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1071: Boosting Productivity and Slashing Overwhelm through Timeboxing with Marc Zao-Sanders

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Marc Zao-Sanders reveals the key to breaking the cycle of overwhelm with a power tool that makes a huge difference.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to prune your to-do list effectively
  2. How to use timeboxing to plan your day with intention
  3. The art of choosing breaks

About Marc

Marc Zao-Sanders is the CEO and co-founder of filtered.com, a learning tech company. He regularly writes about algorithms, learning and productivity in Scientific American, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has followed the practice of timeboxing for over ten years. He lives in London.

Resources Mentioned

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Marc Zao-Sanders Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marc, welcome!

Marc Zao-Sanders
Pete, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to chat and let’s kick it off. I know you have studied productivity, done many experiments, worked it, iterated it. Could you share with us your most surprising discovery you’ve made about us humans and being productive so far?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Most surprising? I mean, maybe it’s just the simple fact that managing your time is so very important and yet it doesn’t get much attention from the public in general, from people at work. If you think about managing time, because time governs everything else, you can adopt a new habit and it might be really good for you. Let’s say it’s exercise or it’s breathing or it’s meditation or whatever, but if you can adopt an exercise, a practice, which is using a time better, then that’s all of the above and many thousands of other things.

So, I find it surprising that, although time management is a thing, if you ask people on the street, what are their systems for managing time, they haven’t thought about it all that much. And yet, that is the entirety of our existence, of our conscious experience of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Starting off light, our existence and conscious experience of life.

Marc Zao-Sanders
Straight into philosophy.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, yeah, I think that does ring true. We had Demir Bentley on the show who wrote a book called Winning the Week. And he said that this is, indeed, a theme he has observed amongst many of his high-performing clients, is that they all agree, “Oh, yes, planning the week is one of the most important things I could possibly do,” but they don’t do it. And so, almost universally, is the observation there.

So, share with us, what are we missing? Like, why aren’t we doing it? Are we just oblivious to the true benefit? Do we think it’s kind of a nice to have? We haven’t really seen the light, experienced it firsthand? Why are we dragging our feet here?

Marc Zao-Sanders
I think, probably, the main reason is just that life gets in the way. There are so many emails in your inbox, there are tasks to do in a task management system, or communications in Slack or Teams, or whatever it is, our mobile phones now as well. So, there are just so many reasons to not carve out some time for yourself and think about how to spend it well. We’re just hugely, hugely distracted.

So, I’d say that was a big thing with it. And I think, also, with any habit, you need to persevere with it a little bit to feel the benefits. And I think people need to get past that first day or two days to see the benefits of timeboxing or, indeed, another time management technique. Yeah, I think that’s it. And it’s a shame because I think we could, if we all lived more intentional lives, we would be happier. We would be more productive. We would get on better with each other. We’d be better human beings.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe paint a picture for us in terms of an inspiring story of somebody who did just that? They weren’t bothering with the timeboxing approach, and then they adopted it, and what happened for them?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Well, one such person is me. It has worked for me as an individual. And that’s the key thing, I think, for anyone listening to this. You need to think, “Does it work for you as an individual?” There are studies, there’s all sorts of science that says that this works. But the key thing, really, is not whether it works for a bunch of other people, it’s whether it works for you.

So, I mean, my personal story is that I’m 45 years old, about to be 46. And when I started my career 20 something years ago, life was hard. I started in strategy consulting and the pressure was pretty intense.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’ve been there.

Marc Zao-Sanders

I was suffering, frankly. I was a disorganized mess, yeah, the performance issues. I was, but more importantly, I wasn’t feeling very good about the work that I was doing. So, I established a little bit of control by setting up what I called a daily work plan. So, that was just an Excel file. I’d write in the Excel file. These are the things I really need to do today.

This is roughly how long they would take. And I’d check them off. They would sum up then to the productive hours that I’d had that day. That was good. That was much better. And it made me feel better about work, more confident with what I was doing. But it didn’t tell me, at any given moment, what I should be doing. It wasn’t linked to other meetings to my calendar.

So, then, yeah, I saw this article in Harvard Business Review. It’s called why “To-Do Lists Don’t Work.” And it immediately resonated. I changed what I was doing as an individual, overnight. And then, over the next five years, I sort of honed the technique. I made it my own. I wrote my own Harvard Business Review article that became very popular.

And that led to the book, and talking to many, many people over the years about timeboxing and how it can help not just with your, I mean, it’s really not just about your productivity. It’s really mostly about how you feel, the control that you feel as you go through the day, as you’re going through the maelstrom of a knowledge worker’s day. It can be unpleasant a lot of the time, but if you focus on one thing at a time and you’ve planned that out, it feels a lot better.

So, yeah, the case study I would give most of all, first and foremost, that I know and have lived is mine, but, obviously, I’ve heard that story, that kind of story from many, many people, from, I mean, literally, from around the world. That’s, I mean, just one other thing to say about that, that the book’s been, and I’m an unknown author.

I was an unknown author before I started this, and yet the rights were bought up in 33 languages because the story, because this idea of making your life more intentional through, basically, through your digital calendar resonated across cultures, across languages. And there’s also a bunch of case studies at the end of the book as well, stories from individuals that have made timeboxing work for them in their specific situations too.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so that’s cool. Works for you, works for them. I actually am curious to hear about the studies. And, in fact, in your Harvard Business Review article, at the very top, it says a recent survey of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing was ranked the number one most useful. Tell us a bit about that and any other, I guess, researcher evidence saying, “This isn’t just a cool thing Marc likes doing. It’s pretty proven for lots of folks.”

Marc Zao-Sanders
So, that study was done a long, long time ago. I did a lot of the research for it, but this is well before I’d written the book or even had an idea about writing the book. I had no, literally, no affiliation with timeboxing. I mean, I happen to do it myself, but actually a lot of the other techniques on the list, I also happen to do.

So, the way that we conducted that study was to look at lots and lots of thought leadership pieces online and categorized them according to which time management technique, which productivity hack or tip they were, and then just see how common they were. And that gave rise to an ordering, a top 100, and, yeah, like you say, timeboxing came top.

Pete Mockaitis

So, that came about by votes or by most frequently cited amongst industries?

Marc Zao-Sanders
No, exactly, most frequently cited, so how many times they were coming up. And it’s not only that. If you look at a lot of the other entries on that list, and like you say, it’s linked to in the in the book and probably on some articles on my site, you can see that many of the other techniques on the list are very, very similar to timeboxing or, actually, they form a subset of timeboxing.

I’ll give you an example. Just saying no, so just saying no is a thing in business. It’s been encouraged a lot over the last five, ten years. By the way, I think this is more of a nuanced thing. Sometimes people should say yes more than they do. It depends on the person and the context. But sometimes they should say no.

Well, saying no is partly dependent on how busy you are and what you’ve got on. If you timebox, you’re not just saying no or just saying yes, you’re doing so on the basis of what you’ve got on your plate. It’s something that you can point to, point your boss to, or point colleagues to. So, just saying no is, it goes very, very nicely hand in hand with timeboxing, just like so many of the other items on the list.

I’ll give you just one other example as well. “Eat That Frog,” the Brian Tracy idea of, you know, do the most difficult thing at the start of the day. Well, again, it’s not like timeboxing is saying you should do the most difficult thing, but if it suits you as a person, then here’s a system where you can put the most difficult thing at the start of the day, again, just completely, consistently, and to support that system that Brian Tracy came up with or popularized.

But also, if you’re the opposite, if you’re someone who needs to slowly, slowly build momentum through the day and start with some smaller tasks, which suits certain people better than it does the Brian Tracy method, that’s also consistent with timeboxing because here’s a system where you can build up slowly with some easier, smaller tasks at the start.

So, my point is that, yeah, timeboxing is very flexible with, it was number one itself, but it’s also works, so nicely with virtually every other time management technique.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so then we say there were timeboxing a lot. Can you lay it on us? What exactly are we talking about here?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Well, I’ve got a definition, but maybe it’s better to describe it in terms of what I do at the start of the day. I’ll come back to a definition after that. So, I wake up, I get dressed, I brush my teeth. And then the very first thing that I do is spend 15 minutes thinking about my day and how I should spend my time. So, those 15 minutes are definitely the most productive of my entire day.

I couldn’t really, now, I can’t really imagine not using them like that. I don’t need more than 15 minutes. I do normally need 15 minutes because sometimes your emails have come in overnight, an idea has occurred to you overnight, and you need to take that into account along with other entries in your calendar. So, it’s a little bit of work, but just 15 minutes.

And then those 15 minutes lead you to have a day where it’s full of what you really wanted to do, what really mattered, what you intended to do. This is what I mean by intentions, giving yourself the space to become aware of what your intentions are, what’s important to you, and then having a system for making sure that they happen. So, that’s what it is, you know, that’s sort of my experience of it. I do that each and every day. I do it in the morning. Some people do it the night before.

But in terms of a definition, which, it’s probably slightly less useful, but I’ll give one anyway. So, I described in terms of what, when, one, enough. What I mean by what is deciding, giving yourself the space to think through what is most important. And then when is deciding when it should start and when it should finish, not being too ambitious, but being ambitious enough with those timings.

One means doing, is single tasking. Just do that one thing in that slot, nothing else. And then enough is doing it to a good-enough level. You’re not aiming for perfection here. Perfection doesn’t really exist for any of us. Do it so that it’s good enough that you can share with others and move things on in your workflow or in your life, whatever the context happens to be. So, yeah, that’s kind of how, that’s the lived experience of it as well as the definition.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that seems pretty simple, and yet, in your experience and that of luminaries throughout history – Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, etc., – it’s revolutionary, you say.

Marc Zao-Sanders
It’s revolutionary in that anyone who wants to achieve a lot and feel good about doing that needs to really use their time well. And I think there’s just something very fundamental about timeboxing. It is working out what’s important, setting a time to do it, not being distracted by anything else, and doing it to a good-enough level.

I mean, it’s very hard, I think, to launch an argument against that. I’m going to invite you to do that, Pete. And, actually, I wanted to ask you if you timebox.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, challenge accepted.

Marc Zao-Sanders

Okay, so go ahead. I mean, which of those elements, which of those four elements of the definition would you say, “Eh, that’s actually not that important”?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no. I suppose, I don’t think that it’s not important. I just think we can come up with lots of excuses for why, “Oh, that’s a nice view, Mark, but I don’t think that’ll quite work for me,” or, “Yeah, that sounds cool, but…” so I think there’s a lot of buts that it might be worth our time digging into to a few of those.

Marc Zao-Sanders

Of course. I mean, some people will see that and then not act on it. I mean, of course that happens. It does require a little bit of discipline, and anything that requires even a modicum of discipline can be ignored, and some people will take the path of lesser immediate term resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
“No, Marc, instead, I’m just going to get this cool app. That’s going to fix my time management problems. This fun little app instead.”

Marc Zao-Sanders
So, yeah, I mean, there are some apps that will do some of this for me and for a lot of people. It’s connecting with your intentions and making sure that you’re doing the things that you want to do at the right time, requires a little bit more of yourself. So, yeah, sure, you can have AI just arrange things for you, but then are you going to be happy with the order of them?

And even in the processing of you’re putting these tasks into your calendar, your brain starts to think about, you know, starts to problem-solve. So, you’re making a little bit of progress with each of them, even in the act of doing it. So, yeah, there are apps and there’s AI, and that’s fine for some people. It’s not for me. It’s not the method that I advocate.

