Prioritization Archives - Page 7 of 15 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

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

Julie Morgenstern
I’m so happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. But, first, I want to hear, so if you’ve got over 30 years of experience as a professional organizer, for folks who’ve got some clutter in their lives, do you have any pro tips or tricks that you use over and over and over again that the rest of us lay people should know?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah, I think when it comes to organizing, maybe, I was going to say physical organizing any space, any information, anything physical, I model every single physical organizing system on the model of a kindergarten classroom without exception.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Julie Morgenstern
Yup. So, you just picture a kindergarten classroom, it is the perfect model of organization. The room, imagine it, this is a room where you can have like 25 five-year-olds that the within the first two weeks of school, no matter how messy that room gets, at the ring of a bell everything is back in its home by five-year-olds, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Julie Morgenstern
So, how is that room organized? It is organized into activity zones. There’s a reading area, a dress-up area, a building blocks area, a music zone, and everything is stored at its point of use. So, if you’re in the music zone, everything that is related to music is in there. There’s nothing on the other side of the room. If you’re in the arts and craft zone, and you’re painting a picture, and you want to add glitter and glue, it’s right there in the arts and craft zone. Even if there’s an empty shelf in the reading corner, no teacher would ever put arts and crafts in the reading zone.

So, it’s storing items at their point of use as related to an activity, and then everything stored in a container that is perfect for what you’re storing, right? So, like puzzles are in those little slotted trays and they’re very organized. The building blocks area, there’s one cubby for the columns and another one for the rectangles and another one for the arches, and everything has a home that’s a perfect fit for what you’re putting away.

And the whole room becomes kind of a visual menu of everything that’s important to the people who use that space. So, like a kindergarten can just come in and look around, and say, “What is there to do? Oh, I’m going to go over and build something,” and run over to that area. And that’s really how our homes, and our offices, and our filing systems, digital or in paper, should reflect who we are and what we want and where we’re going. They should reflect our activities and reflect our life back to us. It’s a very visual and very powerful and very effective way of organizing everything.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you for that metaphor. That’s already kind of sparking some things for me over here. And so, I want to dig primarily into the organizing of time and tasks things. But, first, maybe could we sort of paint the why for us. Kind of what difference does it make having great organization? Some might say, “Are we just shuffling papers, and to-dos, and calendar appointments from one spot to the other?” Can you make the case, what’s the benefit to be gained from this effort?

Julie Morgenstern
So, being organized, that’s a great question because why bother getting organized. You get organized to achieve a greater goal. Never get organized just for organizing sake. Never get organized just to make things look good or appear good to other people. Organizing systems are really vehicles to get you to your bigger goals. So, you shouldn’t organize anything without saying, “Why?”

And the very common reasons to people, when they hire us to organize them, or lead an organizing, or time management book, or get coaching, people don’t invest that kind of time or money to design a system for their lives unless there is something they are trying to achieve. Very commonly, people want to organize their time and their schedules to create space for quality time with their families and quality time for themselves. That is a very common goal.

If your schedule is more organized, if your space is more organized, you would free up time to be present with your friends, with your family, with your kids, with your spouse, and with yourself. That’s probably one of the most common motivations.

Another, in our work lives, is so that we can, “I want to get organized, manage my time so that I can achieve my greatest, fulfill my greatest potential.” If you’re bogged down with procrastination or you’re always late, and then you feel really guilty so you’re not really confident, which means you don’t really show up and really throw in at meetings or with clients, but you kind of hold back because you feel incompetent, or you feel embarrassed, or you feel like behind the eight ball, then you’re missing opportunities. So, it’s usually to really seize the maximum opportunities at work. Whether you work for yourself or you work for a small company, or a nonprofit, or government, or a big company, it’s really to maximize your opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m sold. And so, let’s talk about you’ve got a particular approach called the inside out, I guess, method, or approach, or style, or flavor. So, can you walk us through what is that and how do we do that?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah. So, organizing from the inside out is really about designing systems that reflect your unique personality style and goals so that it’s very natural and easy to maintain. And too often we try to organize from the outside in. What does that look like? You just ask somebody else, I go, “Which app do you use for your to-dos or your calendar?” Or, “How many to-dos do you put in your list for the day?” Or, “How do you organize your closet?”

Well, we buy containers and we buy tools, and we think those tools are going to organize us. They don’t. You have to design your system the unique way you think and your natural habits so that you don’t have to change who you are to be organized, but it actually enhances and unleashes your full potential, and it works and it lasts, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds awesome.

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you give us an example maybe of, “Hey, given your context or your style or approach, you might want to choose A over B”?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah. Okay, so I’ll give you one or two examples. So, one is people are like, “Where do I keep track of my to-dos?” It’s one of the universal questions of today’s era because there are so many options, and our to-dos come at us from so many different directions. And if you don’t have your to-dos all in one place, you lose a lot of time to transferring information or working on something but you’re kind of worried that, “What am I missing?” so you’re not really focused on what you’re doing because you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a big problem.

So, people are, like, digital or paper. That’s the big first cut. So, usually, I will ask people to sort of identify, “Are you a visual tactile person or are you kind of a digital linear person?” And a visual tactile person will remember where on a page they wrote something, they’re like, “Oh, that was like three pages back in the upper-right corner in green ink.” Like, they have a visual tactile memory of where information is.

And if you relate to that then you are probably best on a paper to-do system because the act of writing pen to paper emblazons it on your memory, helps you process and group similar kinds of tasks, and just writing it helps you process what you’re doing. And if you try to do it digitally, it’s not sticky. So, that’s like one cut. And then if it’s paper, then you just have to sort of search through the various products that are out there. That’s one example.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s intriguing and very descriptive. I think some people will say, “Yes, that’s me.” It’ll kind of resonate right away. And so, what would be the “Yes, that’s me” equivalent for those who are in the digital linear zone?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah, I think people who are sort of digital linear thinkers, very often they’re kind of chronologic in their thinking. Like, you could throw out a date, like September 13, and they’ll be, “Oh, that was a Thursday this year. It’s between my sister’s birthday and when I had that proposal due.” Like, they think numerically, chronologically. They’re just great at interfacing with thinking straight into a keyboard or straight into a type pad and they can find things. They can figure out, like, they can setup a database or a contact manager. They think that way. They think digitally.

They rely heavily on search and are never afraid losing anything because all they have to do is have a trigger word and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I could find that.” So, they’re very comfortable and agile and think in a sort of interconnected words and associations kind of thing, rely on the search function. They really adapt quickly to technology, super quickly. They get it.

And they love, because they’re so good at it, they love traveling light, they don’t feel like any attachment to paper. They’re like, “I can find that in the cloud.” They can travel anywhere and find that information and they engage with it. They don’t find it overwhelming, right? They don’t glaze over in front of a screen. They’re using it as a tool. They get it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you. So, very handy there in terms of all the options out there. There’s a quick way to get to the heart of which half of the options are more suited to your brain, so very cool. And then, so you mentioned there’s three steps for organizing anything, the analyze, the strategize, the attack. So, could you kind of walk us through how we might approach that in organizing time or task things for professionals?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah. So, I just was coaching somebody yesterday who is a very overwhelmed executive, incredibly accomplished man, in a very senior position in a big mid-sized company, very well-established, and he’s working like 15 hours a day, seven days a week, he’s getting everything done, but the cost is so high. He’s exhausted. He can’t get to the proactive stuff. He’s just doing the reactive stuff, and he’s not really present for his family or himself. He’s spread so thin that it’s sort of catching up with him.

And so, he’s like, “How do I fix this?” So, I can’t just come in and say, “Hey, let’s get you a to-do list as a starter.” That’d be an outside-in approach, right? That’s sort of an attack-first-ask-questions-later approach. So, analyze, strategize, attack is a three-step process to finding the system that will work for that person.

Analyze is you, first, have to ask a series of questions to really zero in on what needs to be fixed and what doesn’t. So, I always ask questions like, “Tell me what is working. What’s working about your system right now? What are the things that always get done? What are the things that…?” In his case, I could try to come up with his examples but, in his case, everything was getting done. That was working. What wasn’t working was the number of hours that it was taking. So, that starts to lead to narrowing in on the problem to be solved.

And, “What is it that you’re trying to juggle your time between?” That’s part of the analyze, which is, “What do you need to fit in time for to be truly balanced?” And all of us have to decide that when it comes to our time, “What am I really trying to balance my time between? What are the core, like, the big buckets?” It could be, like, I don’t know, in your field, you do a podcast, it’s researching guests, it could be writing, there’s research, there’s writing, there’s production, and then there’s administrative follow-up. That would be like the four buckets maybe.

So, we all have that. And analyzing is to really understand, “What is it that I need to balance my time between? And then where is my time currently going?” And I always do that and encourage people, like, “You have to think of your time. It’s like a closet. It’s a limited amount of time that’s only going to fit so much. So, how much do we have to work with? Are you working 10 hours a day, 8 hours a day, 12 hours a day? What’s the size of the container for your work? And then what has to fit inside? And how are you organizing it right now? What order do you tackle things in? How do you handle your mornings? When do you do your administrative stuff? Is there any order at all or is every day different?” So, that’s the analyze, “Where are we right now?”

Then, strategize is, “Where are we trying to get to?” so, what would your schedule look like if it was in that shape, size container and it fit everything you really needed to do? We kind of really do a graph to figure it out, “Here’s your ideal schedule.” And then attack is, “How do we get you from where you are to that ideal schedule?” And that’s all the time management skills, “What do you add to your schedule? What do you take out of your schedule? What, in your schedule, needs to be done more efficiently?” And then you just tool it. And so, you get the person into that ideal state. It’s very concrete and, actually, very practical and doable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’d love it if you could perhaps share, is there a power question or two that you find tends to yield loads of insight as you are moving through these three steps?

