Prioritization Archives - Page 4 of 14 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

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

Dave Crenshaw
Hey, I’m thrilled to be back, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, last time we talked about having fun and how that’s super important. And I tell you what, your words come back to me frequently when I’m like having fun in the middle of a work day on a break, I was like, “Is this appropriate?” It’s like, “Dave said it’s going to make me better,” so thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, tell me, how are you having fun these days?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, I take July and December off now every year.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. Well done.

Dave Crenshaw
So, I just came off of a nice long December break, spent some time hanging out with the kids, I may or may not have played a little too much XBOX so I’m feeling good. I’m feeling rested and ready to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Did you get the new XBOX?

Dave Crenshaw
I did.

Pete Mockaitis
I did, too.

Dave Crenshaw
I made that a priority.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, kudos. Those were hard to snag for a little while there. Well, let’s talk about multitasking. So, you’ve got your second edition here coming out The Myth of Multitasking. I want to really dig deep into this. First of all, what’s the big idea here? What is the myth of multitasking?

Dave Crenshaw
The myth of multitasking is that multitasking simply does not exist, not in the way that people think about it. The word is an inelegant and improper word to describe various things that could be happening. So, what I cover in the book is helping people understand what really is occurring in their day when they try to do multiple things at the same time, and identify whether they’re being productive when they do it, or whether they’re really screwing things up while they’re attempting it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love the way you teed that up because it sounds like there’s some nuance and some distinguishing to be done which is why I wanted to have this conversation with you because that’s kind of come up before a bit but I think we can drill really deep here. So, if multitasking isn’t the appropriate term, what alternatives do you think we might and should be using?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. So, what I present in the book is that one of two things are happening. Either you are switch-tasking or you are back-tasking. Switch-tasking is when you’re switching attention. You’re switching between listening to this podcast and answering an email, you’re switching between having a conversation with someone at work and thinking about the unresolved laundry that you left at your house, and every time you switch your attention from one thing to something else, you pay a cost associated with that. So, switch-tasking is always ineffective and we can go more into depth on that.

The other is back-tasking. That’s where something mindless, mundane, or automatic is occurring in the background. For instance, I’m listening to this podcast while I’m exercising, right? Hopefully, at this point, I don’t have to pay attention to how I run on the treadmill. I can focus on Pete talking. And that can be productive. The problem is, first of all, most people are using one word to describe multiple options, so they say multitasking, and we create a lot of confusion when people use that word. And when people say they’re a good multitasker, most often they’re talking about switch-tasking. And saying that you’re a good switch-tasker is like saying, “I’m excellent at screwing up multiple things at the same time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Ooh, strong words. So, that seems to be the core distinction. So, back-tasking means something is so automatic it can be done in the background and requires no attention and, thusly, we’re pretty much only really doing one thing as far as our attention is concerned.

Dave Crenshaw
Correct. And that also includes things like starting the printer, printing a job, delegating a task to a coworker. Basically, something else is occurring that doesn’t require any effort from you, that can be productive and that should be encouraged but that’s not what most people are doing. You see how people are behaving in the workplace and in their day, especially now that so many people are working from home. And what are they doing? They’re constantly switch-tasking and they’re telling themselves, “I’m multitasking. I’m being productive,” but what’s really happening is things are taking longer, they’re making more mistakes, and they’re increasing their stress levels.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I like the term back-tasking, I think that’s short for background, things happening as you’re tasking. And, indeed, when you mentioned the printer, I think that’s a great example because sometimes I feel euphoric. There’s a strong word. But if I have, let’s say, I’ve got some dishes being cleaned by the dishwasher, I got clothes being cleaned by the washing machine, I’ve got a vacuum robot going, and I’m doing something else, I mean, that’s like nirvana for me in a productivity nerd kind of a way.

Dave Crenshaw
And you even have your podcast working for you. Wow!

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true, people are listening.

Dave Crenshaw
You’ve got a podcast working for you right now while we’re recording this podcast so that’s effective back-tasking.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s totally true. Thousands of listeners as I sleep. I get a kick out of it when I see people, like sometimes I’ll refresh and I see downloads happening like at late night, like on a holiday or something.

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, we got to talk about that. That’s a different issue altogether.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, I shouldn’t be refreshing my podcast stats on a holiday?

Dave Crenshaw
Correct. Yes, that’s something else. That’s switch-tasking on your holiday. See, it is back-tasking because it’s taking care of it, but the moment you jump in and start looking at it, now you’re switch-tasking.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I guess fair enough. I’m just going to let that go. It’s not about me. It’s about the listeners. Okay, cool. So, the book, it’s on its second edition here. Are there new discoveries that you’ve made associated with multitasking? Lay it on us.

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. Well, okay, so the book first came out in 2008, and you think about where we were and what we were doing in 2008. Something like a Twitter was just barely starting to surface at that time. And, in fact, this shows how dated the original version was. The original version had a BlackBerry on the cover, right? And now you think about how powerful the phones are that we use.

One of my favorite comedians, Gary Gulman, says calling an iPhone a phone is like calling a Lexus convertible a cup holder. And we’ve got these devices that are constantly vying for our attention and then, on top of it in the workplace, since we’re talking about how to be awesome at your job, in a work context, there are so many different channels of communication that people are using. They’re using Slack, they’re using text message, they’re using Skype, they’re using Zoom. And so, when we have all these channels of communication, we’re creating lots and lots of different ways that we could switch-task in our day.

So, I had to make some updates and some adjustments to address, in particular, that issue; the channels of communication. A lot of other things are still the same. The tendency that we have to have a conversation with a human being while we’re tempted to look at our phone, that’s always been there. It’s just maybe a little stronger than it used to be. So, some things have changed radically and some things have stayed the same or just gotten more intense in their impact in our day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now let’s really zoom in on the comment associated with if someone says they’re really good at multitasking, they’re really good at screwing up multiple things at the same time. So, all right, lay it on us, many people really do think they’re good at multitasking. Are you going to tell them their own experience is wrong? Dave, how do you counter that?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, honestly, the best way that I have to counter it, and it’s not going to work well in a podcast, but I can tell people where they can get it and, of course, it’s in the book. There’s an exercise that I do. I do it in my live presentations, I do it in the book, and if you go to DaveCrenshaw.com/exercise, you can find it. And I do an exercise in the book where, first, someone performs a task. It’s just simple; just copying numbers and letters, right? And they focus on that for 30 seconds and they do it and they see how long it takes. And then we do it again, but this time we switch-task.
So, for instance, if I was just doing the alphabet, I would write A and then I would write 1 and then I’d write B and then I’d write 2. And that simple exercise does far more to convince someone than me rumbling on for 30 minutes about the scientific studies, and there’s a mountain of scientific evidence that shows that it’s less effective. But when you get someone to experience firsthand how much they screw things up doing the most simple thing in the world, it opens people’s eyes. The truth is right in front of them and they can’t hide from it.

And what you’ll see is, first of all, everything takes longer and the mistakes, people start just writing weird numbers and letters, and they’re crossing things out, and they’re going up and down, and their work just goes all over the place, and then how they feel, the stress impact of that. And when you experience it that firsthand, it opens your eyes, and then you start thinking about what your work day is like, and why at the end of the day you feel so stressed out, and why you feel like you didn’t really accomplish anything that whole day. And it’s simply because you were switching rapidly throughout the day between all these different activities.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I have seen one of your videos in which you did that exercise, and it is…you’re right, seeing is believing in terms of like you feel it. So, folks might counter that by saying, “Well, you know, I never really actually have to list the letters and the numbers in order while alternating.” So, can you drop some additional sort of research studies in terms of like maybe just how can we convincingly, compellingly prove that this is a big deal? It’s not like you’re, I don’t know, 3% less effective but rather massively less effective when you multitask.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Okay. So, just a few things to consider. There’s a study by RescueTime that found that the average number of minutes a worker can go until checking their email or instant messages, so that’s excluding all the other things like other people interrupting them, six minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Dave Crenshaw
Every six minutes, on average, someone checks their email or instant message. Then you consider that there’s a cost associated with that. It’s not just the check, right? You got to look at it and then you’ve got to remember, “Where was I?” I could be in the middle of writing an email, and then another email comes in or a text message, so I stop. I look at the text message, I read it, I go, “Okay.” And they’re asking these questions, I say, “All right,” I type back the answer “42,” I send it back. Now, what do I need to do? Now I have to return to the email I was writing, I have to re-read everything that I was doing, I have to get my train of thought back to that frame of reference, and then I can start working again.

Another study out Michigan State found that just under a three-second interruption doubles the likelihood of making a mistake. Just three seconds. And this is an impact that everyone is experiencing constantly. That’s why I paraphrase Mark Twain, and I say, “There are lies, damned lies in multitasking,” because it’s a lie that everyone lives. We live it constantly throughout our day. And the beautiful thing though is if you can reduce it, that’s really where the evidence comes from, is when you start to cut down on the switches and you start to feel sanity return to your day. And you start to realize, “Wait a minute. I can get done everything that I was getting done in about a quarter less time.”

I had clients who go through my training and I’ll tell them, “When you go through this training, you’re going to recover about 40 hours every single month,” and they think that’s insane, that’s an unbelievable claim, and I used to hear it coming out of my mouth and say it’s an unbelievable claim. But I have had people literally tell me, Pete, they say, “I thought you were crazy. Now, it’s 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon, I don’t know what to do with myself.” And it’s simply by reducing one thing. By reducing the switches that take place in your day, you reclaim that much time.

Pete Mockaitis
That is striking. Well, maybe could you share with us maybe a particular success story, that 3:00 p.m., that drive it home in terms of it being real in terms of really painting a picture for what was this person’s life and work like before, what did they start doing differently, and then what results did they see from that?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, in that case, and I don’t have direct permission from this individual to use his name.

Pete Mockaitis
Call him Hank.

Dave Crenshaw
Okay, yeah. Hank, a real estate professional, very well-respected, successful in his industry, but just burning the candle on both ends, working long hours, feeling stressed out constantly, and that’s why he brought me in was to help him. And this was back when I did it in person. Now, my training is on LinkedIn Learning, which you’re very familiar with. But he brought me in to help him with this, and what we did is we started to look at how many different interruptions he was getting in his day, and we were saying, “Okay, which of these are absolutely necessary?” because you can’t get rid of all switches. I never make that claim and no one should ever think that that’s what I’m saying.

But what you can do is you can implement strategies to reduce the number of switches. “Which of these interruptions can wait? Rather than leaving my phone on 24/7 and setting the expectation I’m going to answer every time you call, what if I checked my messages every hour on the hour?” When we think about that, especially like in a real estate business, that reduces the number of switches by an order of magnitude. That would cut it down by 50% or more the number of interruptions that are taking place in your hour. He said, “Rather than checking email constantly,” that’s what most people do, right? Either their phone notifies them or they’re constantly hitting send and receive sitting at their desktop computer.

And if instead, if we say, “Here is a scheduled time in my day, three times in my day when I’m going to check my email,” that kind of stuff cuts down. And so, it was little strategies like that that I implemented with him that’s just stacked on top of each other and helped him realize, “Wait a minute. I can perform much more productively if I start to emphasize my ability to focus.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s exciting. So, let’s hit the word cost for me here. You say when we do a switch, we incur a cost. Tell me, what are the types of costs and just how costly is it?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
We heard about making more mistakes and taking longer. Do we have any quantifications on any of that?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, the quantification really depends upon the individual. Some people pay less cost than others.

Pete Mockaitis
Bargain shoppers.