I’m a little bit more old school. So, while I advocate having a digital calendar and making that sync with your various devices, rather than a sort of paper-based system, AI is not something that you need for timeboxing. Not in my view.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah, certainly. Well, so then I suppose, with regard to discipline, for folks who think, “Oh, that sounds cool, Marc, but I just couldn’t even do that because I’m a creative, flexible, fluid kind of a personality. I don’t really do well when I’m tied down,” what do you think of that?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Okay, so I hear this, obviously, sometimes, “They just wouldn’t work for me. Well, it wouldn’t work for me.” Okay, so, I mean, a few things to say. But the first one that occurs to me is like, even if you’re a creative, you’re already timeboxing to some extent because you’ve got meetings in your calendar, right? That’s unavoidable. And however creative or uncreative those meetings are, you’ve got those meetings.

And you have to have some sort of timekeeping system to make sure that you attend those meetings more or less on time. I mean, even if you’re five, 10 minutes late for most of your meetings, as some creatives might be, the meeting is there and it is important and you’re probably annoying some people by being a little bit late.

So, it’s not like this is a brand-new system that I’m suggesting you sort of foist-force into your life. We’re all creative or non-creatives, and also, we’re all creative in some respect. But all of us are using our calendar to spend time specifically, at the very least, with meetings. What I’m saying with timeboxing is let’s extend that a little bit further so that we also do it with some of the work that we do on our own so that we can achieve more and actually, with creativity, specifically, achieve more creatively.

You’re much more likely to achieve the state of flow and get to what Cal Newport and others call deep work, scale the heights of our capability if you remove all of your distractions, if you get to a period of time where you’re just working on one thing. So, I would say that it actually, I mean, genuinely, I think that it supports creativity. It doesn’t stifle it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then when it comes to discipline, if folks think, “Boy, Marc, I just don’t think I have that level of discipline. That sounds really hardcore. That sounds Navy SEAL-esque to go from thing to next thing, to next thing, to next thing with perfect rigid execution. That sounds beyond my meager willpower capabilities”?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Okay. If someone said that, if you said that, for example, I would say, I mean, first of all, it doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be rigid. It also doesn’t need to be productive thing to productive thing. One of the productive things might well be having a break, might be lying down, might be having a cold shower, might be taking your dog for a walk. It’s just positive, intentional activities that you know, by the end of the day and even actually during the day, are going to be really, really good for you.

The other thing I’d say to such a person or, you, potentially, Pete, is, well, like I said, you’re already doing it to some extent. And then also, well, why don’t you just try it? For tomorrow, you could put into your calendar right now, I mean, actually, if you’re listening to this, or watching this right now, anything you could do to get started is put a 15-minute time box, just an event, into your calendar for tomorrow morning at a time that suits you.

I mean, obviously, you need to be awake. You need to be awake enough to get it done. And in those 15 minutes, plan out some of the rest of your day. I will plan out a lot of the rest of my day because I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. But do it for a couple of hours or three hours or four hours.

And once you’ve tried that for a few days, and I imagine you will achieve some success and you’ll get into a snowball effect, a virtuous circle, you’ll be doing it some more. And if it really doesn’t work for you, well, then stop, but give it a try.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, well said. So, we don’t need to start with the entirety of the day that, indeed, could feel intimidating. Understood.

Marc Zao-Sanders

Yeah, don’t let perfection or completion be the enemy of the good here. Get something done. And I’m a big believer in 80-20 and pretty good and doing a decent job of things rather than sort of Navy SEALs perfection, anything like that. I don’t come from that background. I don’t have that in my locker. I’m just a regular guy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so let’s talk about, it sounds like the hardest part of all is we’ve got dozens, hundreds of options, things that have landed in our to-do list with varying levels of seriousness, urgency, importance. How do you begin to decide, “Ah, yes, this is, in fact, the thing that goes on today’s calendar”?

Marc Zao-Sanders

Okay. So, first of all, what you’ve just described is exactly the reason that timeboxing is important. Most of us knowledge workers, at any given moment, could be working on 20, 30, 40, maybe 100 things. They would all be somewhat legitimate. And the existence of so many different things that we could do is stressful in itself. So, you’re doing one thing, and two or three or five or 20 of the other things occur to you. That is so stressful. And that stresses me out every single day.

So, that’s the reason that, the main reason I would say, that timeboxing is important, it kind of pushes all of those other things away and focuses you on a single thing. So, that’s why it’s important. If you have 100 items, though, and how are you going to decide, I’ve got a trick which is very concrete, very tangible, very easy.

So, let’s say you’ve got a to-do list, Pete. You’ve got 100 items on it and you don’t know where to start. Some of those things are going to be very important. Some of them less so. It’s probably accumulated over weeks, months, maybe even years. I would say grab it, put it into a spreadsheet, go down the list, and just score them very roughly on a of an approximation of both urgency and importance. Just sort of, you know, merge the two together, give them a score between zero and 10 every single one.

Now, look, even if you’ve got 100, it’s going to take a little while to do it, but it’s not going to take you more than 10 minutes. This is not a huge, huge task. So, you score them all, zero to 10, and then you sort it on the score that you’ve given it. So, most the highest numbers will go to the top. And then as soon as you’ve done that sort, you will see immediately there’s a group of tasks at the bottom that you really could just delete.

And that is hugely reassuring, gratifying. It’s such a relief to see the list look like that. And then there are tasks at the top that really will be super important because you’ve given them an eight or a nine or a 10. You might want to do some further ordering of those. And that’s also a huge relief because those big important items that you knew were lurking in your to-do list are being surfaced properly. So, they will get your attention.

So those, you know, three, four, five, 10, whatever it is, items that you really had to do are going to make their way into your calendar and get done. And that is so, I mean, it really is about control, like taking control of your life by having a system to understand what is most important, and get it done. This is a specific tactic for dealing with a long to-do list.

And then you can do that even every so often when you’ve only got 20 items, it also works. It sounds, I don’t know, maybe for some people it sounds a little bit much to put into a spreadsheet, but much better that than just leaving it there to gather dust and bother you every so often.

And, occasionally, you’re going to be getting fines because you haven’t dealt with some tax issue or responded to some letter. So, I mean, it’s literally costly, financially costly, to not address it and not address it in some kind of systemic positive, repeatable way.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, I love that so much. And you mentioned 80-20 and so much of what you said there, I’m vibing with a ton. And the phrase “somewhat legitimate,” I think is, oh, so perfect for the items that hang out in our to do this.

Marc Zao-Sanders
At the top that we’ve got.

Pete Mockaitis
They are somewhat legitimate and, yet, Vilfredo Pareto would say they are not the vital few of the 80-20 rule.

Marc Zao-Sanders
Yeah, find the vital few. Find the vital few and do those.

Pete Mockaitis
And it is such relief, you’re right, to see a huge list and to see many of them drop off. It’s like the fastest way to get something off of your to-do list is to decide thoughtfully, thoroughly, not to do it, “Hey, that’s off my to-do list and legitimately so.”

Marc Zao-Sanders
Exactly. Yes, it’s basically pruning. And there is no more efficient way of pruning a list than via a spreadsheet. So, the spreadsheet is not officially part of timeboxing. It is a very effective method for, yeah, for getting to the vital few, as you put it.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I would like to hear a little bit about some of those questions by which we might use to determine what is calendar-worthy. And so, vital few, 80-20 type things suggest that vital few activities produce 16 times the output per unit input than trivial many items. So, there’s that. I also love the ONE Thing question. We had Jay Papasan on the show earlier.

What’s the one thing such that, by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? So, that’s a huge win in terms of a prioritizer. We had Greg McKeown talking essentialism, in terms of like raising your standard, like cleaning out your closet, not from, “Might this someday be useful?” “No, no, low standard,” to, “Does this spark joy?” Marie Kondo style, high standard.

So, any other sort of uber powerful questions that are super handy in the universe of prioritizing?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Yeah, well, the main one for me is actually the emotional response you have to a specific item. So, as you’re going through the list, you will feel stressed or you have some sort of emotional response to some, and to some you just will have the absolute opposite.

What I’m suggesting is that, where you have a stronger emotional response, in general, you’re going to want to action those. So, I think that’s a proxy for importance for what matters to you that comes from your soul, actually. You don’t really need to ask any other questions. It’s just what is your response to this particular item.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say strong emotional response, is it either positive or negative? Is a go signal for action?

Marc Zao-Sanders
No, definitely. It might well be negative. I mean, look, for example, let’s say a tax return. A tax return, for most people, is not going to be hugely positive, but that doesn’t mean that you leave that and let’s find the good stuff. No. What I’m saying is that any kind of strong response probably means that either, you know, because you really want to want to do it because you’re enthusiastic about it.

In general, we don’t need help with those sorts of tasks. So, it’s actually more the ones where you have some sort of negative response. And to just dwell on that particular example, because that’s something that a lot of people feel when it comes to that time of year, getting something like a tax return back to whoever needs to see it.

The problem with not addressing it is that you just die a thousand deaths instead. You will need to do it in the end, and maybe you incur a fee as well if you go beyond whatever the deadline is. But even if you hit the deadline, if you worry about it 17 times before you submit it, well, why have you done that? Much better to confront it, be front-footed, and get the thing done on your terms proactively.

I use the term. I use the word agency a lot with timeboxing. It’s taking back your agency. You be in control. Don’t let the world happen to you. You decide what needs to happen and when it’s going to happen and get it done.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, ooh, die a thousand deaths, or sigh a thousand “Ugh.” Like, “Ugh, maybe tomorrow.”

Marc Zao-Sanders
Or, timebox instead.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so we got some thoughts on how to choose what goes in on this day’s calendar. Do you have some pro tips on how do I think about how long should that thing take? How long should I work in a bout of work, rest, breaks? What are some of the pro tips to designing a day to be a masterpiece?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Okay. Well, exactly, it is like that. It’s sort of like you’re an architect, you’re designing, you’re like an alchemist of the experience that you’re going to have that day, and the ordering matters. I mean, if you think, let’s say you’ve got to write, I don’t know, a summary of a podcast, right? That’s one of your tasks. And you also want to go to the gym.

Now for some people, it will make a lot of sense to go to the gym first and then do the write-up. And for others, it will be the other way around. It really depends on how your brain works, how your mood is, what energy you have, maybe some of the logistical, the contextual elements of your day, but, really, the order really matters.

So, yeah, build in breaks. Consider that the order matters. I mean, for me, for example, when I’ve got difficult things to think about, I like to have some exercise built in to give me a chance to think about them in a diffusive way. So, I can just be a little bit more relaxed and have sort of answers come to me while I’m doing some hard or semi-hard exercise.

So, yeah, build in some breaks, build in also some slack. If you don’t have any slack and you go, like you were saying earlier, Pete, from thing to thing to thing, if anything breaks or anything takes a tiny bit longer, and you haven’t responded to it, then you can have a cascading, a negative cascading effect. So, build in some slack, build in some breaks.

I mean, to be a little bit more specific, okay, it varies from person to person, but for me, every couple of hours, I will need 10, 15 minutes, normally 15 minutes of a break. And that could be anything. Just get a drink, take the dog for a walk, have a shower, meditate, close my eyes. There are a lot of ways of having a break that aren’t just to default to the canteen or the kitchen and eat something that’s not that healthy for you.

So, with breaks, there’s a bit of an art to it as well. And think a little bit more about what’s going to refresh you and give you energy. But I would say that there’s no hard and fast rules about how much time or how many breaks you should take. It’s really, just coming back to that word intention, what works for you. Think hard about what works for you.

