into a pool for the first time, “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. I’m so scared. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m going to do it. Oh, that was scary. That wasn’t that bad. No, I feel really good now. Why didn’t I do that before?” And so, for me, one of the most empowering things is how I feel after the bad, the good decision. And I recognize that my emotions will lead me to make bad decisions that might feel good in the moment but feel bad for a very long time, and then I can set myself free with a good decision.

Now, the good decision will feel bad in the moment but will feel good after the fact. And so, when I see that freedom afterwards, I’m saying, “I’m not going to focus so much on the decision as I am going to focus on the future feeling of freedom after making the good decision.” And so, I’m like, “I want to make future Kwame happy. What would make future Kwame happy? I know Kwame in the present will feel really bad as he’s making this tough decision, but the future version of myself will appreciate it.”

And so, when I think about it through the lens of making future Kwame happy, that also helps me to have the right perspective, because I’m trying to play the long game. Usually, when it comes to good decision-making, it really comes down to prioritizing long-term benefits over short-term rewards. And when I continuously remember that, and I can see evidence of that throughout my life in this journal, then it helps me to feel confident in the decision, even if I don’t feel like doing the right thing in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Wisdom. Wisdom. So, you’re taking these notes, and I’m curious about the nuts and bolts here. Are they tagged by these categories? Or is it just one giant chronological situation? How do you find the relevant stuff from months past? What’s kind of the system that makes it work? We know how that gets captured. We know how it gets reviewed at rapid speed. How does it get organized such that it’s workable for you?

Kwame Christian
All right. Now, Pete, be ready to be disappointed because the organization is not strong. It is just a big old blob of notes, and that’s really what it is. But what I’ve started to do with time is categorize it by month. So, what month am I in, so I could go back into specific months now, but before it was, I would just put all of these notes into one iPhone notes document until the note became so big that the note wasn’t functioning anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow, I’ve never gotten there before.

Kwame Christian
And then I would say, “Oh, okay, time to start a new one.” And so, the last year, I think it was eight different notes, like journal entries that were big, and each of them was probably and listening at, because I was listening at it for a long period of time so I was at like 400 or 500 words per minute as I’m reviewing that during Christmas break. Each one is about 10 to 12 hours long, so it’s a substantial amount of notes.

And so, I did the word count for the last year, it was over a million words of notes that I took. But this year I’m trying something new that’s been really helpful, and it was categorizing by month and giving every month a theme. So, what is the theme? And so, February, I had to let some folks go, so it was red February.

I had to make some really tough decisions, so I’m like, “Listen, okay, so I need to make these tough decisions in my company. What other tough decisions do I need to make in my life? What other things do I need to let go of?” So, I was focusing on some bad habits, some other things. I’m like, “All right, cool. I’m going to make some cuts this month.” And then I realized, red February hurts a lot. So, I said, “March is all about mindset. It’s mindset March. What can I do to be well again, to be more at peace?”

And so, I started to try to approach business as a meditation, approach life as a meditation, “How can I focus on my breathing through all of the decisions that I’m making, through all of the activities that I’m taking? And the worse that I’m feeling, the more I’m going to focus on my breathing. Can I turn life into a meditation?” And so that’s what March was about.

And then we were launching a program, Negotiate Anything Premium, and so April was all about just focusing on revenue. So how can I focus on making decisions that are geared towards revenue? Because going through the notes, I recognized that a lot of the decisions that I was making, they were about status. They were about image. They look good from the outside but the revenue really wasn’t there to substantiate the continuation of a lot of those strategies.

So, I’m like, “Let me evaluate this from a really focused business perspective. What can I do to focus on increasing revenue and increasing impact that we make with that revenue?” And so, that was the focus. So going through these months thematically has been really, really helpful because it’s not just an evaluation of what is occurring, it’s also helping me to make decisions in a way that help me to move my life in a specific direction with more intentionality.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s phenomenal. And so, then when you look back on things, it sounds like you just periodically are just listening kind of like often. But if you’ve got something from 18 months ago, you’re probably not going to listen to that, are you? You’re probably listening to the things you had one or two or three months ago. Is that accurate?

Kwame Christian
Yeah, 100%, because there’s limited utility in going that far back unless, honestly, if I just want to be entertained. But I try to go through it within 12 months, but this year I’ve been trying to go month to month. So, once I finish January, I’m going to review January and February, review February and March and so on. But again, that was leading to a lot of exhaustion, and so I’ve been actually challenging myself to make fewer notes and listen to the notes less. So, I’m still listening to it, but just trying to be in the moment.

Because part of what I discovered about myself in March is that a lot of times I can get so in my head about these things, it’s led to some overthinking in places where I should be in flow. So, when you think about just the psychology of flow, when you’re in that flow state, you’re not actively, really consciously, logically thinking about things. Your body and mind, they’re just kind of responding and reacting, and I know that I’ve consumed enough information, I’ve learned enough through my life that I can flow really well when I let go.

And so, it’s almost like I’m at this point where I’m trying to balance that depth of thoughts and my analytical thinking with my ability to let go and flow a little bit more. And so, to your point about avoiding burnout, I recognize that I have to kind of slow down with this retention, this process, because it’s been leading to burnout, and flow has been a focus.

So, I’ve actually, the last couple of months, this is going to sound very bizarre, but the last couple of months, I’ve been challenging myself to listen to more music and do less, and that’s actually been more rewarding, because I find, when I’m in conversation, when I’m on stage doing keynotes, when I’m doing podcasts and things like that, even when I’m just playing with my sons Kai and Dominic, I’m more present because I’m not over-analyzing things. So, it’s about finding that balance, because anything done out of proportion can be problematic.

Pete Mockaitis
And I don’t think you’re alone with that music comment. I remember at one point, Apple Music had a podcast advertising campaign, so it was on, they were advertising Apple Music offer when it was newer on Podcasts. And I was like, “Boy, there’s so much talk and noise and stuff going on. Like, boy, you know what’s great? Music.”

And I just thought that was such a novel like, “Wow, do you need to sell us on listening to music? It’s like an ancient human delight.” It’s like, “You know what’s great? Eating food. Give it a shot.” But, no, it’s like they’re meeting them where they’re at, “Hey, regular podcast listener, remember music? That’s a great thing to listen to as well.” So, you’re not alone there, and it’s good to be reminded.

Kwame Christian
Absolutely. And now, Pete, I am not perfect. Now, I don’t think I’ve told you this, this newest nerd move that I’ve been doing. So, I’ve taken the notes that I’ve written, like all, like millions of words, and I’ve put it into ChatGPT, and I said, “Okay,” because there are these new apps that are AI music generators.

And so, I don’t know if you’ve ever used these things. The one that I use is Suno AI, and you can give it lyrics and describe the vibe that you want to create, and then it’ll make the music, just brand-new music just off the cuff. And so, I told ChatGPT to take the themes that come up the most frequently in my journal, “What are the top 10 themes?” It’s like decision-making, family, legacy, business, those type of things, just, “What are the top 10 things? All right. Now I want you to make lyrics for music off of those things.”

So, I take those lyrics and put it into Suno AI, and so now a lot of times, where I’m like, “I’m going to vibe to some music, but I want to make sure my music has a good message, and I’d love it if it was talking about things that are relevant to me. Because, I don’t know, when I’m working out, I’m a family man, I try to help my community, talking about drugs and murder in my music. That’s not really the vibe, but I just like the beat.” But now I can take my journal entries and turn them into cool lyrics. It’s motivating.

Kwame Christian
It’s so powerful, I love those things. And, Pete, if you want to, it takes 60 seconds to make this. You want me to make you something, a song for you real quick? I can do that right now.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yep, let’s roll with it, see what happens. 

Kwame Christian
Yeah. Well, now, this app, it has the integration in there. So, it’ll make it yourself. So now, I’ll give it the inspiration. Let’s do customize. I’ll just give it some lyrics. It’ll randomize it. I’ll just say, “Create an inspirational song for my friend named Pete Mockaitis. He is a family man, a businessman, a hard worker, a deep thinker, always looking to optimize decision-making and life in general, and he loves to help people.”

Pete Mockaitis
Can it be a country song?

Kwame Christian
Oh, yeah.

Kwame Christian
So, I’ll say country song, male vocals, you know, inspirational, you want inspirational?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, yeah.

Kwame Christian
A little vibe. Okay, the song title it chose is “Rise and Shine, Pete.”

[Song playing]

♪ Rise and shine, Pete ♪ ♪ Family man, true and sweet ♪ ♪ Hard work in the ground, deep thinker, sharp mind ♪

Kwame Christian
It’s not bad. It’s not bad.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s good enough so I want to know what comes next.

Kwame Christian
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, “Why did you pull away from the microphone?”

Well, now you got me thinking about affirmations, like if you could put those to music, that might make it more interesting or more impactful, because that’s, ideally, what music should do. It stirs within you emotion and the human spirit. So, that’s fun. Okay. Wow, Kwame, you’re putting all of us to shame, right? We’re just brushing our teeth in silence, and you’ve got custom AI generated inspiring songs and/or rapid playing notes of brilliance. I just feel honored that I was able to draw you in a game of chess. That’s my greatest achievement with this great mind.

Kwame Christian
That was such a good game. It was a great game, and I think it was the perfect ending too. It was a draw. It was a lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think you could’ve beaten me if you really wanted to put in the time, but I’m glad you didn’t. So, anything else we should mention before we hear about another round of your favorite things?