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, yeah, yeah. And there’s a question that often gets brought up about the statement that women can multitask and men can’t, right? And there have been studies into this. Some will say there’s no difference at all. I’ve seen some that say less. I have consulted a lot of female executives, business owners, and what I would say from my experience is that women do incur less switching cost than men do, but there’s a problem with that statement. They’re still incurring switching costs.

And what is that cost? Yeah, what is the cost? It’s the amount of time to recover; the mental recovery time. Sometimes even the physical recovery time of locating the thing that you set down and forgot where it was. There are a handful of costs that we incur every time we switch our attention. And this is a funny thing, and this shouldn’t surprise you as someone who wrote the book called The Power of Having Fun.

Occasionally, I’ll recommend that people practice learning how to focus simply by just watching a show on Netflix but doing nothing else. And as I say that statement, I know that there’s probably half your audience that feels tension at the thought of that, right?

Pete Mockaitis
No snacks, no bathroom, no…?

Dave Crenshaw
Okay, bathroom, we’ll let that go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you can do that before or after the show, I think.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, exactly. But what about not media multitasking? What about not looking at your phone while you’re doing it? What about not looking up on IMDB, “Who’s that actor that I’ve seen before, while I’m watching it?” Our brains have become so conditioned and hardwired to jump from task to task, from thought to thought, that we are creating a situation where we are perpetuating switch-tasking in everything that we do. And so, there’s that other part of it which is the amount of time that we gain but it’s also the amount of stress that we relieve when we stop behaving like we’re a CPU that’s being overclocked.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, any sense for how many minutes that is? I heard one study, I think it was from Microsoft, that when you entertain an email interruption, it can take like 24 minutes to get back to what you were doing.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that valid or are there other stuff in that ballpark? I imagine, you said it does vary from person to person, but I would just love it if there’s anyone on the fence, we can just nail them with a number.

Dave Crenshaw
Well, yeah, I’ve seen that study from Microsoft. It’s pretty old and I see that it still gets cited. One thing to keep in mind with that study is they’re talking about software programmers. So, it’s the amount of time that a programmer took to recover, and that is extremely high for an intense task like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you’re deep into it.

Dave Crenshaw
I can tell you, like the U of U, University of Utah, they have a great department by David Strayer where they do a lot of studies. They found that just issuing a voice command to a car while you’re driving, it can take 27 seconds to regain your attention. So, the answer to that, I wish I could give you a hard number but I can’t because it varies according to the individual and it varies according to the task that they’re performing, both the switch that occurred and the thing that they were doing before.

But I can tell you that BaseX research did a study a while back, and I still find this number to be pretty accurate, which is that the average knowledge worker loses 28% of their day due to interruptions and the recovery time associated with those interruptions. I would say that it’s probably closer to over 30% at this point just based on my field experience.

So, again, we go back to that question, if you reduce the switches, you can reclaim 40 hours every single month. That is an entire work week every single month. Where does that come from? It’s the reduction of switching costs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Powerful stuff. So, then, okay, first of all, why do we do this to ourselves then? I think some people even know it’s destructive and we continue to do it. It’s almost like it feels good or we just got a curiosity that we want to scratch. What’s going on inside our brains?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, an example of that is if you haven’t seen the documentary on The Social Dilemma, that is extremely eye-opening. And it talks about how even some of the things that we use, like the social media, are deliberately created to be compulsive and to feel that we must do them.

So, part of it is the ghost in the machine, is “What’s been created that’s doing this?” And part of it though is just human behavior. There’s a psychological concept called variable reward ratio. And it’s the same thing that drives compulsive gambling. It’s the same thing that drives people pulling the lever or pushing the button on the slot machine. And the idea is that sometimes you’re going to get a payoff and sometimes you aren’t, and that is very attractive to the human mind. We like the randomness of it and so it becomes…we want to keep pushing the button, “Am I going to get the jackpot?”

Well, what’s the equivalent in our work day? “I’m going to hit send and receive. Maybe someone is going to say yes to my proposal. Maybe I’m going to get something from a Nigerian prince that’s going to make me millions of dollars.” Whatever it is, we know that it’s not going to pay off most of the time, but the fact that it might pay off is enticing. The fact that you might see that you got a whole bunch of new subscribers to your podcast, going back to that example, right?

So, we have to start conditioning ourselves to be okay with silence, to be okay with not getting an answer. And there’s another concept that I teach elsewhere where I talk about the missing minute and restoring that minute to your day. Meaning, giving yourself just 60 seconds for nothing. I guarantee, people are going to listen to this podcast, they’re going to get done with the podcast, and they’re going to do one of two things. They’re either going to jump back to work or they’re going to click the button and go to the next thing.

Now, that’s great for you to get views but it’s not necessarily serving them as much as it could be if they just stopped, set a timer for 60 seconds, and just sat with it. Just tell the brain, “It’s okay. It’s okay that you’re doing nothing right now.” And the more that you create little pockets like that in your day, the more you start to realize, “I am in control.” And you can retake that control 60 seconds at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
That is inspiring. Well, Dave, perfect transition. I think we’ve built a real good why, so let’s really rip into the how.

Dave Crenshaw
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some of the top sort of high-impact, high-leverage practices we can engage in to help us reclaim control here? So, one of them is taking a 60-second breather to do nothing. I love it. What else?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. By the way, I like to think of these, I call these switch busters. I like the show MythBusters. I know it hasn’t been around. It’s not for a while.

Pete Mockaitis
Somehow it just seems up your alley. I don’t know you super well, Dave, but it just seems right when you say that.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. So, these are little things that you can do to reduce the number of switches in your day. No one of them alone is going to solve the problem but all of them, together, start to really build a nice big strategy for reducing switches. So, yeah, we’ve talked about that. I also mentioned about setting a schedule for when you’re going to check your email. In that case, if someone is taking six minutes, every six minutes they’re checking their email, their instant messages, even if we can cut that down to every hour on the hour, we’ve reduced the number of switches that you’re making by 60% or more. We’re making a big, big drop.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s like 70 a day, nine eliminated times eight hours. There you go.

Dave Crenshaw
There you go. Yeah, so now we just do it eight times a day. Or even better, what about three? What about the beginning, lunch, and the end of the day? What if it’s less than that? And only someone listening to this can answer that question for themselves because every industry is different. But the question you would ask yourself is, “How long can I reasonably go? What is the longest that I can go without damaging my career, without making things hard on my customers and my coworkers? What’s the longest I can go?” And whatever that is, create a schedule and start using that schedule.

And I’m going to pause for a second and teach a different principle that’s really important, which is there’s no such thing as a perfect system; there’s only the next draft. Meaning, just try something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, don’t try to make it perfect. Just try something, give it a go, and then make an adjustment after a week or two, and then tweak it again. Maybe you went to three times a day and that was not enough. So, maybe you go to four times a day or something like that. If it doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean that the principle is broken. It just means that your system needs a little bit of adjusting.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I love to get your view, right now, I’m thinking of a lawyer friend of mine. I think we talked about something like this once, and he said, “Yeah, that’s really just not an option for me to ignore the partner’s email to me, an associate, for a full day.” And so, I guess your response will be, “Well, hey, maybe it’s a half a day or a quarter of a day or an hour, but it’s something other than nonstop checking.” Any pro tips on how we can sort of help shape our environment in terms of like the people and the messaging we convey to them?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, so that’s another switch buster. In fact, that’s the one that I really key in on the second edition, which is having a conversation about channels. One problem that we run into in a variety of areas at work is the assumption of common sense, and we believe that everyone should have common sense, but common sense is not common. Common sense is the result of repeated life experience. The easiest example of that is it is common sense me, being an American, that cars belong on the right side of the road, right?

Pete Mockaitis
But of course.

Dave Crenshaw
But it is common sense for someone in the UK that they belong on the left. And that is simply because that’s what we’ve seen our entire life. So, then we go into the work environment, and let’s just say that we’re using something like Slack to communicate with each other. What is the shared common sense of how much time we should allow until we respond to something? What is the shared common sense of how much time we should allow for an email response? Or what about a text message?

So, you have a discussion with your team and you just list out each of the channels: text messages, email, Slack, whatever it is you’re using, phone calls. “Let’s get together, let’s have a conversation, let’s agree, how long can we wait? And what should these channels be used for? Can we say that text messages are the back channel, that they’re for emergencies only? So, we know if someone sends a text message, it needs to be done within the next several minutes. But we don’t put anything into that channel that isn’t an emergency.”

And you have a conversation about what is an emergency. A lot of the stuff that you have at work is not an emergency; it’s just an impatience-y.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And your point on common sense there, it’s so compelling because people have wildly different expectations. And this comes up, I’ve facilitated a few training sessions in which we have a norms discussion around email, and it’s just wild. Some people are like, “Oh, you don’t need me to reply within an hour? Oh, wow!” And it’s just sort of lightbulbs go off. It’s like some of the easiest result I can deliver in a training, frankly, to just have that conversation.

Dave Crenshaw
And they do it themselves which is great.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, likewise, I remember back when I was single and had some dating activity going on, I remember, through a friend of a friend, someone said, “Well, Pete Mockaitis is a real jerk.” And I thought, “Uh-oh. Did I not communicate that I’m like seeing other people? I thought I made that clear.” And then apparently the reason I was a jerk was because I never replied to a text message for about four hours. And it’s like, sometimes I won’t reply to my mom’s text messages for like 12 hours because I have all my notifications off, and my phone is off to the side, and I’m in a good work groove, and that’s just sort of how I operate. But there is no common sense. It’s all just sort of the expectations you mutually agree upon with the people you interact with.

Dave Crenshaw
Right. And that illustrates, too, that it’s not just your team members. You can have those conversations with your customers. There’s nothing wrong with educating your customers, saying, “Hey, if you need to get me for a normal thing, send me an email. I’ll respond within a business day. If you have some catastrophic problem, here’s my phone number. Use it for that.”

So, you can have these negotiations, this training, whatever you want to think of it, that we all get on the same page as much as is possible. And, again, will that get rid of all switches? No. But will it greatly reduce the switches? Yes. And what it will do is it will help us move from the culture of now to the culture of when.

The culture of now says, “At work, when I have a question, I want an answer now. I’m going to knock on your door,” or at least we used to when we weren’t working from home, “I’m going to knock on your door, I’m going to send you a text message, I’m going to give you a phone call, and if you don’t answer any of those, I’m going to keep doing it until I get an answer.” This just perpetuates switch-tasking in our day.

If you move to the culture of when, you say, “I will respond to everything, and this is when I’m going to do it. This is when you can expect a response.” And that one thing alone dramatically saves time and reduces mistakes and helps everybody feel less stressed.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Okay. Any other top tips, Dave? Lay them on us.

Dave Crenshaw
Well, we kind of danced around this and this is not going to surprise you at all. Making sure that you have clear time off, making sure that you have a time when you’re going to work and when you’re not going to work, and respecting that because that’s going to help you be more focused when it’s time to work. Like, I just came back after a nice long break, like I’d mentioned, and so I believe that my success is dependent upon the fact that I did that.

Also, though, related to the schedule is scheduling the time for your most valuable activities. If I talk to an average person, they’re going to have between 5 and 25 job descriptions, and more if they’re a business owner. And so, what I want to do is I want to look at all those different things, and say, “Which of these is most valuable? Which of these is worth the most per hour? Or which of these is the hardest to replace or will help you advance in your career the most?”