Julie Morgenstern
Well, I would say, especially for listeners, there’s really two questions if you want to start to get a grip on your time. And you just ask yourself, “What am I spending too much time on? And what am I not spending enough time on?” And then you’d go about making adjustments to get those things in the right order.

So, if I’m spending too much time on email, on writing, on administrivia, “What am I spending too much time on?” Then you look at that and you say, “How do I eliminate that? How do I streamline that?” I have this thing called the 4Ds which is, “Can I delete it? Can I just get rid of doing this thing altogether? Like, it’s really not enough value for the time invested. Can I delay it? Which is at this month, this quarter, or this part of the year, this period of the business, I’m going to just put this off because right now we’re in, I don’t know, end-of-year financial wrap-up so I can’t also do that strategic marketing plan, whatever. That’s a delay. Can I diminish it? Which is, is there a shorter, quicker, more efficient way to do this?” And there very often it, right?

Like, we just need to find an efficiency and operationalize a repeat task so that it takes a quarter of the time it does because it’s more efficient. Or, “Can I delegate it? Can I give this to somebody else to do because that’s no longer the highest and best use of my time but it’s still really essential for the company, for the business, for living?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. So, there’s a number of tactics for when you’re spending too much time on something.

Julie Morgenstern
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about the equivalent for when you’re not spending enough time on something?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah. So, you identify, “What am I not spending enough time on?” And, like, the classic, universal, frequent answers are, “I’m not spending enough time on the strategic planning,” or the creative work, the innovative work, that’s in our workday, or developing people. Like, “Not really thinking through my team and how to develop them.”

Pete Mockaitis
That makes sense. These things are important but not urgent. Like, it’s got to happen but it’s not on fire.

Julie Morgenstern
Right. But if you don’t make the time for them, you stay in that hamster wheel of always putting out fires because you haven’t spent time developing your people, you haven’t looked ahead down the road to figure out setting up things to prevent these fires. So, it’s so critical and, also, it’s really where we make our unique contribution.

We do not make our unique contribution in constantly fighting fires and all the little stuff. It’s in the big thinking where each of us make our unique contribution, and everybody knows that whether they articulate it in their brains or not. It’s like, “This is where the meaningful work is. This is where I can solve problems and make a contribution but I need time to think.” So, that’s a common one. Not enough time to do those things.

So, “What are you not spending enough time on?” And then you just ask yourself. The goal is now to create the time for it. And you ask yourself, “What is the ideal block of time to work on this?” which I highly recommend you think about as a daily, not like once a month, but what’s a daily strategic planning, daily thinking time, daily research time, quiet time. And what’s the unit of time? “Do I need an hour at a time? Do I need two hours at a time? What’s the unit of time? And what is the optimal time of the day for me to do that?” And then you claim it. You just claim it.

A lot of people it’s the first thing in the morning, right, that that’s when their head is clearest, and they can protect it the most because they have the rest of the day to catch up to any of the urgencies of the day. You grab and block off the first hour of your workday every day or the first 90 minutes of every workday. Or, if the first hour is not going to work, maybe it’s between 12:00 and 2:00 every day when people feel permission to, like, disconnect because they might be at a business lunch, so know that they’ve got a two-hour block with their deep-thinking time.

So, you claim that time and you make it a regular daily appointment in your schedule. And then you let all the other stuff work around that. And there you go. You’ve reduced the thing that’s monopolizing your time and you have created the space for the most important thing you’re neglecting right now. And life changes very quickly. Your sense of control and meaning and impact changes just on those two questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. Thank you. And when it comes to think about the time of day for things, you’ve been so bold as to write a whole book called Never Check Email in the Morning. Can you tell us, why don’t we do that and when should we do it?

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah, I mean, email is a delivery mechanism for messages, requests, and reminders, and junk mail, and solicitations, and all kinds of things, but all in all it’s a reactive device, right? Everybody wakes up in the morning and has something they really want to get done that day personally, professionally. If before you get to what you know you want to do, your proactive tasks or activity, you check email first, you are starting your day out, you postpone the proactive and you probably never get to it, then you’re off to the races. You’re going down rabbit holes, you’re getting aggravated, you’re pulled in and you cannot get out.

And I think if you postpone checking email, that reactive device, by anywhere from the first hour, your first waking hour, I actually think it should be your first, all the way through your first working hour, should not be on email. And you start your day proactive, getting your biggest task done before you roll your shades up for business. You’ll get so much more done in much less time, and you start out you in control of technology, not it in control of you. And if you can start your day in control of technology, any other time of the day that you want to put your device away, you’ll be able to. But if you can’t do it for the first hour, there is not another hour in the day you’re going to be able to put it down.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to get your take on this. I buy that and I try to practice that. And then, sometimes, that really important thing that I’m doing, I need to get something out of the email to do that. And then as I open it up, I see all the other stuff, and it’s like, “Man, how do I do this?” I’ve even tried to like put a piece of paper up to hide some parts of the screen. What do you do?

Julie Morgenstern
I know it’s really tough. So, I actually think, for your most important thing in the morning that you’re going to work on, if you pull everything you need by the end of the day before, then you will sort of avoid that situation at least eight out of ten times. You’re going to reduce the need to go in because you pulled it the day before, you’re like, “I’m going to work on that proposal. I’m going to work on that document. I’m going to pull the research.” You pull everything together so you are set by the end of the day before for your mornings’ task. You don’t come in and get setup. You set it up the day before. That’s one thing.

If your first to-do requires you to be on your computer, it requires a lot of discipline and hacks to stay focused. One thing could be that before you go in, you set your alarm on your cellphone to say, “All I have to do is go in, find that email with the attachment and download it, and then shut down my email. That’s all I need to do.” You know where it’s going to be, you know what to look up by search, that is a five-minute task. You set your alarm for five minutes, you go in, you get the thing before that alarm goes off, and then shut it down.

It’s, like, think about going into a supermarket, right? Like, how often do you go in a supermarket without a list? You thought, you went in for three things, you come out with six bags of groceries. But if you go in with a list and a short time limit, it can help keep you focused. But it takes a lot of consciousness to do that, which is what we have to do in our screen-dominated lives. We have to stay conscious.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s helpful. And I like it when you say pull it in advanced. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways we could pull it. You could print it. You could save it. I’m thinking about just making in Gmail just like a super query in terms of, “I only want to see messages from these five people.”

Julie Morgenstern
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And then that’s sort of what’s there waiting for me on the email screen, and it’s like, “All right. Well, that’s what I have and I’m not going to kind of delete that search query. I’m just going to keep that filter up,” so I dig that. Julie, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Julie Morgenstern
Just that when it comes to organizing your time, I think to recognize that you can stay as practical as possible. Try to only solve one or two problems at a time. Don’t feel that you have to overhaul everything at the same time. It’s impossible. Just focus on make a short punch list of things that need to be tooled or retooled, and do them one at a time. And you will see that any aspect of your time management that you address, and you adjust, and you tame or conquer, will pay off in all of your other 168 hours of the day, a week, I mean.

We have this 168-hours of a week to work with. You make a change in any one area and it’s all interconnected, and everything else lifts. So, don’t try to do everything at once. Just solve one problem at a time and you’ll see big impact.

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

Julie Morgenstern
One of my favorites is a Winston Churchill quote, which says, “When going through hell, keep going.”

Pete Mockaitis
Love it. Thank you. And a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Julie Morgenstern
There was a study done by the University of British Columbia sometime in the last five years that studied the impact of batch-processing email versus continuously processing email. And it was a very extensive, very well-conducted study.

And they found that, and they tested two test groups, and each one, one week they had people just check email all day long continuously, and then the following week, they had them batch-process their email, which means designate specific times you’re going to go into your email, give it your undivided attention for 20, 30, or 40 minutes, whatever it takes to clean it out, then shut it down, and come back at the next designated moment, which might be two hours later.

And they found, to a person, that when people batch-process email rather than continuously-process, they got through the same number of emails in less time. So, we, a lot of times, do it because we think that’s a way to stay on top of things is to keep checking. Actually, you’ll get through as many, you’ll get through all your emails if you batch-process and it’ll take you less time, less real time, which means you’re going to get time back in your pocket by doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. And how about a favorite book?

Julie Morgenstern
My most recent book is a book on time management for the parenting years, which are the most time-stretched years of a human’s life. And I did research for this book on what kids need, how much time and attention do kids need to feel loved and secure, because I couldn’t advise parents on how to divide their time until I’ve got the answer to that question, and I did about eight years of research.

But my favorite from that is a book called What Children Need by a woman named Jane Waldfogel and it was brilliant, and it is really like the essence of the answers in that book. And any parent who’s wondering, “How do I divvy up my time here, and fuel my career, and my marriage, and still be there for my kids?” What Children Need is the best resource I found.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m totally going to read this. Thank you. We got two under two right now. And, roughly, what is that amount of time?

Julie Morgenstern
Okay. So, I put all this together in my book Time to Parent. So, basically, what children thrive on is short bursts of truly undivided attention delivered consistently rather than big blocks of time delivered occasionally. And when I say short bursts, we are talking about 5 to 15 minutes, 20 minutes tops, at a time.

Children have short attention spans, that’s the key. And many experts say they calculate about a minute for each age of life of attention span, give or take, of course there are some variation. But you think like a five-year old has about a five-minute attention span before they dash off to the next activity, and a 15-year old, a 15-minute conversation and they are like, “Okay, I’ve had enough,” or a game.

And consistency is the key. And that’s what you’ll read a lot about in Jane’s book, which is kids need to be able to rely on when they first wake up in the morning that mom or dad is like, “Hey, how did you sleep?” It might only take three minutes but it’s like first connections, they can count on that. When you get home at the end of the day, don’t walk through the door still on your phone, doing one last email, or one last call, or one last thing. Make a mindful transition before you cross that threshold, and, “What is my intention on the other side of that door? I want to let that kid know, my wife know, my husband know, I am so excited to see them and I want to hear about their day.”

