Mindfulness Archives - Page 7 of 10 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Laura, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Laura Vanderkam
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
First I want to hear about this story behind you singing at Carnegie Hall.

Laura Vanderkam
Yes, I included that as my odd thing about me. I’ve sung for many years in various choirs. I lived in New York for quite a while. One of the things that is sometimes an opportunity is that a choir might do a show in Carnegie Hall, either an orchestra needs a choir for a bit or a singer needs a backup or sometimes choirs will rent it out.

I had a couple of those different experiences where I’ve been able to sing in that amazing space.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, multiple times. Excellent.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah. It’s really about proximity and then also taking up these opportunities. It’s a beautiful place to sing.

Pete Mockaitis
I have to ask, it’s so corny, but did you ever ask anyone for directions to Carnegie Hall and did you get the old joke response?

Laura Vanderkam
I believe that I have in the sense of I would get into a cab and say, “Please take me to Carnegie Hall,” and then somebody guffaws.

No I’m – it’s the same – you live in New York for a while, these things that are sort of cultural touchstones elsewhere, you realize are not necessarily. I used to think like Broadway – oh Broadway is this mythical place. Then I realized it’s a street and a district is named for a street.

It’s more that certain theatres are associated with being high-end first run plays and all that and so those are considered being on Broadway but it’s not like they’re only on Broadway. They’re on various streets around there as well. Yeah, you learn these things.

Pete Mockaitis
So the cab driver didn’t say, “Well, the only way to get there is practice, practice, practice?”

Laura Vanderkam
Is to practice and also that I’ll drive you there and you pay money.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Established. Well, tell us about your latest book. You’ve got several and this is your latest. It’s called Off the Clock. What’s the big idea here?

Laura Vanderkam
Off the Clock is about how to feel less busy while getting more done. In essence it’s about how some people who have a lot going on in their lives still have this sense of time freedom. They feel like they do have time for the things they want to do. They feel like time is expansive, that’s it’s not slipping away from them, that it feels good.

I wanted to learn these people’s secrets. What are they doing with their lives? What are they doing with their hours? What can the rest of us learn from that?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so fascinating. You use the term a lot time perception. Can you sort of define that in terms of how you think about it, what it looks, sounds, feels like as well as how you defined it precisely in your research?

Laura Vanderkam
Time perception is just what it sounds like, how you perceive time. Time obviously keeps moving along at the same rate regardless 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. But you think about different times of our life feel very different.

Maybe like a week of summer camp when you were 12 felt very, very long, whereas for most people as adults, this past week probably didn’t feel that big for you. You may have very few memories of the past week of what makes it stand out for you more than anything else.

But it’s also about whether you feel like you have the time for the things that you want to do, like whether you feel in control of your time, whether you feel present or distracted, whether you simultaneously feel like time is rushing by too quickly at times and that also you spend a lot of time wishing minutes away.

That’s an unfortunate aspect of time perception. Many people are sitting there in a boring meeting being like I really wish it was 11 o’clock already. Time slipping from one side of the hourglass to the other and sometimes we’re trying to shove it along even more quickly.

Time perception in my research though had a more specific definition. I recruited for Off the Clock 900 people who had full time jobs and who also had families to track their time for a day. Monday, March 27, 2017 was the day. They recorded what they were doing on that day and then answered various questions about how they felt about their time.

These were various questions like “Yesterday, I generally felt present rather than distracted,” or “Yesterday, I generally felt I had enough time for the things that I wanted to do.’ Also questions about their life in general: “Broadly I have enough time for the things I want to do,” “I spend time in ways that make me happy,” various questions like this.

People get scores. They answer on these from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Assign those a one through seven point scale. The people at the high time perception scores were the ones who strongly agreed with various statements of time abundance like that. That they felt like they had enough time for the things that they wanted to do. People with low perception scores felt the opposite.

Then I could compare the schedules of people who had high time perception scores and people who had low time perception scores and see how their lives were actually different.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so what’s so intriguing there is it sounds like for the – more or less the amount of actual quote/unquote free time that they had was probably somewhat comparable, like they do have full time jobs and they do have children and spouses to tend to. They’re sort of in a similar band there.

Yet, I’d like to get a sense from you just how much of a spread was there between their time perception. If you’ve got a one to seven, did we get the full gamut there? We’ve got some full blow one’s and full blown sevens?

Laura Vanderkam
Pretty much yeah. People who are down in the – close to the single digits, probably not exactly in the single digits. With anything like this very few people put ones or sevens on everything. That’s one of the reasons we give so many options. In general, most people like to be in the middle.

But there’s – giving people seven allows them to have the degrees within that. People will give you a two or three answer. They will give you a five or six. Those are different. Most people won’t say a one or seven regardless.

But there were people who felt pretty bad about their time. Then there were people who felt pretty awesome about it too.

They were all sort of objectively the same amount of business. It was interesting to see what wasn’t different. Pretty much everyone in the sample worked somewhere between seven and nine hours on that March Monday, which makes sense. They all have full time jobs. That’s pretty much what a full time job means. All had various family obligations and such.

Yeah, we’re not talking a huge range in terms of what time was available. Some of the differences were really in how they spent that discretionary time.

People who felt like they had a lot of time, for instance, were more likely to do what I kind of consider higher quality leisure activities, things like actively getting together with family or friends, reading, exercise, doing various, what I call sort of memorable activities. They’d have little adventures in their evenings, more interesting than one might think for a Monday night.

Whereas the people who had low time perception scores were more likely to spend a big chuck of that time watching TV or being on social media or other such electronic ways of spending time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so fascinating because wow. We do have the same hours in a day, just sort of the nature of the planet and the sun and how that works and yet the perceptions are vastly different. You can find that link there between their perception and the actual activities that they were engaged in.

It sounds like it wasn’t so much that the folks were reading or getting together with friends for more leisure hours than those who were on social media or TV hours.

Laura Vanderkam
No. The times themselves were not appreciatively different because, again, yes, we all have 24 hours in a day. But it’s just what you choose to do with this time that you do have available to you.

If you think about the time before you go to bed, many adults even those who are raising children have some quantity of leisure time before they go to bed in the evening. What do you choose to do with it?

It turns out that if you spend that time on Facebook looking at photos of people you didn’t like in high school anyway, you feel like you have less time. If you spend that time actually talking with your spouse or calling a friend or reading a book, that those are all sort of activities that make you feel like I’m the kind of person who has the time to do these things. That’s where the high time perception comes from.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. Can you share a little bit in terms of – it certainly sounds more pleasant to operate in a world in which you perceive that you have enough time, but could you maybe unpack that all the further in terms of what are the advantages of having a high time perception?

Laura Vanderkam
Well, in general, you’ll probably be happier because feeling rushed and harried is obviously associated with high levels of stress and that’s no fun for anyone.

But it’s also about being effective because when you feel more in control of your time, then you’re more likely to spend it in ways that are meaningful for you. The people who felt like they generally had time for the things that they want to do, this is not particularly surprising, but they were highly likely to report that they had made progress on personal or professional goals in the previous 24 hours.

When you feel like you have enough time, you feel like you can allocate it to things that matter to you. That’s what people were doing.

Whereas when you feel like time is just getting away from you, like you have no grasp on time, then you don’t feel in a powerful enough position to allocate those hours to the things that are important to you. Sort of just react to what’s coming in.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so it’s intriguing the specific uses of time, what folks were doing and how that played an impact or a role. I guess I’m wondering how does one cross the chasm there if you have a low time perception and you’re feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have enough hours in the day to handle everything,” to becoming one of those joyous folk who think that they’ve got plenty of time.