And then I want to look at the schedule, and say, “How much time are you spending in this most valuable activity? When is the time of your day, or the time of your week, when you are least likely to be interrupted, when you can be the most focused? Schedule time to work on that most valuable activity during that time. And that not only will reduce the switches but it increases your value per hour.”

And, to me, that is the holy grail of productivity, is increasing how much you’re worth per hour, not how much you make per year. If you increase your annual salary but you also increase the hours that you spend working, that wasn’t a raise.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I’m right with you.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, you’re just making more work for yourself. But if we can increase how much you make and decrease the hours that you’re working, now that’s fantastic, and that gives you the freedom to reinvest that time into whatever else you feel is worth investing that time into.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen. I totally agree with you there, but some people may say, “Hey, that might be easy for you self-employed trainer types to say,” but I just have a good friend who got a job, it’s a sales role, and it’s pretty awesome. They said right up front, “Hey, we don’t care so much like how many hours you work or which hours you work, so long as you’re hitting these particular goals of new prospect meetings occurring per month.” So, it’s like game on. Like, if he can crack the code on more compelling communications or whatnot, he can work less or, if he wants to, hey, work more to get more commission.

But it is magical because there are some thresholds, like at some point when your hourly compensation rises to one point, it’s like, “You know what, now might make sense to have me hire someone to help clean the house. It might make sense for me to hire a handy person to fix up some things.” And then it just can really snowball because you break these thresholds where outsourcing more and more makes great sense and you’re able to deploy that time to either even more wealth creation or alternative results and fun that you want to make happen in life.

Dave Crenshaw
Yes. And it doesn’t have to be limited to someone in sales or someone who runs their own business or whatever it is because everything that you just said there is one less thing that you have to think about, one less thing that you have to devote time and attention to, which means less switches. And less switches means you get things done faster with less mistakes, with less stress.

And sometimes people hear that too, and they go, “Well, okay, that’s great but I can’t hire someone to do this and that.” Okay, fine, but you do hire people. You don’t make your own hamburger, do you? Not most of the time, maybe on the weekend. You go to wherever it is. You go to Wendy’s and you hired someone to make that for you. You relieve yourself of the burden of having to think about how to put that thing together. When you hire Uber, you’re relieving yourself of the burden of having to spend time driving, which, by the way, is one of the least productive things you can possibly do.

And you can look at it and say, “How can I use technology to reduce the amount of time I’m spending doing each of these things? How can I outsource one task at a time? Could I use Fiverr? Could I use Upwork, to have one person take care of part of this so that I can focus on the thing that I do that is truly amazing and truly valuable?” The more you start to be aware of those things, the more you start to do them, the more productive you become. And, again, I’m kind of throwing some stuff out here, and maybe some thing is going to hold on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I just appreciate that you do it.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, but I go back to that principle of the 2% increase in productivity. A 2% increase in productivity is an entire work week every single year. So, if you look at the computer you’re using, the keyboard that you have, the chair that you’re sitting in, all of those things can create switches. If I have a chair that is uncomfortable, isn’t that going to cause me to switch my attention a few times a day to go, “Man, I don’t feel good. I’m not performing well”? I just lost a whole lot of time and a whole lot of value, so it’s worth making the investment to get the best quality tools that you can get.

I’m sitting here, I’ve got a mouse in my hand that’s a gaming mouse with lots of different buttons that are assigned to macros. I just upgraded my computer to the best quality, and I like gaming quality stuff because gaming quality is built to demanding specifications. They usually perform better, so I just upgraded my computer for the year. I guarantee, that upgrade is going to yield me at least two weeks this year. It’s probably about a 4% increase in productivity. And that sounds crazy but once you start doing the math, you realize, “Wait a minute. Little things really start to add up.”

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, just because I don’t know how many of us can dork out on at this level, I’m going to join you here because I’ve talked to myself about that as well in terms of like, “Hey, my computer is pretty good. It’s 2017. I don’t feel like I’m often annoyedly waiting for stuff.” By the way, my trick was I got a super fancy SSD, a solid-state drive, and plugged it in via a Thunderbolt, or USB-C, and that’s my bootup drive which I found gave me a lot of acceleration for not a lot of dollars.

But run me through the math. So, well, one, I just love to justify buying new stuff. But so, if my computer is fine, and then I went to top of the line, how do you see that turning into extra minutes for me each day, week, and year?

Dave Crenshaw
So, let’s just start with that simple math: 2% increase. So, if you’re 52 weeks a year, 2% is one week, right? So, if I increase anything that I’m doing by 2% overall, that almost immediately adds up to one week.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Dave Crenshaw
And then we ask the question, “Well, what is my time worth? What is a week’s worth of time in terms of my career?” And everybody is going to have a different number for that. And then, not to get too crazy with the math, but I also like to use the rule of three, which says, “If I‘m going to invest a dollar in my career, in my business, I want to get three back in return.” So, I look at that week. Let’s say that one week of time is worth a $1,000, okay? I’m going to be really conservative. It’s worth a $1,000. That means I can invest $300 to increase my productivity by 2%. Makes sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Dave Crenshaw
Or $333. Because if I can invest $333, I’m going to get one week back, and then I’m also going to make money on top of it because of that value. And that’s being ultra conservative because, in many cases, these time gains stack from year to year. I recently did a video about this where I was teaching that concept and some of the things that I’ve done, and I’ve realized, looking back over the 20 years of my career, give or take, I’ve probably gained three to four years’ worth of time.

And that sounds crazy, but then you look back, and I go, “Wait. Did I really gain that much time? Let’s see. I’ve written five books in that time. Well, I’ve actually written six because I wrote a YA novel for fun. I’ve created 35 courses for LinkedIn Learning.” I can just start stacking out the list. “And, plus, I’m working less hours than I’ve worked in my life.” It is a real principle, and I’m making more than I’ve ever made.

So, little things, it started 20 years ago with me doing the same principle, looking at my workspace, looking what I was saying, and saying, “How can I gain some time?” And every little change has added up and made that happen.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And so, well, here’s where I guess the rubber meets the road. So, if we want a 2% lift in productivity, and we’re thinking about upgrading your computer, then that means, in a 480-minute, eight-hour work day, we’re going to need a fifth of that. We’ll just call it 10 minutes. You think you’re gaining 10 minutes a day from your upgraded computer?

Dave Crenshaw
I think that’s an easy question to answer. In the case of your Thunderbolt drive, didn’t you gain 10 minutes?

Pete Mockaitis
I did but I want to see if I can justify and upgrade the whole computer.

Dave Crenshaw
So, in my case, so I looked at my computer and I actually have mine…the one that I had before was a tank. It was probably coming up on four and a half years. And just for tax purposes, I came on the year, I go, “Well, I need to make an investment,” so that was an easy one to make. And I probably, just looking at benchmark scores, I probably increased the speed of my computer by 30%. Now, am I going to use that full 30% every time? No, but I’m definitely going to get 4% to 5% out of it constantly all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess that’s what I’m wondering. Like, to zoom in even more, it’s like I don’t often find that I’m just sitting waiting for my computer to handle something.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, but that’s not the problem, or that’s not the issue. The issue is, “Could you wait less? Could things happen faster than you think?” And they can. They always can. Not just for the computer but other things.

Pete Mockaitis
Are we talking about waiting for one and a half second to half a second on a page load to open? Is that kind what the building blocks here?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dave Crenshaw
Now, I sense, what I know of you, Pete, you’re an analytical guy. You want to know the numbers, and I confess that I am entrepreneurial. I do entrepreneurial math.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Dave Crenshaw
So, I generalize broadly but I have found that my generalizations actually turn out to be quite accurate over time. So, yeah, I’m not like sitting down and crunching the numbers on this, but I can go, “Reasonably speaking, am I getting that kind of return? Yes. And am I going to be extra conservative with that assumption? Yes.” And it usually turns out to be correct.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’ve noticed, like, “Hey, when I open up a program, I wait less now with my newer computer.”

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, yeah, everything. Chrome opens faster. There are things that we’ve done. Like, for instance, with video editing, because I know you do stuff with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s huge. Amen. Yeah, if you’re video editing, you’re going to need that.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, I open it up, I’m spending a lot less time with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Okay, that answers that. Video editing is demanding and makes you wait.

Dave Crenshaw
But here’s another thing that you could do. So, I use a thing called Phrase Express, and there are things like this, that are phrase macros. And so, I found that I was typing the myth of multitasking over and over again. Kind of ironic, right? So, I changed it into a macro where I just type a couple of keys and it spells out the myth of multitasking. You start creating a framework of that where you’ve got 50 to 100 phrases, you just boosted your productivity by 2% to 4% quickly. And that doesn’t cost hardly anything or maybe nothing at all to implement that.

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, good, good stuff. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, the one thing I would say, and we haven’t really hit on this much, is the fourth effect. I’ve talked about the three effects of multitasking, or switch-tasking: things take longer, you make more mistakes, you increase your stress levels. But there’s a fourth effect, and this applies even for people who think that they’re good multitaskers, they think they can get away with it and still be productive. That’s fine. But when you switch-task on a human being, even back-task sometimes, you damage that relationship, and that’s unavoidable.

Because when you switch-task on a human being, you are communicating to them that they are less important than whatever it is you’re doing in the moment. And none of us would wake up and start our day and go down to see our spouse, and say, “Hi, honey. You’re unimportant. What are you going to do today?” Or, someone calls your business, you say, “Thanks for calling XYZ Business where you’re unimportant. How can I help you?”

We would never do that but that’s exactly what we do when we pick up our phone and we’re playing with it when our spouse is talking to us. Or, when we’re in a Zoom call and we’re kind of checking email out of the corner of our eye, we’re damaging relationships. Now, that’s negative.

The positive is when you stop doing that and you focus on human beings, you build relationships because it’s unfortunately uncommon to treat people that way now. So, you stand out when you’re someone who gives someone your full attention, and you build the relationship, you make them feel important. And there’s just hundreds of reasons why that’s a fantastic thing to do.

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

Dave Crenshaw
I’ve got it hanging on my wall right here next to me. It’s, “Every time you devote time to practice, you haven’t lost. You’re always a winner.” Any guess where that came from?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m guessing it’s a sports person but I don’t know.

Dave Crenshaw
Well, it’s Bob Ross.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely.

Dave Crenshaw
So, that reminds me that I’m always learning, I’m always making mistakes, and sometimes I can get hard on myself, but I remember that every mistake is a practice. And if I’m practicing, I’m always getting better and always winning. Good old Bob Ross.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Dave Crenshaw
I’m listening to Is This Anything? with Jerry Seinfeld. I am inspired by comedians because so much of what they do is very similar to what I do as a speaker. They have to hone their craft, and so I like getting inspiration from uncommon places. So, Jerry Seinfeld is giving that to me right now.

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

Dave Crenshaw
I always say that calendar is my favorite tool, but in terms of an app, I’m a fan of Evernote. I like the simplicity of it in keeping notes and staying on top of everything.

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

Dave Crenshaw
Well, if they’re interested in getting The Myth of Multitasking, you go to MultitaskBook.com. That’ll take you right to the Amazon page. And then, of course, my website DaveCrenshaw.com, all sorts of free resources there for you.

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

Dave Crenshaw
Pay attention. Pay attention today. Think of someone that you’re going to talk to whether it’s at work or at home. Practicing at home will help you get better at work. The next person you talk to, give them 100% of your attention.

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you lots of luck in all your single-tasking adventures.

Dave Crenshaw
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure, Pete.

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

Brandon Smith
Pete, really excited to be on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. And I was just telling you off the recording that your subtitle is so good. Your book is called The Hot Sauce Principle: How to Live and Lead in a World Where Everything Is Urgent All of the Time.