You can take as a guideline, you know, how I spend my day. And in the book, I’ve got some screenshots of how that is, but that won’t necessarily be that way, done that way, it won’t be for everyone. The point is to have a system, like timeboxing, which is super flexible and can accommodate different attitudes to different needs for taking breaks and having slack and what you do in those times.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. And then when we’re actually doing the calendaring, do you have any pro tips in terms of 15-minute increments, or color coding, or anything that makes this go better?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Both of those, for sure. So, I mean, 15 minutes, so I have three sizes of timebox. And, again, other people can take a different view, and it is flexible to having different denominations. But my denominations are 15 minutes, 30 and 60. It’s nice and easy, there’s only three sizes so I don’t have to spend long thinking, “Is this a 48-minute task or a 17-minute task or whatever?” It’s just, like, a small, medium, large. And I know what small, medium, large are.

They also stack nicely up to an hour. There’s obviously 15s, you know, go into 60, so does 30. And then you asked about color coding. Well, I do color code my calendar, and this is to get a handle on, I mean, quite literally, get a view, a literal view of the balance of my life. So, I have five different areas of my life at the moment. So, there’s one business that I advise, another business that I advise, things that are for me to do with my soul and my wellbeing. And then there’s speculative activities as well.

So, I’ve got a few different categories of my life that I’ve deemed to be important for me right now. Okay, so if I color code the items as they go into the calendar, I can see at a glance at the end of a week, how much time I’ve spent on each of these areas. And, actually, the way that both Google and Microsoft do calendars now, they’ll toss it up for you.

So, they’re telling you, “Well, you’re spending 30% of your time on your…” as I put it, “…soul. Well, is that good or not good?” But if you have the data, then you can make a decision about adjusting it up or down. So, color coding sounds a little bit trivial, I mean, almost absurd, but there’s actually a very good reason for doing it.

I also, Pete, use emojis in my timeboxes. Why do I do that? I mean, probably not for a very good reason. It just gives me, I see timeboxing as sending your future self a message, a little bit of guidance, so that when that future self is distracted and stressed by the inevitable difficulties of a working day, you have that line back to, when you were in a calmer moment, when you were a bit wiser, when things were more still, “Oh, yeah, that’s the thing that I should do.”

How’s that relevant to emojis? Well, it’s a little bit tongue in cheek. It’s a little bit, like, I don’t know, like a wink or a hug. It’s an affectionate message from my former less-stressed self to my later more-stressed self. And so, I put them in. That it definitely is an optional feature of timeboxing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. And what’s cool about emojis is they can be right in the line of the text as opposed to a separate image thing, which is all weird and complicated and hard to shove into a calendar software.

Marc Zao-Sanders

Yeah, definitely. And it is for me. It’s right before the text that I put it. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m also a fan of the Unicode symbol for a checkbox in the calendar. That feels nice. I just have that copy-pasted like, “Oh, and then that happened. Mission accomplished,” because that’s one of the most satisfying things about a to-do list is the checking them off. I can still have that in my calendar too.

Marc Zao-Sanders

Yeah, exactly. So, it sounds, Pete, like you timebox and you are using some of the higher arts of timeboxing, as we speak, as you live.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yes, higher arts. Well, Marc, tell me, any final things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Marc Zao-Sanders
Sure. I mean, well, okay, a couple of things that occurred to me. One is just the word time itself. So, this is a not very well-known fact, but time is the most commonly used noun in the whole of the English language, but not just the English language. If you look at Spanish, if you look at German, if you look at Chinese, I think, as well, and many others.

So, it’s super, super common. And it’s not like I was saying at the top, at the start of our conversation. It is surprising that people don’t give it even more time and attention than they do. So, that is just a factor I’ll sort of park with people. The other one I want to say is there’s a, yeah, sometimes you’ve got a plan with someone, like a dinner, and then the dinner gets cancelled.

And there’s nothing nicer than that feeling when you suddenly have some time in your calendar, but it’s very easy to waste, especially with your social media and our phones and what have you. There’s a mnemonic which has really gone down. Well, actually since the book came out. This isn’t even in the book, but it’s Mr. Elf.

So, the M is for meditation, R is for reading, E for exercise, L for learning, F for friends and family. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s a very, very useful list to just run through. If I’ve got a bit of time and I want to use it well, here’s a reminder of some of the things that are probably going to be important, could well be important to me. And why not do that with your time rather than Netflix or Instagram or Snap or whatever it is? So, yeah, I want to get Mr. Elf into the ears of the people that are listening and watching.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marc Zao-Sanders
There’s one from Lady Gaga that I really like and speaks to, I think, what’s the most important about, one of the most important things about life and about this system.

So, the quote is, “I am my own sanctuary and can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.” To me, it’s about agency and hope and truth. And while it’s nice to be quoting Plato and Socrates and Nietzsche in the book, too, it’s also nice to give Lady Gaga some extra attention, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Marc Zao-Sanders

There was a study into what’s called implementation intentions. If you just Google implementation intentions, you’ll see. What these basically said was that if you decide when you’re going to do something, what you’re going to do, and when you do it, you’re two and half times more likely to get something done. You’re something like 90% likely to get it done versus 30-something percent.

It’s been replicated more recently in studies. And, of course, that kind of encapsulates exactly what I’m trying to get at with timeboxing. And, actually, when you were asking me earlier, “Well, what about the people that are just aren’t going to do it?” Well, the studies say that you really are two and a half times more likely. So, I probably should have said that back then. It basically says that timeboxing works.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Marc Zao-Sanders
I mean, the book I’ve read the most frequently is Lord of the Rings because it’s just enjoyable. A book that moved me more recently was The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand. I enjoyed that very much. That felt a lot about freedom and, again, agency. So, that resonated and was enjoyable as well, and it’s quite a different style to Tolkien’s work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Marc Zao-Sanders

Well, I mean, in making decisions in business, or in life, actually, the two-by-two matrix is one that I default to pretty frequently. You’ve got an issue, you don’t know how you’re going to resolve it, think about two of the factors involved that are distinct, and then you look at high, low, or yes, no for each of them. You put that onto a two-by-two and, just almost immediately, almost every time, things clarify somewhat. So, yeah, the two-by-two matrix is a really useful one for me. I love the thing.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to resonate with folks, a Marc-original soundbite?

Marc Zao-Sanders
So, this is about, timeboxing is mostly an in-day activity to help you make the most of that day. But the point is if you keep doing it, that adds up to a whole life of intention and purpose and meaning and what have you.

So, the quote is, “The practice of daily intentional activity will eventually yield what almost every human being wants most – a chosen cherished life.” I think that’s very nice and just touches on, like I said, meaning, something that’s sort of deep. Deep and important.

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

Marc Zao-Sanders
I’m on LinkedIn. You can just put my name in. I accept requests, generally, there. I also have a website, MarcZaoSanders.com, from which there’s a monthly newsletter, and you can email me and get in touch by just answering, that it’s a Substack.

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

Marc Zao-Sanders

Yeah, don’t just let life and your job just happen to you. Rediscover what you want to do, what your intentions are, and find a way to bring them into being, into your work, into your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Marc, thank you.

Marc Zao-Sanders
Pete, thank you.

1056: Winning the Mental Game of Leadership with Sébastien Page

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Sébastien Page explores how great leaders navigate failure, conflict, pressure, and purpose.

You’ll Learn

  1. How agreeableness holds you back
  2. How to know whether a goal is still worth pursuing
  3. How to make stress work for you

About Sébastien

Sébastien Page is Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He has more than two decades of leadership experience and has done extensive research on positive, sports, and personality psychology. He currently oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in Assets Under Management.

Page has written two finance books: Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know, and the co-authored Factor Investing and Asset Allocation, and he has won six annual research-paper awards: two from The Financial Analysts Journal and four from The Journal of Portfolio Management. He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, and in 2022 was named a Top Voice in Finance by LinkedIn. He has been quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s. His latest book, The Psychology of Leadership, is on sale now from Harriman House. Page lives in Maryland with his wife and kids.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Sébastien Page Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sébastien, welcome!

Sébastien Page
Thank you. I’m very excited to do a podcast. I don’t get to do that many, and it’s a lot more relaxed than what we usually do on live national TV when we talk about markets.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Well, it’s funny, you talk about markets a lot, but you got a book about The Psychology of Leadership. What’s that about, Sébastien?

Sébastien Page
You know, I get that question a lot, “Why would a finance guy write a book about self-improvement and high-performing leadership?” I’ve been a leader myself for about 25 years in business. And, to me, I started working on this because, myself, I felt very stressed at work, and I was beating myself up for being stressed. So, I was stressing about stressing.

And, Pete, I talked to a sports psychologist who introduced me to a lot of fascinating research, and that was the beginning. The first time I met him, he had this story because the sports psychologists, it turns out, is a pro-athlete as well, 40 national titles in the sport of handball. And so, that’s the sport that looks like squash but you smack the ball with your hands. Forty, four-zero, national titles, and he’s a sports psychologist. His name is Dr. Daniels Simmons.

This is the origin story of the book, “Why would a finance guy end up writing a book on self-improvement and leadership?” He tells me the story of his best match ever, and it’s a match that occurred 10 years ago but he remembers everything about it. He remembers every point, where he was at every point, where the ball was. He has a tear in his eye. At some point, he’s on his knees, he makes an extreme impossible shot.

And then, Pete, it’s an absolute letdown because he goes, “And then I lost the next two points.” And I go, “What? You lost the game?” And that’s the mindset of a sports psychologist, where you have 40 national titles, and your best match ever is one that you happen to lose, but that’s not really relevant. To him, that day he realized he could play at a higher level because he was playing a stronger opponent.

So, I became fascinated with this mindset of sports psychology. So, that’s how the book started. And then I just dug into the research.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it was it his best game ever in terms of his own performance or his delight in it because he realized that he had achieved at a higher level?

Sébastien Page
It was mainly the latter. It was the realization that he could play at a higher level. And, to me, it was the realization of a mindset, which, by the way, relates to money management as well. You can’t get everything right in money management. Sometimes you lose. It was an illustration of that mindset and how you handle it.

But, for him, it was, “Look, I’m now a stronger player. It doesn’t matter that I won or lost.” It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about winning. It’s just a different way to approach uncertainty and failure.

Pete Mockaitis
No, it’s a good one. One of our guests, Michael Bungay-Stanier, who wrote The Coaching Habit and others, said his favorite quote is, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by ever-greater things,” or some of that notion of ever-greater things.

Sébastien Page
I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
And that you can feel good about that, in terms of “Okay, hey, I still lost but, wow, my golly, look at what it took to take me out. I’m really getting better. That’s awesome!”

Sébastien Page
I like that a lot. And I often think back on Roger Federer’s commencement address that went viral about six months ago. He was speaking to students. And Roger Federer is one of the top tennis players of all time, and he goes, “I’ve played 1500 matches in my career. I’ve won 80% of them.” But then he asked the students, “What percentage of points do you think I won?”

What do you think, Pete, is that percentage, percentage of points that Federer won in his career? Not to put you on the spot.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I don’t know how tennis scoring works. I was going to wildly guess, 61, Sébastien.

Sébastien Page
So, you’re not far. It’s 54%. So, Roger Federer, top tennis player only won 54% of the points. And then he looked at the students, and he said, “Whatever game you play in life, you’re going to lose.” Effortless winning is a myth and it’s your mindset when you lose. You actually learn more in sports psychology, from losing than from winning.