And if you do these short bursts, you build them into the fabric and the rhythm of the basic transitions of the day, that is what makes kids feel loved and secure. And if you can occasionally do these big blocks of time, quality time outings to the park or museum, or whatever, those are great, they’re fine, they can make memories, but what they really thrive on is those short bursts delivered reliably. It’s very frame.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Julie Morgenstern
You’re welcome.

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

Julie Morgenstern
I would say come to my website JulieMorgenstern.com and you can poke around there, you can read about the books, you can read about Time to Parent, the Never Check Email in the Morning, my other books, we have a couple newsletters you could sign up for, we have a Contact Julie tab where I welcome comments, questions, queries, and we will absolutely get back to you. And you can find me online, Instagram, just Julie Morgenstern everywhere, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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

Julie Morgenstern
Yeah, I would say the call to action is to define, so clearly, what is your unique contribution. What is it that you bring to the table that you know your company hired you for? And you should start 2020 by claiming time for making that unique contribution. Tie it to your schedule, reliable time, every single day. You do that and you will start to really feel not only a great sense of satisfaction but a great sense of control and contribution, and you will start to see real results for it in every other aspect of your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Julie, this has been lots of fun. I wish you all the best in your organizing adventures.

Julie Morgenstern
Thank you so much. Great to talk to you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Tonya, welcome back to the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Tonya Dalton
Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m glad we didn’t miss out on having you back again. We’re going to talk about your book, The Joy of Missing Out, and maybe you could orient us first and foremost. So FOMO versus JOMO, what’s the story here?

Tonya Dalton
For your listeners who are not familiar, FOMO is the fear of missing out, which I think so many people experience. They feel like opportunity knocks and, “I have to open up that door every single time. Otherwise, I’m going to miss out. And if I do, oh my gosh, I’m going to worry about it.” And it’s this terrible thing. And so, we often have this fear of missing out. And, to alleviate that fear of missing out, we try to do everything. We chase our tails being busy all day long, trying to do it all.

And I try to tell people, all right, we need to let go of the FOMO and embrace the JOMO. We need a little more joy of missing out. I truly believe that there is happiness already really nestled into our day. There’s joy just waiting to be had, but because we’re filling our days and because it’s so crammed full of tasks and errands and projects and this and that and the other, we miss out on finding that joy, even though it’s right there.

So when you think about your ideal day, there’s a lot of incredible, amazing things in it, but there’s also some things that are missing. There’s that feeling of being stretched too thin, that’s gone. That feeling of saying yes out of obligation instead of saying yes to things you want to say yes to, that’s missing. So really getting rid of a lot of that clutter and that noise in our lives, that busy-ness allows us to find the joy that’s already there waiting to be had.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, I think that really resonates. My mom just recently reminded me that John Mulaney has a joke, one of his specials associated with, once you reach a certain age, when plans get canceled on you, it’s like crack, it’s so thrilling and exciting because you finally have the opportunity to do nothing.

Tonya Dalton
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Which is awesome. And so then, that just sort of raises the question, well, why not just conscientiously decide to do nothing?

Tonya Dalton
Why don’t we purposely choose to have our days with a little bit of more open space, a little more freedom in our day?

Pete Mockaitis
And so when it comes to the joy of missing out versus the fear of missing out, to what extent is it true that you might be missing out and that’s terrifying and really unfortunate that you are not taking advantage of a given opportunity versus false. And I guess that’s kind of the core of it. Is identifying what matters and, and making informed choices. But are there some reliable guides, some indicators, that, “Ah, this is all an opportunity well worth taking,” or, “I really will regret missing out on this opportunity”?

Tonya Dalton
Yes, I really think so. It really is this idea, when we’re talking about productivity, I think the reason why productivity has failed so many people is because they think there’s this magic system out there, and they think they have to work their life and shift it and change it and make it work to fit this system. When in effect, let’s put you and your priorities front and center, and then let’s custom design a system to work for you to play to your strengths and play to your weaknesses.

And when you do that, when you create a system for your life that really feels manageable, maintainable because it plays to your strengths and to your weaknesses, when you really are allowing your priorities to sit front and center, that can really act as your filter for “What do I want to say yes to,” and, “What should I really be saying no to more often?”

I think that’s the issue a lot of times, is that it’s not when it’s black or white. It’s not when it’s good and bad. It’s when it’s the good, better and best. How do you know what to say yes to and what you should really, just let that opportunity knock and move on by to the next door so to speak?

And so really that’s one of the things that we talk about a lot in the book is, this idea of it isn’t just about saying no, it’s about finding your yes. It’s finding the yeses that are meant for you. The things that are really tied to your priorities, to your purpose, to your passion.

And a lot of that is really tied to the idea of your North Star, which is what I talk about in the first section of the book, which is your mission, your vision and your core values, and really allowing that to be your filter. To act as your first filter for, there’s opportunities here, do I even want to say yes to it?

Because I think that’s the problem. Is a lot of times we think to ourselves, “Well, I’ve got 15 minutes, I’ve got the time to do this 30 minute project, so I should just say yes.” And really, the question of time, that’s not really what we should be asking ourselves. We should be asking ourselves, “Does this fit the life I’m really looking for?”

I have this whole finding your yes blueprint that we walk through in the book, that asks these questions. How does the opportunity feel? Why do you want to take it on? Does this align with your North Star? We don’t ask the question of time until like four or five questions in. And I think that’s the problem is, we don’t often times know what we want to say yes to.

So in an effort to be at all, we say yes to everything, and that’s why we end up feeling overwhelmed, because we don’t know what we want to say no to. And I truly believe we all have our own yeses that are meant for us, that are tied to our North Star. And when we can really figure that out and we can use that North Star as our filter, that makes it so much easier to let those other opportunities to pass us by, and not feel like we’re truly missing out. To feel like, okay, this feels good. That these things are not things I’ve taken on.

Pete Mockaitis:
You said overwhelming and that reminds me of our previous conversation. I thought about it again and again, and you said, you said it better than, “That it’s installed into my brain.” But you said that, “The feeling of overwhelm comes not so much from having too much to do, but rather the feeling that we’re not actually making progress on the things that are important to us.” Did I say that right or how do you say it?

Tonya Dalton
I like to say the overwhelm isn’t having too much to do, it’s not knowing where to start. So it’s tied to that whole idea of, what do I want to work on? What do I want to say yes to and where do I start? And we’re spinning in circles, driving ourselves crazy. And this is why we feel overwhelmed because we have a to-do list that is three miles too long and unachievable and unattainable in our day.

And this is what happens is we end up with this long to-do list. We’re checking a million things off of it. We’re running around busy, slipping into bed at night thinking, “Gosh, why didn’t I get more done?” Even though we were busy all day long. Even though we chased our tail. Even though we checked all those things off.

When instead we choose where we’re going to start, when we choose to focus in on what’s most important to us as the cornerstone of our day and really the center point of what we want to do. When we do that and we do fewer tasks that have more meaning, that is when we really feel like we’ve accomplished something. That’s when we finish our days feeling satisfied.

And I think that’s really the difference is, knowing where to start that you’re not going to start with the menial tasks, the things that aren’t really important and driving you forward, but knowing where you’re going to start with those big tasks that feel really good to our soul. Instead of filling our calendar, let’s work on filling our souls and feeling really good about our days.

Pete Mockaitis
I think the corollary to that that struck me is that, I’ve had days that had lots of activity to them, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed, and it’s because each of those things indeed was filling up the soul.

Tonya Dalton
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think it’s hard to feel overwhelmed say on a camping trip. Even though I’m doing a lot of things. I might be hauling a canoe over my head, cutting wood-

Tonya Dalton
Catching dinner.

Pete Mockaitis
… Boiling water. Yes. It’s like there’s a lot of activities happening here, but I don’t feel frantic. Like, oh no, it’s just sort of like, well, yes, this is exactly what I wanted it to be doing, is enjoying some outdoor time and being with great people and mission accomplished.

Tonya Dalton
Yeah. I think that’s so true and I think this is the thing. I like to tell people that productivity is like what I use to get them in the door. “Oh, come over here, look at their productivity,” and then they come in and I go, “Okay, it’s really about being intentional. It’s really about intentional living.”

It’s choosing how you want to have lived your life and choosing how you’re going to spend your day, and really doing the things that do have meaning to you. Whether that is when you’re camping and doing a lot of things that are really important, like you said, like getting the canoe together and getting dinner and cooking the dinner and doing all those things.

You end up feeling really good because you’ve gotten something accomplished. You’ve worked towards your goal versus chasing our tails, picking up the dry cleaning, returning a shirt to Target, doing these little teeny tiny tasks that are really filling up our schedule and keeping us from doing the important work that will make us feel like we’re making big steps towards where it is we want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so now I want to talk a little bit about the particular how’s of zeroing in on some of the North Star guidance. But first maybe could you inspire us by shooting a tale of a transformation? Someone that you worked with who was dealing with one set of circumstances and experiences of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and then what that person did and the results that emerged?

Tonya Dalton
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve worked with a lot of different people. I like to tell people that I’ve worked with men and women in all different seasons of life with all different life circumstances. I think the difference that it makes with what I teach in the book and in my courses is truly, it’s all about customizing it so it works for you.

So, I had this one woman who I was working with who was really struggling because she just felt like she was in a dead end job, but she felt like, “Well, I don’t really have any choices because this is what I trained for. This is what I’ve been doing for the past 10, 15 years, so there’s no other options for me. There’s no other place to go look because this is just how things are.”