Laura Vanderkam
Well, that’s the goal of the self-help book. Those are the strategies I try to share in this book is what were these people doing differently because it’s one thing to tell you that yeah, some people perceive time differently than others, but that’s somewhat not helpful for anyone who would like to live a fulfilling and rewarding life.

There are seven strategies that I identified that people with high time perception scores were more likely to use. Just a few of them, just if people are thinking about this like what I can I do more immediately.

One thing is figure out where your time is actually going. I know that sounds like maybe something people don’t really want to do, but keeping track of your time is one of the best ways to see well, here’s where it’s actually going and then you can ask do I like this/do I not like this.

Being able to make that decision with good data allows you to make changes in a way that’s more effective than if you’re just sort of operating from various stories like, “Oh, I have no time for anything.” Well, if you are telling yourself you have no time for anything, it’s hard to do anything about that.

But if you track your time and say, “Oh, well I see that I was watching TV for two hours in the evening and I keep telling myself I’d like to read more. Maybe I could read for an hour and then turn on the TV. Wow, that’s an interesting idea.” Then it turns out you will probably feel like you have more time if you are willing to make a change like that.

One other finding that was somewhat surprising but was definitely there was that the people with the highest time perceptions scores were highly likely to do kind of interesting and out of the ordinary things even though this was a very normal March Monday that they were recording.

One person who responded to my survey had actually gone to salsa dancing lessons. That was on her time log for the evening. Somebody else went to like a big band concert on this Monday evening. There’s even more pedestrian stuff, like going to a movie on a Monday night or meeting a friend for a drink or taking the family to the park after dinner instead of sitting around watching TV.

Choosing to do interesting things with your time makes you feel like you’re the kind of person who does interesting things with his or her time. Again, that’s a thing that makes you feel in control, it makes you feel like you’re in a good place with this and can expand your experience of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess where I think maybe the rubber meets the road in terms of am I going to watch TV or am I going to read a book, am I going to browse social media or am I going to get together with a friend, I think in those moments – well, one I guess it’s just kind of planning ahead in terms of you have a plan and you’re going to meet somebody.

But I think the other one is often just, “Oh, it just seems like so much work. I’d be so exhausted to change and leave the house and do this because I’ve just been beat down,” or whatever. It seems like the energy factor is huge in terms of what do folks think they can even handle taking on and doing say on a Monday evening. Do you address that perspective?

Laura Vanderkam
I do. I think what you need to realize with that energy question is that the self – please stick with me. People are going to turn off the podcast here. But I think this is an interesting point. The self – various psychologists have looked at this behavioral thing, but there’s really three selves.

There’s the part of you that is thinking forward to the future, so the anticipating self; the experiencing self, which is what you are feeling in the here and now, going through life; and then the remembering self, which is the part that is thinking back to things you have done in the past.

These are all three part of us, but the issue – and I quote this philosopher saying this is that we pamper the present like a spoiled child. We pay very much attention to our experiencing self, which makes sense. It’s how we’re going through life. But it’s really only one actor in what should be three-actor play.

Our anticipating self and our remembering selves are the ones who want us to go to salsa dancing lessons on a Monday night because it sounds awesome. When we get back we’ll be really happy we did it. Nobody ever exercises and is like, “Gosh, that was a horrible idea.” It feels great once you do it. Meeting your friends at the class, hearing the great music, it’s going to be awesome.

But you have to get yourself in the car and go do it. That’s when your experiencing self throws this temper tantrum like, “No, I don’t want to.”

What you really have to do is this idea of plan it in, do it anyway. You will draw energy from meaningful things. If you are not completely and totally exhausted, like you have some energy, like you could maybe walk out to your front door or something as opposed to being just completely passed out on the couch, if you could get yourself that far, probably you could make yourself do it.

If you think about how the other versions of yourself would react to this and pay attention to them, sometimes that can nudge you to pay a little bit less attention to the experiencing self.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that is just a master key for life right there. Wow.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, paying attention to how you feel right now is not actually the best way to go through life because our physical bodies are not always happy to move, but then you’ll never do anything.

You’ll do only effortless fun, which is the TV and web surfing and you won’t do the effortful fun, which is getting together with a friend, which is going to the salsa dancing lesson, which is even just going for a walk with your family. These are things that they will be great once you’ve done them, but you have to make yourself do them.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting in terms of just the anticipating part. You’re right in terms of you can draw energy from remembering, “Hey that was a cool thing that happened. Yeah, I’m glad I did that,” as well as, “There’s a cool thing that’s happening soon. I’m looking forward to that.” Then it sort of even making the present experiencing self a little bit more fueled to begin going there.

I’m sort of visualizing just a very beautiful virtuous cycle or a vicious cycle in terms of whether you start to build in some great stuff versus you are just always sort of devoid of great stuff in doing the low effort fun.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, because it’s the effortful fun that we really have the memories of. It’s the difference between looking at photos on Instagram of other people’s dinner parties or having your own dinner party.

They are both ways you can spend your leisure time. One obviously takes a lot more effort than the other, but one is going to be a lot more fun than the other. One will make you very, very happy, will create great memories, you can look forward to it, you can remember it afterwards, you will enjoy it a lot at the moment, but you also have to invite the people and get the food to your house.

That takes effort, but effortful fun tends to be the fun we remember.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you tell us about some of these other practices such as lingering?

Laura Vanderkam
Lingering is about being able to stretch the present. It’s not about enjoy every minute. You can’t enjoy every minute. Plenty of minutes in life are just not actually enjoyable. But you can choose to enjoy the enjoyable ones more and to sort of linger in their happening and thus stretch the experience of time.

Part of that is about the anticipating and remembering of it. If you plan stuff in ahead of time that you know will be enjoyable, you can look forward to it and that kind of makes it bigger in your mind.

You can also attempt to be fully present during the experience itself. You can note that you’re having fun. There’s a certain mental thing. It’s not enough to have fun; you want to be aware that you’re having fun. You can tell other people that you’re enjoying yourself. You can make sure you’re remembering details.

Then after the fact, you can tell people about your fun or journal about it or whatever you want to do, look through old photos because that makes the memory come back and then you experience the pleasure a second time. All of these things can make any given unit of time seem more vast by making it more memorable.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting as you sort of unpack this, it seems like maybe one easy way to get started and have your cake and eat it too could just be looking at some of your photos. You don’t even have to change out of your pajamas to do that.

Then in looking at those, it brings back a memory, like, “Oh, yeah that was really cool.” Then it also provides kind of a nudge and inspiration for, “Hey, I should do some more of this stuff.” It kind of gets the train in motion.

Laura Vanderkam
It does. People talk about dwelling in the past as being a negative thing and I don’t think that’s the case at all. This is how we create our stories of who we are. This is a big part of our identity is what our past is. We can nurture this relationship with the past as well to make it more of this living thing that helps us through the present as opposed to something that’s kind of just buried in a dusty drawer somewhere.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. I also wanted to get your take on people on a plane who are doing Facebook, how does that rub you?

Laura Vanderkam
Well, you do you. But it’s one of those – if you’re traveling, probably most of the people on the plane in the middle of the week are traveling for work. These are busy people. They’ve got a lot going on in their lives.

They’re probably the kind of people who are saying, “Oh, I never have time for X, Y, Z. I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to think. I don’t have time to relax. I don’t have time to take a nap.” Well, the plane provides opportunities for all these things. You’re there for three hours. It’s relatively quiet or it can be if you put your headphones on.

There’s generally very few distractions if you don’t choose to then get the Wi-Fi and start checking Facebook. It’s a great time for that kind of focused work that people say they never get a chance for. Or if you’re not comfortable working on the plane for whatever reason–it’s a great time to read. You can make it through a great book in the three hours you’re in the air.