In fact, I write this in The Psychology of Leadership, sports psychology is not about winning at all. It’s about losing and what you do with that loss. And I really liked what you said earlier about losing to ever-greater things or ever-greater opponents. That’s exactly the conversation that sparked my interest in sports psychology and how it can apply to leadership, to business management, and to money management as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was thinking about money things as well. It might’ve been Mark Cuban, who said, “You only have to be right once,” in terms of, like, your entrepreneurial career. Yeah, you can fill many things but your one big win, and, whoo, you’re doing awesome.

Sébastien Page
Yeah, that’s an analogy in venture capital, and it’s the same idea. You have to accept the fact that a lot of your bets are not going to work. As long as there’s one that goes 10X, you’re going to be a successful venture capitalist.

But in terms of self-improvement, we don’t like losing, and we have to kind of get over that. As leaders, when you look at business environments, accepting that you’re going to have setbacks, and just focusing on what you do with those and how you move forward. That’s where the mindset shifts.

And, look, I think, Pete, in general, sports psychology is greatly underrated. I wrote the book also because the positive side of psychology is kind of still on unexplored in business. If you go on Google Scholar, and you searched for articles in clinical psychology, you’ll probably get about the same number of articles as in positive psychology. To me, that’s fascinating. The business world has only scratched the surface here of the positive side of psychology.

Let me give you an example. Does the name Felix Baumgartner ring a bell?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, he got the red ball really high up stunt.

Sébastien Page
Yes. Here’s the stunt. He goes on a helium balloon, up 24 miles to the edge of space, he steps out of his capsule, and he skydives for 10 minutes, four minutes in freefall. The first human being to break the sound barrier. I mean, it’s amazing what he did. But what most people don’t know is Felix Baumgartner was coached every step of the way in preparation and through the day of that skydiving from space stunt by a sports psychologist.

So, I used this sometimes as an introduction to, yeah, psychology is super important to treat clinical anxiety and depression, but it’s also really important for ultra-high performance. And that’s where the business world hasn’t really come around to this much yet. And it just brings so much tools to deal with setbacks and the stress that comes with high performance, because it’s stressful to deliver high performance in any area of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, you’ve got a number of really cool principles that you put out in your book, and I want to jump into speaking about these bits, about mindset. You said we should identify and manage our core beliefs. Tell us, why and how is that done?

Sébastien Page
So, a core belief is the way you interpret the world. Think of it as rules of thumb. They might not be entirely conscious but it’s how you interpret events, and how you tend to make decisions. In the research in psychology, it’s often about a traumatic event that changed your core belief.

So, imagine someone who was betrayed in a major way in their life. They might’ve developed a core belief that everybody is out to get them, and that’s how they’re going to interpret situations and go through life with that core belief.

Now, in business, we have core beliefs. “The consumer is always right,” is a popular one. In money management, we have core beliefs, “The trend is your friend,” or, “Buy low and sell high.” And the thing about core beliefs in business, in leadership, for yourself, is that they’re, oftentimes, unexamined.

Do you know, Pete, what your core beliefs are, how you tend to react under pressure, how you tend to interpret the world? Not necessarily. You might have core beliefs that you haven’t realized you’re using to make important decisions.

So, in that principle, I encourage people, for themselves, for their teams, for their company, to write them down, examine them, discuss them, “What do we believe in? How do we interpret the world?” And here’s the key. Some of them, you’re going to want to get rid of. Other ones, you’re going to want to foster within your team or within your organization. And that’s where you start managing core beliefs, and it’s incredibly powerful in setting the right culture for high performance.

I had a core belief earlier in my career, my boss used to say that I heard high frequencies, and this was about corporate politics. What he meant was, you know how dogs hear certain noises that humans don’t hear?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. I’m thinking about the Superman movie with Gene Hackman, and that dog with high pitch thing. But Superman and the dogs could hear it.

Sébastien Page
Yes. So, he would say, “You hear high frequencies, like you’re hearing political noise, or you’re worried about things that are really just high frequencies.” And he would remind me of this every time I get worried. And my response was usually, “Well, it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.” That’s kind of a famous quote that people use sometimes, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.”

But that was a bad core belief. It was a bad core belief to think that, to not assume good intentions. And I kind of managed and replaced that core belief with, “Start by assuming good intentions.” It’s just a good starting point, even if you’re wrong. It’s a better way to start when you’re managing team dynamics and corporate politics.

So, that’s an example of examining core beliefs, changing it for a better one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you walk us through the practice in terms of how you identify a hidden core belief, and then if you see it, you say, “Ah, actually, I don’t like that. That’s not so helpful”? How do you jettison it? Because I imagine that’s perhaps easier said than done.

Sébastien Page
So, people in clinical psychology, when they might have really unhealthy core beliefs, they just go to therapy, and that’s a way, through discussion and through the therapeutic to identify your core beliefs but I think you don’t need to go to therapy to identify your core beliefs.

I think, as a team setting, say in a business environment, what you want to do is observe how people behave, think, make decisions, interpret events during moments of high pressure, during moments when it’s tough decision, and there’s emotion in the room. That’s usually where we default to some core beliefs.

And then what you do is you discuss these. Let’s take money management. Markets are crashing, “Are we prone to just sell and panic or buy more or sit tight?” And there’s probably a core belief behind that. And so, you identify those moments of pressure, and then you see how they come out, they surface, during those moments.

It’s also often written down in a company’s founding or there’s a lot of companies that will write, “We believe…” statements. And those are usually a bit cheesy and motherhood and apple pie, and they sit on a PowerPoint somewhere, and they’re cliché, and we don’t really read them or believe them. But you know what? These things really matter day to day.

Not necessarily the curated PowerPoint, but, “What do we believe as a team?” whether it’s a sports team, whether it’s a family. You’re a leader in your family. You don’t have to manage people in a business to be a leader. So, in The Psychology of Leadership, I give some examples of company core beliefs or team core beliefs, and just writing them down is very helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s hear a real belief, written down, that’s powerful and has a galvanizing real impact on a team.

Sébastien Page
So, for us in business, if we’re disagreeing on something, the best way to win the argument, say it’s a product development or an investment decision, is to make the case on behalf of our clients. So, there is a core belief that everything we do, everyday we go to work, is to make money for our clients so they can get better retirements, pay their bills, put their kids through college.

That’s the mission of a money manager. You go to work and you want to make money for your clients. So, that’s a core belief. We write it down often, we talk about it, and we resolve disagreements with them, is that we’re acting as fiduciaries for our clients.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And then you also have a principle about “Be disagreeable sometimes.”

Sébastien Page
So, in personality psychology, we all know whether we’re introverts or extroverts, and that’s actually popular in the business world nowadays to talk about introversion, but there are these other traits, and agreeableness is one of the traits that I talk about in The Psychology of Leadership.

Agreeableness is a great trait to have. It just means that you like to get along, you’re a good listener, you tend to not confront people head on, but like any personality trait, it has downsides. If you’re too high in agreeableness, you’re a people-pleaser and you’ll put other people’s needs before yours, and that might not be productive for your own career and even for the benefit of the team.

So, some people score high in agreeableness, some people score low. In The Psychology of Leadership, I actually publish my own scores. I’m tempted to put you on the spot, Pete, to see if you would score yourself high or low in agreeableness.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m too agreeable, it’s a problem. I need to, sometimes, not give a “Good God, gosh, golly” about other people’s perspectives in order to do what’s optimal, yeah.

Sébastien Page
You hit the nail on the head. If you want to be a good leader, an effective leader, you can’t spend your days just trying to build consensus and making everybody happy. You’re going to have to make some decisions where you’re going to have to be disagreeable.

And I say 10% of the time in The Psychology of Leadership, this is a book that’s full of research. All the principles are research-backed but the 10% is my intuitive recommendation, know when to be disagreeable at the right moment, when you need to put your foot down. Only then you’ll be an effective leader.

You can’t just go through your day-to-day as a leader just constantly trying to make everybody happy. It’s a desirable thing, though. That’s why I say 10%, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Wel, it’s true. And as I think about, if you hear the stories of great leaders through history, there are often those moments in which all or many of the advisors around them are pushing them in one direction, and they say, “No, absolutely not. That could result in nuclear annihilation. So, we’re not doing that. We’re doing the opposite,” and they firmly, with backbone, go ahead and do the thing. And we’re still alive today, so thanks to good leadership backbone.

So, I guess the hard part, Sébastien, is how do we know, “When is that 10%?” How do you know, “You know what? I am, indeed, putting my foot down, and the perspectives I’m getting are incomplete or just plain wrong. And so, we’re going my way this time”?

Sébastien Page
Well, let me give you two cases. One is you, as the leader, have information because you’re connected to the board of directors or the clients. You might have information that you can’t share for one reason or the other.

But there’s an information asymmetry and you know what the right decision is, or maybe you have a unique talent, and only you. But be careful with that because that can turn into arrogance. But you have an edge in making the decision. Like, in your example. You’re going to be disagreeable.

The other part of it, number two, is that the job of the leader, often, is to resolve conflicts. And you’ll have people come at you with recommendations that disagree. So, one person wants the organization to go left, the other person wants the organization to go right, “Leader, what are we going to do?” It can be absolutely exhausting and counterproductive to just try to create some kind of consensus or keep everybody happy. If the organization needs to move fast, you have to use your 10% right there.

So, you use your 10% when there’s an information asymmetry or really convince you have the right decision and others don’t, and then you use it when, and maybe a bit more often, when you need to help resolve disagreements. Because if you don’t, over time, it builds, and it builds, and it builds, and it becomes your full time just dealing with the disagreements because they fester, they just keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, by taking a stand and resolving it, we sort of nip it in the bud.

Sébastien Page
Yes. And remember also, I talk about goal-induced blindness in the book. And with goal-induced blindness, people lose sight of what’s not related to their goals. They just focus narrowly on the goal, and they might sacrifice their health, their family, or their sense of ethics. So, they’re, famously, companies, business leaders, or sports leaders and athletes, that cheat because they have goal-induced blindness.

And so, when you as a leader, you really have to put your foot down, and say, “Okay, you need to go home and rest. This is perhaps a disagreeable way. I know you want to stay here and keep going,” or, “This is an ethical grey area and we don’t go nowhere near that. And, therefore, I’m putting my foot down.”

So, exercising leadership is a lot about inspiring people, is a lot about building consensus, is a lot about being agreeable, but 10% of the time, and that’s my own rule, 10% of the time it’s not, and that’s a crucial part of the job.

Pete Mockaitis
Goal-induced blindness is a fun turn of a phrase. And I’m curious if there are any early-warning signals you look for to see, “Uh-oh, it looks like we are starting to tip-toe into blind territory.”

Sébastien Page
You’re going to start seeing it through people getting exhausted, through morale, through customer feedback, but let’s just define goal-induced blindness clearly. It’s well-researched in psychology, and let me give you an example, Pete.

I was in front of about a thousand students, giving a talk, about two months ago. And I asked the students the following question. I’m going to ask you, too, although I think I know what you’re going to answer. Imagine I give you a bowl of a hundred gummy bears. Four of them are poisoned and they’re going to kill you. So, you have a 4% chance of dying.

And my challenge to you, Pete, is would you eat one gummy bear for $100,000?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d have to run all the numbers but I’m guessing no because it would take vast sums for me to think it’s worth trading my life, and our numbers aren’t good enough here, Sébastien.