Kwame Christian
Yeah, so check out Negotiate Anything Premium. Of course, we have the podcast Negotiate Anything. It’s the number one negotiation podcast, but we have a premium offering for subscribers who could listen ad-free and some bonuses, “Ask me anything,” so you could ask me questions. I answer your negotiator-related questions. But that’s the main thing that we’re working on right now. We’re really excited about the way it turned out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote?

Kwame Christian
Yes. So, for me, one thing that I’ve been enjoying, and this is a quote I made up, “You don’t get bonus points for not using your resources.” And I feel like a lot of times, when it comes to the difficult situations that we find ourselves in, we almost think that there is some kind of valor in not accepting help from others and not using the resources available. And the people who are the most successful are the people who utilize the resources at their disposal.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Kwame, that’s really, I love that. That’s hitting me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite study?

Kwame Christian
So, my favorite study that I’ve been referring to a lot for my negotiation clients is a study on the principle called anchoring. So, I believe it’s the most powerful negotiation technique at our disposal and it’s really more of a psychological principle. It’s like a priming effect. And so, with anchoring, what you do in negotiation is you start off the negotiation with the most aggressive request that you can reasonably justify with the data available.

And so, what they found is that just having a more aggressive first offer dictates the outcome more than almost anything in negotiation.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Kwame Christian
I kid you not. And so, well, they did as study in real estate, and so they found that with anchoring, even with experienced realtors, it worked for them. So, what they had them do is go into a home and look at the home, and then there would be a list price. And so, look at the list price and then look at the comps. And then you would make a decision on what you think is a fair price for this home.

And so, in the study, what they did was they said, “All right, the list price is, let’s say, $200,000 in this scenario,” and then in the other scenario, the list price was $250,000. In the other scenario, the list price was $300,000. But the comps were all the same. And so, they’re like, “All right, come up with your estimation for what you’d think is a fair price for this home.” And, not surprisingly, based on the psychology of anchoring, the people who were primed with that anchor of 200 guessed an  average less than the people who were primed with 250, who then guessed an average less than the people who were primed with 300,000.

And so, my favorite anchoring study was actually the Gandhi study. So, what they had them do is they separated people into two different groups, and so they asked them ridiculous questions but they asked them the same question, the same second question. So, the first question they asked to Group A was, “Do you think Gandhi was older than or younger than 13 when he died?” Right? Ridiculous. Every picture we see of Gandhi, he’s very old.

And then the other group, they said, “Do you think Gandhi was older than or younger than 130 when he died?” Again, ridiculous. He was old, but not 130. And then they asked them the same second question, “How old do you think Gandhi was when he died?” And the group that was primed with 13 guessed on average 20 years younger than the group that was primed with 130.

So even when there is not legitimate information to back it up, the priming effect from anchoring still works. And so, that’s why, for me, with my negotiations, this is the simple rule that I follow. If I have as much information or more information than the other side, I’m always going to make the first offer because anchoring is so powerful.

If I have less information than the other side, I don’t have enough information to give a competent anchor because I might undervalue it unwittingly, so I’ll counter in that case. But anchoring is so strong, I always find a way to make the first offer if I have enough information to make a competent first offer.

Pete Mockaitis
Undervalue it unwittingly. Well, I guess if you’re on the purchase side, the buyer side, you would want a lower price.

Kwame Christian
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s like, “Hey, this isn’t going to work unless I can get a customer acquisition cost of less than $1,000.” So, that’s a form of anchoring. It’s like, “Okay. Well, hey, we got the impressions and the conversion rates and da-da-da, so you’re exerting the pull.” I’ve heard that even judges who see irrelevant numbers, like a housing street address, different housing street addresses in a document, can, in turn, impact their judgment for what’s an equitable distribution of assets. It has nothing to do with the case at hand, it’s just a number. It got in your brain and then it’s in there.

Kwame Christian
Yup. And, Pete, with these studies, it’s like the researchers almost got playful with it because it seems like they’re saying, “How far can we push this nonsense?” Because they did a study where they anchored with the last four digits of a phone number. So, the people who had nine, eight, and seven, as the first number, they were anchored different from the people who had like 0, 1, 2, or 3, just based on those numbers.

So, back when I was practicing law more frequently, when I was making demand letters, if I was asking for a lot more money, I would write the date out numerically. I would write it with as many numbers as possible. But when I was asking for a lower number, I would just write out the date, and say January 1, you know, and not even put the rest of the date because I’m like, “Everything has an impact. I don’t know what that impact is, but I know what anchoring is going to do, so I’m going to go small numbers if I want a small number, big numbers if I want a big number.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Hey, I know it said 10,000, you were hoping for $50,000? But $10,000 is a lot more than January 1, so, I mean, in a way, it’s a bargain.” Well, yeah, that is wild, and I think a good lesson. And that’s also a good lesson just in preparation, in terms of knowing we are hyper-susceptible to these.

Do your research in advance to determine what is a number you can truly live with so you have that influence inside of you, as opposed to, “Well, you know what, we’re going to take a call and just kind of see what they come up with.” It’s like, “That’s kind of playing a dangerous game. You may find that you accept an unreasonable thing as reasonable just because you didn’t get yourself settled somewhere sensible in advance.”

Kwame Christian
Yeah. And, again, Pete, this gets really deep too because, you know, I like to make jokes every once in a while, but in a negotiation, I might make an anchoring joke, right? So, imagine you’re negotiating for a higher salary, and so you go into your boss and you act all serious, and you know a reasonable price might be, let’s say, $150,000 is reasonable. You’re at $140,000, you’re trying to get to $150,000 that’s a reasonable leap.

And so, you say, “Well, I know this might be a little bit awkward but I wanted to have a conversation about compensation.” “All right. Well, what did you have in mind?” “Well, I was thinking is would I want $653,000? No, I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding. But honestly, what I think is reasonable, if we could get to 155,000, that’s what I’d like.”

So, if you say something ridiculous as a joke, you have a little bit of tension that is diffused with a little silly humor, and then you give the real number, the contrast principle still has an effect, “I’m going to do a fake anchor with a joke, then do the real anchor, base it with data and science and the research.” But then it makes whatever you’re asking a lot more reasonable in content, when you consider the contrast principle there, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, then that gives you so much leeway with your joke in terms of if you say, “Well, I saw an article about a prompt engineer getting paid $360,000. And I said I know how to talk into, or type into ChatGPT, so that’s kind of what I was hoping for. But the market comp suggests to me…”

Kwame Christian
Exactly. Because you can think about it on the other side. Like, the anxiety, like the adrenaline will start pumping, they’re like, “Are you seriously going to ask? Oh, thank goodness.” And one of the best emotions to feel that’s truly undervalued is relief. Give them that feeling of relief, and now it just changes the whole vibe but also has a significant psychological impact.

Pete Mockaitis
And, you know what’s funny, I’ve also done that with my wife. If I have to deliver some bad news, it’s like, “Okay, so everybody’s safe. There were no injuries. We are financially secure. The structure of the home is still intact. However, I broke this thing and I’m sorry.” It’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Kwame Christian
Exactly. That’s a perfect example. Great example.

Pete Mockaitis
Because it does. It’s like, “Okay.” Because in terms of relief, she’s like, “Everybody’s safe.” “Okay. It must be pretty bad if that’s where we’re starting. Oh, okay. You just broke the dishwasher. Okay, that was dumb. You shouldn’t have broken the dishwasher, but I’m not going to give you a hard time about it because I guess you’re right, in the grand scheme of things, we’re okay.”

Kwame Christian
I love that example. That’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Kwame Christian
Favorite book. Right now, I am really liking Unlearning Silence by Elaine Lin Hering. So, she is a Harvard law grad.

Pete Mockaitis
We had her on the show.

Kwame Christian
Oh, you had her? Oh, great. That’s great. Yeah, Elaine is amazing. And so, with her approach, it’s not just about the negotiation excellence because she has that in spades. It’s also about recognizing that sometimes people don’t feel comfortable standing up and speaking out about the things that are really meaningful for them. So, with that book, she analyzes what could be holding you back and then what you need to do to have that conversation and then how to have it more effectively.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Kwame Christian
Favorite tool right now, I mean, it would be hard not to say tools like Voice Dream and Suno AI and ChatGPT after this conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
You got it. And favorite habit?

Kwame Christian
My favorite habit right now is I’m really enjoying going to the gym. That’s something we bond over, too. I’m recognizing that it is a keystone habit for me because, for me, like the gym has been a core source of socialization. And you would love this because I recognize there was a hole in my social game when it came to creating relationships out of thin air. Like, if there’s somebody that I don’t know at all and have no connection with, I didn’t know how to just go up to that person and start a conversation.

So, as I was working out, I was learning how to do that because I read in a book written by a spy, The Code of Trust, Robin Dreeke. He talked about how spies would approach people and start organic conversations out of nothing. And I was like, “No way it’s that easy.” So, I started to hone that skill at the gym. And so, for me, after five years of doing that, because of course I’m keeping track, I have a list now of 306 people that I have met in the gym over the past few years.

Pete Mockaitis
This is one facility, 306 people.

Kwame Christian
It’s two gyms now, two gyms.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my gosh. Wow, hardcore.

Kwame Christian
But yeah, that’s still a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
You go to two different gyms for your working out?