Using this time intentionally as opposed to just using it for the same thing that people use their bits of time for the rest of their lives is a great way to actually feel like you have more time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you have a great line. I don’t know if it’s an original or if you’re quoting a third party here. You say, “The fear of boredom is a waste of time.”

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah. The original impetus for that came from a great novel. Edith Wharton, she’s best known for The Age of Innocence or Ethan Frome. But she has a book that most people I guess haven’t read because it went out of print at some point, but it’s called Twilight Sleep.

The heroine of this book is this bustling, productive woman. This is 1920, so it’s a different sort of productivity that we think of now. She is basically terrified of having an empty hour. She will fill it with whatever she possibly can just to avoid this sense of having to think of everything.

I think that happens for us too. If you think about why you reach for your phone when you’ve got a few minutes. You can tell yourself, “Oh look at me, I’m being productive. I’m deleting email,” but there’s nothing coming in you really need to delete at this moment, especially if you looked at it ten minutes ago. It’s not – there’s nothing there. It’s just that we don’t actually want to sit there and be bored.

That’s fine, but there’s other things you can do with little bits of time that might be more meaningful or enjoyable and help you feel like you actually do have more time than when you have leisure time, you chop it up into these tiny bits through checking your phone.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to talk about the tiny bits and the phone piece because you successfully read the entire book War and Peace I understand primarily using the Kindle app on your phone. Is this true?

Laura Vanderkam
That is true.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild in terms of because when-

Laura Vanderkam
People are going to tell me that my eyesight’s got to be going from doing that, but it was little bits here and there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well because I guess that’s sort of – we talk about the energy piece, I think sometimes when I – just even conceiving reading War and Peace sounds huge, epic, massive, and then taking a moment to read some.

I guess my brain goes to this place and it’s probably false, so set me straight here. It’s like, “Oh boy, War and Peace, that’s pretty intense. That’s going to really require a whole lot of cognitive capability from me. Got to bring some good, smart energy.

I probably can’t do this in a three-minute bit to make tiny bites of progress to finish it because I’ve got to remember where we were before and sort of get into the scene and the characters and the picture that’s being painted and the themes and all that.”

How do you think about to what extent is it really manageable and doable to chop up something into tiny bits and to have that work out for them?

Laura Vanderkam
Well, the great thing about Tolstoy is he does it for you. People think of War and Peace as being this huge, intense, long novel, and it is very long, but the chapters are actually very short. If you look at the print book, most of the chapters are two to three pages.

In fact, it’s a book that lends itself incredibly well to reading on say the Kindle app in five minute spurts while you are waiting for a phone call to start, while you are waiting for a bus, while you’re waiting for your kid at soccer practice or whatever because these chapters are literally five-minute reading material.

There are a lot of them, but they are very, very short, which it’s one of the ways that Tolstoy keeps the story moving along, but he’s a very good writer. There’s a reason this book is still around as opposed to it being disappeared into the ash heap of history as they say.

First I would say it’s not as intimidating as it might sound. You could read it in those five-minute chunks. But if it’s not War and Peace, you could read a poem in five minutes. That’s a unit of itself. Load a book of poems on your Kindle and then read one when you’ve got five minutes. If you like it, read it again the next time you open it. If you weren’t so cool on it, move to the next one.

But using those little chunks of time for reading poetry as opposed to deleting J. Crew ads that have been emailed you just feels entirely different.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Tell me more about how you would articulate the distinction in terms of J. Crew deletion versus reading a poem.

Laura Vanderkam
Well, one is really doing nothing for you I guess is the best way to say it. Deleting email feels incredibly productive. I know. The reason is that what gets measured, gets done. Who knows if we made progress on our most important personal and professional goals today, but I know for sure that I got down from 150 unread messages to 75, so yay, go me.

Whereas, many other things do not lend themselves so easily to numbers, so it’s harder to necessarily feel productive doing them.

But poetry takes the brain to great places. It’s how we can see things that we wouldn’t have brought our minds to before, great emotions, ideas in history or that real people have gone through or memories. It can evoke memories if we have something similar to what it’s getting at. Just taking the brain into a completely different and higher level than making sure the inbox goes from 150 down to 75.

If you want to view it in terms of productivity, I don’t know if poetry lends itself to productivity, but I do know that giving our brains space to think about bigger things is often where we start to get good ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That notion that sort of there’s a theme associated with those who have high time perception is that they’re doing things that are kind of unique and broke up the monotony. A poem, I think it’s very clever is that that’s a short way that goes about breaking up that monotony.

One thing I do – it’s kind of weird, but I don’t care I love it – is I will take a short break and sort of go to my backyard and jump on a trampoline for just a couple minutes. That is kind of like the opposite of being at a computer in terms of I’m standing, I’m bouncing, I’m outdoors. It’s very quick.

Sure enough, there’s something to that notion of doing something that is just the opposite or very much different on multiple dimensions than the baseline.

Laura Vanderkam
That’s a great idea. One of the things I talk about people should do is planning in breaks during their days in order to manage their energy.

What happens is people are like, “Oh look at me. I’m working all hard. I’m working through lunch. Look at how productive I’m being.” Then around 2:30 – 3 o’clock in the afternoon they’re reading the same email six times in a row and then falling down some sort of internet rabbit hole because their brain needs a break and they’re not taking one, so the brain forces the issues.

Whereas your trampoline break hits on all sorts of different dimensions. A) You’re outside, so getting fresh air adds to most people’s energy levels. You’re getting physical activity, another thing that adds to most people’s energy levels. This is a great way to just – whatever you were depleted from before to recharge yourself so you can get right back to work.

Pete Mockaitis
You had a nice turn of phrase about we’re often in denial about taking a break. What does that look like in practice and how can we break better?

Laura Vanderkam
Well, if you think about most of these social media breaks that people take during the day, a lot of those are kind of these fake breaks. But you think you’re still being productive because look at me, I’m still sitting at my computer. If somebody walked by, it looks like I’m still working.

But no, you are not. You’re on whatever thing. You’re reading headlines that are not remotely associated with your job. It’s just you need a break from whatever it was you were doing, so you go over and do this other thing that is sort of effortlessly pleasurable and is a break. But then you don’t consider it a break.

It’s not actually all that rejuvenating either. It doesn’t necessarily add to your energy levels to read headlines. Often it takes from it. It makes you stressed out about whatever is going on in the world.

Better to take a real break, to go jump on your trampoline if that’s what you do or go read for five minutes, read something real away from your screen or go outside or have a cup of tea or whatever it is, but go talk to a work friend whose company you really enjoy. Do something that is a true break because then you’ll be able to come back to work restored.

The fake breaks just don’t do that. Then we’re still dealing with the low energy levels afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a personal take on work time versus break time, the right rhythm intervals, flow ratio there.

Laura Vanderkam
I don’t know. There’s been various studies and people trot out – in the productivity world in trying to find what it is. I would assume most people couldn’t go more than 90 minutes before taking some sort of break. In many cases it’s probably less if it’s more intense type of work.

You can kind of make yourself do it to a degree by drinking a lot of water and you have to get up and refill your bottle or go to the bathroom. Those are all ways to kind of force yourself to get up and stand.

But I think it’s less time than you might thing. If you’re trying to work straight through in the afternoon, like 1 o’clock to 5 o’clock probably you’re not being as efficient as you would be if you put a break somewhere in the middle of that.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to make sure before we kind of shift gears to your favorite things that this time diaries approach, I think that it’s easy to start to do and fail if you’re trying to take an honest account and inventory of how you’re spending your time. What are your pro tips, best practices for executing this well?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, I’m a bit of a time management freak. I’ve actually been tracking my time for more than three years continuously now, which nobody else needs to do. I’ll put out there. But I do think it’s good to track your time for a week to see where it really goes.