Sébastien Page
So, look, I offered the students, hypothetically, a million. That was my opening. And I saw 15-20% of the room raised their hands. And in surveys, when you ask Millennials, for example, there are good surveys on them, 81% of them say that their life goal is to become rich, which, by the way, is not a bad goal. Go for it. Like, measurable goals, traditional goals are motivating, go for it.

But the caveat about goal-induced blindness is that, I mean, what? Eating one of those gummies is complete goal-induced blindness. Like, no amount of money is worth doing this. And here’s why I used four gummies that are poisoned out of a hundred.

The literature in psychology refers to Mt. Everest deaths. If you want to summit Everest, you have a 4% chance of dying in the process. And when you read about psychology and goal-induced blindness, there are lots of examples of people who die on Everest because they have the summit in their sight, and they lose sight of everything else, the risk they’re taking.

So, at the end of one of my principles, I go, “If you’re going to take any advice from this entire book, take the following. If ever you feel like climbing Everest because it’s there or some other reason, my advice to you is ‘Don’t.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because Everest, we think about money, I suppose my frame of reference for even entertaining the gummy bears is that if I think about my life as a gift or contribution to family, nonprofit, others, like, “What is the impact I would like to give? What’s the impact I would like to create by putting my life in service of folks? And then what might be the comparable impact of a vast sum of funds going to, you know, starving or whatever, folks in need?”

So, I guess that’s how I’m thinking about it. Because we might say, “Would you eat a gummy bear if it meant you’d save many lives in the neighboring room?” And so, I guess that’s how I’m thinking about it. Whereas, Everest, yeah, I mean, one, I’m not that into mountain climbing, even though it’s kind of fun.

You’re right, I think that’s excellent to think about goal-induced blindness, is you just want it really bad, and you’re excited about it, and to heck with the risks.

Sébastien Page
Look, you found the perfect counterargument to what I was saying, which is you might have altruistic goals that you are behaving in a way that looks like goal-induced blindness but it’s a completely different framework, it’s to do something good. And there, we get philosophical. And there’s the theory of utility, and “How do you achieve the greater good for the greater number of people?”

Psychology is not much about philosophy. My son is 17, happens to be really interested in philosophy, so we talk about these things. But, Pete, you gave a really good counterargument there. My general recommendation is to pursue goals, go for it. Like, measurable goals work. They work. They motivate. We take people to the moon. We want to go to the moon. That’s the goal. And it works. And it’s okay to want to make money.

And I think, even better, if you want to make money for altruistic ends because, in that case, also research in psychology, in positive psychology, shows that that is much more likely to make you happy, Pete, to help others than making more money per se. And there’s a lot of research about “Does happiness increase with money?”

If you’re in poverty, it definitely does, but then it does not much after a certain level. That’s also well-published research. But the problem with goal-induced blindness is that it happens. So, I’m arguing for having goals, for being aggressive in pursuing them, but for being mindful of “Are you still taking care of yourself? Like, are you healthy? Are you sleeping? Are you eating okay? Are you exercising? And don’t cheat, ever. It’s not worth it. Yeah, you’re playing a long-term game.”

And recognize when you’re slipping into goal-induced blindness. That’s a risk for high performers, not for low performers.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s good to note that, sometimes, as you pursue a goal, we realize the costs are much greater than originally anticipated. And it may be wise to pause, and say, “Hmm, new information has come to light. Perhaps this goal is no longer worth pursuing,” although that is a bummer, and make sure you don’t let your ego get into it, like, “I’m not a quitter.” It’s like, “Okay.”

Well, I think about that with Everest, in terms of folks, they get in that position where they pretty close to the summit, and they realize, “Uh-oh, we’re entering a high-danger situation,” and some folks will wisely turn back even though they were so close to the peak, and those who are like, “Doggone it, I’m so close, I can’t give up. I’m just going to go for it. I’m going for it.”

Sébastien Page
Look, quitting might be the most underrated skill in business. We think of leaders as those that never give up and stick to the goal, but there are plenty of occasions in business when the facts change and the future profits from your project have changed, and you have to quit even though you’ve invested a lot in that project.

Annie Duke has a fantastic book that she titled Quit, and it’s about how quitting is an underrated skill in business. And I refer to her research in The Psychology of Leadership as well. So, I’m glad you bring this up. Pete, the other example I like to use when talking about goals is my friend, Phil. So, that’s the story of my friend, Phil. Phil made a billion dollars.

Pete Mockaitis
Shout out, Phil.

Sébastien Page
Yeah, with his cryptocurrency company, and he decided to give everything away to charity. And the next morning, he was eating his cereal in his kitchen, and an angel appeared to him. So, this is usually where I disclose that it’s not a true story, but it’s illustrative.

Pete Mockaitis
“What an interesting life Phil has had. He earned a billion dollars. Sees angels.”

Sébastien Page
You might’ve been wondering where this interview was going.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I bet, I’m an angel, Sébastien, so, okay, fiction with you.

Sébastien Page
It’s a made-up story but I use it to frame goals. So, the angel said, “Oh, you’re such a good person. I’m going to give you one of the following three gifts. I can give you infinite power, I can give you infinite wealth, or I can give you infinite wisdom.”

So, I don’t know, let’s encourage our audience to think about which one they would choose. Pete, which one would you choose – power, wealth, or wisdom?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m tempted to say, to paint how we define the terms, infinite wisdom may lead you to, if you so desire, infinite wealth and power in addition. So, it’s like a three-for-one deal with the wisdom.

Sébastien Page
Or it may lead you to not desire those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sébastien Page
Who knows? But that was the interesting part about that story, is that Phil chose wisdom. And so, for the first time in human history, someone had infinite wisdom. There was a giant press conference, cameras in his face, lightbulbs flashing. What would the person with infinite wisdom say? We’ve never heard from anyone with infinite wisdom.

And the story goes, Phil said, “I should’ve taken the money.” And this is the frame that I use to talk about goals and long-term goals, and how we think about, “Which goals will make us happy?” And this is where positive psychology comes in.

And Andre Agassi, for example, had the clear goal of being one of the best, or the best tennis player. He was miserable his entire career. His autobiography is one of the best books I’ve ever read, Open by Andre Agassi. He was absolutely miserable. He hated playing tennis. And when he left tennis, I think he became much happier.

So, we set these goals and we don’t take the time to think about “What long-term goal will truly make me happy?” So, positive psychology says, when they followed people for their entire lifetime over 80 years, eight decades, this is a study out of Harvard, and they go, “What makes people thrive over their lifetime? What makes them happy? Let’s ask them, on a regular basis, how they’re doing.” A bunch of questions, “How are you doing? How are you feeling? How’s your life going?”

And then there’s generations of researchers, as you can imagine. There’s no study like this. It’s fascinating. Eighty years running, it’s still running. Robert Waldinger out of Harvard, he’s fantastic, and he’s still running that study.

But what they found was people, during their lifetime, who climbed the social ladder, who were healthy, who made money, were not necessarily statistically happier than those who lost their job, who got sick, who went to prison.

It’s just so fascinating that all these traditional goals did not make people happy. And there was one dimension, though, that showed to be very powerful in people’s ability to thrive in the long run and feel happy with their lives.

I don’t know if you’d talked about it in your podcast with Robert, but it is those that had the most positive relationships in their lives self-reported the higher levels of happiness over their lifetime. So, relationships are important.

Now, we’re getting into notions of happiness and positive psychology, and here I am, a business guy, talking about these very abstract concepts. What does it mean in business? It means a ton. If you have a bad day at work, it’s probably because of a relationship issue. I would say, nine out of ten times, you’d come home and you just had a bad day at work, it’s probably relationship-related.

If you want to run a high-performing organization, a high-performing soccer team, a high-performing orchestra, a large proportion of the success of the team is going to be the quality of their relationships. And it’s not about being nice and feeling good every time, but it’s trust, it is mutual respect, it’s how you give feedback to each other. Those things are absolutely necessary for strong leadership and strong team performance.

So, we go from this theoretical, positive, nice-sounding positive psychology stuff to really practical business practices in terms of how you give feedback, how you receive feedback, how you talk about culture, why culture matters, how people interact within a team, why trust is so important.

And I say set goals that are longer term, that will generate organizational happiness, set goals for yourself that are positive in nature, and here’s how you go about executing against those goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, we talked about agreeableness a little bit. I also want to talk about neuroticism. You’ve got a bit about learning to love to worry. Tell us why and how do we do that?

Sébastien Page
We talked about why I wrote this book, initially, why I got interested, particularly in sports psychology. I felt stressed. And I was beating myself, well, for feeling stressed, I thought, “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’ve had more stressful jobs. Why do I feel stressed at work?” And there, sports psychology is incredibly helpful because you learn to embrace a certain amount of stress.

I explain in The Psychology of Leadership that optimal performance does not occur at a stress level of zero. In other words, stress can increase performance up to a point of optimal performance, after which, performance decreases, mental health gets impacted, you choke, it impacts your physical health as well.

But this idea of going through life trying to operate at zero stress, first of all, is absolutely impossible. And the top athletes, I guarantee you, speaking to a sports psychologist who trains them mentally, they get absolutely stressed. Now, sports psychologists like to reframe stress as activation or arousal. In the literature, there are different ways to define this.

I’m using the term stress loosely here. But this idea that there’s a curve, that stress to a certain amount, with activation, will improve, not decrease, your performance is super fascinating. And, by the way, those curves, they’ve been studied for almost a hundred years, and they are different for different people. So, your stress curve might be different from my stress curves, and they’re also different for different tasks.

For some tasks, you’ll perform really well when you’re really stressed, when you have the adrenaline pumping. If you’re going to run a 5K, you’re probably going to get your best time with a very high level of activation and some adrenaline coursing and some, yes, some stress before the race. You’re going to perform better.

If you’re going to do archery or something complex or solve math problems, you’re going to need some activation but your optimal performance is going to be at a lower-stress level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that makes sense. As I think about when I’m really fired up, my hands are kind of shaky. So, precision archery isn’t the best. Well, you got me thinking about biathlon athletes which is the fun-nest sport. The funniest idea for a sport, “Let’s go cross-country skiing, and then pause and shoot, and then do it again and again.” And so, there you have it, they’re playing both games at the same time.

Sébastien Page
I love that example because, to ski, I mean, the technique is pretty straightforward. They got to be pretty activated. And then they need to bring it down really quick for the shooting. So, it combines two stress curves, and the ability to toggle between the two is part of that sport. That’s a great example, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to hear your piece about thinking about death.

Sébastien Page
So, does that sound positive or negative to you if I just say that?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, there’s some ancient stoic philosophy about the benefits of remembering, thinking about your death. So, yeah, on the surface, it feels a little spooky and unpleasant, yet there could be rich goodness under the surface.

Sébastien Page
Look, Stephen Covey has one of the best-selling self-improvement books of all time, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. One of the habits is “Begin with the end in mind.” And he does talk about thinking about what you want to reflect on at the end of your life.

And then Covey argues once you figure that out, it guides your values, and you bring that back to today and it’ll help you make better decisions that are more aligned with your long-term goals and long-term values. So, I love that.

In fact, one of the early titles of the book, instead of The Psychology of Leadership, was “The End in Mind.” I actually wanted to give a nod to Covey.

But so, you’d think about death, it helps you think about positive psychology. There’s a model in positive psychology that spells P-E-R-M-A, PERMA. It was developed by Marty Seligman, father of Positive Psychology. I hate acronyms because we use way too many of them in business, but I love that one. So, P stands for positive emotion, and then ERMA, E stands for engagement, R for relationships, quality relationships, M for meaning, and A for long-term accomplishment.