Kwame Christian
Well, I moved. So, it’s like 10 minutes away, right? It’s the same gym, different locations, but it’s been great. And what’s been funny, Pete, is that I’ve made some really great relationships there. I’ve had people who became employees of the company. That’s how I closed Chase Bank as a client with just making these relationships from the gym. So, yeah, physically, it’s been great.

It’s been helpful in terms of pushing myself harder in the gym. It helps me to understand how I can push myself harder in life, make these social connections. I feel a lot smarter because I have more energy during the day, and my family and my colleagues at work, they can tell days that I miss the gym. They’re like, “Hmm, something’s off Kwame. Did you go to the gym?” I was like, “No, I didn’t go to the gym today.” Yeah, they can tell. So going to the gym has been really, really helpful, not just for physical health but also mental health.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I’m curious. Well, we got to have you on yet again, because I’m imagining, so let’s just say here I’m filling up a water bottle, and you are also in line to fill up your water bottle, what might you say to me here in this gym situation where we find ourselves in?

Kwame Christian
Ah, yes. Okay, so this is the move. This is the move. What you do is you make an observation that both of you can appreciate or recognize.

Pete Mockaitis
“Water is good, huh?”

Kwame Christian
Yeah, “Water is pretty cold today, right, buddy?”

Pete Mockaitis
But, no, seriously though, it’s kind of tricky, like I can’t. I’m in that situation. Like, maybe you want to talk to somebody for any number of reasons, and that’s what I think come up with is something really lame like, “I sure am thirsty. How about you?” And then I think, “Don’t say that. That’s dumb.” So, what do you come up with?

Kwame Christian
So, sometimes it is as simple as like, “Hey, I’ve seen you in the gym so many times, I feel like I should introduce you myself. Hi, I’m Kwame.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s it?

Kwame Christian
That usually works. I usually would do that with guys. Approaching a woman is different. Because of the dynamic in the gym, you have to be really mindful of that. But sometimes it’s a unique exercise that they might be doing and it’s just genuine curiosity. None of it is fabricated. I’ll say, “What? I’ve never seen that before. What do you…what do you…what does that…what does that do? Like, why do you do it that way?”

So, I’ll ask for advice, and they say, “Oh, yeah, it works the rotator cuff in that way.” I was like, “Ah, I’ve had shoulder problems. That’s really helpful. My name’s Kwame, by the way.” Or if I see shoes that I’ve never seen before, I’m like, “I really like that pattern. I’ve never seen that color combination.” “Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate it. I got it because of blah, blah, blah.” Start the conversation there. And then just say, “Oh, I’m Kwame, by the way.”

And so, whenever you introduce yourself, then people always reciprocate, and then you just build from there. And so, now it’s just like gym, “Hi’s” turn into, “Hey, how are you doing? Oh, what are you up to?” and then the relationship deepens. But you definitely want to respect people where it’s like, “Oh, you make that introduction, but you can recognize they prefer to be left alone.” You can get that vibe, and I think the background and negotiation and body language can help too because you pay attention to the person’s feet and the orientation of the feet.

So, if their feet are staying square with you, they want to stay engaged in the conversation. If I say see the feet start to shift in the other direction, I recognize they want to leave, and then I say, “Hey, well, listen, let me let you get back to the workout. I just wanted to introduce myself. I hope you have a great day,” and then that’s it. And then you just build from there.

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

Kwame Christian
LinkedIn is the best place. So, if you want to connect, I post on LinkedIn every day. Of course, we have the podcast. The podcast comes out every day, and if you like cute children, follow me on Instagram. That’s another place I frequent, too.

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

Kwame Christian
Yeah, I would say start thinking about your decision-making process. What is it that really moves you to make decisions? Because a lot of times, you’ll be surprised. Because I used to think, I am a deep thinker, clearly, because of the conversation, but I didn’t recognize how much emotion was my emotions were swaying my decisions, and especially what emotions were swaying my decisions.

Because I often thought about negative emotions swaying decisions negatively, but a lot of my bad decisions were made because of the positive feelings I was feeling at the moment too. So, just start taking notice of the decisions that you’re making, and how you were thinking and feeling, especially feeling leading of that decision, and that’s how you can start to optimize decision-making so you can start to have a better life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kwame, this has been a treat once again. Keep on rocking.

Kwame Christian
Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, buddy. Appreciate it.

Apr 29
0

957: How to Push Past Discomfort and Expand Your Comfort Zone with Dr. Marc Schoen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Dr. Marc Schoen discusses the critical role discomfort plays in our lives—and offers powerful techniques for getting better at managing it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we need more—not less—discomfort
  2. Everyday techniques to build your discomfort tolerance 
  3. The 45-second trick that helps you handle stress better 

About Marc

Dr. Marc Schoen is an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine where he specializes in Boosting Performance and Decision Making Under Pressure and Mind-Body Medicine. He works extensively with elite athletes, professional and college, as well as, executives and UCLA medical students in strengthening their ability to thrive under pressure, and in competitive and uncomfortable conditions. His method of Discomfort Training and Pilates for the Brain builds hardiness and resilience, by rewiring the fear region of the brain which is responsible for Performance Under Pressure.

Resources Mentioned

Dr. Marc Schoen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Marc, welcome!

Marc Schoen

Yes, very fun to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. I have listened to your book, Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience twice, partially because I think your voice is so soothing. I guess that’s the hypnotist in you. But I would love to kick us off by hearing what’s a particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about us humans and how we perform best in your many years of working in mind-body medicine?

Marc Schoen

The biggest discovery, I would say, is that I was trained to believe that performance really had to do with controlling pressure or discomfort. And what I found is that, in reality, that’s not really what it is. It’s that we all should be feeling some amount of discomfort. And it’s not the discomfort alone that impairs performance. It’s that it’s our reaction to discomfort. And I have a great two studies on that, if that’s okay to elaborate on.

One was a great study done right around the start of the Afghanistan War, where they took two groups of people, the general infantry and the Special Forces, and they subjected them to a very intense, grueling workout. And the hypothesis was, is that the general infantry would show much higher signs of stress in the body, while the Special Forces would show very little stress.

Well, what they found out is that the Special Forces actually had a higher stress response than the general infantry, but the difference was they were able to parlay that stress response into productive action and, therefore, bring down the stress response, while the general infantry continued to hover in that higher level.

And that really is something that I have seen in several studies that I’ve done, whereas we can train people to manage discomfort and pressure better. But it doesn’t mean they will report that they’re not stressed, but their physiological response shows that they are managing the stress far superior than those who do not receive that kind of training.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s beautiful. Well, I think we could all use a little bit more of that. Did you say there were two studies?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, that was my main study on it, and then the second study was the Afghanistan study. That was not mine. That was someone else’s study.

So, two studies. The Afghanistan study, and the second study was mine, my own. And that was one where I had people who, in their everyday life, come in, report just the stress levels they’re having at work, and every day took blood measures of them, then trained a group into managing the discomfort and the pressure better, and their blood measures, which were cytokine measures, called Interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor, those people that received that kind of training had a far reduced inflammatory response, but they still reported being stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, we’re going to dig deep into what training consists of but, first, maybe let’s hear the big picture in terms of the big message behind your book Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience. What’s the core thesis here?

Marc Schoen

The core point of it has to do with discomfort. And I think of it this way, is that here we are in this advanced technological society, and it’s done a great job of really limiting our discomfort in our lives. But the paradox of it all is that, even though we have less discomfort, theoretically, we’ve become far more sensitive to being uncomfortable. So, the premise of the book is, “Okay, how do we learn to manage discomfort without precipitating the fear response, like the fight or flight response?”

Pete Mockaitis

And that is a powerful message and question, and so rich and apt, I think, for our time. I’ve also enjoyed Michael Easter’s book, The Comfort Crisis, which explores some of these bits as well. You’ve got a fun word you use frequently in the book. Can you tell us the definition of agitants? What is that? And tell us a little bit of the story for how it is we’ve come to find ourselves here in this place with greater comforts and yet less resilience to discomforts?

Marc Schoen

Yes, I call it the comfort zone dilemma, is that we all strive to be in our comfort zone. And no doubt, it feels good to be in the comfort zone, to be a non-stressed organism, but the downside is, if we take refuge in this comfort zone, what we end up doing is that actually shrinking our comfort zone because we become more and more uncomfortable with the idea of getting out of it. It’s the effect is a lot today.

I see so much of this today, is that, as this shrunken comfort zone happens, we get many more mental symptoms, particularly phobias: fear of getting on the freeway, fear of flying, fear of closed places, or fear of heights. And so, we want to be challenging our comfort zone. If we just fall back into it, we are setting ourselves up for poor performance and many mental symptoms.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, what is the concept of agitants?

Marc Schoen

So, agitants comes from the word agitation. And I’m very interested in, as our body gets more and more agitated, or has agitants in it, is that we cause a certain sort of high bar, I think of it, and the more agitants we have that exceeds the high bar, the more we are likely to impair performance and have psychological, physical symptoms. But if we can keep our agitants below that high bar, we tend to perform well and have no symptoms. But the key point of this is not the absence of agitants, but rather the well-management of agitants.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, is agitants the same as stress and agitation? Or what is the distinction or the core of this concept?