And I think that’s oftentimes what people fool themselves into believing that there are no choices. When in fact if we look around and we change our perspective a little bit, there are options everywhere. It’s just a matter of sometimes having to go and look for them a little bit.

So she was feeling really, really stuck and those are her own words. She was like, “I just feel stuck and I feel like, I’m not really happy, but this is just how life is. I’m chasing after the kids and I’m doing all the things that they need me to do, and there’s no time left for me.”

So she and I sat down and we worked on, discovering her North Star, uncovering what her mission, her vision and her core values are, and then creating all these systems at work around that. And it was interesting, because at the start of working together through this course, she was really determined that this was just not going to work, because this was just how life was.

And then by the second week you could see that she was like, “Okay, there are some choices.” So we first opened up her eyes to the choices and really taking a lot of what she discovered about herself. And this is why I think it’s so important to start with that discovery phase. To really think about who you are in your heart of hearts.

So she took what she learned from that discovery phase, and then she started really implementing that into, how do I make it so this is the center point of my day. And so she started to feel really good about that. And then we started doing the simplifying and adding systems and making sure all the other things are running.

And then now, I just caught up with her a couple of weeks ago and she goes, “I quit my job. I’m now doing something I’m absolutely passionate about. I had conversations with my family about what their schedule look like, what did I want, what did they want?” We have a lot of these misconceptions that our kids want to do 5,000 different things. Our boss wants to give us 5,000 different projects.

And when I started having her create these conversations where she was like, “What do you really want? What are your priorities?” We began to uncover that a lot of this was stories she was telling herself. That her kids really wanted to do five different after school activities every day. When in reality, her kids were like, “No, we’d be fine just doing, piano and doing field hockey.”

And so she was like, “Oh.” So she was able to really make that manageable, not only for herself but also for her family. And now she’s starting up a job that she’s truly passionate about, that’s really tied very strongly to one of her core values of faith. And she says she’s in a completely different span of life than she was back when we started a year ago, because she really customized and made it all work for her.

And to me that is really what’s most exciting. Is when you see those light bulb moments where people are like, “Oh, I do have choices.” Or, “Oh, this is why I feel this way.” Or, “Oh, I love how now I’m spending more time on these things I really love.”

I mean that’s just one example, but I’ve had people who have gone back to school. I’ve had people who have changed careers. I’ve had people who’ve done all different kinds of things, because I think when we open our eyes and we begin to realize that we really can make life work for us, that life is meant to be enjoyed rather than just endured. And that we can create systems so the other things still happen so that the grass still gets mowed, the bills still get paid, the laundry gets done, and those types of things, that it really is achievable to have that ideal day and make that into your everyday. And that is truly what I love about what I do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s exciting stuff. And so, we talked about that mission, vision, values pieces last time. So I’d like to zoom in on saying no in terms of one, I guess being okay internally, psychologically with your own self—

Tonya Dalton
Going to say space to say no, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And secondly, how you find the ability to articulate that when you’re kind of nervous. What are your top perspectives when it comes to saying no well?

Tonya Dalton
Well I think this is one of the problems that people have is, sometimes we know we should say no and we’re like, “Ooh, I want to say no to this.” But yes, feels so good coming out of our mouth for about 10 seconds. And then it’s like, what did I just say yes to? Because a lot of times we’re either taken off guard or we feel guilty. We feel bad because we feel like we’ve let people down.

And we forget that every time we say yes, we’re actually saying no to something else. So every time we say yes to someone else’s project, we’re saying no to our own passion project. When we’re saying yes to volunteering for a project that we’re not really excited about or truly invested in, we’re saying no to our own goals and we’re saying no to time with our family.

So if you start to reframe that and realize, you know what, every time I am saying yes, I’m actually saying no, but most times I’m saying no to my own priorities and to the people and to the things that are truly important to me. I think that’s the first stepping stone to get to is to realize, “What am I saying no to every time I’m saying yes?” Because I really think that makes you stop and think for a minute when somebody asks you to do something.

But I think it’s really important too, to have a little something in your back pocket ready to go. Because we are thrown off guard, and then a lot of times if we say no, we ended up overexplaining, over apologizing and somehow, somehow getting roped into saying yes after all.

I like to teach people that there’s a really simple strategy to use called the sandwich strategy. And it’s like the little black dress of saying no. It works in all situations and it really is so simple and easy to do.

So it’s essentially this idea that if you think about a sandwich, you have two pieces of bread with some kind of filling in the middle, the meat in the middle, right? Well, with our sandwich strategy here, we have two slices of kindness, that’s our bread with that solid no right there in the middle.

And when we sandwich our know, it makes it more palatable. It’s easier to give, and it’s easier for that person to receive so there’s not a lot of guilt.

So let me give you an example. Let’s say someone asks you to volunteer for yet another project. You could say to them, “Oh, thank you so much for thinking of me. I really appreciate that you’re pulling together a group of people to really make this fundraiser happen. Unfortunately I can’t give it the time it deserves. However, I do have some ideas that I’d done for this other project, so I’d be happy to pass those along to you.”

So there, we’ve had kindness at the front, kindness in the end, but right there in that middle there was that no. There’s no question about it. I can’t give it the time it deserves.

And to be honest with you, that phrase, I can’t give it the time it deserves, is one of my favorite phrases to use when you’re saying no. Because I’m not saying I’m busy, I’m not elevating myself. I’m not saying what they’re doing is unimportant. In fact, I’m saying, “Gosh, what you’re doing is so important, it really deserves time and I am not able to give it to it.”

So that’s really the sandwich strategy in a nutshell. It’s starting with kindness, putting in you no and then finishing up with a slice of kindness.

And because it works for all situations, it’s so easy to remember. If let’s say that somebody asks you to go out for a girls night, and you’re really wanting to spend more time at home with your spouse. You could say, “Oh, thank you so much for asking me to the movies. I’ve heard some really great things about it. I’m so sorry, but right now I’m really committed to spending a little more time at home with my husband, and so I’m going to give this time to him. I really think you guys are going to enjoy the movie and I would love to go next time.”

I think so often we forget that being kind and being assertive are not mutually exclusive. We can be assertive with our time, we can be assertive with our calendars, we can be assertive with our boundaries. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be kind or generous or thoughtful. We can be both at the very same time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. That’s a real nice clear perspective on saying the no. And so then, you’ve got a nice section on finding clarity within the realms of focus, time and energy. How do you recommend we go about doing these things?

Tonya Dalton
Well, this is the thing is, I think we don’t realize that we have these three precious resources of time, focus and energy. Once we give those away, we cannot get them back. Once you give away time, there’s no getting it back. But we don’t think anything of handing out 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, five minutes here.

If we thought about our time like we do our money, we wouldn’t do that. If we had a set amount of money for the week, we would make sure that we paid our bills, that we fed ourselves and fed our families. We would make sure that we paid our mortgage before we started handing out dollar bills. But with our time, we don’t think about, first I need to invest it in the places that matter, invest it in my priorities, invest it in my goals, and then I can hand it out.

So when we shift the way that we’re looking at how we spend our time and we start looking at it as an investment, I think that really does help. So we go through in that section, that section two of the book, this whole idea of how do we clarify our day so that really we are spending most of our time on what matters most.

And this is where I get into that very controversial idea of tossing the to-do list. The to-do list is one of those things that people have talked about for decades and decades. It started back with Bethlehem Steel where they started doing a to-do list. That’s where it actually originated. And people have taken it so much further than what it was originally intended.

It was originally intended to be a list of three things when it first was brought about. And now people have these to-do lists that are 25 miles too long. So I really tell people, “The problem with a to-do list is it’s taking you everywhere, but where you want to go. It’s long, it’s unorganized, it’s jumbled, and it doesn’t tell you where to start.” And as we said earlier, overwhelm isn’t having too much to do, it’s not knowing where to start.

So if instead of making a to-do list, you spend five seconds longer—and I can promise you that’s all it takes—to make a priority list, that tells you very intentionally where you want to start. I like to say that a priority list is a to-do list with intention.

So like I said, it takes the same amount of time. It’s just really thinking through what are the tasks that are most important to you?

So it’s a little bit of a riff on the Eisenhower matrix, which I know you’re familiar with and I’m sure your listeners are familiar with, which was originated from Dwight D. Eisenhower, our most productive president, and then adopted later on by Franklin Covey and that whole system. But we, instead of having the four quadrants in the priority list, we start at the top with, there’s three levels.

So we have the top level, which is escalate, which is our tasks that are important and they’re urgent. So they’re important in that they are connected to our North Star. That mission, that vision, that core values. It’s linked to a goal. It’s something that’s essential to be done by us. It’s advantageous. It’s not tied to our perfectionism or a story that we’re telling ourselves about what we should be doing. So it’s important, but it’s also urgent.

And so we put our items at the very top because that’s really where we want to begin our day. With the things that are important, but have a deadline, because that’s why they’re urgent. And then that next level goes right underneath it. So instead of being a quadrant, it’s just almost like a vertical list. That second level is cultivate. Which are our tasks that are important but not really urgent.

So what’s amazing here is that this is truly the area where you’re going to see a lot of professional growth, a lot of personal growth, because these are things that are going to cultivate. These are investments in ourselves that will pay dividends in the future. So these are things like, creating a budget, taking a course, bettering yourself, reading articles that are in your industry, doing things like that. Working on a presentation that’s not due for another two weeks.

So things that are really important, but they’re not urgent. But because they’re not urgent, a lot of times those get pushed aside, even though that’s really where we’re going to see the most growth because they’re not screaming out at us. So that’s our second level.