When you think about your death or when you think about what you want on your tombstone, what you’re going to reflect on has a lot more to do with ERMA – engagement, relationships, meaning, and long-term accomplishments – than what day-to-day you and I and everybody in our audience, we’re all seeking, which is basic positive emotions, a good glass of wine, a laugh, a like on social media. We’re all addicted to the positive emotions.

But if you put this in the context of thinking very long term, think about death, stoicism, the end in mind, however you want to frame that thinking, you introduce notions of positive psychology that are incredibly powerful. We don’t really talk about this in business, but there are lots of ways to think about applications of this in business.

For example, engagement. More than half of employees in surveys in our country are not engaged at work. So, how do you use research in psychology to improve engagement? And you introduce the notion of flow, how you set the goals, how you set the milestones to put people in flow, and so on. Meaning is incredibly important in business, and some are underrated sometimes.

So, I could go on but this whole idea of starting from the end point is a big part of The Psychology of Leadership, of goal-setting, and of executing against goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Sébastien, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Sébastien Page
I would say, first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. You know, I mentioned, in my day job as a money manager, I have to go and talk about financial markets in the space of two to ten minutes, and it is high pressure and it’s live national TV. I’m super happy that you got me on here, to have more of a conversation. It was a lot of fun. I hope our audience liked it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Well, now let’s hear about a favorite quote.

Sébastien Page
Okay. Marcus Aurelius, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”

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

Sébastien Page
There’s some research that shows that social comparison is a more powerful motivator than positive encouragement.

So, here you go, Pete. If someone else has a podcast that you feel you’re competing with, and they’re getting more views, better ratings, it should be, theoretically, based on that research, more motivating to you than if I just called you, and say, “Hey, Pete, you’re doing a great job. Keep going.”

And so, it’s counterintuitive. We look down on social comparison but it’s actually very powerful. And if you can gamify it and enjoy competition, it could be a super powerful tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Sébastien Page
I got to go with David Goggins, either of his books, Can’t Hurt Me or the follow-up. And I read so many books but there’s no author like David Goggins that is going to motivate you to do something about your physical health and exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Sébastien Page
Favorite tool in my day-to-day life, very underrated, I feel, is a calorie counter. I think it’s really hard to eat a decent diet. I don’t think we should all, like, try to be perfect. But counting your calories is pretty much, at least in my life, the only way that I could get a decent diet going, is to actually look at it and count it. So, those are, like, really helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Sébastien Page
This is going to sound unusual, I suppose. It’s important to me to have a streak for exercise, and I’ve basically exercised every day for more than 12 years, for at least 30 minutes. Sometimes, when I’m tired, I just go on a slow jog.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key Sébastien-original soundbite that you’re known for, or people quote back to you often?

Sébastien Page
The most critical lesson in leadership that I’ve learned over the last few years, and I’ve been a leader for 25 years, is summarized in four words, “Talk less. Listen more.” We think leaders have to be outstanding communicators, and that is part of the job, but listening is what is going to really push your leadership skills upwards.

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

Sébastien Page
PsychologyofLeadership.net or LinkedIn.

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

Sébastien Page
Set big goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sébastien, thank you. This is fun.

Sébastien Page
Thank you. Likewise.

1055: The One-Minute Trick to Defeating Procrastination with Dave Crenshaw

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Dave Crenshaw discusses how to find the energy to tackle your goals–when you really don’t feel like it.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to overcome procrastination in one minute
  2. The five costs of multitasking
  3. Why to pick a terrible stopping point 

About Dave

Dave Crenshaw develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities, and organizations of every size. He has appeared in Time magazine, USA Today, FastCompany, and the BBC News. His courses on LinkedIn Learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages, the most popular of which is The Myth of Multitasking—a time management bestseller. As an author, speaker, and online instructor, Dave has transformed the lives and careers of millions around the world.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Dave Crenshaw Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome back!

Dave Crenshaw
Pete, it’s great to be here. I always enjoy talking with you. We always have a good time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, maybe too good of a time. You’ve introduced me to “Slay the Spire,” which has cost me hours of fun.

Dave Crenshaw
It didn’t cost you. You gained all that, right?

Pete Mockaitis
It cost me. There was gain and cost. And my son, Johnny, likes it now too. So that’s cool. Thank you for that.

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, that’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re talking about procrastination and taking action despite, you know, internal emotional resistance and reluctance. And as a backdrop for this, I’d love it if you could kick us off with, you have a deeply vulnerable and powerful annual practice. And I bumped into a seven-minute video from you on LinkedIn. I wasn’t expecting, but was like, “Wow, this is this is powerful stuff.”

And the comments, likewise, were resonating and finding actionable wisdom for some of their own difficulties, but in terms of mental health or taking care of business when they don’t feel like it. So, could you share a little bit of that context?

Dave Crenshaw
So I’ve dealt with a variety of mental health challenges throughout my life. And a big element of that has been depression. And the way that I heard someone describe it is– and part of what I’ve dealt with, in conjunction with that, is pretty recurrent suicidal thoughts. But, in particular, one year, it was just bad. My body chemistry was completely compromised. And so, I had to work with a psychologist, to work with a psychiatrist, get medical help to solve the issue. And as I was coming out of that, Pete, there was a moment where I had one foot in and one foot out. Meaning I saw what I was like and I saw where I was going and the things were getting better.

And in that moment, I realized I had an opportunity to help people because I was in both worlds and I could see what it was like to not deal with that, but also the pathway that I was taking to get out. And so, I recorded one video, and then later on condensed it, and started to share the strategy that I used to get out of that with the goal that this is going to help someone.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful, powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And, yes, I, too, have dealt with suicidal thoughts from time to time, and it is tough and unpleasant.

Dave Crenshaw
I’m sorry that you had to go through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
It’s a terrible feeling. 

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And I think, like, this provides maybe perhaps the most intense or dramatically possible backdrop for thinking about procrastination or emotional reluctance, resistance to doing stuff. Because I’ve had, you know, more often than suicidal thoughts, like sort of just like a malaise in terms of, “Oh, I don’t feel like it and these things seem so hard.” And it’s like I’m thinking and moving slower.

And yet, even when th is happens, I have found it is possible, and often not fun, but sometimes surprisingly fun, to go ahead and take care of some business.

And you have a transformational tactic that you’ve shared, and folks are really vibed with. Can you tell us about it?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, and I’ll give a little bit of a context for this. As a time management guy, because that’s what I do, one day, I was coaching a client, this is where this thought came from. And he was talking about vacations, and about how he would take a vacation and he’d rush to get everything ready. At the end of the vacation, and then he would have to catch up and do all this other stuff at the other side of it.

And he said the phrase, “If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.” And that is a very common thing for people who experience ADHD and a variety of different psychological challenges. And I think it’s just human as well. And I thought about that and I thought, “What if it was the other way around? What if it was, ‘If it weren’t for the first minute, I wouldn’t get anything done’?”

And that was something that I immediately made a part of my time management training. And the idea is simply this. When we look at a project, we look at a task, we feel overwhelmed, we say, “This is going to be difficult for me to do.” I was coaching someone who was in sales, and this was back in the day, I’m dating myself. He would actually open up the phone book and call people, right?

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, cold call is not dead, Dave.”

Dave Crenshaw
I’ve got a mentor who still does it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, Blunt’s in my ear right now.

Dave Crenshaw
So, he would say, “It’s really hard for me to start making cold calls.” And I would say, “Well, what’s the first minute? What’s the first action that you need to take?” And he’d say, “Well, I need to identify who I’m going to call.” I said, “No, no, no. You’re thinking five, 10 minutes in. What’s the first minute? What’s the first action?”

And he said, “I just need to open up the phone book.” And I said, “Okay. In your calendar, schedule that. Block out how much time you think you’re going to have to take, whether that’s an hour or two hours or whatever. Block it out. But in your calendar, write the phrase, ‘Open up the phone book.’” And the moment he did that, he was like, “Oh, I can do that. That’s easy.” And then he immediately was able to flow right into starting to make the calls.

And so, a big part of my training, and my processing, in my course, “Time Management Fundamentals” and elsewhere, I tell people to schedule the first action, the first minute of activity. And that’s a way to just jump over all that emotional baggage that we have and just trick yourself into starting to be productive.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. So, literally, on the calendar, we see, “Open up the phone book,” or whatever it is. Or, “Sit at desk,” in terms of, like, the first minute, the first action. And I think that’s great, even if you have not scheduled it or you’re in the midst of a thing, and it’s like, “Oh, I should do this task, but, oh, I don’t want to. It’s so complicated. There are all these different stakeholders, and then I don’t want to step on any toes, that I’m probably going to offend someone. And who needs to be included?”

So, you got all the stuff that pops up showing why this is difficult or unpleasant. And then I think it really helps, for me, if I think about the first minute, or like the tiniest step, it’s, I’m like coaxing myself like a child.

It’s like, “Okay, Pete, you know what? We don’t have to finish all those things. No, no, no. All we’re doing, we’re going to read that email. We’re just going to read every word of that email. And then we’ll just pause there. That’s all that’s happening.” And then if that feels too hard, it’s like, “I’m going to open that email. We’re just going to open it,” and then it’ll be on the screen, and then you can do what you want from there.”

And so, I am like coaxing and coaching myself into the tiniest step. If one minute’s too hard, maybe the first four seconds.

Dave Crenshaw
And there’s an interesting thing about emotion. Procrastination is driven largely by the emotion that we feel. Let’s say that there’s a big goal that you want to accomplish. Let’s run through the different time periods and the emotion that you feel, the emotion you feel about it.

So, let’s say that I’m going to create this goal that I’m going to get promoted. When I think about the goal, what’s the emotion that I feel? I feel good. It feels great. When I start doing the work, what’s the emotion that I feel? Usually, I feel pretty good once I’m in the motion of doing it. And then when I accomplish the goal, how do I feel? I feel really good when I did that.

So, emotion is good when you think about it. Emotion is good when you do it. Emotion is good when you complete it. Where is emotion not good? Where does the emotion feel the worst? Just before we start the work, right? So, we have to trick our brain to jump over that emotion, to just ignore it and start the process.

And that’s what the first minute does. It just helps us remove emotion from the equation so the brain can’t bog us down. And then once we start working, we start feeling good again.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, Dave, I’m seeing in my mind’s eye sort of a graph or infographic or picture. Maybe you’ve made one and I’ve seen it in one of your books or courses, I’m not sure.

Dave Crenshaw
I haven’t, but I should. That sounds good. I’ll make a note of that.

Pete Mockaitis
On the X axis, it’s like we’ve got time, and the Y axis we’ve got feel good. And then we can sort of see, like, at the start, or stop watching Netflix and begin doing the thing is our lowest, most unpleasant time. But then there are several maybe milestones of feel good in terms of, it’s like, “Okay, I’m in the groove,” “Okay, I’m making some progress,” “Okay, I’ve got an insight,” or, “Okay, I’m looking back and feeling kind of proud about what I’ve accomplished over this period of time.”

So, it’s like there are numerous phases or eras over the course of this thing. And yet, our brains can vary adeptly, zero in on a short sliver of a minute or two or three that is most unpleasant. And that’s kind of a distortion in and of itself. That is not an accurate representation of the overall emotional pleasant or unpleasantness of the whole arc of the thing.