Marc Schoen

Well, I think of it more as a warming up of the body, heating it up. So, like, we all are theoretically around 98.6 is our basal temperature, and we do okay if we get into the low 99s, we may feel a tiny bit off. But once we start overheating and getting above 100, then our performance is very much affected. So, I like agitants more as a continuum, rather than thinking of we’re stressed or not stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, certainly. And so then, and for a given stressor, we may very well experience a different internal agitants response, like whether something gets us really steamed and furious, or a little bit like, “Ah, it’s kind of annoying, but I’ll shrug it off.”

Marc Schoen

Yeah, I just find it better to refer to that because of that continuum, rather than that you either have it or don’t have it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, can you walk us through the history, the chronology, the narrative of how we found ourselves in this place with lots of comfort, and yet a shrinking comfort zone? And you suggest it’s not just the smartphone but this journey starts much earlier.

Marc Schoen

I really think it starts as prehistoric humans, where humans learned to have an instinct to avoid being uncomfortable because the brain is pretty black and white about this. So, if we start feeling discomfort, then the brain starts experiencing a threat. So, in the early days, obviously, that threat was not enough food, or cold, or a mountain lion, or someone throwing a spear at us.

So, we learn real quickly to become sensitive to any impending discomfort and threat. And those humans that were capable of being able to respond effectively to that, live a whole bunch longer than those who are more tight-beat folks that were, “Oh, I’ll be fine,” and they just didn’t live long enough to propagate. And so, we’re a product of worriers and people that are constantly concerned that something bad will happen.

So, it’s natural that we would evolve more and more as a society to want to limit our discomfort because it just feels so much better. But that’s the ultimate trap, is that by continuing to pursue this path of greater comfort, which has really come significantly with technological advance, we’re losing that discomfort muscle so it atrophies, so we’re less capable of responding to the world.

And here’s, like, I think a wonderful example of this. We are in a world with tremendous amounts of psychological resources. And to help people do well and manage resilience and become hardy, but yet with all of that, and all of these technological advances, we have more mental illness than ever, and our troops are more likely to die from their own hands than they are from enemy fire. So, what’s happened is that we, as a society, have become less hardy, more fearful, and so that’s what’s happened to us.

Pete Mockaitis

Ooh, that’s tricky. And you say that in many ways that the march of technological progress has contributed to that, whether it’s microwaves and fast foods and convenient packaged foods, it’s like we don’t have to sit in even hunger or discomfort for long at all.

Marc Schoen

So true. And look how quickly we can create perfection by just tweaking things on the computer, making ourselves look better, sound better, or edit our responses. And not to mention, this was sort of what you alluded to is the issue of delayed gratification. We don’t have to wait long, do we, for gratification anymore? So, we don’t get uncomfortable in the same way we did in earlier times.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, bringing this to careers, in particular, could you tell us a story of how this scenario we find ourselves in, with a relatively tiny comfort zone, has been harmful to someone’s career, and what they did to turn it around and the cool results they saw on the other side of that training?

Marc Schoen

One great example was, some years ago I was sent a fellow that wanted to be drafted into the NBA. He was a senior year at the university, so he knew this is a make it or break it year.

And so, while he was playing during the year, he was never, by the way, historically a very good free throw maker. He’s always like around 60%, but now here he is in this last season, and many of the games being nationally televised, is that he’d get to the free throw line and freeze. He would push the ball rather than just be relaxed, and then his percentage went from 66% or 68% into the high 30s. So, he was having lots of pressure, and then of course freezing under the pressure.

So, I would go to Pauley Pavilion where he would play, and every time he got to the free throw line, the crowd would go, “Oh, no.” You just hear this large moan of 15,000 to 17,000 people. So, I had him come in, and I asked him questions, “What is your memory?” And this is so important for the bigger question that you’re asking, “What’s your memory of being under pressure?” And his memory was oral reports in school, and getting up to do an oral report and being nervous and shaking, and then the kids teasing him about his inability to talk.

So, now, years later, he goes to the free throw line, it’s like going up there for an oral report, and then when the whole crowd starts moaning, it pushes that old button and he freezes up. So, that’s a good example. So, what the solution was is that we couldn’t stop the pressure that he was feeling. Didn’t want to. What we wanted to do to make it so that the pressure, which is uncomfortable, no longer pushed the fear response.

Pete Mockaitis

And how does one make it such that that occurs?

Marc Schoen

It is possible to create a physical, emotional state in the brain that neutralizes the fear region of the brain, as many of you their listeners know is the amygdala part of the brain. So, what we do is put someone under pressure, when they’re uncomfortable, create this physical state in the brain. Hypnosis is the big way I do it, and it will block the fear response. So, now we’re having someone be uncomfortable, and learned that no fear is associated with it, and that’s how it stops.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool.

Marc Schoen

Neuro-conditioning.

Pete Mockaitis

Neuro-conditioning. Hypnosis. Okay. And you said you had another story.

Marc Schoen

Another story is more directly related to business. I see a lot of folks that are young entrepreneurs, and have come up with a fabulous concept, made a lot of money, and venture capitalists come in to give them more funding for their company. And it was their idea, their intuitions, their hard work that created the success, but now you have the venture capital people, working with someone that’s a lot younger, and the entrepreneurs can get very intimidated by these people with their mathematical models, being older, putting pressure on them, second guessing their decisions.

And so, what happens is they start getting frozen up inside, starts second-guessing themselves, start losing confidence, start basically bowing to the pressure, which isn’t necessarily good because the venture capitalists aren’t the ones that created it, nor the ones that made the money. And so, we get this, again, this dilemma where we have pressure, uncomfortableness, pushing the fear response. And what is the fear response mostly is the area of rejection.

You think about it, when it comes to performance, if you look at “What is the issue?” It’s usually rejection, judgment, worry what other people might think, what they might say. When I asked my medical students, “What’s your biggest fear?” And these are super bright medical students at UCLA, “What’s your biggest fear?” Of saying something and embarrassing themselves.

And so, we get this with these young entrepreneurs and they buckle under that pressure. So, what I do is, again, create the pressure but make it so it does not push the fear response, so they can respond accordingly, express their opinion, stand up for what they believe.

Pete Mockaitis

And in your book, you mentioned that it’s very possible to feel two emotions at the same time. You’d say, “I feel stressed, worried, concerned, anxious, and also I’m safe.” Could you talk about that principle?

Marc Schoen

Yes. And that goes to that early concept of being able to create an emotional, physical state in the brain that blocks the fear, but yet, you can have them feel pressure. So, we have a neutral state or a safe state induced by this type of hypnosis, I like to call it hypno-meditation, and the real-world stress, and I also alluded to that study I gave you, is that, yeah, the people did report plenty of stress in their lives, but physically there was no trace of it. It’s an interesting dynamic. I call it duality, is my term for it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, hypnosis is one way that we can get there. You also lay out 15 strategies to stay cool, calm, and collected. Could you share with us maybe your top three favorites for professionals that do a whole lot for folks, and yet are pretty easy, a big bang for the buck or ROI?

Marc Schoen

Yes, so the overarching goal is not to banish discomfort. The goal is to make it so discomfort does not experience as a threat and, therefore, push the fear response. Okay, so then that’s the goal of any exercise that we want to do. I have a lot of different ones that push the button, that make us uncomfortable, because it again pushes that button of rejection, or being judged, or being embarrassed and so on.

One thing that I’ve done to help train myself in this area was to ask people for favors, and that’s an uncomfortable thing. And the exercise I did was, and remember the goal wasn’t to get the favor granted, the goal was dealing with the uncomfortableness of asking for the favor. So, I would go around and ask people for $100. And, of course, virtually everyone would say no.

Pete Mockaitis

Virtually.

Marc Schoen

I actually had one person say yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Alright.

Marc Schoen

Of course I gave it back, but that’s really uncomfortable for me to ask that, and then justify it, or for people just to say, essentially, “Screw you,” or just ignore me, or walk away. That’s uncomfortable. But I wanted to give myself practice in that, and that’s a great tool.

Now, there’s different degrees of pushing this button. One is you could put yourself out there. Let’s say you’re uncomfortable about dancing in front of other people. You could go take dance lessons. Let’s say you’ve always wanted to sing, but you have a terrible voice. Well, you could take some voice lessons. Or, very simple, it’s so easy for us to just take the same way to drive to work or use our Google Maps. What if we were to try to navigate our way without the help of that? Again, the overarching goal is to feel uncomfortable and learn we can manage it and not get a fear reaction.

Another great way is to approach someone that you think is important or very attractive, and introduce yourself. All of these things really push that button. And so, the goal is to be uncomfortable, but still be able to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, if we are in the midst of it, feeling super uncomfortable, and we’re not sure if we can do it, and we are maybe feeling the fear response getting pushed, what do we do? Do we do some breathing? Or what’s your pro tip to pulling it off?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, I have a breath technique. That’s what I call it. It’s on my website. It’s a free download, and it’s a way that you can really expediently knock down your heartbeat and blood pressure. It really just takes 45 seconds to create a result. So, you can use this as a preface to doing any of these exercises, and all we want to do, we just bring it down below that high bar that I talked about so we’re not so overheated, and then move forward with the task.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Marc, that sounds like 45 seconds well spent. Could you give us a demo on this breath technique?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, it really is something I developed back in, like, 1983 in a biofeedback room at Cedars-Sinai when I wasn’t allowed to do hypnosis on the medical units so I had to find a way that would rapidly relax people. So, I hooked myself up with all these electrodes and then later ran other people through it, borrowed from here, borrowed from there, took from here to make something really quick.