And then our third level is our accommodate. And these are our tasks that are urgent. So they’re screaming out, they want to be done, but they’re not necessarily important. They’re not really tied to our goals, our vision of where we want to go. But because they’re screaming out at us, we oftentimes want to do them first. And a lot of times they’re really easy things. There the kind of ticky tack things in our day. Running to the dry cleaner, or returning a shirt to Target, Answering emails. Because 99% of what’s in your inbox right now, is not really important, but it’s urgent. It needs to be done. Those emails need to be returned.

So when we create this priority list with those three levels of escalate, cultivate, and then accommodate, and we start our day at the top and work our way down, it really does help us focus our day on what’s most important. Because we’re beginning with those important tasks and we’re making sure those get tackled first, which is why we can end up feeling like we have bigger wins in our day. And I think that’s really important, ending our day feeling successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s talk about email for a second here. So I agree with you that the vast majority of the emails that come in are not necessary to look at or reply. And yet, there are some that are just, change your life.

Tonya Dalton
That’s true. That is true. Not everything that’s in there is trash. There’s some jewels in there, yes, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
So how do you think about processing email?

Tonya Dalton
Well this is the thing is, you’re right. There’s lots of great nuggets in there. There’s a lot of things that we need to just kind of discard and get rid of or just quickly reply to. Email is an important communication tool, especially when used correctly.

The problem is though, is that your inbox is like digging a hole in a sand storm. That whole idea of the inbox zero is such a great idea and I’m an inbox zero type of person, but that zero, and this is what I can’t remember his name, Merlin Mann, I think it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Merlin Mann.

Tonya Dalton
Yes, Merlin Mann who came up with that term. He talks about, it’s not about the zero, it’s not really about the number, it’s about how you feel about your inbox. That it’s not really dictating your day and it’s not taking over your day. So if we’re spending all day going into our inbox, trying to empty it out, but it keeps filling itself back up, that is really an exercise in frustration. And it’s taking up so much of our time, considering most of the information in there is not truly important.

So if instead, we chose to very intentionally batch our emails and check our emails, let’s say four times in a day, that would give us bigger pockets to focus on the important work.

So for me, and I’m going to go ahead and throw this out there, and tell you that email for me, I’m like Pavlov’s dog. I hear that ping of the inbox and I’m like, “Oh, what’s in there?” I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is. It’s not the same way with texts. But, I love checking my inbox, even though I know it’s mostly junk.

So what I did for myself is, I started checking email four times a day. So I come into the office, I start off by creating my priority list. I process my day, I take care of setting my day up, and then I check my email for the first time. Then I let other people’s priorities begin to invade my calendar.

So I do a quick check and I get myself a container of time, 15 to 20 minutes to check it in the morning. And then I check it again around lunchtime, and then I check it again mid afternoon, and I check it again after closing time for work.

And I do it four times a day because that allows me to get through my inbox and really respond to the things that are important in there and allows me to clean it out and keep on top of it. But I’m not in there all day long.

So what happens is, if we’re checking email every five minutes or so, we’re continually interrupting ourselves. We’re not getting to that deep work where we can really do great things, the important tasks on our list.

If instead we batch it, we have these bigger blocks of focus time, where we can really get into our big work. And I think that this is the thing. It’s not about getting rid of email. It’s really about how can we make email effective, so it truly does work for us. So for me it’s four times a day.

Now I have worked with other people who are like I only check it twice a day. I have some people who were like, “Four times will not work with me. I need to do six or I need to do eight.” And I’m like, “That is great.” Again, it should be totally customized to what works for you, just be intentional with it. Make a decision when you’re going to be in and when you’re going to be out. And when you set that container of time, abide by it. And then use the time that you were checking email to do that big important work instead.

Pete Mockaitis
And so for you personally, four bouts of 15 to 20 minutes keeps you in control such that you are hovering near zero ish most of the time?

Tonya Dalton:
Yes. And like anything else, when you’re batching tasks, you’re able to do it a little bit faster. You’re getting kind of that zone where you’re just automatically like, “Okay, quickly checking them,” and you can tell what’s trash and what’s not. And you’re cleaning it out and you’re checking things. And because you’re in that batch zone, it’s so much more effective than if I pop in there and I check one or two emails, and then I come in 10 minutes later and I check one or two more emails, and then I come in 10 minutes later.

Anytime that we’re batching tasks and we’re doing the same repetitive action again and again over and over again, it’s very similar to that assembly line, right? It just moves quicker. So we get that task done off of our plate and then we move on to what is truly important.

Pete Mockaitis:
All right, so Tonya, when folks are on board, they say, yes, JOMO, I’m embracing it, I’m going to live it and love it, are there any common mistakes or missteps that seem to pop up a lot when folks are starting down this journey?

Tonya Dalton:
Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes we make, and this happens whether it’s with JOMO, or a goal, or a project or anything else, is we try to take it all on at once. Okay, there’s all these different things you can do, and we talk about different strategies and tactics throughout the book, but people try to take it all on at the same time.

I think anytime that you’re trying to effect a change and you’re trying to, maybe live more intentionally, it’s okay, let’s take a step back and let’s figure out what’s one thing you want to do first. Let’s focus just on one small thing and let’s make these adjustments slowly. So it really feels a little more natural so we can begin to see how does this really work for you? And we can make those adjustments that I think are really important and are really necessary.

And then maybe a week later, let’s add another step. And then maybe a week later, let’s add two more steps. And build up to it instead of trying to take it all on.

It’s kind of like, have you ever tried to start getting up earlier. People think, “Oh, I want to start this morning routine so. You know what, I’m going to start getting up two hours earlier.” Well, getting up two hours earlier, getting up at eight o’clock in the morning and then six o’clock the next morning, that’s jarring to your system.

So instead back it up. Back it up 30 minutes for the first couple of days, and back it up another 30 minutes and then back it up 30 minutes again. It’s taking these baby steps and making it so we can acclimate to these changes and really start building them in as habits. Because that’s one of the other things that we talk about throughout the book is, this idea of let’s take the thinking out of it. Let’s make it so a lot of these intentional things that we’re doing, these intentional choices, become habits. So we don’t even have to think about them, they just happen automatically.

We talk about that whole idea that our brain is one 50th of our body, but it burns one fifth of our calories. And we can choose, do we want to burn our calories on the nonsense and the things that aren’t really important? Or do we want to burn our calories on the things that are really going to drive us towards that life we really want? And when we choose to allow habits to kind of step in and work on autopilot, especially when they’re good, healthy, intentional habits, that allows all that to run automatically and seamlessly, allowing our brains to really focus in on what matters most.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to these baby steps, have you found historically that there tends to be one or two or three that make a world of difference, and just get that ball rolling quite effectively, consistently?

Tonya Dalton
I love that question. I would say, just like anything else I talk about, I think it really is personal to you. I usually tell people, “Start with what you’re most excited about. Start with what you’re most passionate about. What got you most excited? Let’s start there, instead of trying to say like, you have to start here, then you go here.”

The one thing that I do really encourage people to do is really do start with that discovery phase of what is important to you, because then we can really tweak and make everything work for you. And when I say for you, I don’t just mean like what you’re really good at. I also mean what you’re not good at. Let’s make it play to your strengths and your weaknesses.

So thinking about that and then starting with what you’re truly most excited about. Let’s say that the morning routine is what you’re most excited about. Let’s start there. Maybe it’s the priority list, then I would start there. So really to me, ultimately, with everything that I teach and everything that I talk about, it really is about this idea of customizing productivity, making it mold and work to you and your life. Instead of you feeling like you have to twist and turn yourself to fit the systems, let’s twist and turn the systems so they work for you.

And that’s really what I want people to get out of the book is that, when they finish reading the book, they’re like, “Okay, I know how to make this system for myself work, and I’m ready to get started.”
Because I wanted people to feel like they had a roadmap for how am I going to really start implementing this idea into my real everyday life? It needs to really work for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well Tonya, I want to hear about some of your favorite things and we’ll see if any thing’s newly favorite. Last time your favorite quote was from Oprah. Are you sticking with, “Do not think you can be brave with your life and your work and never disappoint anyone. It doesn’t work that way.” Or, do you have a new favorite one?

Tonya Dalton
Good question. That’s still my favorite. It’s really hard to let go. I mean, Oprah, she knows what she’s talking about. And I think too, I think this is a thing, especially when I talk to people about, JOMO and really finding that joy of missing out, that there’s going to be times that people do push back. There’s going to be times that people are like, “Well I just think you should say yes to this because you should say yes to it,” and don’t believe you can be brave in this life and not get a little bit of flack from people. But yeah, I’m still with Oprah. She and I are still one.

Pete Mockaitis:
Okay. All right. We’re sticking with it. And last time you had a favorite study about multitasking at a Duke. Any other studies that have caught your eye?

Tonya Dalton
Well, I have this other study that’s actually about multitasking that I really like as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Tonya Dalton
Multitasking seems to be one of my favorite things. There’s been a lot of studies on it and there was a study at the University of London on multitasking, and what they found was that, when people were multitasking, they performed as well as people who had stayed up all night long. And so what they did is they had a control group that was, multitasking. They had a group that went to bed, they had a group that stayed up all night long, and they had a group that smoked marijuana.

Now, the people who are multitasking did not perform as well as the people who had stayed up all night or the people who had smoked marijuana. So I like to tell people, “When you are multitasking, not only are you increasing your cortisol, not only are you stressing yourself out, but you might as well either stay up all night or smoke drugs.” To me it’s most interesting about this study—

Pete Mockaitis
“You might as well smoke drugs,” wonderful pull quote.

Tonya Dalton
Maybe not my pull quote please, no… But I think that’s so true. When people hear that, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I keep multitasking because I think it’s increasing my productivity,” but it actually is decreasing your productivity 40%. That means you’re losing about, I think it’s like 17 hours a week when you try to multitask. That’s a significant amount of time.

So really, when we think that we’re working harder, we’re not really working smarter, we’re just wearing ourselves out.