I use just a spreadsheet that’s got the days of the week along the top. It’s got half hour blocks along the left going from 5 AM to 5AM, so if you think about the week, it’s 5 AM Monday to 5 AM Monday in half hour blocks.

I try to not to be perfectionist about it. I just check in three – four times a day and write down what I was doing since the last time. It’s okay to just put stuff like work, hangout with kids, eat dinner, drive to store, sleep, read.

The goal is not being so granular that you get every bathroom trip every time you went to the kitchen for whatever. It’s more that you broadly see where the time goes. Just doing that, even with those sort of fairly broad categories, it can still be enlightening.

I know in my case, I was spending a lot more time in the car than I thought I was because I usually work out of my home office when I’m not travelling for speeches or things like that, so I don’t have a daily commute, so time in the car wasn’t really registering to me as a category of my time and yet when I looked at my time logs it was a pretty big category of my time.

That’s good to know because I was just listening to the radio. I don’t even really like top 40 radio, but that was what was on, so I really needed to think about how can I spend that time better.

Pete Mockaitis
With the spreadsheet, is it just kind of in the background? Do you just click open the window from time to time on your computer or your print out and write in it, color coding, highlighters? How does it go down?

Laura Vanderkam
There’s no color coding. It’s on my computer, on my laptop. My laptop does tend to travel with me, so it’s not something where it’s ever gone very far. Because I have the home office, it’s there on the weekend too, so I can just stop in and write it down.

For different people you might want to do different things. Time tracking apps might be useful for people who don’t have a situation where a laptop is very accessible to them big chunks of the time.

You can just use a notebook too. If you want to write down during the week what you’re doing on your work computer and then on the weekend sort of write it down in a notebook and fill in the log when you come back on Monday for instance. That would be a good sort of compromise between those things.

It’s really what works for you and don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I get people sending me these time logs that are in 15 minutes and they’ve color-coded everything in order to have certain categories that they want to be mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive. It’s like, “Ah.” You don’t have to do that. It’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so funny. When you say MECE. I am a former strategy consultant. You’re talking about a spreadsheet.

Laura Vanderkam
Yup, I’m glad you got that.

Pete Mockaitis
So I am thinking, “Okay, once I’ve collected the data how do I go about working with it.” I would imagine … pivot table.

Laura Vanderkam
You don’t actually have to produce a pie chart. Okay, you don’t actually have to produce a pie chart, which means that your categories don’t actually have to be the MECE acronym.

It’s fine just to say, “This is the amount of time I spend in a car.” Maybe, “This is the amount of time I spent watching TV,” or “This is the amount of time I spent reading.” If there’s a big chunk of multitasked time, that’s okay. It’s just good to know that too. You don’t necessarily have to try to categorize it per se.

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

Laura Vanderkam
No, I think we’ve covered a lot of it. That was great.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, all right. Then can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Laura Vanderkam
I actually put a ton of quotes in Off the Clock just at the start of every chapter. But one of my favorites was at the absolute start, the introduction. Mary Oliver, who is a poet. Most people know her line of, “What do you want to do with your one wild and precious life.” I’m misquoting that. That’s not my quote.

But she has – in one of her poems she has this line, “I look upon time as no more than an idea.” I really like that, that time is something we can maybe think about as an artist might use her materials as opposed to this kind of steady drumbeat marching toward doom. Having this sense of it as an idea you can kind of play around with is a lot more positive and implies that you can do a lot more with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and the notion of an artist and materials is delightful. It just makes you think “Ah, what shall I create here?” It has a whole different feel. Yes, thank you.

How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Laura Vanderkam
One that I find myself citing over and over again was done by Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger and a bunch of other people who are sort of known in the field of behavioral science and things like that. But they actually had people track through the day how happy they were as they were doing different things.

It was a study of like 900 Texas women as they went about a day. They would report if they were happy, if they were unhappy, what they were feeling at the time. You can see just this hierarchy of human happiness. As it turns out commuting to work is the low point of people’s day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, but not if they listen to the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Laura Vanderkam
Not if you’re listening to – well, that’s why you’ve got to listen to podcasts because anything you can do to take a minute that would be in this absolutely unenjoyable category at the bottom of human happiness and move it into something that’s actually more enjoyable. That’s a huge happiness booster right there. Yes, listen to your podcast, listen to great music and you’ll feel like you have more time.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Laura Vanderkam
I have too many to really say. I would say that the one I have reread probably the most frequently is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. It’s a short novel. It’s very lyrical. It’s just beautifully written. I’ve enjoyed reading it over and over again. I find something new every time. It’s one of those novels that can be reread and you see new things every time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, how about a favorite habit?

Laura Vanderkam
I am one of those crazy people who runs every single day. I’ve been doing that since December 24, 2016. I’ve run at least a mile a day. That’s a little over 500 days now.

A mile isn’t that much, so it usually doesn’t take me more than like 10 minutes. It’s pretty hard to tell myself I can’t find ten minutes to exercise somewhere in my day. But usually by the time I’ve done the first mile, I’m happy to keep going.

It’s been good in getting me to run more and thinking more strategically about when I might exercise because if you know you need to run the mile a day, the question is not am I going to exercise, it’s when am I got to exercise. Then that’s just about problem solving as opposed to motivation.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious what was it about that Christmas Eve that made you say today I run.

Laura Vanderkam
Today I run and I will not stop. It was nothing. It was more that I ran that day and then we were – I was off work. We weren’t travelling anywhere that particular vacation, so I wound up running I think seven days in a row. I was like, “Oh, I wonder if I just kept going. What if I continue?”

It was around New Years as well and people often have these New Year’s resolutions. I thought well, I’ll just try it for a while, see if I can run 30 days straight. Then I was like, “Well let me see if I run 60 days straight.” By the time you’ve run 60 days straight, you’ve pretty much worked it into your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Laura, is there a particular nugget or piece that you share that really seems to connect, resonate, to get retweeted when you convey it?

Laura Vanderkam
One of my favorite thoughts for people is any time you’re going to say, “I don’t have time,” substitute the language, “It’s not a priority,” because that’s probably actually more accurate.

Whatever it is, you’re saying, “I don’t have time to iron my sheets,” but if somebody offered to pay you 100,000 dollars to iron your sheets, you would do it. It would go up the priority list very quickly. It’s not about lacking time. It’s that you don’t want to do it. You may not necessarily want to tell other people that whatever it is that they’re asking you to do is just not a priority for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Your wedding is not a priority.

Laura Vanderkam
Your wedding is not a priority. But if it’s true, it’s true. Own this truth about your desires in life and how you wish to spend your time because usually this language puts us back in control of it. It’s not the universe keeping us down. We actually do have many choices.

Even if life is in many constrained circumstances, there’s often at least choices with small bits of time. Once we can start to see that, then often we can expand that sphere of influence over time.

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

Laura Vanderkam
You can come visit my website, which is LauraVanderkam.com. I hope some of your listeners will check out some of my time management books as well. The new one Off the Clock is just out, but there are a few others. If you are looking for more time management titles, there’s a shelf full. I can hopefully help you rethink how you spend your time.

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

Laura Vanderkam
I think that being intentional about how you spend your time is really the most important time management tip. Don’t show up at work without having thought through what would make this an awesome day.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you will inevitably do that thing that will make it an awesome day. Stuff does come back, but at least having an idea of why this day will be special and memorable and amazing for you can help you be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Laura, thank you so much for sharing this good stuff. It’s eye opening. It’s powerful. I wish you and Off the Clock tons of luck and success and sales and all that good stuff.