Brandon Smith
Everything is urgent all of the time, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re speaking to my experience and the exhaustion associated with that. But I want to sort of go back in time a little bit. So, you were not always a master communicator. There was a time, I’m told, that you had quite the stutter and were nervous about ordering pizza. What’s the story of the transformation here?

Brandon Smith
Yeah. So, let me tell you a little bit of the story. I don’t know if I can answer the transformation part as well but I can at least tell you part of the story. So, I was the youngest of three boys, I had two older brothers, both were adopted, and my oldest brother was always in and out of trouble, so creating a lot of drama and dysfunction in my house, throwing up.

Well, when I was 10, he took his own life. And during that time, it was a really kind of transformative period for myself and my family. It was a hard time. And I ended up, I don’t know why, but I ended up coming down with a stutter about six months after he died, and I couldn’t shake it, and that was going into middle school, which I do not recommend.

So, every day, before middle school, I would have to go and see my speech therapist early in the morning and we’d work on the letters that always tripped me up, which were the Bs and the Ps and the Ts, so then I would work on those and then go on to the school day. And so, yeah, during my entire middle school career, if you were to call it that, things that involved those letters were really tricky for me. I would find any way to avoid that.

But when you’re ordering a pepperoni pizza, there’s just no escaping. You can’t say, “Can you put those little things on there? What are they called again?” so, then, ordering the pepperoni pizza, that would never really end. I would just get caught in that stutter. And I just decided that people were just kind of messy and dysfunctional, because growing up with my brother, and then the way kids with stutters were treated in school, I thought, “Man, people are messed so I’m just going to keep distance from them.”

And that was kind of my high school years. Really kind of made myself kind of a wallflower, an introvert, and then went off to college, didn’t really know what I wanted to major in, ended up majoring in communications, ironically enough. And then, at some point along the way, my stutter kind of shook free, I suppose. However, I can tell you, when I get really, really tired, or really, really stressed out and tired, it comes back a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, what a story, and I’m sorry to hear about that difficult moment but it’s reassuring to hear that you, ultimately, triumphed and, here we are, benefitting from your wisdom.

Brandon Smith
I’m working on it, Pete. I wouldn’t say triumphed. So, I’m working on it. I’m working on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you sound great, and you’ve got something important to say, and I’m excited to hear about it. So, first, The Hot Sauce Principle, why don’t you just define that? What’s the big idea there? And where does this term come from?

Brandon Smith
Yeah, you know, the big idea, what I was finding, so I wear lots of hats in the world. One of my hats is I’m an executive coach. Another hat, I teach at universities and business schools. And I was just finding that a lot of the people I was interacting with in the workplace, didn’t matter what kind of job they had, didn’t matter whether they were nonprofit, for profit, big, small, work in the United States, work internationally, two things were true. Time was everyone’s precious resource. Not money, it was time. And everything was urgent all the time.

And that urgency was like hot sauce. One day it just kind of hit me. It’s like just being hot sauce just poured on everything. And while I love that concept of hot sauce for urgency for lots of reasons, one, I like it because a little bit of hot sauce is actually kind of a good thing. I like hot sauce. It adds focus, it adds flavor, makes things a priority. But you put that stuff on everything, if you’re like me, you’re just going to be drenched in sweat, curled up in a ball, and not really able to function. And some people can tolerate a lot of this stuff, and some people can’t tolerate much at all.

So, it’s a nice, simple way of thinking about how we deal with urgency, and that sometimes it’s a good thing. But too much of anything, particularly urgency, is like hot sauce. It just overwhelms us.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, you mentioned some people can handle a little, and some people can handle a lot. That reminds me of there is this like local comedian who was making a joke about how some people who are really into their hot sauce will sort of demean others, it’s just like, “Oh, you probably can’t handle this.” It’s like, “You’re belittling me for having a tongue that works properly.” Like, where else has this happened with regard to, “Oh, man, you probably don’t need glasses, but I need huge glasses”?

So, we’re going to dig into that, I’m sure, in terms of just how much you can handle and how much is optimal. And so then, tell us then, what would you say is sort of the most surprising or fascinating discovery that came about when you were putting together this research associated with urgency and what we do about it?

Brandon Smith
I think there’s probably a couple things that really are big highlights that are important for us to think about. First, urgency is a good thing. So, if we kind of flip into another part of the workplace world, all the experts in change management, one of the more famous ones is a guy by the name of John Kotter who teaches at Harvard.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we had him on the show.

Brandon Smith
Oh, you had him on the show?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Brandon Smith
Okay. Well, then you know John well. Well, John is famous for change management. And when you look at a lot of the concepts he brings, in his frameworks, he says, “You know what, if you want to turn out a change, the first place you got to start is urgency. There has to be a high-enough sense of urgency.” So, urgency is really important when we’re trying to change.

My kids always joke with me because every year, about a month out, six weeks out to a month out from my annual physical, I will start really doubling down on exercise and health. And they’re like, “Oh, here comes dad’s physical again.” But it’s that urgency. I want to show up really good for the physical. It creates urgency. It gets us to change.

So, I think one big takeaway is that urgency is a really good thing. It’s a healthy thing. We need it. As one client told me many years ago, she said, “I know I need to light a fire in my people, but sometimes I need to light a fire under them too.” So, we don’t want to cut out hot sauce, but the problem is when we, as leaders, just think everything is urgent and we make our emotions, our anxiety, other people’s problems. It’s kind of like kick the dog syndrome.

There’s a whole new set of research studying emotions in the workplace, they’re called emotional contagion. And one of the big takeaways in that research is that anxiety is one of the more contagious forms of emotions. It’s super contagious. So, we want to make sure that we’re not making other people feel that pain. That’s a really, really bad thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Brandon, you know, that rings true in my experience in terms of anxiety. I just pick up on it. It’s just like, “Aargh.”

Brandon Smith
And you think of the year we’re in, it’s really easy for a leader to be really anxious about a lot of things. Anxious about uncertainty, about where the business is going, anxious about their family or the health, so are all our employees. They’re all anxious too. So, sometimes we actually need to be the calm in the storm. We’ve got to say, “Okay, I’m going to show calm today, or peaceful today, so I don’t freak everybody else out and they can focus and do their job.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m with you. So, urgency, it’s not bad, we need some of it, especially in order to make a change. If you don’t got it, it’s probably not going to happen. And so, at the same time though, hey, we’re in a global worldwide disease pandemic at the moment with COVID-19, as we speak. Hopefully, people will be listening to this, years from now, and say, “Oh, I remember that. That was a difficult time. I’m so glad it’s such a distant memory now.” But, in addition to that, you say that professionals these days are in an urgency epidemic. What do you mean by that? And what are the consequences of it?

Brandon Smith
So, the urgency epidemic is when other people put their urgency on us, on you. They make their problems your problem. Notorious for this would be like large publicly-traded companies. So, shareholders and everyone else putting so much pressure on them, so what most C-level leaders do in this company, I hate to say, is they just tell all their direct reports, “All this stuff is urgent. We have to change it all right now. All of it now.”

And I was actually sitting in a meeting a few years ago with a senior leader who said this to the room, and one of his direct reports raised their hand and said, “Well, I totally get that, boss. I totally understand that but help us to prioritize. So, what’s the priority? What’s the order here?” And he looked at him and he said, “All of them are urgent right now equally.” And you can feel the room just deflate.

So, the real epidemic is everything being urgent all the time and having that pressure being pushed down on us. So, it’s kind of like rather than running a marathon where you say, “Okay, I’m going to be done at 26.2 miles,” it’s like run until you drop. Because we can sprint, we can do urgency for a little while, but the school of thought is it needs to be more like interval training. Like, you sprint, you get a little rest, you sprint, you get a little rest. Not just run until you drop.

And so, that’s what the real urgency epidemic costs us. It costs us exhaustion, burnout, and performance, and lots of other things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, this is very much ringing true. Oh, there’s so much I want to dig into there. First, okay, maybe this is a quick one, with intervals, there’s all sorts of different interval timers. I’ve got so many apps on my phone and different recommendations for four minutes on, one minute off. Do you have a sense for what is “optimal interval”? If we really want to make some stuff happen, and we also want to not burn out, what’s kind of the range of, hey, sprinting versus chilling ratio?

Brandon Smith
Oh, man, yeah. Pete, this is tough. I hate to give that, like, classic business school answer, “It depends,” but it really totally does depend. So, for example, let’s say we were a software company, and we did a product release. Well, the natural time to do interval for rest would be right after the launch of a new product. So, if you’re in that kind of a world where you have a beginning, middle, and end of something, then you want to take the break at the end.

There was a company out in Silicon Valley a couple of years ago that tested this idea. And they would launch a new product every quarter, and at the end of every quarter, they’d shut down their business for a full week so everybody could rest, so nobody worked that week. So, at the end of the year, they were actually only working 11 months out of the 12 months because of one week off every quarter. That first year they did it, they had a higher productivity and higher performance and higher revenue than the year before.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. So, working fewer total days.

Brandon Smith
Yeah, fewer total days. If you look at another example of that, you might say like in the quick-service restaurant world, Chick-fil-A is number one in revenue per store, and they are only open six days a week, and they don’t have the late-night hours, like McDonald’s or Wendy’s or Taco Bell or any of the other players might have. So, that’s an example of interval training. They found a way to make that work in their rhythm. They did one day off a week.

So, I think it really depends upon the business but the notion is really important. So, I think almost a better way to think about it is if you’re a leader or a manager, how can you give your folks a break between sprints so they get a moment to catch their breaths? And what are some creative ways you can do it that kind of work for your world?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, can you give us one or two or three creative ways right off the top of your head?

Brandon Smith
So, one would naturally be trying to find an extra day off a week, or working from home. So, there are many uncomfortable things and not pleasant things that came from 2020, but there are some positives. One positive is a lot of employers realized people can work from home. And then, as a huge not only morale boost and perk, but it impacts motivation if used in the right doses in a positive way.

So, allowing people the opportunity to work from home is probably going to be more like our new normal. My guess is, if we look out in the crystal ball, we’re going to see people coming into the office one, two, maybe three days a week, and then working from home the other days of the week. So, that’s an example of interval training, giving people a little more space to get things done.

Another example would be thinking about times and opportunities where you can close and turn off the whole business. So, what makes this tricky is if you’re going to give someone a break, you got to make sure people aren’t pinging them during the break. Like, I could tell you, “Pete, take this day off.” But if customers are still calling you and they didn’t get the memo, it’s not really a day off. So, boundary is really important.

Part of my background is I’m a trained clinical therapist, and any therapist, one of their passion areas is boundaries, and to really do this thing well, interval training and intervals, and protecting ourselves from urgency, we’ve got to know how to set boundaries, know how to communicate that and say no when necessary.

So, I’ll give you one more, a quick one. This is a personal tip that you could use. Everyone listening to this can use this. I started doing it this year. Really easy. I stopped emailing people on the weekends. Period. Now, it didn’t mean I didn’t do work. So, Microsoft Outlook is the tool I use. They have a function, like a lot of emailing software tools, where you can schedule emails.

So, what I did was I would still do my work but I would schedule all my emails to go out on Monday morning when people were actually supposed to be at work or working. And what I found. when I did that, was I wasn’t getting any emails on the weekend. Because, before when I would send an email, there would always be that super hardworking ambitious person at the other end that would kick the email back with a response. And then I would respond, and then they would respond, and now we’re playing an email tennis match on Saturday afternoon.