Dave Crenshaw
And let’s tie just a little bit of science into this. Our brains are hardwired to resist change. That’s an evolutionary advantage. That’s a good thing because it allows us to take things that normally would take a lot of work and make them easy. For example, brushing your teeth. I don’t have to think, anymore, about how I’m going to brush my teeth, and that’s because the brain has created a pattern that says, “This is how it’s done.”

And so, because my brain doesn’t like change, it also makes it easy to continually do the things that it should do. The problem is whenever we try to do something new, our brains go, “What are you doing? You’re messing up the system. I didn’t exercise at 6:00 a.m. in the past. Why are you making me do it now?”

And so, that first minute of activity can play an element in forming new positive habits.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. So, by thoughtfully, conscientiously designing, selecting, choosing what we’re doing with that first minute is very powerful in terms of trajectory. It sends us down and the habits and patterns and grooves that get formed.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. And we can trick ourselves into creating new habits, new patterns, just by doing that first minute over and over. And you do that repeatedly for a month, and pretty soon what used to be something your brain resists is now something that your brain embraces and just pushes the momentum to it.

So, you can use that that gift both directions. You can use it to prevent yourself from doing what should be done or you can use it to create a new habit, and then your brain locks in and it becomes easier in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really solid. And thinking, linking it back to the suicidal thoughts, I deliberately chose a replacement in terms of, if I was feeling super tired, stressed, overwhelmed, just, “Aargh,” I might have the thought like, “Ugh, I want to die.” And so, it was like, I’ve said, “Well, no, no, no. More accurately, what I want is rest.”

So, that’s the new thought. The “I want to die” thought, I am choosing to replace with, “I want rest.” And it is more true and accurate. And it creates a much better internal vibe for me, you know? It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s make a plan to figure out how to get some rest in the near future.”

Dave Crenshaw
It’s interesting. I hadn’t planned on bringing this up, Pete, but I think there’s another principle that I teach that relates here. I have a book called “The Power of Having Fun.”

And there’s a principle that I teach in that called head-heart-mouth. And head-heart-mouth is designed to program your brain. Because a lot of people now, if you say, “What do you like to do for fun?” and, first, they’re going to have a hard time with it, but maybe they do something that’s a break, that’s relaxing, but they don’t feel it. They don’t take it in. And, boy, I can relate to that as dealing with depression, right? I’m doing something that’s supposed to be fun and I’m feeling miserable.

So, head-heart- mouth says, “Do something and then…” head, “…think intellectually, ‘This is a good thing.’” “It was good for me to do that work.” Intellectually, I say in my head. You don’t have to feel it, right? You just say it.

Heart means, “Why was this good?” You ask an emotional question, “Why should I feel good about this? Why would this feel like a good thing?” Well, it’s good to make progress. It’s good to move forward. And I feel like I’m a productive person or I feel like I am adding value to the world. There a lot of reasons why.

Mouth is expressing it in some way. So, you might say, “Hey, I did some work today, it was really hard and I did it anyway.” Or, you might write down in a journal, “I did this thing and it was rewarding to do that.” So, you just get it out of your head. And the more you practice head-heart-mouth with the things that are difficult, the more you start to retrain your brain to feel the positive emotions that are occurring. And then you start to recognize them.

So, whether it’s doing work, you start to feel that work is more rewarding. If it’s having fun, you start to feel that “Slay the Spire” is more gratifying and it’s giving you positive impacts in your life. Whatever it is, spending time with family, you can use that head-heart-mouth to reinforce the power of that first action that you took in the first minute.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. And this reminds me of the practice of savoring, which is so powerful and yet so easy to not do. So, the head-heart-mouth approach, I like it just makes it explicit in terms of “What are we doing here?” with regard to the savoring as opposed to, “I guess this is cool.”

Dave Crenshaw
It systemizes it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s so easy to just skate right past it, and yet when you systematically have these three pre-planned moves, it just locks it in.

Dave Crenshaw
It’s easy to skate over these things when we are constantly doing multiple things at the same time, when we are media multitasking, when we are not paying attention to the people around us, we start to just create this surface-level skimming of every experience in our life, and I’ve tried to make an effort to not media-multitask anymore, where I’m using my phone and I’m watching a show at the same time.

And I’ve been like, “Okay, I’m not going to do this.” And it’s interesting, like, all of a sudden, these shows that I was watching to take a break started to become more rewarding. And I started to feel happier just simply by not playing “Gems of War” while I’m watching “Severance.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you know, it’s so funny, Dave, when you said “Severance,” because I love this show so much. I was, like, “Sacrilege! Media-multitasking during ‘Severance.’” Part of me is like, I guess my philosophy or current practice is, “I mean, if the show is, you know, whatever, you know, some 10-year-old sitcom that just has some laughs here and there, you know, no big deal. But if it’s a work of high art, oh, it must be savored.” And you’re saying, “No, don’t media-multitask on anything.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yet, that’s not just about shows, it’s about everything that’s happening around us, the people around us. Even the work that we’re doing, the meetings that we attend, everything starts to become just a little more meaningful and we start to feel more connected when we choose not to multitask.

Where we’re trying to do two attention-requiring tasks at the same time, things take longer, we make more mistakes, we increase our stress, and we damage relationships.

And, you know, I’ve always talked about in terms of those four things, but having this conversation, Pete, I think there’s a fifth cost. And the fifth cost is the impact on our mental health. We damage our mental health and we train our brains to skim through life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so let’s zoom right back into the moment of, “All right. I got to do a thing and I don’t want to.” Any other pro tips for us in that moment?

Dave Crenshaw
I think the other thing that you want to consider, we’ve talked about the negative emotions that stop us from doing things, but there’s also a positive emotion or a positive mindset that keeps us from doing it, and that’s imagination. So, a lot of people who listen to your show, Pete, they’re highly intelligent, they’re imaginative, they’ve learned how to set goals probably for many of the guests that you have.

And so, we set these goals, we create these resolutions, right, every year, and we say, “I’m going to do it.” And again, the emotion is fantastic because we see this big picture of how my life’s going to get better. The problem is, along with that imagination, we’re also seeing all of the work that needs to be done to get that.

So, I think what I would weave into this is what I teach about goal-setting and achievement, which is just keep splitting the thing in half until it gets as small as possible. So, if I say, you know, I could use any example, let’s say, “I’m going to write a book in a year.” So, then the question is, “Where do I need to be six months from now? Well, six months, I should probably complete my first draft.”

“Where do I need to be three months from now? Well, maybe I should have completed the first chapter. Where do I need to be one and a half months from now? Well, maybe I have a table of contents,” and I just keep splitting it down and down and down and down, until I’m down to “What do I need to do today? What do I need to do in this next minute, in this next second?”

And we take these big goals that we want to accomplish and we break it down into just turning on the computer and looking at the first page.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That’s super. And so, then when you’re feeling the overwhelm, that’s a great thought, “Well, how could I cut that in half?” And until it’s halved enough times that it’s easy.

Dave Crenshaw
Eventually, you’re going to get to a place where it’s just so darn easy, that’s “Why won’t you do it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Dave Crenshaw
And we can do it for the next day, “What do I need to do tomorrow? What do I need to do by the end of the week? And then what’s the one minute that’s going to move me closer to that thing this week?” You know, it’s interesting, this is kind of related to the concept. I did a podcast, I’ve wrapped it up now, and I also have a course on LinkedIn Learning called “Success Stories with Dave Crenshaw.” And I interviewed a really, really interesting character.

Are you familiar with the name Ed Greenwood?

Pete Mockaitis
I think so.

Dave Crenshaw
Many people aren’t but they probably have seen his work. Ed is the creator of “The Forgotten Realms” for “Dungeons and Dragons.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Dave Crenshaw
So, all of the characters that you see, the world that you see, all of that was created by Ed. And he was talking about his writing process. And I know that most people here aren’t writers, but you can apply this principle to what you do. He said that he would not finish at the end of a chapter. He would finish with, like, the first paragraph of the next chapter.

So, what happened was, when he would sit down to write the next day, he already had some words on the pages. And I think that’s a great thing to do is sometimes we look for those natural break points, which we should, but then at the end of it say, “What do we need to do to just push this 1% further, just a little bit more so that tomorrow when I pick it up, I can look at it and go, ‘Oh, this is exactly, I know where I’m supposed to be’?”

I thought that was a great principle that I had never heard before, but I think we can do that in a variety of different ways with our work and the projects that we’re approaching.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I like that it’s almost like when you have an open loop in your brain, like unfinished business, then there’s a push to want to close it, to get that kind of wrapped up and into a good stopping point. But to intentionally flip that on its head, it’s like, “Let me go to a terrible stopping point because that is an outstanding starting point.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, it’s going to make that first minute a lot easier. It’s just sort of an extra little tool in the belt to make that simpler the next time you come.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And you can apply that to all sorts of things in terms of if there’s a project, I am going to open up all of the windows associated with doing that task. And so, that’s just there waiting for me when I return to the office the next day. Or, I would lay out all of the physical items necessary to complete a thing. And then, if like the phone book is open, and a sticky note with an arrow is affixed to the name, or the CRM, as the case may be in 2025.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. And the other thing that’s really interesting, too, is I’ve started using AI that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Go on.

Dave Crenshaw
So, maybe I have to work on a project and I’ve got all of these random thoughts in my head. What I can do is just dump them into ChatGPT. That’s what I use, and we have like a team thing. And the great thing about that is when you own a corporate plan, it protects it, right, that keeps it from going out there. So, we can put everything in there.

And I’ll have all these ideas, these random ideas, and they’re just not quite cohesive. And I just dump it in, and I say, “Can you put this into a logical order,” right? I’m not asking it to do the work for me. I’m asking it to order my thoughts for me and give me a starting point. And then I see the order and I go, “That is exactly what I was trying to do with all that chaos that was in my head.”

And now I can take that outline, or whatever it is, and I can start to order. It can’t replace my creativity, but, boy, it can make it really, really easy to give me that starting point so that I can get to work.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And we’ve had Jeremy Utley on the show talking about AI stuff. And I think that what you’re doing is dead on in terms of thinking about it as a collaborator that’s a cool way to collaborate there.

Dave Crenshaw

And it’s a cool way to beat procrastination, which is the topic, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dave Crenshaw
“Every time you devote time to practice, you haven’t lost. You’re always a winner.” And that is from Bob Ross.

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

Dave Crenshaw
Well, certainly, lots of work by David Strayer of the University of Utah about multitasking. I cite that a lot in my books, and the importance of focusing on one thing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Dave Crenshaw
I like “Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide” by John Cleese. It’s a great little book that teaches you how to come up with new ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Dave Crenshaw
Everybody asks me, “Dave, what’s the best app to use?” And the best app to use for productivity is your calendar. I just love the calendar. It’s so simple and it’s probably underused by most people.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us, what’s something people are not doing with their calendar that they ought to?

Dave Crenshaw
Two things. One, they’re not scheduling all the things that are happening in their life. And so, that’s like spending time on a credit card. You don’t really know if you have the ability to do the things that you’re committing to. So, when you use your calendar for everything, it shows it. But that also has to be accompanied with one that seems contradictory, but it’s important, which is scheduling buffer time. Scheduling lots of time for nothing so that you have room to breathe for all of the interruptions in between.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dave Crenshaw
I used to not do very well with exercise. I started to exercise very simply, just a little bit more each time, which kind of goes back to the thing. I just started shooting baskets, and then I started to shoot jump shot baskets, and then I started to use the treadmill, and I just added a little bit more and more over time, and now it’s pretty consistent. And I’m probably in the best shape of my life and it makes a big impact on everything.