Laura Vanderkam
Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Oren, welcome to the show!

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks so much, Pete.  Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
I think we’re going to have a ton of fun here.  First I’d like to get oriented to your history and backstory as a child actor.

Oren Jay Sofer
Alight, yeah.  It’s interesting – I was thinking about this before getting on the call.  And my motivation for being a child actor is actually the same reason why I do what I do now.  So, when I was about eight or nine years old I got really inspired by a movie I saw and I realized that millions of people have seen this movie.  And here I am having this cool thought and thinking about something that’s pretty amazing.  Imagine if I could reach large numbers of people and get them to think about their life in a different way.
And so I decided I wanted to become an actor.  And so until the age of 20 I was going into New York, going to auditions, I did some TV commercials, a few shows, some student films, some off-Broadway theater.  And then I found meditation, and it radically changed my life.  And here I am 20 years later and realizing that in some very interesting roundabout way I’m doing the same thing, in a different way – trying to reach people and help them to think about their lives in a different way.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so cool.  And I want to hear, what was the movie that got this seed planted?

Oren Jay Sofer
[laugh] It’s slightly embarrassing because it’s not a very profound movie.  But I think it was Back to the Future part 2 or part 3 or something.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s pretty profound.  That gets you thinking.

Oren Jay Sofer
It was.  It was in the ‘80s and I got thinking about time and one’s life.  And yeah, it really made me ponder things.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, I dig it.  And I’ve had those moments as well, from movies that might be silly or comedies or not as powerful apparently in the eyes of the critics, in terms of assessing it as a movie great.  But that’s cool.

Oren Jay Sofer
And I was eight or nine years old.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so kudos there.  And so, with your child acting, are there any commercials we might have seen or recognized?

Oren Jay Sofer
I giggled in a Life Savers commercial. [laugh] And I did an Applebee’s commercial, that restaurant is still around.  The thing that you might see actually that’s still out there if you’re having trouble sleeping late one night and flipping through cable television, is an episode of Law & Order that’s still running, where I actually was the murderer.

Pete Mockaitis
A kid murderer?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yes, a kid murderer.  A Crime of Passion was the title, or something like that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so funny, because you’re all about the non-violence.

Oren Jay Sofer
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And here we have that role.  Well, cool.  So, I’ve heard your voice many times through the Simple Habit meditation app, and I just connected with it in a great way.  You’re just so encouraging, so thank you for that.

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you say meditation changed your life.  Could you maybe walk us through a little bit of what’s the story or the narrative of how this unfolds?

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure.  So I was in college and acting in New York City, and worn pretty thin.  Just kind of rolling hard and heavy.  I won’t go into details, but you can imagine.  And parents got divorced.  So just a lot of stress, a lot of pressure.  I had a big falling out with my friends.  And just in kind of that way that can happen at that particular age – I was about 18 or 19 – it felt like my life was coming apart at the seams, and I wanted to start over.
And I ended up hearing about a study abroad program in India actually, where I could go to a monastery, and no drugs, no sex, no alcohol, up at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, meditating twice a day.  And I said, “Sign me up.”  I kind of wanted to clear the decks and just start fresh.  And some of the teachers that I met over there had a really profound impact on me and kind of opened my eyes to what was possible in a human life, and taught me how to understand my own mind.  And it started a whole process of me reevaluating my life, reorienting to deeper values inside, and starting to deal with some of the struggles and emotions that I had been kind of pushing away inside for many years.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating.  And so when you say you meditated twice a day, what kind of length of time are we talking about here?

Oren Jay Sofer
We would meditate for 30 or 45 minutes, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, intriguing.  And so was there teaching on top of that?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, it was a whole program.  So we were studying Buddhism and learning about meditation.  I was in the process of doing a degree in Comparative Religion, so that kind of became part of my studies.  But I had I guess you could say the good fortune, but the unique opportunity to kind of dive in head first.  And I’m guessing most of your listeners aren’t going to give up their career and go to India for six months the way I did.  But what’s wonderful is the kind of opportunities that are available today, like Simple Habit or 10% Happier or other apps – those weren’t around 20 years ago.  So people today can actually access these practices right from their own home, and there’s a lot of really wonderful teaching and guidance available.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so cool.  Well, could you maybe share in your own experience, in terms of back here States side, thinking about the… Well, you tell me first of all – do you find that you go into and out of a regular habitual meditative practice, or is it like stone cold, 100% solid?

Oren Jay Sofer
So, it’s pretty much a regular part of my life at this point.  That doesn’t mean that I sit for 45 minutes every day without fail.  Things get busy sometimes, I’ve got an early morning appointment.  I try to sit quietly for at least a minute or two, no matter what’s happening, just to kind of touch into that space.  But what is the case is that the level of clarity and awareness that’s present in my mind is much greater because of the many years of mindfulness practice.  And so even when I’m not meditating formally, there is a connection with mindfulness that’s happening.  And that’s the result of practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’d love for you to expand upon that clarity and awareness, sort of the result or the product, if you will, the outcome from having done it, either in a day, like right afterwards, or over years.  Could you just make that a real clear contrast or distinction, in terms of non-meditating – “My brain is kind of like this”, versus meditating – “I experience this other opposite thing instead.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure, yeah.  So, we can characterize the benefits of meditation in two or three key ways.  And this comes straight out of a lot of the research that’s been done.  So, one is emotional regulation.  So for example if one’s not meditating, we might find that things get us going a lot more easily, we get reactive, we pop off at someone, we’re short, we’re testy.  Things get to us easily.
Meditation, mindfulness meditation helps to decrease emotional reactivity, so that we are more aware of the emotions that we experience and have more space inside to tolerate any discomfort and choose how we respond, rather than reacting impulsively based on how we feel in the moment.
And as all of us know, that’s a really useful skill in life in all situations, whether we’re talking about our primary relationship, our family, or our work.  Being able to be in a stressful or demanding situation, where something comes up that triggers us or makes us angry or makes us upset or fearful, or a lot of anxiety or anticipation – to have the capacity to still think clearly and not be pushed around by those emotions – that’s huge.  So that’s one major benefit.

Pete Mockaitis
That is huge.  Just that phrase there, nice – “The space to tolerate discomfort”.  We’ve got a bunch of people who like learning, listening to the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast, and we’ve heard it said many, many times associated with, growth occurs in discomfort.  When you’re learning something new you’re kind of clueless and feel dumb.  Stephen Covey talking about the comfort zone versus the growth zone, which is intrinsically uncomfortable.  So that just sounds so huge right there, is if we can tolerate greater discomfort, then our whole ability to learn, grow, develop just… We might, I don’t know, I’m going to throw a number out, see how it feels – you might double or triple your capacity to grow if you double or triple your capacity to tolerate discomfort.

Oren Jay Sofer
Absolutely, yeah.  And the phrase that I like to use comes from a colleague of mine.  We talk about “the zone of strategic discomfort”.  So, if we’re too comfortable we don’t learn, we don’t grow, because we’re just going along and everything’s fine.  However, if we’re too uncomfortable we also don’t learn, because it’s overwhelming.  So there’s this zone in the middle, of strategic discomfort, where it’s uncomfortable enough that we’re forced to actually look at things and question them and pay more attention.
And so, that’s what the training of mindfulness does, is it creates a space in which we can study our own mind, our own habits, our own reactions, and really start to come into contact with those places that we get uncomfortable and learn, “How do I respond here?  What’s my go-to strategy?  How do I develop more patience, more resilience, more stability inside, so that I have more choice?”  And this is one of the central principles behind mindfulness practice, Pete, which is the more aware we are, the more choice we have.
So, mindfulness practice increases awareness.  It increases awareness of our emotions, it increases awareness of our thoughts, it increases self-awareness, our attention is sharper in terms of being able to observe around us and pick up more information from others and our environment.  And when we have that awareness and information, that allows us to make better choices.  And all of those things translate directly into our ability to be awesome at our job, as your podcast likes to say, because we have more access to our own intelligence and resources inside.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, that’s good.  Alright, so you said three.