Well, I’m not playing email tennis matches anymore, and so it allowed me to really get ahead of the week and not feel that kind of pace and urgency. So, that’s a simple kind of interval training that we can all put into our lives. And if you’re a manager, I would encourage you to tell your team that you’re doing that so they don’t send you emails on the weekend either.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay, cool. Well, so already so many great takeaways there in terms of we’ve got to have some rest, and you could think about creative ways to do that. Shut down the whole business, or the whole team, or have particular days off, and so there’s a rhythmic groove that you’re in, and establishing a boundary, showing it to others so that they follow up. So much good stuff here.

I guess I also want to get your take on it is really frustrating when someone says, “All of these are urgent. Right now. And equally so.” Now, in my opinion, I want to get your take on this, one, I think when someone communicates that, it’s really just laziness and that they haven’t actually done the work to determine what is, in fact, the most urgent and/or important yet. That’s my hot take. What are your thoughts? Does that jive with what you believe as well? Or, how do you see what’s behind that message?

Brandon Smith
Yeah. Well, I agree with you completely. I would say when we live in a world where times are our most precious resource and everything is urgent all the time, it will default us to become firefighters. We’re not leaders. It doesn’t matter people’s title. Most people right now, “most leaders” are firefighters. And so, when you’re a fighter, you’re in a reactive posture.

So, what you’re saying is rather than being a proactive posture and really prioritize and sit down and plan, you’re just reacting to the stuff that’s burning that day, and then you’re putting that on other people. So, I agree completely. It’s trying to get them to shift that behavior, which is one of the many antidotes you can do when you’re getting someone trying to push that on you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then, lay it on us, if you think everything is urgent, and whether it means you haven’t done the thinking through to determine what’s truly more urgent, how do you recommend we go about thinking through that, and then arriving at some optimal decisions regarding the urgency of things?

Brandon Smith
So, to help with this, for everyone listening who has a boss, I no longer want you think of your boss as your boss. From now on, I want you to think of your boss as your number one customer or client because they really are. I mean, they are. They can decide to renew your contract or end your contract. So, when we do that, it, all of a sudden, turns on a whole bunch of other tools and competencies that we have around client management because, really, what we’re talking about is client management.

We want to sit down and say, “Miss or Mr. Client,” or boss, “I totally understand that you want to get all these things done. Unfortunately, we have limited resources. So, we have a couple options. One option is I would love to talk to you about the order in which we need to take these on and the importance of each so I can try to meet your needs with what we have. The other option is we can get more resources, so maybe we can find more people to get this done, or hire, or get better software, or wherever else we can invest. So, which path would you like to go down?” Essentially, it’s client management, and you’re forcing them to either trade off or offer more resources.

That’s also a boundary conversation. If you don’t do that, and you just say, “Yes, I’m going to get this done,” then what you’re sacrificing is yourself and your team because you’ll end up needing to work till 2:00 to 3:00 in the morning in order to get it all done if there isn’t enough resources, there isn’t enough time. So, you have to have the courage to also be willing to stand up for yourself and for your team to not sacrifice yourself in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And this reminds me, is it called the project management trio, in terms of like the scope and the resources and the timing, and there’s sort of like a triangle there? And it’s like one of them has got to shift. And I think scope can also maybe include quality. We could do a lot of stuff poorly or we can do a few things really well given how much time and how many people we have available to do those things, and to just get very real about that.

And so, I guess I’m curious, there’s all sorts of data suggesting that we human beings do a poor job of estimating how long things take. How do you recommend we get a clear handle on, yeah, this is really what is a manageable amount for us to bite off right now versus not too much?

Brandon Smith
Oh, this is a tricky one. Now, the simple answer is time and wisdom helps to cure a lot of those ills. We just learn over time that, “Oh, yeah, I estimated I was going to take 10 hours. It turns out it took 40. That was not a good decision.” Like, I have not stained my deck myself in many years. Last time I did it, it took me 40 hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog.

Brandon Smith
I enjoyed doing it but it took me 40 hours. The next year, I hired a crew. It was like 300 bucks and they did it in like four hours. I will never stain my deck again. So, I think part of it is we learn over time. But the other part of this, too, is it’s really important that, as best we can, we try and under-promise and overdeliver when it comes to things like this. Because when we don’t make a gunline that we promised, we lose credibility. And when we lose credibility, it’s in the book, it’s part of a trust formula that I offer, we need to have trust in order to effectively push back on our manager. If she or he doesn’t fully trust us, or we don’t have that credibility, it’s going to be hard for us to push back. They’re not going to listen to us.

So, part of the way, one of the many ways we gain credibility is by kind of meeting and exceeding expectations on a regular basis. And so, it’s all about kind of managing those expectations. So, for example, I could tell my wife I’m going to be home at 6:00 o’clock. If I come home at 7:30, she’s going to be mad. If I tell her I’m going to be home at 6:00 o’clock, and I come home at 5:30, she’s going to be happy. So, it’s just kind of managing that. So, trying to think how we can do that is going to be key.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that really rings true with regard to with the trust. If you try to push back, and there’s low trust, the boss may very well say, “Nah, it’s not that much. You can handle it.” As opposed to, “Oh, no, I really do believe that you’re giving me your honest, genuine assessment of how long things take as opposed to like you’re sandbagging me because you’re lazy,” or something. So, that’s huge. And then under-promise and overdeliver, that’s excellent.

Let’s zoom into kind of the emotional difficulty associated with putting forward a smaller commitment maybe than you think they want, or saying no, or establishing or enforcing a boundary. All these things can be a little bit uncomfortable in terms of that. And I just sort of, this is my personal trick, I remember when I was an employee, and someone asked me, “Hey, when do you think you can have that done?” I just sort of reoriented that question in my brain not to mean, “When do I really think I can have it done?” to, “What is the latest data I can tell you just before you’re going to become irritated with me?”

Brandon Smith
That’s fair.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s kind of how I tried to play it. And sometimes they push back, and I’d be like, “Yeah, I think I could definitely have that by next Tuesday,” and I meant it. I definitely could because I could probably have it three days before that. And then they’d say, “Hmm, yeah, about Friday?” Then I would just sort of say something like, “Yeah, that’s more challenging but I still think that’s doable.” And then, in that way, it’s like, hey, I was never lying, I was never deceptive, I just said, “I could definitely have it done by then,” because I had a great deal of confidence that I had some bugger to schedule. And frequently they just took it, like, “All right. It sounds cool. We’ll do it then.” So, that was my little trick.

Brandon Smith
No, that’s great. It’s managing their expectations. That’s beautiful. That’s perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s one for me. Let’s hear, Brandon, what are some of your faves?

Brandon Smith
In terms of managing some of those expectations?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, managing expectations, saying no when forcing a boundary, when inside, want to people-please and accommodate.

Brandon Smith
So, let’s go back to like saying no. Saying no is difficult because it’s a vulnerable position we put ourselves in. We don’t like vulnerability because what are they going to do to us when we say no? Are they going to reject us? Are they going to get angry with us? What are they going to do? So, we just say, “Well, the path to least resistance is I say yes and just kind of keep on piling and piling and piling.”

Now, that story ends up always ending the same. We have so much on our plate that we end up missing expectations and starting to disappoint others because you can’t just keep piling and piling and piling. So, there are a couple ways that we can say no that will make it a little less emotional for us and easier. So, one very helpful tip is when you’re saying no, that conversation should be 20% no, 80% alternate solutions to solve their problem.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Brandon Smith
Where we go wrong is we spend all the time, like, you asked me to do something, Pete, and I’d say like, “No, Pete, I can’t. Here’s all the reasons why,” and I go through all my list of reasons. You’re not listening to my list of reasons anymore. You don’t really care. You didn’t like the fact I said no. And what I’ve inadvertently done is I’ve set up a negotiation. So, what you’re going to say to yourself is, “Well, if I can counter his argument, then he has to do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. It’s like, “Oh, well, if you could do this, we’d do that. Give it someone else.” And it’s like, “I didn’t mean to invite you into a micro assessment of the rest of my obligations and, yet, here we are.”

Brandon Smith
And that’s what happens. We end up inadvertently turning it into a negotiation. And so, what you want to do is quickly and very succinctly say, “No, I don’t have the capacity to do this, but I want to help you solve this problem. So, I’ve come up with some other alternate solutions to maybe get this problem solved. Let’s work through some of these to find another solution that will get this completed.”

So, you can suggest colleagues perhaps, you can suggest external resources, you can suggest moving things around. So, there are other options that you can lay out at the table. But, in a perfect world, all the other options should not involve you, so you’re kind of going into problem-solving.

Now, the other thing you can also do in terms of saying no is giving people a little more transparency into all the trains running on your tracks. So, often when people load up, even your own boss, your own manager, they probably have forgotten and are unaware of all the stuff you’re doing. So, giving them that window can be helpful.

I had a student of mine years ago, and she did an internship in New York in investment banking. And during that internship, she had multiple managing directors in that office, and they were notorious for coming up to her and giving her big projects. So, one day, one of them came up and gave her a project after his colleague had given her a project the day before. And she looked at him, she said, “I’m happy to do this for you. But in order for me to do this for you, I need to go to your colleague, the other managing director, and I need to tell them I can’t do their project that they gave me yesterday because I’m doing yours instead. Are you comfortable if I have that discussion?” And they looked at her, and they said, “Never mind.”

So, sometimes, showing people what you have going on, and letting them know who you’re going to have to tell no to in order to tell them yes can also re-shift the focus because, now, we’re going into politics and, all of a sudden, this person could put them self in a political limb that they didn’t realize because now you’re going to tell their boss no so you can do their project, or whoever that person may be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I like that so much because it’s honest, it’s real, it’s genuine. And then, sometimes, the person you’re communicating would be like, “Oh, not a problem. Happy to do that.” And then you learn something from that, it’s like, “Oh, huh, funny. Because from the outside looking in, it had seemed like those two projects were of equal importance but, apparently, one of them is way higher, and I didn’t even know that.” And by having had that conversation and learned that, you’re gaining some of that wisdom, that kind of say, “Oh, okay, this is what’s really important here and what is most valued in this team or organization.”

Brandon Smith
Yeah. So, if we go back to one of our bigger meta-principles today, it was about forcing prioritization. Don’t let everything be urgent all the time. Everything can’t be equal priority. That’s when we get overwhelmed and burned out. In a very kind of geeky way, we need to be lining stuff up in a process kind of way, and say, “Okay, where do I start with first? What’s first priority, and second, and third?”

And, by the way, the leaders and the companies that have really done the best job of keeping everybody focused and aligned during this whole time in 2020 have had anywhere between three and no more than five priorities. They’ve been operating off of a very set list of three to five. They haven’t made everything urgent all the time. They said, “No, these are our big things we’re going to focus on. Everybody, line up around these,” and it calms people’s anxiety, it gets people focused, it’s like just that right amount of hot sauce.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, yes, that three to five is great. The forced prioritization is powerful. One way is to just say, “Hey, I could do that, but in order to do that, I’m going to have to drop this.” And so, you share sort of the constraints. What are some of your other favorite ways of forcing a prioritization?

Brandon Smith
So, when you’re thinking about going to your boss, it helps when you bring a menu. So, rather than say, “What do you want me to do?” we want to be a little more on the author seat and we want to bring them a menu, and say, “I’ve got three different options for you today. Which one of these would you like to go down? Which path?” So, that’s another way that we can force prioritization is by offering options. You’ll learn a lot from people based on what they choose off that menu.