And the other part of that study that I thought was so fascinating is there was this inverse corollary where the better someone thought they were at multitasking, the worst they actually were. Which I found interesting because they said, they would ask people like, how good are you multitasking? And the higher they rated themselves, the worse they performed.

So this is the thing. There’s very few super taskers out there who really can multitask.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s almost like I’m one of them. So, caution, caution there. The odds are not in your favor.

Tonya Dalton
Yes, the odds are not in your favor and that’s one of the things that the researcher said. He says, “People want to fool themselves into believing that they’re the super taskers, but they’re not.” I mean, that’s like his direct quote, “but they’re not. They’re just fooling themselves.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well so, last time you mentioned your favorite book is Jane Eyre. Are there any other favorites you’d like to mention?

Tonya Dalton
Well, I just read not that long ago James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and I really enjoyed that book. That was something that I really enjoyed recently. On the fiction front, I’ve been doing quite a bit. I’ve been reading some Ruth Ware, and I’ve really been enjoying her. I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with her, but she just came out with one called Turn of The Key, and then she did, The Woman in Cabin 10. Those have been my reads lately that I’ve been enjoying.

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

Tonya Dalton
I would tell them to go to joyofmissingout.com for information on the book and where you can get that, it’s available really anywhere books are sold. And then if you want to connect with me or learn about my podcast or anything that I do, my products or anything else, you can go to tonyadalton.com. So that’s Tonya with an O and a Y, tonyadalton.com.

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

Tonya Dalton
My call to action could be just go get the book. Because I really do feel so passionate and excited about the book. But really what I want people to take away from this is, we’ve talked about that idea of the small steps and starting small. I think that that’s really what I want people to walk away from this episode remembering. That that ideal day that we dream about when we’re in the shower or we’re waiting for our coffee to brew, it feels so far away from where we are.

And, so because it feels so far away, we sometimes think it’s not ever going to be possible. But, if you take one small step each and every day closer to that ideal day, if you get 1% closer each week, by the end of a year, you’re going to be 52% closer to that ideal day, to that ideal life. It really is the tiny little itty bitty steps that matter.

We often think it’s the big giant leaps. It’s the leaps of faith and the giant running starts. But oftentimes, it’s just taking that first step that builds that initial momentum, and that’s really all we need to keep us moving forward. And one tiny step each and every day really does make a gigantic difference in how we feel about our days, and how we feel about ourselves, and how we feel about getting to that ideal life that we want.

Pete Mockaitis
Tonya, this has been so much fun. Thank you. I am overjoyed that we didn’t miss out on this conversation

Tonya Dalton
Me too.

Pete Mockaitis
So, keep up the good work.

Tonya Dalton
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me again. This was great.

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

Maura Thomas
Pete, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, one of the first things I wanted to hear a little bit about was you do some martial arts stuff. Can you tell us about that and maybe any personal safety tips we should know from your learnings?

Maura Thomas
Sure. Yeah, I trained in martial arts and a variety of other self-defense courses for many years. And I think that the most useful tip that I can pass along is don’t put yourself in a dangerous situation. And what I think a lot of people don’t recognize is that if you are in a place that is perhaps not so safe, like out on the street at night by yourself in the dark, or like in a deserted stairwell, or just any place where your personal safety could potentially be at risk, being distracted in that moment is really dangerous, like being on your phone, having headphones in your ear, ear pods in your ear where you can’t hear anything. The smartest thing you can do when you are out and about, especially at night, when you’re alone, in secluded places is be present and aware.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, one time I was actually punched in the face right near a Chipotle and not a bad neighborhood, at around twilight. And you know what? I was looking at my phone and the guy just yelled at me, “Get the F out of the way!” and he might’ve had some mental illness or something going on because he just kept walking after that. In all fairness, I was in his way, and I was distracted, but he could’ve just said, “Excuse me,” and I would’ve gladly stepped to the side. So, I did not heed your wisdom.

Maura Thomas
Well, it’s easy to forget but I think it’s super important.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, lessons learned and I’m fine, if anyone was worried. And I learned a good lesson about compassion because a lot of people, it was spooky, it’s like they don’t want to look at the guy who just got punched.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, anyway, I didn’t think we were going to go there. But, now, we’re doing some disclosing and you’re talking about managing your attention, you’re a real pro at this, you’ve done a lot of research, and there’s a lesson right there. If you don’t manage your attention, there could be personal injury but more likely career and productivity injury. Tell us, what’s a fascinating discovery you’ve made about how we manage our attention and we can do it better?

Maura Thomas
I think the most interesting thing that I have learned is that distraction is a habit, and it is a habit that has been cultivated in us on purpose by our technology. But the idea is that the more distracted we are, the more distracted we will be. And there was a study by Gloria Mark out of the University of Irvine, and she discovered that we switch our attention on average about every three minutes. Three minutes and five seconds to be precise is what her study concluded.

And so, when you do something every three minutes all day long, it becomes a habit. And it is a habit that our technology only cultivates in us because our technology is designed to steal our attention basically, and to keep our attention. The job of the internet is to keep you on the internet. Not only are you distracted by your technology but you’re distracted by other people.

And every few minutes all day long you get a distraction, that becomes a habit that gets really reinforced which means it becomes a really strong habit, which means you can’t just leave it behind when you walk out the door of the office, and you can’t just decide, like, “I’m not going to have that habit right now because I’m on my personal time,” or “Because it’s the weekend,” or, “Because I’m on vacation.” That habit follows you and it sticks with you and it really undermines us.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, there’s so much that you got me thinking about here. So, three minutes, five seconds, and so in a way I find that a little bit encouraging that if I’m focusing on something for longer than that then I’m kind of making progress.

Maura Thomas
You are making some progress, but think about this, we try to do important things, not only tasks at work that require our brain power, which we were, by the way, hired for, not only tasks, but also interactions, conversations, experiences. And we think that we can fully experience something, fully be present in something, fully apply ourselves in about as long as it takes to toast bread.

And you know what’s really sad about that is that because this habit of distraction has eroded our patience so much, I bet there are many people listening right now saying, “It takes kind of a long time to toast bread.”

Pete Mockaitis
I could check several emails in the time I’m spending toasting the bread.

Maura Thomas
Exactly. And it feels like a minute, two minutes, three minutes is like, “Oh, I got this.” But here’s the thing, your brain requires momentum. It takes you a few minutes, depending on the complexity of the task, or the complexity of whatever it is that is happening to you right at that moment, the experience you’re in. It takes you a minute, or two minutes, or three minutes, or five minutes to get your head into something, right, to build up that brain power momentum so you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m in it. I’m totally with you. I hear what you’re saying. I know where we need to go with this project. I have this idea now and I’m going to expand on it,” right?

And when we do our most challenging things, or have our most richest experiences, or our most meaningful interactions, a couple of minutes isn’t enough. It takes more than that to build up that momentum to be there, to apply ourselves, and we almost never get that. And, yet, most of us probably, I’m imagining most of the people listening to this podcast are knowledge workers, which means our job outputs are intangible brain activities, right?

There are things like ideas and creativity, and relationships, and innovation, and analysis, and research, and those things that we use our brain for, and those things that require brain power momentum. That’s what we were hired for.
And so, then we hire those people because we think they have this brain power and these qualities that we want in an employee, and then we put them in a situation where they can’t express those qualities and that brain power in any meaningful way pretty much ever.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’re talking about situations in terms of we have a context full of distractions. Or what do you mean by situations?

Maura Thomas
The work environment where they are distracted all day long, and they are distracted all day long as a result of the culture. So, for example, when I’m speaking to an audience, I ask people, “How many of you have two computer monitors?” And some people raise their hand, or I say two or more computer monitors, and pretty much everyone raises their hand, right?

And then I ask, “What is on those monitors?” And people essentially tell me, “Work is on one and email and other communication devices, instant message, whatever, is on the other.” And so how often, when you are at work, are you going to get an instant message or text message or an email? Pretty much all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Maura Thomas
Right? And the company, like imagine you are going into a new job, and you’re walking around and you’re shaking everybody’s hands and you’re meeting people, and everyone has two monitors on their desk. And on each monitor, for everyone, they have some sort of spreadsheet or document or something open on one, and their email and other communication devices open on the other. So, aren’t you going to get the impressions like, “Okay, this is how we do things. Sign me up for my two monitors so that I can leave my email open all the time”? And the average person gets an email every two to four minutes.

And so, it’s sort of by design that these people that we bring in because of their brain power are unable to apply their brain power. And that’s just one of the many ways that the culture sabotages performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess we also have sort of the open-office plans that are in vogue and then folks are sort of dropping by all the time and then plenty of other things, whether it’s if you have Slack, the instant messaging there. Okay. So, I’m with you there, there’s plenty of things that disrupt our attention and pull us all over the place. So, I want to dig into the how. But maybe, first, could you maybe inspire us with a case study or research or an example of what’s really possible in terms of the leap a professional can make with their attention management in the current state versus an ideal state?

Maura Thomas
Yeah, I think the most recent example I have actually is in someone’s personal life. So, I was at a client this morning, in fact, and I was talking to one of the women, Kristine. And I had just finished the attention management portion of the training that I was delivering at this company and so Kristine and I were talking after that, and she’s like, “You know, this whole idea of distraction as a habit is so true.” She said, “I recently went out on maternity leave, and when my son was born, I would be holding him, and the urge to hold my phone in the other hand was overwhelming.”