Oren Jay Sofer
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to make sure I’m segmenting or following your train.  Did we cover one or did we cover two?  Or did we cover three?

Oren Jay Sofer
We covered one.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, you have more.

Oren Jay Sofer
We covered emotional regulation.  So the second one is something called “attentional stability”, which is a fancy way of saying focus, or ability to pay attention, or concentration.  So, one of the skills that’s developed through mindfulness practice is the ability to stay aware of a chosen activity or object.  So, you talked about your mind before and after meditation.
So I remember when I was in college, before I started meditating, reading the same paragraph over and over again, sometimes five or six times, because my mind would keep wondering.  And it would take a lot longer to get a certain task done because I wasn’t able to stay on task, to stay on track.
So mindfulness develops that capacity to be focused, to choose where we put our attention, and keep it there.  And again, that translates into all areas of our life, whether it’s personal or professional, whether we’re wanting to read or study or write, or even listen in a meeting and be able to keep track of the information that’s coming, without losing focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s certainly helpful in lots of things.  I dig it.  And what’s the third?

Oren Jay Sofer
So, the third is self-awareness.  The third is being able to understand and be aware of our own experience, our own mind.  So one of the other common ways of talking about mindfulness practice is that this quality of mindfulness, which we haven’t defined, so maybe let me take a moment to just do that now.  Mindfulness is the ability to be aware of what’s happening in the moment in a clear, balanced and non-reactive way.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Oren Jay Sofer
So it’s not just knowing what’s happening, but it’s knowing what’s happening in this particular way where there is clarity and there is a kind of balance inside.  We’re not getting pulled around or reactive just because of something that’s happening in our environment, internally or externally.  So, one of the main things mindfulness does is it helps us to tell the difference between what’s actually happening and the stories that we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening.
And so this is where the self-awareness comes in.  We start to see how our thoughts, our moods, our emotions, our interpretations begin to influence and color our experience.  This is really important.  It’s like our mind is a set of glasses through which everything is being filtered.  So there is nothing that we experience in life, there’s nothing that we hear, see, taste, smell or touch that doesn’t involve our mind.  And so, if our mind is adding interpretations and opinions and biases to those experiences and we’re not aware of it, that’s going to affect how well we live, how well we do our job, the quality of our relationships, the quality of happiness and well-being we experience in our life.
So, for example, how many of us have had the experience of working someplace and somebody walks in and they don’t say “Good morning”?  Or you catch a weird look on their face and all of a sudden we’re like, “Oh my God, they don’t like me.  They’re out to get me.  I know, it’s that project we did last week – they’re not happy with it.”  And we start spinning.  We make this whole story and we don’t even realize what just happened – that all that happened was actually we walked in and we didn’t hear them say “Hello”, or we didn’t make eye contact, and that everything else is extra. It’s all thoughts and fears and interpretation.
And so that’s happening a lot of our lives, that we’re living in the reality of our stories and our beliefs and our interpretations.  And the more we develop mindfulness, the more we see those for what they are, and then we can actually evaluate, “Okay, which ones are helpful?  Which ones are maybe likely to be true?  And which ones are just getting in my way or tripping me up?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.  That’s potent.  So I think you really painted a nice picture there, associated with what good looks like, when you’re sort of “with it”, and then what the not-so-great default can look like.  So I’d love it… You mentioned studies a couple of times.  Could you share, are there maybe one or two or three studies that have an impressive, quantified result that you’d like to drop?

Oren Jay Sofer
I’m happy to answer the question.  I want to say one more thing on your last question before we go there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Oren Jay Sofer
You said something like, the difference between what’s…

Pete Mockaitis
Like when you’re on the meditation train versus off of the meditation train.

Oren Jay Sofer
Exactly, exactly.  And the one thing that I want to add to that that’s really important is that being on the meditation train doesn’t mean that we don’t still have negative thoughts or interpretations or anxiety come up.  It means that we’re able to be aware of those and have some choice about how much space they take up inside, so that they’re not running the show.  And that’s a really key distinction, because if we have an expectation that, “All this stuff is going to go away and I’ll never have to feel anxious or insecure again” – that might not be realistic.  But what is very attainable is being able to put those things in context and not be so oppressed by them.  And how much of the time are we our own worst enemy, in terms of being able to really fulfill our potential?  So, I just wanted to make that really clear before we move on to the research question.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah.  So, I’ll share a little bit of what I know about studies with the caveat that I’m not a scientist and I’m not a researcher.  So, just to give you an analogy – I’m a meditation teacher, and so I teach people how to practice mindfulness and I teach people how to practice communication, how to bring those two together in their relationships.  How to use mindfulness not just for one’s own mind but also in your relationships and life.  And it’s a little bit like the difference between being a musician, who plays music, and being a sound engineer, who records the music and knows how to get the right frequencies and levels set.  So, I don’t deal with the sound engineering; I just play the music.
So, having said that, one of the interesting things that’s happening these days is, they’re doing what are called “meta-analyses”.  So the individual research studies that are done have a specific sample size, and those carry some weight.  But a meta-analysis aggregates the data over 20, 30, 40, 50 or more individual research studies and then looks at trends.  And so within scientific research, a meta-analysis can often carry more weight because it’s drawing on a much larger sample size.
And the meta-analyses are showing really strong consistent evidence for benefits in decreasing cognitive and emotional reactivity, for decreases in mind-wandering and rumination, so like getting lost in thoughts and sort of spinning inside with worry and anxiety; and self-compassion and kindness.  So those are some of the qualities that are coming out.
But a couple of my favorite, favorite studies – so, one has to do with the effect of mindfulness training on kindness and altruism.  So they gave people three weeks of mindfulness training – not a long time.  And then they said they were going to participate in a research study.  So they get to the waiting room.  One person comes in from the study, a participant, and they’re waiting to go in to do the research study.  But what they don’t know is that the waiting room is actually where the research study is happening.
So they come in and there are three chairs.  Two of them are occupied with people who work for the research team, but they don’t know this.  They sit down in the third chair, now they’re waiting to go in.  A few moments later somebody comes in on crutches, with a boot on one of their feet – also an actor in the study.  And they visibly kind of sigh, noticing that there’s no place to sit down.
So they do this with everyone who participated in the study, and with a control group who received three weeks of cognitive training with no mindfulness.  And what they found was that people who received mindfulness training gave up their seat at a rate two times as often as others.  And that was verified by another study.  So it points to, very clearly, when we’re more aware of our own thoughts and feelings and body, it increases empathy.  We become more aware of other people and how it is for them, and say, “Here, sit down, please.  Take my seat.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now I’m so curious to know what the baseline rate is of non-meditators.  It had to be less than 51%, if it was doubled by the meditators.  So that’s no so encouraging for humanity.