So, a common example is, like, I always feel bad for the creative types in the world because they routinely get customers that say, “You know, I don’t know what I want but I’ll know when I see it.” It’s kind of like forces you to do just do all this guessing. But then if you bring them three options, say, “Well, which one of these do you like better?” People always react to a menu. So, spending that little extra effort in creating a menu will also teach you a lot. You’ll learn a lot about what the incentives and motives are, and it’ll help you kind of know what path you want to go down.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. When I’m a manager, I like that as well in terms of that’s sort of something I ask people to do, is, “Okay. Hey, each day, send me a quick email on what you did today and what you plan to do tomorrow.” And then that really helps me because, one, I could say, “Oh, huh, no need to do that. Let’s do this instead.” So, I get the heads up so I can redirect as necessary.

And it helps me get a sense of, well, what are their preferences, their strengths, their desires, what would they naturally kind of flow to, as well as their judgment in terms of, it’s like, “Oh, you seem to be under the impression that that is really very important/urgent to me, and it’s not.” So, we can have that conversation, and say, “Hey, actually, we’re totally all set on that front for a couple months, so we can go over here.” They’re like, “Oh, okay, great. Didn’t know. Thank you.” So, I like that, the menu. Very good.

Brandon Smith
So, that made me think of something, another tip. So, we’re spending our time with tips as kind of the employee kind of dealing with the manager. But there are tips about being a more effective manager in this stuff. So, I’ll tell you my favorite example that came from a client. So, I was talking about this idea of urgency and hot sauce. He had a small technology company, about 50 employees, an anxious guy as it is, and so he was just bringing that anxiety into work every day. I mean, everybody was just so wound tight because he was so wound tight.

So, I shared this idea of hot sauce and urgency, and gave him one of my little bottles. I buy these little Tabasco bottles in bulk and hand it out to people. And so, he went out to the grocery store and he bought three bottles of hot sauce, stuck them on his desk. Bang! Bang! Bang! And every time he had an initiative or project that was urgent, when he assigned that project, he would hand that owner of the project a bottle of hot sauce to hold onto until the project was done.

And why that was such a great, really great tip and technique that he did is because he only had three bottles to give out. So, once all the bottles were given out, that’s it. He can’t make anything else urgent until someone gives a bottle back. So, thinking of forcing mechanisms like that that you can do is also another way for you to manage the flow of hot sauce on your teams.

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

Brandon Smith
The only other thing that I would say is also important when we think about hot sauce is just, as managers and leaders, just being intentional, what really is important and making sure we’re communicating that. One of the interesting little missteps I find with senior leaders when we talk about things like executive presence, one of the more common missteps that people don’t realize they’re doing is they talk out loud a lot or they think out loud a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, to their teams.

Brandon Smith
Yeah, to their teams. And they’re just thinking out loud, but their teams are interpreting that as an urgent priority, and they go off and start doing work. And they bring them back a PowerPoint deck the next day or recommendations or something else, and the manager looks at them and says, “I was just kind of just talking. I didn’t really want you to do anything.” So, just being really intentional about what you’re asking folks to do is an important takeaway too for managers so you can keep everybody focused and aligned and just that right amount of urgency.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Now, can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Brandon Smith
One of the ones I actually mentioned a couple times this week, they attribute it to Mark Twain but I don’t think anyone really knows who said it, but it goes like this, “I would’ve written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have enough time.” I love that quote. Because it emphasizes how hard it is to get to finish thinking, how hard it is to have that very concise, like, “This is what I want.” And when time is our most precious resource and everything is urgent all the time, we tend to kind of dump our thinking on people. So, that’s my favorite quote for at least this week.

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

Brandon Smith
Probably the one that is jumping out for me right now is about three or four years ago, a group of researchers studied this question, “What’s the worst kind of boss to work for?” And I thought they would’ve come back with the angry, yelling, and screaming boss, that wasn’t number one. Micromanager wasn’t number one. Ghosting boss wasn’t number one. The worst kind of boss to work for? The highly-inconsistent boss or like the unmedicated bipolar boss, because you never knew what you were going to get on a given day.

So, I thought that was really fascinating because it really speaks to the importance of consistency because anxiety at work comes from a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability. That’s one of the reasons why it’s such a contagious emotion. So, we can prevent a lot of that if we’re consistent and predictable. So, that’s one of my favorite pieces of research that’s come out in the last few years.

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

Brandon Smith
One recently that I’ve continued to go back to is Daring Greatly from Brené Brown. So, she’s got a whole bunch of books kind of all in the same genre and theme, but I like the study and depth around vulnerability. It’s so important to us building relationships, and even us being more effective as leaders. So, I continue to find myself going back to that one.

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

Brandon Smith
If I think of a simple one that everyone can do, scheduling your emails. Simple tool. Simple-simple, so powerful, saves you so much time, saves you so much anxiety.

Now, I would say, in more recent years, the ability to learn how to hand things off to others who are better at it than you is a kind of tool. And I found it’s gotten me happier, gave me more leverage, and really allowed me to do the stuff that only I can do. So, I’m a big believer in finding ways to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Brandon Smith
Exercise. I’ve always enjoyed exercise and working out, but I’ve been really doubling down on that the last month, so I’ve been finding it’s been yielding a lot of results maybe that’s because I just had my annual physical.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, right.

Brandon Smith
We’re coming full circle, but that’s one that I think is really, really important.

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

Brandon Smith
Simple nugget, going to be something I’m going to be writing about in the future is distinction between being an author and editor, and we’ve touched on it a little bit today. But in every dynamic between a manager and a direct report, there’s always someone who sits in the author seat and someone who sits in the editor seat. And knowing what seat to sit in is key.

So, as the manager or leader, you want to spend the majority of your time in the editor seat, which makes a lot of sense when you think about your great all-time direct reports. They would come to you and say, “Hey, Pete, there’s a problem. Here’s what I think we should do about it. I’d love to get your thoughts.” They’re offering a solution for you to edit.

But where we get stuck sometimes, or tricked sometimes, is we’ll have a direct report say, “What do you want me to do?” And what they’re doing is they’re baiting you into authoring so they can sit back and edit. They can say, “Well, it’s not my fault it didn’t work out. He told me to do it that way.” So, making sure that we’re sitting in that editor seat as a leader is really important. It’ll save us time, and it’ll make our teams better because it promotes ownership, initiative, and critical thinking with them.

And then with our boss, we want to make sure we’re sitting in the author seat. Bring them ideas, bring them a point of view, and recommendations that they can react to, which again goes back to some of our comments earlier around how to more effectively manage our boss.

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

Brandon Smith
It’s very simple. You can Google “The Workplace Therapist.” That’s my handle and I’m the only one. So, you can go to TheWorkplaceTherapist.com. That’s where my blog is, podcasts, where you can get a copy of my book. Of course, it’s also available on Amazon and other places where you might purchase a book. And, again, the title of the book is The Hot Sauce Principle: How to Live and Lead in a World Where Everything Is Urgent All of the Time.

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

Brandon Smith
I think, particularly right now in 2020, I would say there’s two. First, make sure you’re setting healthy boundaries because while people have been working at home and from home, we’re seeing a lot of boundary creep. So, making sure you’re setting healthy boundaries and communicating that. That’s really, really important.

The second thing that I would add, too, is making sure you’re finding ways to remind your boss and other leaders of the value that you’re providing. We’re not always visible, we’re not in front of them every day, and no one likes to self-promote but, at the same time, we’re going to need to make sure that our boss does recognize the value that we’re bringing so we don’t get passed over for that promotion or we don’t get looked over for new opportunities. So, those would be two tips to particularly apply today.

Pete Mockaitis
Brandon, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck in all the things that have hot sauce on them.

Brandon Smith
Thank you. Really enjoyed coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for all the great questions. I really enjoyed it.

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

Devora Zack
It’s a pleasure to be back with you. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear, you’re doing a lot of interesting work and research and speaking and training. Tell me, have you had any cool insightful new discovery since the last time we spoke?

Devora Zack
Oh, yeah, I’ve had so many cool discoveries since we last spoke mostly about how to transform the virtual environment into one where people really can connect in deep meaningful ways whether it’s networking or interpersonal connections. It can be done. And I’ve had a great time uncovering those possibilities and helping people feel more connected during this challenging time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that sounds so good. We might have to have a third appearance because that’s right up our alley. But we’re all prepped up to talk about singletasking today. But if you found some tools, yeah, maybe drop those into the favorite things and integrate some of that and the goodness here as a sneak peek. So, I want to talk to you about singletasking, sort of what’s the big idea here and how do you define singletasking versus multitasking? Like, what counts versus doesn’t count when we’re determining something multitasking?

Devora Zack
Well, just let’s start with understanding the foundation of my work, which is that multitasking is a myth. It’s actually impossible to do two simultaneously competing activities in your brain at the same time. So, when people claim to be multitasking, what is actually happening is what the neuroscientists call task-switching. And when we’re task-switching, what’s happening neurologically is our brain is very, very rapidly moving back and forth between tasks, and that has all kinds of negative impacts on our lives internally and externally.

It makes us less productive, which is interesting because the big reason people say that they “need to multitask” is because they have so much to do. So, doing that makes us unable to enter an emerging state or a flow state because, by definition, we’re not focusing deeply on one task in front of us. It lowers IQ and, here’s the biggie, it even shrinks the gray matter in the brain. So, multitasking isn’t really multitasking, it’s task-switching and it has a whole range of negative effects on us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, those sound negative. So, could you share with us any of the most hard-hitting research, like the alarming numbers or studies or stats that would make us say, “Whoa! I’m convinced. I got to cut this out”?

Devora Zack
There’s so much. I think that what is alarming and overwhelming is that this international research done over the past 10 years in the highest esteemed institutions and organizations are all in agreement, they’ve all been consistent, that attempting to do more than one thing at a time is neurologically impossible, and that it does everything from harming our relationships, it makes us much less respectful than we used to be of people who are standing in front of us engaged in a conversation, and it also makes us feel professionally because we’re not able to maintain focus on one thing at a time.

And just as a quick aside, when you said I have a virtual environment, what’s interesting and maybe it links to singletasking, it absolutely does because it’s getting even harder now because we’re all sitting behind screens so much at the time, it’s very tempting to allow ourselves to be distracted.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, totally. It’s sort of like right now we can see each other but you don’t really know what I’m looking at. I’m looking at my prepared questions but I could be looking at any number of other interesting news articles or Facebook or you name it while, supposedly, having a meeting, and I’m not really there at all.

Devora Zack
And we have all kinds of reasons for that. We can say, “Oh, I’m very effective at doing this. I can get away with it,” or, “I’m being more efficient,” or, “The meeting is not interesting anyway.” But one thing I can say is that, just to do a reality check for ourselves, we know when someone else is not giving us their full attention, whey they pause between a question and answer, when they ask to repeat. So, we’re not tricking anyone either when we’re living distracted lives. I call it SBS, scattered brain syndrome, that we’re dealing with these days.
Sometimes people say to me, “But, Devora, I can multitask, I can go for a run and listen to music, or I can empty the dishwasher and talk on the phone.” So, that’s an important point to raise because it’s all touched in my book called “When Multitasking Isn’t Multitasking.” So, it’s only considered multitasking if the two activities are competing for the same brain space. So, if, for example, I’m on a conference call and I’m squeezing a stress ball, that’s totally fine. It’s when I’m on a conference call and returning emails that things start to fall apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, it’s like we can’t compete for the same channel or function stream or capability. I guess, are there…how might we segment that? So, running and listening is fine, stress ball and online meeting is fine, I guess one is physical and one is mental. How do we think about the channels that we have available that are distinct from one another?