She was like, “Here I have this perfect life, and my baby is only going to be this age once, and I’m looking into his beautiful face, and there was still part of my brain going, ‘You know, just pick up your phone. Maybe you have some messages.’” And she said, “I was so dismayed by that that it was so hard for me to be present in these first moments of my son’s life because I was so distracted by my phone, which wasn’t even around, I was just thinking about it and feeling like I should have it, feeling like I was missing, not even missing out, but missing something. Like there’s something missing. Like, ‘Oh, my phone is not in my hand. That’s the problem.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Maura Thomas
And she told me that it took her a few weeks on maternity leave and she had to work really hard to overcome that urge to not multitask while she was interacting with her baby, right? And she was upset by it. She was like, “I cannot believe that my newborn infant didn’t seem like enough for me in that moment.” But she was out on maternity leave for a couple of months, and she really kicked that habit of distraction, and she found that time with her child so much more rewarding.

And there are new studies out. I just saw sort of the headline of one that talked about the impact that when parents have the TV on, their interactions with their children go down. When they have some sort of technology distraction around them, the number and quality of interactions with their children go down.

So, she was able to kick the habit and she had a much better time with her child while she was out for those two months, because most people don’t get that opportunity to spend all of this precious time with their newborn. You get maybe a week, six weeks, or eight weeks or something, and then you’re not with them. If you have to go back to work, whether it’s a mother or a father, right, or whatever parent, you are not with them after that because you have to go back to work for most of the day.

If Kristine hadn’t been aware and had just sort of felt like her phone is fine in her hand, how much of those first, that early life of her child would she have missed because she was distracted?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is powerful, and I’m glad to hear there’s a happy ending there. And this reminds me of my favorite tweet of all time, which just sort of made me chuckle, and it went like this, I think you’ll get the joke. I don’t think the tweeter was trying to make a joke, but the tweet read, “Holding my child and just so present in this moment.”

Maura Thomas
Uh-huh. Me thinks you are not as present as you think you are, right?

Pete Mockaitis
All right then. So, it’s a habit, it can creep into all aspects of our life even during very privilege times. So, what do you recommend is the means of building a new habit that will serve us better?

Maura Thomas
Yeah, the first thing is that we need to become aware of how often we are distracted because I think a lot of people think that this isn’t a challenge for them. Kristine herself said, “I didn’t notice until I was home with my child on maternity leave.” Apple came out with a study, I think it was in 2015, so I’m sure the number has changed quite a lot now, but even in 2015 it showed that we unlock our phones 80 somewhat times a day. Eighty times a day, 80+ times a day that we unlock our phones.

And so, what else is going on in that moment that you are unlocking your phone and doing something on it? Are you driving? Probably often. Is there somebody else in your presence? Often probably. Are you having an experience? Capturing an experience so that we can have the memory is really important. So, taking pictures, for example, on vacation is really important. But posting those pictures on Facebook and Instagram, probably not that important in that moment, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Maura Thomas
So, becoming aware of how distracted we are, because you can’t change a habit that you don’t know you have, right? Wayne Dyer said, “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” And so, that’s really important, is becoming aware. And becoming aware of how technology lures us into that habit, right? I mean, you know all of the persuasive technology and all of the ways that technology developers are studying neuroscience and cognitive psychology and behavioral science to figure out what are our human tendencies and how can they exploit those to keep us using our technology longer.

So, one simple example is that human beings look for natural stopping points when we’re doing something, right? Like, if you’re reading a book, you might be like, “Well, when I finish this chapter then I’ll stop.” And have you noticed? So, that’s a thing that we do. Human beings, we look for natural stopping points, and so technology developers have recognized this, and so they have taken away the stopping points. I mean, have you noticed that on Facebook or on LinkedIn or on YouTube, when you are scrolling, there’s no bottom of the page? It just keeps reloading.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it just keeps loading more.

Maura Thomas
More and more and more. So, they said, “Well, they’ll stop if there’s a stopping point so we need to make sure that there are no stopping points, right?” It’s the same reason why casinos don’t have windows, right?

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, hey, it’s nighttime, I need to go home.“

Maura Thomas
Exactly. Exactly. There’s no clocks and there’s no windows in casinos because those are sort of stopping points that we would say, “Oh, maybe I should leave now.” “So, let’s take those away.” So, recognizing how we are being manipulated, and I don’t say this to make technology companies be the bad guy. I love it by any stretch of the imagination. I love my technology as much as anybody else. On the other hand, we need to control our technology, and that’s another step.

Our technology will control us if we allow it to. And so, one of the ways to overcome this habit of distraction is to exert some control over our technology, whether it’s off or silent, not vibrate, or airplane mode, or “Do Not Disturb,” or shutting off the notifications, shutting off all those little red numbers that those notifications in the little red circle that just calling your attention.

All of those things, if we don’t exert any control over our technology, our technology controls us, and then that habit just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger, and chips away at our attention span, and chips away at our patience, and chips away at our ability to apply ourselves in any meaningful way, not just our wisdom and our knowledge and our experience, but also our empathy and our compassion and our humor and our kindness.

Pete Mockaitis
Maura, I completely agree. I don’t know if it’s angry but I react strongly when an app requests, it’s like, “Such and such would like to send you notifications.” It’s like, “Well, you are denied. You may not send me a notification.”

Maura Thomas
Exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m okay with that I hope my friends and family are too that I’m not made aware of their text message until maybe hours later because I don’t allow the badge or the buzz to let me know if there’s a new text message for me because I think that drives me insane in terms of, “I’m trying to have a great conversation with Maura right now, so those text messages will have to wait for a moment.” And I think I’m better for it, and I hope that everyone else is okay waiting a little while.

And, very rarely, have I been prompted in terms of, “Hey, what’s going on? You’re rude.” So, I think whatever fears that folks have are, some maybe real in terms of particular stakeholders, you know, you can have some conversations, but I think for the most part I think people are kind of chill, and they say, “You know what, I wish I could do that too. That’s great.”

Maura Thomas
Well, you know, let’s face it, it’s not like you’re going off the grid for days at a time. It’s like an hour here and there, 30 minutes, right? We’re not going to forget to check in with our messages. You know, what I say to my clients is, “Check your messages, check your phone as often as you feel like you need to, but just do it in between other things, not during other things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we talked about, all right, becoming aware, we’re controlling our technology. What else should we do?

Maura Thomas
So, the next thing is that we need to control our environment because we have, even in an open office, we have more control over our environment than we exert. So, for example, people think, “Well, the office is loud, and it’s busy, and there are people walking by me, and interrupting me, and distracting me all the time, and that’s just the way it is, and I have to just adapt.”

But the truth is if you gave your colleagues some signal, a sign, right, maybe with some people it would need to be a more overt signal than with other people. But if you had a sign on the back of your chair that said, “Deep work in progress,” or something, “Important work in progress,” “Working on my flow. Please do not disturb,” whatever it says, let your personality shine through, but whatever it says, if your coworker saw that, they would be less likely to interrupt you anyway. Unless if you can’t make a sign and put it up and just leave it there all the time because now a sign doesn’t mean anything, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. “Then you’re not flowing 100% of the time, nobody is, we don’t buy it.”

Maura Thomas
That’s right. So, you have to be judicious about it and say, “No, really, when I’m going to do important work, and I need to build up that brain power momentum, that’s when the sign goes up. And when I’m done with that, that’s when the sign comes down.” And if you do that, and so I tell my clients, “I don’t know if it should be 20 minutes every hour, or an hour a few times a day, or the frequency and the duration is completely up to you, and it also depends on the nature of your job.”

Some people’s jobs are more collaborative than other people’s jobs. If you are the office manager, you probably have more interactive work than if you are a programmer, and you probably need more focused time. So, it’s up to you to say, but if you have anything that requires any amount of your brain power in any meaningful way, then there has to be sometimes when you can be undistracted.

And so, whether that means a sign, or headphones, or if you’re lucky enough to have an office with a door and you’d close it, or you’re going into a conference room that nobody is using, or whatever it is, but you have to exert some control, and then you have to honor. You have to create those boundaries and then you have to honor those boundaries, right?

So, if you have your sign up, and somebody interrupts you anyway, then you have to say to them, “Did you see the sign? I’m sorry. Unless this is an emergency,” then your sign should say something about emergencies, “But unless this is a true emergency, please don’t interrupt me.” And then if they do anyway, you have to say, “Could you come back when the sign comes down because I can’t help you right now?” In whatever language, whatever way you feel is appropriate to do that, but you have to because if you put the sign up and people interrupt you anyway, and then you say, “Okay, what do you need?” Well, you’ve just taught them that the sign doesn’t mean anything, right?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. So, we become aware, we control our technology, we control our environment, and what else?

Maura Thomas
I like to think of controlling your attention as a practice. It’s a little bit like healthy living, right? There are so many things that can fall under the heading of healthy living, and when you do some of them, then you start to do other ones of them. And then you discover things that maybe you didn’t even know about before.

So, I think sort of getting on the path to attention management by when you start to control your technology, and you start to control your environment, those two things then allow you to start recognizing your habits and to start resetting your habits and changing, interrupting those distraction habits and substituting instead. Instead of chipping away your attention span, you start to build it back up. Instead of chipping away at your patience, you start to build it back up.

And so, I think beginning there is sort of the first step. And then there’s, you know, you can experiment with mindfulness or meditation. There are some kind of advanced strategies, thinking about flow and how best to engage your flow. But I feel like that’s sort of Attention Management 201, and if people just got started with Attention Management 101, those are some sort of baby steps.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’d love to hear some of the specific practices that you think make a huge impact in terms of, “Okay, these are some of your first baby steps, they’re going to do a whole lot for you.” What would you put in those categories?

Maura Thomas
Well, certainly the technology and environment control steps. So, figuring out what is your signaling going to be? Because if we talk about building up your brain power momentum, it doesn’t matter how much momentum you have. Once somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey, Pete, you got a minute?” Poof! Poof! It doesn’t matter how much momentum you had, it’s all gone now.