Oren Jay Sofer
Right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
But there is a pathway, so there is the bright spot there.  That’s a fun one, thanks.  And you said there’s another.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah.  The other is less of a story there.  But six weeks of mindfulness training has been shown to decrease implicit bias against minorities.  So that’s pretty powerful to think about the effect on one’s mind there.  They also do a lot of studies on something called “loving-kindness practice”, which is another form of mental training that’s related to mindfulness, but different.  It’s cultivating an intentional state of goodwill and kindness.  And just 10 minutes of this kind of meditation has been shown to have a relaxing effect on one’s ability to shift gears into a more relaxed, para-sympathetic state.
Another study’s showing that a number of weeks of loving-kindness meditation, participants reported significant increases in well-being, like contentment and joy and gratitude in their lives.  Oh, and then here’s another one, you’ll like this.  I was just reading last night.  A lot of the research that’s happening, or a certain amount of it that’s really fascinating is where scientists, neuroscientists are taking meditation masters.  So people who are considered like Olympics-levels of meditation – more than 10,000 hours, and doing FMRIs – functional imaging scans of their brain and measuring different things.
And so one Tibetan teacher, they’ve done some different scans of his brain over the course of the last 8 to 10 years, and what they’re finding is that his brain is aging more slowly than like 99% of people in his age group.  He’s in the like 100th percentile of the rate of aging in brain cells.  And so, that’s really fascinating to me to see that the potential for training our minds with meditation and mindfulness can even have an effect on the long-term vitality of our mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s compelling.  It makes me what to kick it up right now, to reap those benefits 50 years from now.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, you mentioned loving-kindness and its impact on relationships.  Can you share a little bit of how that can pop up in the workplace?

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure.  Well, I think that our culture and our society tends to be very competitive, and I think in many workplaces my sense is that that carries over, and that there is a sense of competition and we are against one another.  Not exclusively, but that can infiltrate, it can get into the workplace.  And what I’ve seen in my own life and from the things that I’ve read and the stories that I know, two things are true.  One, we can accomplish more when we work together as human beings.  We can do great things when we are supporting one another and celebrating one another, rather than competing or fighting with one another.
So, if you’re looking at any kind of a company or a team within a company that has a certain goal or charge, when there’s goodwill present, when there’s a quality of respect, mutual respect and trust and empathy, you can draw on the strengths and the ingenuity and creativity of each person in that team a lot more.  So that’s one aspect. The other aspect is… Dale Carnegie’s famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People.  It’s like you catch more flies with honey than with. What’s the saying?

Pete Mockaitis
Vinegar, was it?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, that’s it.  Vinegar.  So, in our own relationships when we’re kind, other people tend to be kind back to us.  When we approach a situation with goodwill and an open mind, that energy tends to come back around to us.  And even when it doesn’t, it feels better in ourselves, and so we’re enhancing the quality of our own life and we’re increasing our own well-being directly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good.  Well, it sounds like to get in the depth of that, we might just have to do this again, maybe when your book comes out, December-ish.  Because I really want to dig into a little bit of, if someone’s never meditated before, what do you do?

Oren Jay Sofer
Right.  Sure, sure.  Yeah, so there are a few simple pointers or suggestions.  I think the first is just understanding the main principle behind the practice of meditation.  And the main principle is that our minds are designed to learn.  And whatever we do with them, they will learn.  So, if we spend our time thinking about things that are stressful, if we spend our time feeling aggravated and rushed, we’re doubting ourselves, we are actively shaping and training our mind to feel stressed and aggravated and rushed.  Those are just a few examples.
If you look back to the origins of mindfulness meditation in the Buddhist tradition, there’s a quote from the early text that captures this really well.  And it says, “Whatever the mind frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become its habit, that will become its inclination.”  And so, the modern day version of this is neuroplasticity – neurons that fire to get a wire together.  So our brains can change in their shape and function based on how we use them.
So, this kind of fundamental plasticity or malleability of our brain means that we can use the mental training techniques of mindfulness practice to shape and train our brain in a different way.  So, the exercises of mindfulness meditation are about training our mind to be aware of what’s happening in the moment in a clear and balanced way.  So, that’s the underlying principle.
The practice itself involves sitting or standing in a comfortable position at first.  You can also do it while walking.  It’s helpful to start when you’re still, turning your attention inwards.  Sometimes that might mean closing your eyes, other times that might just mean withdrawing your attention from what’s going on around you – the sights and the sounds and so forth, and just turning your attention inwards, and seeing if you can feel your breathing.  So when we breathe in, can we be aware of that?  When we breathe out, can we be aware of that?
That’s the most basic mindfulness meditation exercise, is feeling the breath.  And it’s important to let your breath be natural.  We’re not trying to control our breath in any way, or breathe in a special way.  But what we’re doing is we’re using the breath as a foil, as a tool to sharpen our awareness, to learn how to stay connected to what’s happening in the present moment.  And as you know, and as anyone who tries this will very quickly see, we’re not really good at that.  Our mind tends to wander off really quickly.  And that’s okay, that’s part of it.  That’s why it’s a practice.
So, every time we notice that our mind has wondered, that moment of noticing is really powerful.  That’s actually the key moment of mindfulness practice, because that’s the moment where awareness is actually growing.  We just woke up, we just realized that we were off task.  So, in that moment it’s a cause to actually appreciate, “Oh, great.  This is working.  I’m becoming more aware.”  And then we just gently come back to feeling the breath.  That’s the most basic practice.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m glad you said that.  I was going to prompt you to do it if you didn’t, because that point that you made in the Simple Habit app when I heard you, it was so powerful for me because it’s I guess a little bit of what I was doing before, in my noviceness, was I’m like, “Oh, darn it!  Argh, I thought of something.  I’m screwing up.”  And you just completely turn that on its head, reframing it to, “The sheer fact that you did notice that means you’re growing in awareness, not that you’ve screwed up.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It was so funny, the first time you said that I was like, “No, that’s not what that means.  Ohhh.”

Oren Jay Sofer
It’s a win.

Pete Mockaitis
So it was a big eye-opening sense for me, so thank you for that.

Oren Jay Sofer
You’re welcome.  Yeah, it’s a win.  Every time we remember, our awareness is growing.  The other important thing I’ll mention for your listeners out there, in terms of if you’re experimenting with mindfulness practice, or even if you have a mindfulness practice already.  The other thing that’s important to remember is that because our minds are so fluid and can be shaped, the way that we do these techniques is really important.
So, in other words, if we take on this practice and we get excited or we’re going to try it, and we’re doing it with a lot of self-judgment and tightness, and we’re pushing and we’re trying really hard, not only are we going to exhaust ourselves really quickly and probably give it up, but we’re reinforcing those habits in our mind.  So, how we practice mindfulness is as important as that we practice mindfulness, the technique itself.  It’s like any other tool that you use – how you hold the tool is really important, and if you’re not holding the tool properly, you’re not going to be able to use it well, you might even do some damage with it.
So, as the saying goes, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent.”  So, it’s important to see, how am I approaching this?  Am I approaching this with a sense of curiosity, lightheartedness, patience, rather than, “Okay, now I’m going to really do this and I’m going to be great at it and push myself.”  And that’s where the transformation happens, is that we learn how to be patient, relaxed, kind, steady, balanced, by noticing, “Oh my God, I’m totally driving myself nuts here, just trying to feel my breath.  Why is this so hard?  Oh, I can relax.  I don’t have to try so hard.”  And so begins the learning that unfolds through the practice.

Pete Mockaitis
I really like when you say in the app in terms of the stances of, nowhere to go, nothing to do, being friendly and curious.  And as we’re talking about neuroplasticity and the mental inclination, it’s like, those are things I want to experience in my brain frequently, and maybe experience less frequently than I’d like to.  So, I think that’s really cool how that ties together and is just very pleasant.  So, do you have any pro tips on how to step into that stance effectively?