And what I found is that an inhale through the nose, just a medium inhale, not having to be a big diaphragmatic breath, just medium. I’ll make a sound, but you wouldn’t make the sound. Kind of like this, about that amount. We pause for a second, and then have a pattern of four exhales. But the key part of it is to have no inhale between the exhales.

So, it looks and sounds like this, and the sound of the exhales is important. Here’s the inhale. Hold it for a second or so. Start of the exhales. And the last one, we just release the remaining air, and then we repeat that four times. And it’s remarkable, if you’re measuring someone’s blood pressure or heartbeat, how pronounced of an effect that can have.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So then, these exhales, it’s like a shh sound, like we’re calming, like telling a child to “Hush up now. Shh.”

Marc Schoen

Exactly. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

And then there’s a pause between the shushes. And so, it’s about a medium level of inhale, not like a huge maximum.

Marc Schoen

Through the nose.

Pete Mockaitis

Through the nose. And then is the exhale there then, are we aiming to get mostly out, all of our breath out, or like completely evacuated, or just mostly evacuated, or does it really not matter?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, most of it, but we don’t want to deplete ourselves that we’re gasping for air. So, just a medium amount like that.

Pete Mockaitis

And then do we pause after the fourth exhale before the next inhale?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, a comfortable space between. And as you do this, cycles, you slow it down, so you’re pausing more between the exhales. Oh, and what I learned back in the ‘80s about this is that it’s not the inhale that relaxes us, it’s the power of the exhale.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. That’s cool. All right. So, we’ve got that breathing. And tell me, when it comes to perhaps physical interventions, whether it’s cardiovascular exercises, or resistance strength exercises, or getting in cold water, or walking with a weighted backpack, are there any kind of physical fitness-y things that go a long way in improving our discomfort tolerance?

Marc Schoen

Well, it’s best for us to think about these kinds of techniques that I’m talking about, is that we have both discomfort, physical discomfort and emotional discomfort. And so, it is very important to work on our ability to tolerate both of them, and they both affect each other. So, obviously, if we’re physically less capable, then we’re going to be more emotionally uncomfortable, and vice versa.

So, the more emotionally uncomfortable we are, the less we tolerate physical discomfort. So, it makes sense to work on both. Now, here’s what I like to do, is to challenge myself physically. For example, when I used to run quite a bit, I would run, but meditate on the ability to stay calm and keep my heartbeat at a certain level. Or, when I take a sauna and have the temperature like 175, is to see how long I can keep my body cool from sweating. So, there’s that kind of interplay that we can do.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s great. Well, let’s talk about hypnosis for a moment before we wrap up. And so then, for those unfamiliar with hypnosis, could you maybe first share with us some of the best data or studies suggesting that hypnosis is a real thing that’s useful beyond our stage amusements?

Marc Schoen

Yes, it used to be that we thought hypnosis only changed people’s perceptions, and so it’s just sort of like a surface charge with a battery, that you can charge it a little, but it doesn’t seep into the true fabric of what it is. But as we’ve had more advances, we can truly measure the impact of what it does, and we see that it has a cellular impact and a biochemical impact. I even did one of those studies to show that we can use hypnosis to block the inflammatory response in the body, and that’s by measuring cells.

So, now hypnosis can be seen as having both a psychological and a physical effect. I like it because it’s like the difference between a Scud missile and a Patriot missile. It is precise, direct, and much quicker than going in more globally.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, for folks who are jazzed about that as a tool for being more awesome at their jobs, I mean, I guess we could schedule a session with a professional like yourself. Or, how can we get a taste of this benefits hypnosis might have to offer us?

Marc Schoen

I would like to offer your listeners a free download where it’s a hypnotic set of suggestions, all geared for job performance based on this whole concept of discomfort, threat, fear, and being able to manage discomfort without threat.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. That sounds beautiful. We appreciate that. We’ll make sure to link that in the show notes, etc. Okay, so we got that going for us. And then you mentioned the notion of the precision, like targeting anything. I’ve seen a whole boatload of different hypnosis pieces on YouTube for any number of things. What are your thoughts on those? My guess is that the quality and effectiveness vary. Is there any danger in just trying those out? Or, what are you thinking about these?

Marc Schoen

I certainly wouldn’t try someone’s work that isn’t credentialed and has significant training in it. And so, it should be a mental health professional that’s done it for a while because it’s very powerful and mishandled can create some bad results. So, be careful, selective, as to who you allow to do it. And again, most hypnosis can be seen as just trying to deal with changing people’s thoughts only, and just like cognitive behavioral therapy, it certainly can work.

But, if a lot of our behavior is influenced by fear, then it makes far more sense to deal with that part of the brain where it is centered in this limbic part of the brain. So, I like to use hypnosis to go directly at those limbic areas, such as the fear center, such as the pleasure center, the sleep center, and so on. And so, you can use hypnosis in a superficial way, or you can use it in a much more profound way, because to me, if we don’t deal directly with the fear response, no matter what we tell ourselves consciously, it’s just not going to hold.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And maybe, I’d love to get your…we’ll do your hot takes. I saw a YouTube video where they quickly said underrated, overrated for all sorts of, like, health and fitness interventions. So, let me get your hot takes here, the good doctor, Marc Schoen in the house. Hypnosis for, if I would like, I’m just going to put out some scenarios and say, could hypnosis be useful for this? Maybe say yes, no, or a little would be the three options if I may. We’ll say, “I crave cigarettes, and I’d like to crave them less.” Is hypnosis useful for that?

Marc Schoen

A little.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. “I get scared when I’m asking for referrals or feedback, and I’d like to feel less scared”?

Marc Schoen

Very positive. Good.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. “I’d like to sleep longer and better with less interruption.”

Marc Schoen

Good.

Pete Mockaitis

“I would like to stop eating as many cookies, candies, sweets, and diet more disciplined-ly.”

Marc Schoen

A little.

Pete Mockaitis

“I would like to be more assertive in telling my team my expectations for them and how they can improve.”

Marc Schoen

Good.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Anything else I should have mentioned, Marc?

Marc Schoen

Well, no, you did a great job. And you noticed where I said just a little tend to be those things which are more addictive in nature, that hypnosis is just a medium, it’s a single, it’s not a triple or a home run for addictions.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marc Schoen

The thing I say is just a summary statement, is that in reality, what a lot of people say, “What doesn’t kill me, strengthens me.” It’s really more this, “It’s not the adversity that makes us stronger. It really is our effective management of adversity that makes us stronger and more resilient.” That is the key part of this.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that’s good. Thank you. “I often find myself procrastinating and putting off the hard, uncomfortable things, and doing easier tasks like email.”

Marc Schoen

That’s a mixed one. That’s why I have to say a little, but possibly good. It depends what’s the source of the procrastination. A lot of people just come into the world wired as a procrastinator, and those folks, you can slightly modify it. There are groups of people that are procrastinators that’s totally out of fear.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Marc Schoen

That can be modified that way.

Pete Mockaitis

And how about, “I find myself I just get so distracted. I sit down to do a thing and then I find myself around the news or social media or shopping minutes later.”

Marc Schoen

Not necessarily a good one either. Just a little bit of an effect.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marc Schoen

One I always like was something that Lance Armstrong had said when he was the Olympic athlete. It’s something along the lines like, “Pain is temporary, but quitting is forever.” That was a good one.

And there’s an old time one, God knows if I’m saying it correctly, it was something along the lines, you know, that we really want to judge someone based on the stage or position in life, but rather judge someone on the obstacles they have overcome. I like that one. I don’t know who said that but…

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Marc Schoen

I love this book called The Untethered Soul.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Marc Schoen

I do self-hypnosis meditation once to two times a day. That is such an incredible way to keep our body in the zone. Because as we get older, it would seem like it shouldn’t be this, but as we get older, it takes more work to stay in that zone.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’m curious, within that self-hypnosis, are there a couple key messages or suggestions that you think really hit home and bring a lot of the result?

Marc Schoen

If I had to say a core feeling is a belief, but it’s a feeling, is that when I’ve looked over my life, I have not had an absence of bad or tough things happen, but I’ve been very fortunate, that ultimately, it all resolves favorably with a few exceptions here and there. So, what I get to is a place of trust and faith and confidence, that no matter how tough something is, I will ultimately have the resources to manage it effectively. So, I’m just going to trust and let this feeling of total openness, non-tightness, safety, lightness be the prevailing dominant feeling I’m going to feel in my body. That’s what it is.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marc Schoen

It really is this notion that we have talked about that I can be uncomfortable, I can feel pressure, and nothing bad will happen to me. There’s no danger. And that I can persevere and succeed and that, ultimately, most people will say, my ability to hang in that place of fire is where the greatest results happen.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Marc Schoen

I would have folks feel free to look at my website. It’s my name, Marc Schoen, M-A-R-C S-C-H-O-E-N.com. You can find out more about me. I will have the downloads that I’ve referenced already there under the product section. But it’ll give you an overview of my work.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marc Schoen

I would really, really encourage people to challenge their discomfort zones, to push against that key thing I’ve said about rejection and judgment. And even though our tendency is to want to limit our losses, some people call that the negativity bias, often the probabilities of success are actually higher than the probabilities of failure. And so, so I would recommend really pushing that, and being uncomfortable, going in there and just challenging, “I can hang in here, persevere and succeed.”