Devora Zack
It’s a good question and an important question because we tend to err in the direction of thinking that things are not competing for the same set of our brain. So, for example, if I’m driving in my car, and at home, on a route, I take all the time, then I may not need as much of my conscious part of my brain as if I’m on a business trip driving in the rain in the dark and somewhere I’ve never been. So, we tend to overestimate our ability to do two things at once. So, I caution people to really think hard about, “Are two tasks really separate?” And as a good example, something that people think they can do, is walk down a busy street while talking on the phone. And, in fact, while we’re all aware by now of the terrible dangers of texting while driving, but a more recent phenomenon is texting while walking. And it sounds silly, but, in fact, there are people fall down staircases, walk into traffic, bash into other people, just because they think, “Oh, I can handle it. I can do it.”

So, really, to spend time in self-evaluation about not only, “What can I physiologically handle doing two things at once?” but also “Maybe I’m diminishing my life experiences personally and professionally by deciding that I’m never where I’m at.” So, part of it is being where you are. Like, how about, when I work with coaching clients, I often encourage them, to take a walk even for 10 or 15 minutes outside without their phone and see how that experience is different from what a lot of us have gotten used to. And the other side of all these studies is they’ve discovered that even if we spend 15 minutes a day being “non-productive,” like if we’re doing a crossword puzzle, or just taking a walk outside, that that actually increases our productivity by 25% overall.

So, there’s lots of good news too, is that by giving ourselves some downtime, for example, there was a Harvard Business Review study that found that if you take lunch, like even half an hour at work without doing work at the same time, that you’re more productive over the course of the day. So, if you got to feel guilty about, “Oh, I’m not working hard enough,” just reverse that guilt, and feel guilty if you’re not spending some time, I call it time-shifting, shifting down your time so that you can do things that maybe seem idle but actually are very rejuvenating.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Devora, I love that. And any encouragement you can give me to play a game of Fortnite or have a nap or take lunch in the middle of the day?

Devora Zack
Oh, I’m glad you mentioned that. Fortnite, actually…no, I’m just kidding.

Pete Mockaitis
She’s got it all. She’s got it all prepared. And I love the point about just sort of diminishing the quality of your life when you’re not paying as much attention. I remember, boy, when my buddy Mohamad was in town from Dubai, he was on the podcast, and we were just sort of walking in Chicago. We’re trying to find a place to eat, that’s the goal, we’re going to eat lunch. But I was just so happy to see him and having so much fun with the conversation, but I actually made the conscious choice, it’s like, “I’m going to devote zero attention to looking for a place to eat and all attention to chatting with and enjoying Mohamad.”

And it was funny, we walked around kind of aimlessly for a good while, which is fine by me, I’m sure. Any of the food would be perfectly adequate, and then we happen to bump into a great spot. But I think that’s a good point in terms of we can be, without even being aware of it, diminishing our life experience by not thoughtfully, conscientiously choosing “This is the one thing I’m doing now.”

Devora Zack
That’s right. We tend to blame our technology for the interruptions. There’s a section in my Singletasking book called “If Your Phone is so Smart, Can You Teach It to Heel?” and it compares smartphones to puppies. So, we’ve all been around puppies that are cute and adorable and lovely, and around puppies that are out of control and jump up on the table and don’t leave you alone. And who is responsible for that? Is it the dog or is it the owner? So, I think we all kind of know, it’s the owner’s responsibility to keep their puppies, to train them so that they’re good members of a shared society or sidewalk.

And we do the same things with our phones. So, maybe you and I are meeting for lunch, and we haven’t seen each other in a year or two, and I’m like, “Oh, darn. I can’t believe my phone is going off again. Just a minute. Just a minute. This is so annoying. Oh, no, here’s another text.” So, in reality, technology obviously can be a great friend of ours and super useful. However, we need to be in charge of it rather than letting it run away from us.

And there’s all kinds of tips and techniques in my book about ways to manage technology personally and professionally. So, I’ll tell you a fun one since we’re talking about going to lunch with a friend. I’ll tell you a fun one, which is that we can go out with a group and, depending on when you listen to this podcast, to socially distance if necessary, and everyone puts their screens, anything that have screens, onto a chair off to the side, and the first one to touch the pile of phones or screens treats everyone.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. A little pressure.

Devora Zack
Exactly, a little peer pressure. And there’s a version of that you can use for work which I encourage people do, which is if you have a team meeting, is to give everyone, or have everyone if you’re working remotely, an agenda and a pen or pencil, and the only electronics that’s allowed to be on is whatever you’re connecting through, whether it’s Zoom or another platform, and make the meeting half the length of time with everyone committing to be fully engaged. And you’ll be amazed how much more efficient you are, and how much more community you build, and more better connections, because people are there actually together instead of being a million different places at once.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that so much. Well, so we’re going to dig into some particulars when it comes singletasking and how to do it optimally and sort of avoid the multitasking and the distractions, and technology as being one of them. I got a real chuckle, you’ve got an appendix called “Retorts to Multitask-hardliners,” and I think I’ve been here before, and I think some listeners are probably here now, and say, “Okay, yeah, I think I maybe heard about some of that research. And that might be true for the population at large and maybe the majority of people in a given study, but, you know, that’s just really how I like to operate, and it really works well for me. And, boy, I feel so productive, so multitasking works for me, but maybe not most people.” Lay it on us.

Devora Zack
So, I would say, first of all, what kind of mistakes are you potentially making? Like, if you’re responding to an email and, in a team meeting, are you fully engaged or are you answering the questions? Did you hear the questions? And, at the end of the day, how much have you actually gotten done? And then compare it, just test a little bit, just spend an hour or two focused on whatever is at hand. And I really encourage people to start small, and you’ll be blown away by how different your work is and how different your mood is when you focus on one thing at a time.

Another piece of resistance people have to the concept of singletasking is they think that it implies that we’re somehow less productive, or we get less done, or we don’t have as many capabilities, and it’s not about that at all. You can get 10-12 things done in the course of a day while singletasking at any given time. So, it’s not saying you can only do one thing in a 10-hour period. Maybe you can do one thing for a 20-minute period, and that’s all you’re doing, and then you switch to another thing. And it’s the conscious choice that a lot of us aren’t making these days about “What am I committing to in this moment? Am I going to watch my kid play a sport? Or am I editing a legal document for tomorrow’s meeting?” So, just pick one for that time. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about the other choice. It just means that’s not your choice in this specific time period.

Now, another resistance people have is they just don’t have the tools, like, we’re overwhelmed. So, set up systems that will not require superhuman strength to overcome temptation. So, an example is if you’re driving in a car, we all know we shouldn’t text while we’re driving, but,” It’s just this once, and I’m at a stoplight, and I’m late, and I’m lost, and I’m going to an important meeting, and I’ll keep looking at…” Like, we always have reasons to convince ourselves to do things that aren’t maybe in our best interest. But don’t require yourself to combat those reasons. Set up, I call it, a fence. Set up a fence to mitigate the temptation in the first place. So, when you get into your car, toss your phone in the backseat under a pile of coats and start driving.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that.

Devora Zack
And you’ll be cursing yourself, probably you’d be like, “Aargh!” but in the end you’ll get there alive.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. What is it, Ulysses or Odysseus kind of getting himself tied to his boat so he could hear the siren song but not be tempted to go toward it and its destruction? It’s sort of like you just decide, you cut off that option, it’s not available to you. So, there it is.

Devora Zack
That’s a great analogy. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And so, I want to get your take in terms of sometimes multitasking feels really good. Is there some neuroscience or some dopamine or neurotransmitter stuff going on in terms of the sensations and how it feels to switch or do a lot of things quickly? What’s going on there?

Devora Zack
So, our brains crave novelty. So, if I’m sitting at my computer inputting data for three hours, and then something pops up on my screen that’s different, my brain is pretty psyched, so there is something to that. And then what we would do then is, there’s various techniques we can use, but one of them is to turn off all auditory bings and all visual popups so that when we’re focusing on writing something that we’re completely focused so we don’t get that novelty in there.

Another is to say give yourself treats. Like, if I’m going to work for 45 minutes, then after that I can do something that’s completely different. Create that novelty for yourself. And you might be surprised at how deeply you go into a thought state, and so I recommend actually setting an alarm so that you don’t have to keep looking at the clock or wondering how long it is. And then when your time goes up for doing your tough tasks, the harder one, then even if you’re like, “Oh, I feel like I could go longer,” it’s better to stop and take a break, because if we stop a task while we’re still excited about it, the next time we engage in it, we’re much more likely to have a positive feeling about it as oppose to if we work, and work, and work until we’re just hating our jobs, and then you’re going to avoid it the next day.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that is just a powerful reframe for me personally. Thank you. To stop when you’re still excited about it means you’ve got some enthusiasm ready for next time. And sometimes I think it’s, “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be enthusiastic about this. I better milk it for all I can right now because it may never come back.” Like, if I feel like doing my taxes right now, that’s a rare event so I better really run after it until it’s absolutely gone. But, instead, I should stop while I still got some enthusiasm left.

Devora Zack
That’s right. It’s like an old saying about a party, “Leave while you’re still having fun.” What you can also do is to do a little self-awareness about why do you think this time, working on your taxes, felt okay. Do you happen to have music on in the background? Were there no distractions? Were you sitting in a different environment? Was it that you did it following an exercise? Just try and identify maybe what made it different so you can replicate that. And other times, it’s just a matter of you don’t feel like doing it. You force yourself to, and 15 minutes into it, it’s not so bad, and you’re in the flow.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Very nice. Well, so I’d love to get your take here, when you talked, you mentioned sort of setting an alarm or an amount of time, “I’m going to do this for this window.” You’ve got an approach called the cluster tasking technique. Tell us how this works.

Devora Zack
So, many of us have an activity or two that takes over our day and it prevents us from getting any of our bigger work done. So, as a way of example, for a lot of people it’s messaging, whether emails or IMs or texting, and we can spend all day messaging and then we never get to the bulk of what we’re here to do. A study, which wasn’t even that recent, it was a few years ago, so I bet these numbers have gone up, found that we look at our phones at an average of 150 times a day for a total of four hours.

So, what we can do instead is to put those tasks, that repetitive task, and for right now we’re just going to call it messaging, it could be a different task for you, and we’re going to find two or three cluster times during the day where that’s all you do. So, maybe it’s right when you get into the office in the morning, right after lunch, and maybe 4:30 near at the end of the day. And you can decide this is a half an hour block, a 45-minute block, and a 20-minute block, or whatever you decide. And so, during those times, all you were doing is reading and responding to messages, and during the rest of your workday, you’re not looking at your messages. And this is a tough pill to swallow, at first, for many people because you’re like, “Well, I have to be available all the time,” and so I’ll address that in a minute.

However, if you’re not like going off the grid for two months, if you do it three times a day, you’re only going to be not looking at your messages for a couple of hours at a time, and, as a bonus, when you are looking at your messages, that’s all you’re doing so you’re not distracted, so you make fewer mistakes, and committing to two different things at one time, or writing the wrong date for an event, so you’re way more efficient overall. So, that’s a great simple technique to try. A lot of my clients say it’s worked really well for them.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that.

Devora Zack
Yeah, thanks. You give it a try. It’s very useful.
So, people say to me sometimes that they need to be available to others and so they have to always have their phones on and nearby. And a general true rule of thumb is if you try to be everywhere for everyone all the time, you’re never anywhere for anyone with full focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Any of the time, yeah.