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure.  Yeah, I’ll offer one of those and then link it to our work in the workplace, the relevance in the workplace.  So, I make a huge emphasis in my teaching and in my own personal meditation practice to start from a good place.  And I actually have a free guided meditation on my website called “Finding Ease” that shares this, it shares some instructions on this.  It’s a free download if people sign up for my email, is they get this meditation.  And it’s basically when you sit down to meditate, see if you can set an intention inside to just say, “Okay, this time is for me.  I don’t have to do anything now.  All of the projects, all of the plans, all the issues – I can just set those aside.  And can I find a place of just being able to feel relaxed or at ease right now, in this moment?”
Not forever, just for right now.  Just to take whether it’s 5 minutes or 10 minutes, however long you’re going to practice for, just to take this time off from other things.  That doesn’t mean that stuff’s not going to come up, but it just means that we’re starting from a place of letting go and just arriving in a place of, “Ahhh, I can just chill out here.”  And so, it can take time to find that.  It’s like finding that note.  How do I hit that note inside?  But we all know that place; we’d go nuts if we didn’t.
It’s that feeling when you’re with a good friend that you haven’t seen for a while and you’re just sitting out on the porch or taking a walk.  Or it’s the feeling on Saturday afternoon on the weekend, when you’re with your family or you’re out by yourself just enjoying a sunset.  And everything just kind of slows down for a little bit and gets quiet.  It’s remembering that feeling and that sense that that’s always available to us in the moment, if we can just step back from things.  And so, starting from that place.
And that takes practice.  It takes practice, but it’s totally doable.  Now, how does this relate to having a job and going into the office every day?  So, I think that what I’ve seen in myself and other people at work is that the number of demands on our time and energy are greater than the number of hours in a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Oren Jay Sofer
And that gets stressful over time, because there’s always a list that’s growing faster than we can accomplish the items.  So this is where mindfulness comes in really valuable, because what mindfulness does is it allows us to be more present… I was going to say “fully present”, but that’s what we’re aiming for.  But at least to be more present with what we’re doing in the moment.  So rather than worrying about the 10 things that we’re not doing right now – that we actually can’t do right now, because we’re not doing them, we’re doing something else – instead of worrying about those or rushing to try to get to them, we can be fully present, or as present as possible with the task at hand.
And that has a few really positive effects.  Number one – it allows us to do that task more efficiently and more skillfully.  We have access to more of our intelligence and creativity because we’re 100% there, or as close to 100% as we can.  Number two – it helps us keep from burning out.  One of the reasons we burn out is that we’re always trying to be two or three steps ahead of ourselves, and that’s just not possible.  So when we’re able to just do one thing at a time completely, we’re conserving our energy because we’re not pushing ourselves to be someplace where we’re not.
And so to sum this up, what’s the essence of this?  In the Zen tradition they say, “When you’re sweeping the garden, just sweep the garden.”  So there’s that sense of like anything… And this is where mindfulness is more a way of life than something we do for 5 or 10 or 20 minutes in the morning.  It’s about being wholehearted in whatever we do.
Our whole life is having an effect on our mind.  Everything that we do – how we are when we’re driving and sitting in traffic.  If we’re gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles – well, we’re actually strengthening impatience and anxiety in our nervous system.  We’re enhancing those qualities.  So, if we can take any activity, whether it’s walking to the car, chopping vegetables, answering an email, washing our dishes, and use that to strengthen qualities of clarity, focus, calm, presence, resilience, by how we perform that activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, could you expand upon answering an email… The white knuckle driving steering wheel example is a nice visual.  So can we get the contrast between a not-so-happy to the nervous system way of replying to an email, versus a delightful way to reply to an email?

Oren Jay Sofer
Absolutely, I see it in myself all the time.  I get a lot of emails, and sometimes I see myself firing off responses, and because of my practice I notice the tension in my body.  So I’ll notice my shoulders are hunched up, as I’m typing my fingers are pounding on the keys, and maybe my breath is tight or shallow.  And there’s this energy, a little like impulse or push inside to be going more quickly getting on to the next one, on to the next one, on to the next one.
And what I find is if I just take literally half a moment, just enough space to breathe in and breathe out once, my shoulders relax, I can feel my body sitting on the chair, instead of being like up out of my body through my eyes in the computer screen.  And then I can respond to the email with ease, and that’s less exhausting.

Pete Mockaitis
“Ease” is a great word.

Oren Jay Sofer
It is, yeah.  And so, I know that you’ve shared with me that you guys are really big on, “How do I use this?  How do I take this into my life?”  I am a huge proponent of a very simple practice called “pausing”.  And as I just said a pause can be as brief as one breath.  It could be longer, it could be a minute or two.  But the more we can make a habit of taking just really brief pauses throughout our day – as I said, it can really just be one breath, like you sit down at your desk and before you turn on your computer just to take one breath, or before your lunch break, or before a big meeting.  Those kinds of pauses can help us be more efficient with our energy during the day, it can enhance our quality of life, it can allow us to enjoy our work more, instead of always being on the treadmill, trying to get ahead.  Yeah, and like you said, just feel more at ease inside.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it, thank you.  And nice to have inspiration there.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
No, I’m good.  Let’s move on.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  Could you share with us a favorite quote, something that inspires you?

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure.  One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote The Little Prince.  This is from another one of his books, called Wind, Sand and Stars.  And he wrote, “It is idle having planted an acorn in the morning to expect to sit beneath the shade of an oak in the afternoon.”  And so for me it just really points to the virtue of patience in our lives, and how anything worthwhile doing takes time and takes patience.  And that goes for mindfulness practice, and it goes for any kind of creative project or other pursuit.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, thank you.  And how about a favorite book?

Oren Jay Sofer Gary Snyder has a book called The Practice of the Wild.  It’s a collection of essays that are really wonderful reflections on what it is to be human and how our culture and society can interfere with realizing our potential, not only as individuals but also as a community and as a species.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
I’ll share two.  So one – I use an app called Things that helps me track my to-do lists.  I find that very helpful.  And well, the subject of our podcast is the other tool, so mindfulness.  In terms of pausing, there are many apps that you can get for computers – desktop, laptop computer – that give you a reminder periodically to pause.  The one that I use is called Time Out for Macs, but there’s a whole host of those.  And it’s hard to remember to pause.  Work day’s often so busy, so I rely on that sometimes to just help me to take a break periodically.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.  And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate with your students?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, I come back to patience.  The key to success is patient, kind persistence.  Just keep showing up, being patient and having that spirit of kindness towards oneself and others.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, my website is the best place – OrenJaySofer.com.  You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook – same thing, Oren Jay Sofer.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
Sure.  Sure thing.  Think about what’s most important to you, why you’re doing what you’re doing.  And then every morning when you wake up, set a clear intention about how you want to show up at your job.  What qualities do you want to bring to the work that you do and the people that you work with every day?
Set that intention every morning.  If you can remember it halfway during the day, at lunch come back to it.  And then at the end of the day when you come back home, before you go to bed just reflect back on the day and think, “Okay, when did I actually remember this?  When was I able to come from this place inside?”  And if you do that every day, even for a few weeks, you’ll start to notice changes in your work and in your quality of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.  Oren, thank you so much for sharing this.  It sounds like there’s a wealth of stuff to talk about, in terms of the relationships and interconnectedness from this stuff.  So, I hope we can chat again about some of this.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, that would be great.  We can talk about how mindfulness applies to communication, which is what my book’s on that’s coming out in December, called See What You Mean.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.  Well, this has been a real treat.  Thanks for all you do.  I’ll continue listening to your voice in the app, and keep on rocking!

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks so much, Pete.  You too!