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Well, Marc, this is a great time. Thank you. And I wish you the very best.

Marc Schoen

Many thanks. Enjoyed being here.

Apr 25
0

956: How to Delegate Anything with Dave Kerpen

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Dave Kerpen shows how to get over delegation hangups to tackle your top life priorities and prevent burnout.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to get over yourself and finally begin delegating
  2. How to become a master delegator in 5 steps
  3. A simple rule to prevent embarrassment when delegating and automating

About Dave

Dave Kerpen is a serial entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, and global keynote speaker. He is the co-founder and co-CEO of Apprentice, a platform connecting entrepreneurs with top college students, and is the author of several bestselling books, including The Art of People, Likeable Social Media, and Likeable Business.

He is a popular contributor to Inc.com and a LinkedIn Influencer, and has been featured in many media outlets, including the New York Times, the TODAY show, CBS Early Show, BBC, Financial Times, and more. Additionally, Kerpen is the executive chairman of The Nursing Beat and the cofounder and CEO of Remembering Live. He was previously the founder and chairman of Likeable Local, and was the cofounder and CEO of Likeable Media, which was sold to 10Pearls in April 2021.

Resources Mentioned

Dave Kerpen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome.

Dave Kerpen
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom about delegation. And I’d love it if you could kick us off with maybe one of your most surprising and fascinating discoveries about us humans and delegation.

Dave Kerpen
Well, the most surprising thing is that the secret to delegating is much less about how to do it and much more about getting over yourself up here, getting through your brain, and dealing with the fear and the distrust issues and the perfectionism issues that are likely holding you back.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, succinctly stated right off the get-go, Dave. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. So, that’s the scoop. So, that’s funny, if people think I’m having trouble delegating, they may very well say, “I need a model. I need some steps. I need an acronym. I need a mnemonic.” And, Dave, you’re saying, “No, what you probably need first is to get over yourself because you’ve got some emotional stuff that’s hindering this whole process.”

Dave Kerpen
Yeah. And, look, my book has the steps and the acronyms and the models, and I love acronyms. I’m all for models, I’m all for systems and tools, but too many people do it to try a system or tool for anything, but certainly, in this case, for delegation, it doesn’t work, and then they say, “Forget it, this doesn’t work.” And the real answer is, “Let’s do the work on ourselves and deal with the issues, the limiting beliefs, the challenge, the fears that are holding us back.”

And then my model might work well but there’s a lot of other models right, or this software might work well but there’s 15 other software that might work well as well. And it’s less about choosing the software and more about getting the mindset right to be able to delegate.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. And so, so maybe if folks are so not over themselves, and they don’t even think it’s possible, Dave, can you paint a picture of hope, maybe share some data or a story?

Dave Kerpen
So, first, I’ll paint a picture of a sadder story and then I’ll tell my story, which, hopefully, is a little less sad. Scott came to me, names have all been changed to protect the guilty, but Scott was a long-time real estate entrepreneur, worked for himself, essentially, but built a nice little practice with having a couple people work for him over the years, made a lot, a lot of money, came to me years and years into his career, sort of mentoring me.

He said, “You know, I made a lot of money over the years. My son just turned 21, and I missed his growing up. I missed basketball games. I missed parent-teacher conferences. I missed an awful lot because I was so focused on building my business. And if I could go back, maybe I wouldn’t care so much about building my business because, yeah, it made me lots of money, but I will never get that time back with my son.” And that story struck me.

So, as I was doing the research for my book, I looked at deathbed research, and researched on what deathbed regrets people had. And perhaps this won’t surprise you at all, but, as you might guess, Pete, a very, very small percentage, under 1% of people regret not working enough hours. People almost always, over 50% of people, on the other hand, regret, when they’re asked for deathbed regrets, regret not having more time with friends and family, not having more time to pursue their passions, not having more time to pursue travel and other key hobbies.

We all get the same amount of time and we only get one shot at it in this lifetime. And the reason I wrote this book is that, sure delegation will make you a more productive employee, delegation will make you a more productive leader, delegation will make you a more successful entrepreneur depending on what it is that you do, but I think the stakes are much higher than that. I think delegation is the single biggest key to unlocking success and happiness in life.

And I will share that there’s many, many things that I’m not good at, but one thing that I’ve been fortunate, you know, the sort of happier story is that I pick up my son from the school bus every day, and shut off my phone, and for those three hours after school, I’m helping him with his homework, and we’re playing baseball, we’re having to catch, playing basketball. I’m getting that all-important family time, that all-important parenting time, that’s my priority.

If you’re listening, that might not be your priority, but then you might want to climb Mount Everest, or you might want to work out three hours a day, or you might want to find the love of your life. Delegation is the biggest tool that allows us to have the freedom to pursue our number one, two, and three priorities in life. And so, for me, that’s something I’m proud of, and I wrote this book to help share that with others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. So, delegation unlocks all kinds of good possibilities for us. The hangup is that we are stuck believing that, “I don’t trust them. They won’t do it as good as I can. Only I am capable of doing this,” any number of these beliefs, mindsets, etc.

So, Dave, help us out, if we are in that place, like, “Okay, Dave, that sounds really awesome. Maybe you’ve managed to find some great people, but I mean, I’ve got a team of knuckleheads or I’ve been burnt before in terms of trying to delegate, and it didn’t go so well. So, what do I do?”

Dave Kerpen
Well, I mentioned before, maybe you try a tool and it doesn’t work, and then you sort of give up. I think a lot of people delegate poorly and choose poorly the person to delegate to. And when we get into my system, an acronym, and I do believe in such things, like I said, the number one and the most important aspect in the beginning is who you choose. And they choose the wrong person, they choose the person that’s there, the most convenient, cheapest, lots of reasons, but they choose the wrong person. And then, of course, it’s going to fail if you choose the wrong person.

But you got to keep trying until you get it right because the solution can’t be that you do everything. You’ll burn out. You’ll be miserable. You won’t have all that time. So, let’s attack one of those myths that you shared, Pete, “You’re the best person for the job.” Let’s really think about this. If we think about this rationally for a minute, there’s 7 billion people. I said I’m good at delegating. I’m pretty good at marketing, there are so many things I’m not good at.

And for me to think that I am the best person for any given task, virtually anything, let’s say anything actually, because honestly, there’s lots and lots of people that are way better at any possible thing that I could do. It’s frankly narcissistic and somewhat ridiculous of me to really try to convince myself that I am the best person for the job. I am very, very rarely the best person for the job. I might be the only person that knows precisely what’s in my head for how to do something, but I might also be wrong about the best way to do something. In fact, I’m probably wrong about the best way to do something.

Chances are there’s people out there that could get to the finish line much, much better than I can. So, if that’s, in fact, true, then the next challenge that I have is, “Okay, how can I choose the right person and then explain what that finish line looks like in a really clear, concise way that allows that person to be mutually aligned with me on precisely what the outcome looks like?” And then the trust issue comes up, “How can I…?”

This is hard, I get how hard this is, you know, I’ve been there, I’ve managed a lot, I’ve coached a lot of people here that have a tough time trusting others, but there has to be some level of trust that somebody else is going to get, it’s going to make their way to the finish line, and they’re probably not going to do it the same way I would. In fact, it’s very rare that they would do it the same way I would, but they might do it differently, and they might do it better than I would. And if they can get to the finish line, if they can get even to 80% of the finish line the way I would have done it, but allow me the time to do other things and not worry about it, well, then I have won.

Pete Mockaitis
Inspiring, yes. I like the winning and that’s cool. Let’s stay with the myths for a little bit longer. I’m with you. Okay, fair enough, Dave, 7 billion people alive on this Earth. Maybe I am. Maybe I am one in a million. Well, there’s 7,000 people that are as good or better than I am at that thing. So, okay, fair enough.

But in terms of realistically speaking, can I find that person? Will they be available? Can I afford them? In terms of the practical realities, are we thinking that, in fact, it is still the case that I could find someone who will do a thing better than me, even if I’m awesome at that thing, given these real-world constraints?

Dave Kerpen
Well, let me answer that in two ways. First is maybe they won’t do it better than you, but this is where most of us, to one extent or another, are perfectionists, so we have an idea about what we want something to be, and perhaps better than us is not necessary, and perhaps the same as us is not necessary. That’s where I got to that 80-85%. If they can get to 80-85% of what we would want, but relieve us of all the stress and the work and the agita of getting there, then I see that as a good outcome.

The other thing I want to address is this issue of, “How do I find this person, this mythological person? I can’t afford it. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the money, etc.” That may be the case, but more often than not, when people come to me with this, and I challenge them on it, we get to the heart of it, and it seems like they’re making excuses because they’re afraid or distrustful or maybe truly ignorant.

In this day and age, when I can personally go on Fiverr and hire somebody for $5 to design a flyer for me, or if I’m really looking for high level…so, that’s on the one end, on the basic task, right? And then on the higher end, folks come to me, and say, “Well, I can’t find a CMO. I can’t afford a CMO.”

And to them I say, “Maybe you can’t afford it, maybe you don’t have the cash, but then maybe if you’re an entrepreneur, you can share equity and find a partner here. Find a partner. Much better to have a smaller piece of a bigger pie and find a partner, or a partner or two or three.” I think there are always creative solutions to find folks to delegate. You could be listening to the show, Pete, and you could be an entry-level employee.