So, you need to prevent the tap on the shoulder, that, “Do you got a minute?” so that you can maintain that focus. So, one simple thing you can do is figure out what is your “Controlling my environment signal going to be.” And then you need to, depending on how subtle it is, right, if you decide it’s going to be headphones, then you might need to inform your coworkers, at least the people in your immediate vicinity, like, “Look, if the headphones are on means ‘Could you not interrupt me?’”

If you use a sign that says “Do not disturb,” I think it’s going to be pretty clear. Somebody approaches you and your sign is up, it’s like, “Oh, I guess she’s busy. I’ll come back.” So, one easy step that you can do right now is to decide what is your “Do not disturb. Flow in progress sign” going to be, and then start using it right now.

Maura Thomas
Yeah, so another thing is to shut off all of your notifications on all of your devices. Start using silent, not vibrate, more often. Like you said, right, so just you get your messages when you decide it’s time to get your messages instead of when the entire world decides that they want to send you a message, right? I think that we have forgotten that our technology exists for our convenience.

You didn’t go to the store, to the electronic store, and buy your smartphone so that everyone in the world could interrupt you all the time, right? That was not your intention, and yet that’s how most of us behave, “I have this device that anyone in the world can reach me on probably 17 different ways at once, and I let those things all just wash over me constantly.”

So, shutting off all of those notifications and all of those things that tempt you, all of those types of persuasive technology, like the little red circle, the number, that tells you you’ve got notifications because we have this compulsion, like, “I got to clear all the notifications, right? You’ve got to clear them all.” You see what they all are so they can all be cleared. And then just as soon as you cleared all the little circles off your Facebook app and your LinkedIn app, and your Twitter app, and your email app, and your text app, and your phone app, now you got to start all over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Maura Thomas
So, just get rid of all the little circles and shut off all the notifications and start remembering that you have your smartphone for your convenience not for the convenience of the rest of the world. Because, again, you’re not going to forget. You’ll still probably going to check it multiple times in an hour. It’ll be okay. But in the meantime, you will get lots of stuff done and you will be more present.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And so, when you talk about getting more stuff done, I want to hear your view on having a proactive workday. How do we achieve that, and what’s the alternative, and sort of can you paint a picture there?

Maura Thomas
Yeah. I talk to so many people who say to me, “I know I was busy all day and I’m exhausted, but I feel like I didn’t get anything done.” And it’s because they spend their days doing whatever happens to them, right? You go into work and people probably approach you as soon as you walk through the door, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. And do you have a minute to talk about this thing?” and your work then gets set.

And even if that doesn’t happen, you probably sit down at your desk, and the first thing you do is check your email, check your messages, check what came in overnight. And all of those things just set the tone for a day of reaction, which means a day of doing everybody else’s stuff and none of yours. And the problem with that, even if you are the person whose job it is to help everyone in the office, or to help all the customers, if you also have anything else to do at all, then you need some time when you are away from the intaking, away from the reacting so that you can be proactive, right?

I tell the leaders that I work with, “If you have a customer service team, even if it’s just two people, and their job is to answer the phone and take in the emails from the customers, if it’s also their job to solve the problems that the customers bring to them, then they need some time away from the intaking to do the solving in a useful way.

We have become a society where I think we believe that faster, like fast customer service equals good customer service. The faster it is the better we are. The better our service is the faster we are. And I think that that is the new race to the bottom. I think price used to be the race to the bottom, and now fast is the race to the bottom because no one can respond immediately. So, employees take away this idea that if faster is better then immediate must be best.

And so, if I have to respond immediately to everything then I always have to have my communication tools open, and if my communication tools are always open, then I’m guaranteed to be distracted every couple of minutes. And if I’m distracted every couple of minutes then I can’t apply the brain power that you hired me for.

And so, again, the practice of attention management allows you to have some time where you are proactive in the day. And when you have spent part of your day being proactive then you leave feeling more satisfied. You leave feeling like you accomplished something. There is a book called The Progress Principle and it’s based on the idea that, of all the things that can boost emotions, motivations, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

And so, we talk a lot about engagement and work satisfaction, and one of the biggest things that is taking away from that engagement and that satisfaction is the feeling of actually accomplishing things during our day. And we feel like we’re not accomplishing anything during our day because we spend all of our day being reactive. But we only feel accomplishment when we can be proactive, and you can’t be both simultaneously proactive and reactive at the same time.

You can only be productive, productive which I define as achieving your significant results. Well, that’s what the dictionary says — achieving or producing a significant amount or results, that’s the definition of productive. And so, if we look at the personal productivity side of that, achieving a significant result. You can only be productive, achieve your significant results when you can be proactive. And you can only be proactive when you’re not being reactive.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, yeah, this all adds up for me certainly. I guess I’m curious to think about, so how might you measure progress on this so you can feel more satisfaction in a day, you might see sort of what the screen time stats tell you on your phone? Are there any other kind of measures? If we talk about progress being satisfying, if we want to make progress on our attention management and sort of measure and behold and appreciate that progress, what might you point us to?

Maura Thomas
Yes, for knowledge workers, because knowledge work is hard to quantify, when your work output are things like ideas and relationships and analysis, it’s hard to quantify that, “Was I more productive today than I was yesterday?” Attention management is a piece of what I call workflow management, what it’s commonly called in the productivity industry – workflow management. For me, the workflow management system that I teach, in other words, “How do I get stuff done? How do I organize and manage and track and move forward on all the things that I have to do in all parts of my life?”

Well, my answer is you use a workflow management system for that. So, you systematize the way that you operate so that you can get stuff done. And, for me, the foundational component of workflow management is attention management. And so, when you are using a workflow management system, you have all of your work sort of in front of you. And so, a workflow management system not only helps you identify and track and organize and not forget the things that you haven’t done yet. But then a byproduct of that is that you are tracking also the things that you have done.

And so, it’s easy to tell if you are making more progress in a day when you are marking things, not just things off your to-do list but important things, right? Making progress in meaningful work. It feels much better to write an article for most people than it does to answer 10 emails because you have accomplished something, you have something to show for your brain power at the end. But it’s hard to write an article when you are interrupted every two minutes or three minutes.

And so, most of the stuff that we do in a day it never makes it onto our to-do list. It’s that stuff that happens to us. And so, that’s why most people leave work feeling like, “My list got longer, not shorter. I feel like I didn’t get anything done.” But when you can control your attention, when you can be more productive, you are making progress not just on stuff but on the stuff that’s on your list, the stuff that you determined was important to your job, the stuff that means something to you if it gets done, and to your sort of performance, and the ultimate goal that you are hired for.

And so, that’s one way, is that when you are achieving more of the stuff that you put on your list, that you decided you needed to get done, then you’re going to feel more satisfied at the end of the day. Then your job is going to feel more rewarding.

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

Maura Thomas
Yeah, I’ve been talking about this idea of brain power momentum, and the shorthand phrase that I use for this idea is that I call it unleashing your genius. When you are distracted every few minutes, you are sabotaging your ability to build up that brain power momentum, and not only brain power but it’s difficult to bring your humor in two-minute increments, and your empathy in two-minute increments, and your compassion and your kindness and your thoughtfulness, and all of the things that make you uniquely you. It’s hard to apply those things in the time that it takes to toast bread.

And so, when you can control your attention, attention management allows you to unleash your genius on the world, to bring the full range of yourself, your wisdom, and your knowledge, your experience, but all of your unique gifts that are uniquely you, that are packaged in the way that is uniquely you. You can only do that when you can be present, when you can stay focused from more than a few minutes at a time, when you are not constantly distracted in trying to do multiple things at once.

So, unleashing your genius is really the most powerful, I think, and the most satisfying outcome of attention management.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, tell us, then, can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Maura Thomas
Yes, I have been looking. I think I’m going to have to call a librarian because I’ve been researching to find out who said this first, and I have not had any luck. The quote goes, “It’s not the moments in your life that matter, it’s the life in your moments that matter.” Right? And the life in your moment is the experience you are having in a moment. Are you present? Are you engaged? Are you participating fully in that moment? That is the life in your moments. And I think it’s really true and it’s really powerful. If we live a long life, it doesn’t mean much. I’m not sure it would be as valuable as a shorter life that was full and rich and loving and compassionate and joyful and present.

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

Maura Thomas
This study recently came out of the University of Texas at Austin, and it found that when we have our phone in our presence, even if it’s off, it absorbs some of our cognitive capacity, which essentially means it makes us dumber in that moment.

And so the study had three groups of people, one group had their phone off but visible, one group had it off but out of sight but still in the room, and the other  people had it completely in another place, and the people whose phone was completely in another room far outperformed the people whose phone was anywhere in their presence. And the people who had it even out of their sight, only slightly overperformed the people who had it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And how about a favorite book?

Maura Thomas
I am a big fan of Cal Newport. So, Deep Work and his latest Digital Minimalism, so thought-provoking and so important and I’m loving Cal’s work right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and people quote it back to you, like you’re known for?

Maura Thomas
A lot of people remind me that they heard that idea of moments in your life not mattering as much as life in your moments matter. You know they tell me stories about like Kristine’s story with her son and how they change up experiences. I guess the idea of attention management is what people tell me they remember most from when they see me speak or when they interact with me.

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

Maura Thomas
I would say the challenge that I would pose… the question would be, “How much richer is your life without distraction?” I think the only way you can know is when you can find a way to live without distraction. So that’s the challenge.

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

Maura Thomas
MauraThomas.com has all the information. My latest book is called Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity—Every Day, and being aligned with the title, it is from a line called The Impact Reads, which means it is designed to spark the impact in just one hour.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Maura Thomas
I’m sorry, it’s Ignite Reads.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. Well, Maura thanks so much for sharing the good word, and good luck in having many rich moments in your life and full attention.

Maura Thomas
Thanks so much for having me on, Pete. I really enjoyed the conversation.