Devora Zack
So, you can either do one thing well or two things poorly at any given moment. And when people say, “Oh, you need to be available all the time,” if I’m coaching someone, and I might ask some follow-up questions, like, “What do they think they really mean? They really mean that you follow through what you say you’re going to do, that you’re going to be responsive, that you’re clear about deadlines?” And people get used to the idea that “Even though you may not be available to me every minute of the day, when we’re talking, I get your 100% full attention so our conversations are more efficient and shorter, and I get the picture of how helpful it is.” And there’s going to be exceptions.

So, if you were on a conference center, and there’s a huge conference that day, you might need to have your phone with you all day, but just to be aware that there’s exceptions but, most of the time, to err in the direction of saying, “Here is when I’m doing this particular repetitive task.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I like that turn of a phrase there in terms of you can do one thing well and two things poorly, and I think it’s possible, although rare, that, you know what, doing two things poorly is the right choice right now in terms of there’s sort of a mandatory conference call of little value to you and to your team, but it’s, “Hey, everyone’s got to do this thing, so it’s like, okay,” so you just got to do it. But your desk is also a mess and even just a little bit of attention is going to make it better. So, you can make the conscientious choice that, “I know what’s happening here. I’m going to do two things poorly, and that’s the right answer. But most of the time it’s not.”

Devora Zack
And there’s also ways to work within that situation. So, for example, if, again, when I’m working with clients and if they have exactly what you just described, a mandatory department-wide meeting that’s two hours every Thursday, or whatever it is, that there’s an opportunity to, in some cases, delegate that responsibility to maybe someone who works for you who could actually learn from the call and it would be a benefit for him or her to be on that call.

You could say to the group, “I’m available for the first half of the call. So, the items that I can contribute to, is it possible to discuss this in the first half?” And this isn’t always possible, but I’m just saying to always explore options so that you really are where you need to be. And sometimes, also, you might think, “Oh, this call is boring,” and so you start organizing your desk, and then you might miss something, and maybe there was something interesting that just happened.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, there is the risk you take.

Devora Zack
But one thing for sure is that if you’re on one of those calls, you can tell when someone is doing something else, and they’re not impressing you with their professionality when you know they’re distracted. So, part of it might just be building a reputation with someone who’s present.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yeah. Thank you. Okay.

Devora Zack
I’m a tough cookie.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, absolutely. Sure. And I think there are some exceptions to every principle or guideline, like, “Hey, hundreds of people are out there, everyone’s muted.” Okay. But even then, you have options as oppose to it’s either/or, doing two things poorly or giving this my full attention. You can get creative and say, “Well, maybe I’m here for this part, maybe I’ll delegate,” so there’s many ways to slice it, which I like.

Devora Zack
Actually, one thing I heard recently is that doodling can be a very useful device in staying focused on a conversation. The doodling doesn’t take up a conscious part of your brain, and kind of releasing that extra energy, just by drawing images on a notepad can help people stay focused. That’s another new technique I learned recently.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, if we’ve got some lifelong multitaskers, and this is kind of challenging in terms of training the attention to zero in on the one task, how do you recommend we develop that skill, that focus, that discipline?

Devora Zack
So, there’s really two parts of our lives, to speak broadly, that we can apply to singletasking. One is internally, and we’ve talked a little bit about that, like in our brains, how to manage our brains, and the other is externally, how to manage our environment. So, the first thing I’d say is start small and pick something that you can manage and that you think is doable, and also start with something tangible.

So, we have these smartphones and they’re incredible. As a matter of fact, I heard someone recently say, “Really, the phone is just a rarely used app on the smartphone.” They do so much more than just phone-calling now, and so that can be very convenient. It’s also our alarm clock. It’s also our camera. It’s also our flashlight. It’s so many things. And I encourage people to look for places to unbundle some of the potential areas of usefulness in our phone because it can lead to distraction. And a good example is we all know, and every sleep scientist in the world would tell you, the worst thing you can do before going to sleep is to look at your phone, for all kinds of reasons, because the blue light wakes us up, because there could be a stressful text popping up, a news report we don’t want to see. But when we use our phones as our alarm clocks, that’s the last thing many of us do.

So, how about investing in a cool old-fashioned alarm clock that you can play your favorite song to wake you up, and see what it’s like to wake up and fall asleep in a relaxed atmosphere is one example. And so, looking for ways to unbundle. Like, when I teach seminars, I time people a lot of times for timed activities, and for a while I used my phone because there’s a stopwatch on it. Then I realized that I wasn’t unbundling, so I got just an old-fashioned kind of handheld stop…what is it called?

Pete Mockaitis
Stopwatch?

Devora Zack
Stopwatch, right. And it’s great, and it keeps me focused. So, look for ways to help yourself succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, before the stopwatch, I had it around my neck, and just even feeling the pressure of it around my neck was a little reminder, “No, no, I’m on the clock for this one.”

Devora Zack
That’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, I’d love your view then, if folks think, “I am too busy for singletasking. I have to multitask,” then a part of the game is really just identifying, “Well, hey, what’s truly the most important thing? Like, what is really worth that?”

Devora Zack
Also, learn some of the science because you’re actually too busy to multitask. You will be way more efficient in getting things done by focusing on one thing at a time. And in my book “Singletasking,” I have some examples of going through a typical day while you’re attempting to multitask versus singletasking and seeing how the time flow works, and it’s based on reality, just through a lot of different people’s experiences, and it’s remarkable. So, we start off with like, “Oh, there’s this bad news.” But now we have this great news that you can live a more sane structured life by doing one thing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me, just how many hours a day do you think is at stake here in terms of excellent singletasking versus poor multitasking? What kind of a lift, or a gain, or a timesaving do you think this adds up to on a daily basis?

Devora Zack
Maybe all our waking hours. It depends what measurement you’re using for what’s a good use of time. So, if you consider a good use of time being with a significant other for 45 minutes for dinner without anyone looking at any screens and talking about interesting topics beyond just the mundane? Do you consider a good use of time to be taking your dog for a walk outside? So, it depends how you define it. What I will say is that in terms of work tasks that there have been, again, studies that show that when someone is having a pure focus on one activity at work at a time, that they’re more creative, more structured in their output, they get it done in less than a few hours, and so it really works in your favor to be fully focused.

And some people say, “I can’t focus anymore. Like, I’ve lost ability to focus because that’s the kind of world we’re living in.” So, when people say that, I encourage them, or you, as you’re listening now, to think of something you love to do. Just think in your mind, if you’re listening to this podcast, of something that you enjoy, it really brings you happiness. And when I ask that question with people in the room with me, I get all kinds of so many different types of answers. Maybe it has to do with doing an athletic activity, or an instrument, or a craft, or a conversation with someone you care about.

And what we find is that there’s a correlation between that act, whatever activity you thought in your mind or said out loud, and the fact that you’re totally focused on it, that it focuses you when you’re doing it, that nothing else exists in the world, that if you love going to museums, and when you’re in a museum, that’s the only thing that exists in the world, or reading a book, or running a race, or whatever it is. That’s part of the appeal. And so, it also shows that you can do it. You can focus. If you thought of even one thing in your life that you really get fulfilled doing, then there’s a correlation in that and being able to focus your brain on other activities. And that’s called mental elasticity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Well, tell us then, if let’s say there are some interruptions outside your control, a sudden emergency, an interruption, how do you recommend we refocus?

Devora Zack
Okay. Great. So, I’m glad you asked that because there are emergencies, and we want to go with the flow when there’s an emergency, and it doesn’t negate everything else you’re working on when there’s not an emergency. However, we’re always looking for ways to manage emergencies. So, an emergency can be big or small. So, a smaller type of emergency is you’re being interviewed on a podcast, let’s say, and you’re working from home and someone barges in and starts yelling in your office, your home office, for example, so that would be an emergency you need to deal with.

But we always want to take it one step back, and say, “Is there anything potential I could’ve done to anticipate a possible emergency and how to make sure it doesn’t happen?” So, I encourage people to, very simple low-tech technique, put Post-It notes on your door, if you have a door where you’re working, at home, virtually or in a shared office, and make a note saying, “This colored Post-It notes mean don’t come under any circumstances. This one means come in if it’s super important. And this one means I just closed the door because I don’t like the breeze. Come visit and we’ll chat a little bit.” So, again, it has to do with setting up systems.

Now, let’s say there is something that distracts you and you asked about pulling back in. How do you get focused again? And I would say taking a little in-between time, like, “Maybe I got so scattered or overwhelmed by the emergency that I can’t seem to focus back on the work I was doing before. So, that’s a perfect time for me to let myself go for a walk, or to talk to someone, or get some fresh air, to reboot.”

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

Devora Zack
One thing I’d like to share is that singletasking is a relatively new idea, and it’s also a super old idea, it’s in our nature. So, when we were hunting and gathering, we wouldn’t have done very well if we were distracted all the time, so it’s kind of part of our ingrained human success. It’s ingrained in us to be successful by singletasking. And it’s also a new concept to a lot of us today, this day and age, and so to be kind to yourself when you try these techniques and to give yourself plenty of space to mess it up and to take two steps forward and one step back.

And there are a lot of activities suggested, and also that you can actually use in the book Singletasking. So, the first part of the battle is convincing yourself that it’s worth a try, and the second part is learning how to do it, just like some people are organizing and structure their physical environment, and for others of us, it just seems so impossible. So, there are techniques that can help you be successful. So, I wish you all the best of luck in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you.

Devora Zack
You’ll be happy that you did.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Devora Zack
I love quotes so much. I change my favorite quotes all the time. Okay, here’s one of my favorite quotes right now. I’m sorry, it’s Steven Pressfield, “Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb, the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

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

Devora Zack
It’s a scientist named Douglas Merrill, and he works on this area of focusing our brains, and the quote is “Everyone knows kids are better at multitasking. The problem? Everyone is wrong.”

[36:18]

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. And a favorite book?

Devora Zack
The Phantom Tollbooth.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job, or to help virtually remote-working folks connect all the better?

Devora Zack
My favorite tool in helping virtual folks connect all the better is in building connections among them through embracing technology instead of fighting against it. So, I teach a class called “You Are Not Alone,” and instead of saying, “Here are all the things we can’t do,” we take whatever technology each of us has and we figure out what we can do based on what’s right in front of us. And it sounds simple but it makes a huge difference in how we build connections with each other, and how we accept what the possibilities are given what the reality of the situation is.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear them quote it back to you frequently?

Devora Zack
Yes, especially for people that are in fields like ours, whether you’re interviewing people, or working with people, or inspiring people, or writing books for people, what’s a great rule of thumb, because there are so many so-called experts out there, and I love this one. Elinor Glyn, an author, “Life is short. Avoid causing yawns. Be interesting. Be fun. Be unique. Be quirky. Engage people.” Life is short. We don’t want to be the cause of any yawns.

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

Devora Zack
My website is MyOnlyConnect.com, and it has tons of samples from media, podcasts, TV shows, newspapers, magazines, and all sorts of information about my three different books. Networking for People Who Hate Networking just came out in a second edition. It has tons of new chapters and sections that people are finding really useful in this day and age.

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

Devora Zack
Yes. It’s another quote but it’s also a call to action. It’s from Philo of Alexandria, and this is especially important today, “Be kind for everyone you know is fighting a great battle.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Devora, thank you. This has been a treat and I wish you all the best in your singletasking adventures.

Devora Zack
Thank you so much. You, too. I hope it works well for you.