If you have a set of tasks, and you’re responsible for getting those tasks done, and you think of a more creative way to get them done than you doing it, like, for instance, hiring somebody on Upwork and Fiverr for X dollars, and you vet the process and manage the process, and you pitch your boss on the business case for getting the job done that way versus you doing data entry, or whatever that tedious work is all day long, I can’t predict what the boss will say.

But I know that if somebody came to me and gave me a good business case for managing something differently and better than I had thought of in the first place, I’d say, “Great, go for it.” So, a lot of the time, it’s a matter of creatively thinking through better ways to divvy up the work than maybe we’re thinking. Maybe we’re too stuck in the box of having to get the work done ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve busted one myth. Could you bust another or help us with a general thinking, doing approach for getting over ourselves?

Dave Kerpen
So, Pete, I think the number one thing that holds us back, and the reason Get Over Yourself is really as high as the dual meaning of get over yourself to delegate work, but also get over the mindset issues that get in your way is fear. I think that a lot of us, at all ages and all levels of seniority at companies, have fear of failure, have fear of not getting things right, have fear that other folks won’t get the job done as well as we would, have fear that, maybe if we’re off with our kids or golfing or doing something else, that we’re not doing our job right, even if the work gets done.

There are all these fears that we have, and, ultimately fear, of course, is false evidence appearing real. Fear holds us back. All fear holds us back. And so, in my model, in my vision, in my dream, and in my scenario, and what I try to do, is feel the fear because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of screwing up on your podcast right now. I’m afraid about being valuable for your listeners. I’m afraid of not delivering. But I understand that fear, and then I proceed and act anyway. That’s literally the definition of courage.

And so, instead of, like, trying to push the fear away, when we embrace it and tackle it head on, and say, “It’s okay to be afraid that this person is going to screw up. It’s okay to be afraid that we’re going to lose our jobs. It’s okay to be afraid that we’re going to lose our clients.” And, in the face of that fear, I’m going to take an action and figure out how to best delegate this work so that I don’t lose my mind, so that I don’t burn out, so that I get this job done in a better way than maybe I would have otherwise. And that’s the courage that it takes to get over ourselves in that manner.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I dig it. Thank you. So, yeah, let’s talk about the model in terms of how, in fact, do we determine what we ought to delegate, and then do so effectively?

Dave Kerpen
So, we’ve got two acronyms. You mentioned the acronyms earlier, and while I said that acronyms are great, I said, “We got to deal with the mindset issues first.” So, we’ve dealt with the mindset issues. We’re through it. We’re having the courage to act. And now what do we actually do and what do we actually delegate?

And so, the model is there’s three things that we should be doing as leaders, managers, individuals with jobs. Those three things have to do with the overall vision and strategy of the goals here. If we’re in a position to hire people, making sure that we have the right people in the right seats, the hiring process, and the resources issue.

Now, resource is a tricky one. If you’re the CEO, yeah, it’s your job to make sure there’s money in the bank. If you manage an apartment, it’s your job to manage up and make sure to your boss that you have the headcount and the resources to get the job done. And if you are managing projects but not people, it is absolutely your job to make sure that you, personally, have the bandwidth and resources, and that, again, you manage up your boss, to say, “This is what I will need to get the job done.” And if that includes an extra $100 to manage a Fiverr project, well, then you’ve got to advocate for that.

So, those three things, strategy and vision, hiring the right people in the right seats, and access to resources and capital to get the job done. After those three things, my belief is that you can delegate nearly all, if not all of the rest. And so, the SHARE model is strategy, hiring, access to capital, and then remind ourselves that, if there’s anything else, we can, E, empower somebody else to do the job.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dave Kerpen
Then we move into the 5Cs model of delegation. The first, and probably most important C, is choosing the right person or resource to delegate to. Again, we may think, listening right now, because I’ve done a bunch of podcasts that I already know, and I’ve done a lot of coaching of people, and I’ve heard all of the complaints, all the excuses already, “I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the budget.”

So, let me share that when we’re thinking about choosing the right person, it is not just a full-time employee that you could delegate this work to. It could be an intern, it could be an apprentice, it could be a contractor on Upwork or Fiverr, it could be a virtual assistant, it could be a vendor, a consultant, there are a partner, there are numerous types of folks that you could delegate the work to.

And the biggest mistake folks do is jumping immediately to hiring the wrong person, maybe just the person that’s the closest in proximity, the person that works down the hall from them, the person that is their peer, the person that, “Oh, my goodness, my first company was in the social media space.” Do you know how many people hired their 21-year-old niece or nephew to run social media for their company because they happened to be the 21-year-old?

Pete Mockaitis
“You use Instagram.”

Dave Kerpen
“You’ve been on it. You’ve been on TikTok. You have a TikTok account, don’t you? Make some videos for me.” So, this first big mistake is choosing the wrong person. And if there’s anything that should be the bottleneck – nothing really should be a bottleneck – but if there’s anything that it’s worth taking the most time on, it’s that first piece of choosing the person to delegate to.

The next C is communicating clearly what the intended outcome is. And, note, what I’m talking about is not every step. There are some folks out there that, whether I say it or not, they’re going to micromanage, they’re going to do the standard operating procedures, they’re going to do detailed instructions on precisely how to get to the finish line.

And if that’s really important to you, I’m not here to say you can’t do that, but in my experience when hiring people, folks like autonomy. They like to be able to get to the finish line in their own way, zigzag a little bit, learn a little bit, have some freedom. People aren’t robots. They don’t want to just, like, input in, output out. They don’t want to be robots.

Exception might be GPT and actually delegating to robots. We can get to that in a little while. But when we’re managing people, what I would say is, the key thing here with this C is to communicate clearly the intended outcome, what does success really look like, paint that picture, and then, ideally, empower them to get there the way that they see fit.

The next C is coaching them to success. Way too many people see themselves as managers. Nobody likes managers. Managers are bosses. Managers are in your face. Managers are not there to support you. They’re there to boss you around. Coaches, on the other hand, which is I strongly urge you all to use the word coach instead of manager. Coaches, anyone that’s played sports as a kid has had the experience of having a coach, hopefully, a good coach, somebody that cheers them on, teaches them along the way, supports them when they have challenges. So, by all means, coach your person on to success.

The fourth C is check in on the regular. I personally like weekly 15-minute check-ins, just where I’m there to say, “Any challenges? How can I help you reach your goals, etc.?” And then the final C, which is often also forgotten, is congratulate them. When you get to the finish line, please, by all means, like, celebrate success. Celebrate success together and then, of course, move on to the next project. So, that’s, in a nutshell, the SHARE model for what to delegate, and the 5Cs model for how to delegate when possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot. And, Dave, I’d love it if you could make this come alive for me with an example that I’ve heard is quite tricky. I was chatting with someone who is just excellent at sales, in terms of when he’s having those conversations with a prospect, they are just listening wonderfully, asking great questions, building rapport, being super honest and creative, like, “Hey, these are the solutions we got. This might work for you. This probably won’t. This is what I would try instead, such that it generates referrals and business and great close rates, all sorts of lovely things.”

And yet, the challenge is there’s a whole lot of other responsibilities in the universe of making sales happen beyond talking to a prospect in terms of managing the lists, and the outbounds, and the marketing, and the vetting of the potential prospect, etc. And so, we’ve had some conversations, like, “Boy, it should be great if there’s a way that we could delegate all of that, such that you just had appointment after appointment after appointment, and doing what you’re amazing at, and doing less of what sort of sucks your energy, and is not perhaps the highest and best use of your time. That’d be really cool.”

And he said, “Yes, that would be really cool, but in practice I’ve never actually seen a master salesperson do that effectively because people come in, prospects come in, you want to be quick and responsive to them, like, all the time, before the demo or the meeting, and then have the follow-ups, but the follow-ups are best coming from you and not someone else, because they’re like, ‘Wait, who’s this other person? Am I going to talk to this person? I want to talk to the main salesperson, and not the secondary assistant to the salesperson.’”

And so, these are the sorts of hang-ups that have made this tricky. So, Dave, I’m just going to lay that on you, and say, here’s the trickiest delegation question I’ve bumped into, how do we crack it?

Dave Kerpen
Well, Pete, it’s as if we planned this, and God is my witness, we did not. But the story that I will share is actually precisely the same role, and I didn’t write about this in the book, but perhaps I should have. A very impressive young man, Sam, who was a salesperson for me, who, very similar to what you said, was an excellent salesperson, not so excellent, as frankly probably many salespeople are, not so excellent at the pre-work, the post-work, the putting it into the CRM, all of that administrative stuff.

And he said to me, “Dave, can I have a budget for an assistant?” And I said, “No. So, here’s what I’m going to do. You take the chats. You prove the business model. You hire the assistant out of your commissions. And if it works, I’ll make the budget for you.” I wanted him invested in making it work. And, lo and behold, he took money out of his own commission check to fund an assistant to do all of that, to delegate all of that stuff to. And this is a rare case because in corporate America, you’re not funding a headcount out of your own pocket, right? That’s pretty insane.

But in this small business entrepreneurial environment, he pitched me. I said, “Here’s the deal. You want to do this? Go ahead.” And guess what? It worked, and I created the budget for sales support, for admin support because he was able to prove that there was a business value in delegating all that other stuff, that frankly was not the best use of his time, to somebody else. So, it’s absolutely doable. It is doable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so it is doable, and that’s encouraging. Could you share with us a little bit of the particulars, some of the nitty-gritty for how this vexing delegation problem can actually be cracked in the nuts and bolts?

Dave Kerpen
I mean, he chose, he interviewed a bunch of people. We’ll walk you through with the five C’s model. So, he interviewed a bunch of people. He knew what he was looking for. And for him, while the tasks were important, the fit, the cultural fit, the somebody that he could reach out to and really bounce things off of was probably even more important. So, I’m not him, but as I understand, he interviewed maybe seven or eight people, hired somebody.

Hired AJ. Gave AJ very clear directions over the types of prospects that he wanted him to reach out to. AJ did the prospecting. AJ did the outreach. There were some missteps along the way. People are going to make mistakes, that’s okay, as long as you coach them. So, Sam coached him, “You know, actually, I’d like more prospects like this,” and he did just that.

He adjusted along the way, getting him better prospects. They showed up for the call. Sam did his work. He closed them up, passed them back to AJ, who followed up to do the contracts and do the follow-ups and do all of that administrative work, getting them in the CRMs and doing the contracts and all that stuff. And, ultimately, both people did their jobs. And Sam made a lot more money for himself, and for me, for the company, by delegating that work and see him coaching his assistant through the steps that he needed done.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And not to get too much into the weeds here.

Dave Kerpen
Yeah, no, weeds.

Pete Mockaitis
When AJ was reaching out, AJ is reaching out, as AJ in his name and his email to the people, and he’s saying to the prospects, “Oh, let me have you speak with Sam.” And there’s a handoff? Or is AJ stealth being Sam?

Dave Kerpen
No, no, there’s a handoff. I think that authenticity is important. And so, I’m all for delegating, clearly, many, many things, but if you get a LinkedIn message from me, it’s from me. And I might have an assistant, my apprentices are going to write all the messages, they might draft all the messages, they might select all, using whatever criteria, they’ll do all the work in figuring out who to send messages to. But I like to click send. I do think it’s important, at the end of the day, for authenticity of we are who we say we are.

Pete Mockaitis
And I agree. And what’s really funny is, in this particular delegation scenario, and I guess this is a tricky nuance I’m glad we’re discussing, it’s funny because, well, so, Dave, I get a lot of inbound pitches. People want to be on the podcast, and that’s cool. What a great place to be. What a blessing. But what’s really funny is it’s clear that either there are, I don’t know, PR firms or software or automations or something happening, where someone says, “Oh, hey, Peter, I think we could really make a great podcast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,”

And I say, “Yes, I agree. In fact, we did make a great podcast four months ago. It was memorable to me. I’m sorry if you’ve already forgotten it.” And I’m just teasing them because I know what’s happening, and they’re like, “Oh, Pete, I’m so sorry. Oh!” you know. Or, I’d be like, “Hey, Justin, I’m getting this message from you, but it feels as though we don’t have a relationship and we haven’t seen each other in person numerous times, and we certainly have.” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, sorry!”

And so that happens, and I don’t hold it against them, like, “You’re dead to me for this faux pas.” But it does diminish a little bit. It’s not a good feeling, and it could actually, in fact, be more devastating if, in fact, they’re like, “Hey, what the heck, man? We’ve had a long-standing business relationship, and maybe actually things are tense right now in our business relationship, and I’m getting an automated message from ‘you’ that isn’t really from you.” That might be enough to push it over the edge.

I think there’s a lot to it, whether it’s a human or a robot or an automation, that the way you’ve said it is, it’s like, you’re the person who clicks send, because then you can be like, “No, wait a minute, not that person. I’m already friends with that person. They don’t get a message like this.”

Dave Kerpen
That’s right. That’s right. And as much as I think that there are lots and lots of opportunity for delegation to tools and use of software tools when we don’t have, you know, I talk about resources to delegate, sometimes we don’t have individuals, or we don’t think we have individuals to delegate to. There are a lot of great tools to manage a lot of tasks. But when it comes to communication with people, I do think authenticity is an issue.

It’s funny. I told the story in my very first book, now 12 years ago, about I was friends with a State Senator on Facebook and I got a chat, a live chat from him asking me for a donation. And I was like, “Huh? I donated. I feel like I donated recently.” And he replied, “I know but I really need a little bit more.” And something was amiss, so I said, “Wait, this is my State…” I’ll protect the guilty here. I said, “This is my State Senator, X and X name, right?” Pause. And I said, “Please respond.” “Actually, this is an intern. I’m managing the account.”

Like you said, sometimes the stakes are higher than other times. I mean, if I really wanted to blow that person up for using interns to pretend to be them, to ask for money, I mean, it’s a really bad look, I think. So, I think we have to be very cautious about how much we, I’ll say how much we automate, and how much we automate about that final step in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I’ve heard that said as a general rule of thumb for AI, like, “Have a human in the process so it doesn’t do dumb things, like automatically deny everybody’s health insurance claims.” Like, whoopsie daisy, you know, or a number of the embarrassments that people have managed to get themselves into when they use AI without the human oversight touch.

Dave Kerpen
Yeah, I love, love, love large language models like ChatGPT for drafts, first drafts of articles, of emails, of marketing plans. I mean, there is massive, massive value in the work that a large language model can provide and produce, given the right input. So, the work becomes less about what to produce and more about the inputs, the prompts that you give the models.

But all of that is really wonderful, again, for a first draft, and then I urge you, as a human, to take that first draft and check it over, first of all, like literally, for some obvious ones. We’ve heard some of the horror stories there. But then work with it, use it as a starting point, because what a great starting point. Sometimes folks have come to me super overwhelmed.

Actually, I just had a woman that I invested in say, “I need a marketing plan. I don’t know even where to start.” And I said, “Here’s where to start. Go to ChatGPT, put in your goals, put in your budget, put in your target audience, and ask for a draft of a marketing plan.” She did it, and it produced a six-page marketing plan for her to consider. Now that’s a great first draft, but it took 10 minutes. And years ago, or without me, without that idea, she might have taken 10 hours to come up with that initial starting point.

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

Dave Kerpen
I want to give the listeners credit. Sometimes I take for granted that some of this stuff is easy because I’ve been doing it for a while, but I want to recognize that it’s hard. It’s hard to shift the mindset. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to let go of stuff that you’re used to owning and controlling and doing the work on. I want to really take a moment to recognize that and appreciate that. If you’re listening and you’re thinking, “Well, he’s full of S-H, and in the real world, this is hard.”

I hear you and I get it. It is hard stuff and it is worth doing the work on, is my pitch. It’s worth muddling through and challenging oneself, and becoming more self-aware about the limiting beliefs and challenge and fears that are holding us back from delegating more, and the constraints that we think we have that maybe we don’t have as badly as we might think, and then doing the work. And there’s a brighter side on the other side of the rainbow, it really is. It gets easier.

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

Dave Kerpen
Sure. My favorite quote is from Seth Godin, who writes, “How dare you settle for less when the world’s made it so easy to be remarkable?” I think so many of us go through life like not being as intentional as we could be, and not doing the work to really stand out, and be amazing. And I think, like Seth says, it’s not that hard to be amazing. Go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dave Kerpen
Probably Adam Grant’s research. He’s probably my favorite author and I love his research. I’ll go back to his initial research from his first book, Give and Take, that talked about givers, takers, and matchers, and the value of becoming a giver and giving freely. It’s a little tricky to talk about this on a podcast because I get that I’m giving information, but it’s more of a matching situation. I’m expecting to get book promotion. I’m getting that and I’m grateful for it.

But that first book of his that I read really moved me, if I wasn’t a giver already, to become a giver to the extent possible, and the research shows that it pays. It’s ironic because we need to give without the expectation of getting something back, but when we do that, it just comes back to us tenfold in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share a favorite tool something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Dave Kerpen
There’s so many that I could talk about, but I want to say that the free, simplest set of tools is Google Suite. Yeah, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides. Those three I use nearly every day, and for next to nothing I’m able to do a lot of cool stuff. So, thank you, Google.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Dave Kerpen
Walking. Walking gets the blood flowing and is a healthy habit. I chuckled because I have a whole bunch of habits that maybe aren’t enjoyable, maybe not as healthy as walking.

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

Dave Kerpen
With the context of delegation in mind, it’s probably “Hire slow, fire fast.”

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

Dave Kerpen
I would say, first and foremost, I have pro bono office hours. I’ve met with 838 people over the last 10 years on Thursday afternoons. So, anyone that wants to chat with me, get some free coaching, absolutely no strings attached, I never charge for coaching ever, go to ScheduleDave.com, and you can book some free time with me on a Thursday afternoon. Of course, the book Get Over Yourself, and all my books are available on Amazon and bookstores everywhere. And if you’re looking for really awesome college-level talent, ChooseApprentice.com is our website.

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

Dave Kerpen
Feel the fear. Life is scary. Be courageous. Think of what you can get off of your plate and challenge yourself to say no, say no to more, and then figure out how you can take those no’s and get that work done in one way or the other, either delegating to humans, delegating to ChatGPT, getting that work off your plate so that you can say yes to more, not necessarily at your job, but more of your priorities in your life and with your family.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Dave, this is powerful stuff. Thank you. I wish you many more successful delegations.

Dave Kerpen
Thank you so much for having me, Pete. It’s great to connect.