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

Dave Crenshaw
And this could be a quote as well from one of my mentors, David Winford, “Do what you said you would do by the time you said you would do it.” That is the most important rule of success, and most people, if they just did that one thing, they’d be more successful than 90% of the people around them.

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

Dave Crenshaw
I love connecting with people on LinkedIn, Dave Crenshaw, connect with me there. I put out updates all the time, and that’ll also, I share videos from all of my LinkedIn Learning courses as well.

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

Dave Crenshaw
Just put into practice what we talked about. Think about something that’s difficult for you to do, something that’s daunting, maybe something that you’ve been putting off, and just say, “What’s that first minute?” and immediately put this into practice. That way you move from just hearing this conversation to making it a part of your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dave, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
Thank you, Pete.

1039: How to Stop Wasting Time on Email with Randall Dean

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Randall Dean shares practical tips for taming an overwhelming inbox.

You’ll Learn

  1. The best time-saving investment you can make
  2. How to keep unread emails from flooding your inbox
  3. The inbox shortcuts that’ll save you hours

About Randy

Randy Dean, The E-mail Sanity Expert®, author of Amazon bestseller Taming the E-mail Beast, is an expert on time & e-mail management and the related use of technology. For 25+ years his humorous and engaging programs have given attendees key strategies on better managing their time, e-mail, apps & technology.

Resources Mentioned

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Randall Dean Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Randy, welcome!

Randall Dean
It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited. We’re talking email. You are the Email Sanity Expert, registered trademark. So, I’d love to start by hearing a little bit in working with so many people and their email, is there anything that’s particularly surprising to you that you’ve learned about us professionals and doing email?

Randall Dean
Well, you know what’s interesting, I’ve been leading programs on this topic for 20 years now, started my company all the way back in 2004, and what I’ve learned over all this time is that not only are people spending, I think, the average that I saw in a published study was a little bit more than two hours per day, but at a lot of the conference events, conventions, places that I speak, I’m getting people answering anywhere from three to six hours a day just on their inbox.

The interesting contrarian fact and statistic that I’ve discovered, I ask people at these programs, I go, “How many of you have had prior training?” And if it’s an audience that I haven’t spoken with before, it’s less than 5%. Less than 5%, not just here in the United States, Canada, Mexico. I’ve spoken in Europe several times on this. And in all of those places almost no one has had strategic or technical training on how to be more efficient with their email on a tool that’s taking 25% to 50% or more of their workday. It’s crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s what’s funny is I think we have a sense, or I have a sense, and I think I’m getting the vibe from other professionals, that we’re spending “too much time” on meetings and emails. Well, first, I just want to check that assertion for validity, because I guess it’s conceivably possible that even if you are spending six hours on email a day, if most of these messages are thoughtful works of written craftsmanship in which you are casting a vision and offering clear guidance, and wisdom, and leadership, and insight, and clarification, and coordination that that might be okay.

Like, you’re doing work. You’re doing knowledge work at a high level. You’re spending six hours on email but those six hours are well-spent in these communications. Tell, Randy, how often is that the case? Or, is, in fact, our assertion correct, that that’s too darn much?

Randall Dean
I would actually say for the vast majority of people, they’re not doing what you just described.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Randall Dean
They’re dealing with 200 emails a day, and they’re trying, in a mass flurry, to get through them as fast as they possibly can, and they’re not writing terribly high-quality and high-level communications. They’re just trying to get through the flood of information that’s coming in at them. It’s funny because I actually talk about email etiquette sometimes and I’m actually of the point, like, make the subject line sort of say what is in the email.

If there’s tasks inside the email, make sure people, right up front, know who’s got what tasks. And if you can’t get down to bullet points, it’s almost the exact opposite of what you just said in terms of crafting really nicely crafted communications. And I actually even mentioned that, if you are going to write something that’s sort of wordy and requires extra time and effort to go through it, you should probably turn that into an actual document, like a Word doc or a PDF so that you attach it to the email, so people slow down and read it more carefully.

Because one of the problems that they have is if it’s sort of a long email in terms of message length and density, a lot of people are just scanning over the top of them and not getting into them because they’ve got too many coming in.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Randy, you’re bringing back a fun memory of my first kind of grown-up internship was at Eaton Corporation in Pittsburgh, and I was part of this program, and the one coordinating the program, her name was Amber. And it was funny, her email signature had “Thank you for your attention to this communication,” like in all of her emails.

And it was so funny, I don’t know if this is what she was going for, but it caused me, an insecure 19-, 20- year-old intern to say, “Oh, shucks, I didn’t actually spend much attention on your communication. I better read it again.”

Randall Dean
Yeah, and the thing is, I always tell people, “If somebody’s getting 150-200 emails a day, and you’re barraging them with a 14-paragraph soliloquy, and they miss something, is that really their fault for missing something? Maybe it’s your fault for not getting to the point, you know? So, yeah. Now that doesn’t mean you throw out all rules for appropriate grammar and etiquette.

But I also am a believer that email is best used when communications are simple, obvious, and straightforward. And the minute they start getting complex or confusing, it might be time to pick up the phone or go find the person.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or, I guess, we’ll talk alternatives and tools. I personally love the Loom video, if we’re remote and asynchronous, in terms of, “Hey, these are my thoughts on this matter and some detail. So, you can see my face, hear my voice, see the document, or whatever we’re talking about at the same time.” So, okay, understood.

It sounds like it’s quite rare that email time is time brilliantly spent, and we may, even if we do need to craft a beautiful something, it might be better off in a document. And so, the Tim Cook’s up early in the morning, emailing the day’s leadership wisdom for each of his key team members, it sounds like that’s not what most of emailing is.

Randall Dean
That’s really funny because, I mean, if you’re at Tim Cook’s level and his senior leadership team’s level, then maybe what you described at the start of this conversation might work. Most of the people that are coming into my audiences are administrative professionals, mid-level to low-senior level managers and directors, and they’re just dealing with a barrage of messages, and they’re trying to figure out what they need to get done within these messages, who they need to follow up with from these messages, and how to then turn that into a work day.

And so, a big part of what I’m doing is like, “Okay, here’s how you go through this stuff to figure out what’s important, what’s urgent and what’s not.” So, I think that that’s been a big part of the struggle.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I hear you. So, that’s kind of the email vibe we’re talking about here is tons of incoming things, kind of unprocessed, unsorted, that need to be gotten through. And I’m thinking we had Cal Newport, we talked about A World Without Email on the show, and he used the phrase, just haunting, “In some corporate environments, we are human network routers.”

Randall Dean
That’s a good way to put it. I like that a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of, “Okay, here’s a message that’s coming to me. Okay, I can do this thing. I can forward it. No, it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs over here, forward there.” So, for many of us, it’s about processing large volumes, and having help is awesome. Shout out to my producers. I just forward all my pitches to them and they know what to do. It’s like, “Read all of these thoughtfully and tell me which ones are fantastic finalists.” And so, I don’t read 90% of the pitches in my email, and that’s awesome that they do that for me. I greatly appreciate them.

Randall Dean
And that’s a perfect delegation right there, that not enough people, I think, are doing. And so, I always tell people, “If you’re more of a senior level in your management chain and you feel like you’re spending way too much time, especially on low-level emails, that’s a mismatch because you’re getting paid to do higher-level work than low-level emails.”

So, you got to find a way to sort of fix that a little bit. And it’s probably going to require a reallocation of some of the messaging so that you’ve got somebody else helping you with screening a bit. I think that’s a really good way to put it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I am tempted to jump into tips and tactics, but, first, maybe, can you orient us to, you mentioned, okay, almost none of us get training in this. Can you give us a glimmer of hope or inspiration? What’s on the other side of this? Let’s say we do get some training from this insightful conversation with Randy or more, what’s possible? In terms of when we’ve got our email game optimized, what’s the before-after transformation look like?

Randall Dean
I think email is what you could call a necessary nuisance. It’s something you have to deal with and we’re not going to get rid of it. I don’t see anywhere on the horizon where email is going to completely go away. But when you think about what it is, the vast majority of what’s coming in are what I basically say are a whole bunch of hungry squirrels with the occasional big angry dog, right?

And so, basically, you’re trying to figure out, “Which one of these is the big angry dog that’s barking? And how do I reduce the distraction of all these hungry little squirrels?” And so, when you say “What’s on the other side?” I think having a logical triage mentality with processing your emails that requires some new habits.

But if you get into the habits, and you do it well, you will look at your emails less times per email, you might look at your inbox less times per day in total, you will be able to better identify what’s really important or urgent, and you’ll end up without such a big cluttered mess so that it’s not a distraction in and of itself.

You know, I would bet almost every program I’m into, maybe 15-20% of the audience has more than a thousand emails in their inbox that haven’t even been filed or deleted. And I mean that’s common. So, if you’re in that boat, you’ve got a lot of company. But I can also tell you, I know that when you’ve got just got pages and pages and pages of email streaming in your inbox, some marked unread, some flagged, some starred, most of them not, and you don’t know what is most important, that’s stress. I mean, I just think that’s the definition of stress, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. As you described that scene, I could actually feel my heart rate ticking up a bit. So, okay, less stress, fewer times, fewer total minutes there. Could you ballpark it for us? I mean, I’m sure it varies a lot based on roles and responsibilities and email volume. But in terms of untrained to email Jedi Master, what kind of email time savings might we realize?

Randall Dean
Well, it’s interesting. I had one of my university clients at one time, they had to sort of justify the expense of bringing me in to do the program. They did an ROI justification. And what they did was really cool. They actually asked people about a week or two after the program how much time they thought they were saving from the tips they learned in the program, and how confident they were, they were saving that much time.

And, now, the average person was basically saying they were saving more than two hours a week with a good number of them as much as four to six hours per week. Now, I know that may not sound like a lot, but if you could get a half day to three quarters of a day of additional productivity time every week, I think you’d be pretty happy with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And my mind just leaps to running the spreadsheet. So, two hours a week times 50 work weeks a year, 100 hours. What’s that annual rate for those employees? And now that time spent more valuably. So, Randall, unless your workshops cost a quarter million dollars, I’m pretty sure they got their money’s worth.

Randall Dean
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s easy, low-hanging fruit return on investment. I believe that we figured out that if you extrapolate those findings across all users in the room, that the first year ROI in and of itself was over 2,000%.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s what I like to hear.

Randall Dean
Because, like I said, it would be a different math if half the people or more already had this training, but if it’s literally 5% or less, it’s almost impossible not to see a significant productivity improvement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, we’re fired up, Randy. Lay it on us, what do we do to realize these gains?

Randall Dean
Well, when I teach my programs, I’m mostly speaking to professionals using tools like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, and one of the first things you have to do is just understand how software works. Most people don’t know what the software can actually do. And one of my first tips to anybody is, if you’re using a piece of software frequently, daily, multiple hours per day, there may be no better use of your time if you want to be more efficient to spend a little bit of time at least every week learning another new tip.

Because, by learning that extra tip or two over time, you’re just going to get so much more efficient and so much more time back just by understanding how the software works.

And the one example, really interesting thing, because most people are self-taught, I’m going to play a scenario out for you that happens super frequently for a lot of people. They get an email, they open it, they read it far enough to go, “I don’t have time for this right now,” and then they mark it unread or they flag it or they star it. Okay, now right there, let me share with you the statistic that I believe comes from that behavior right there.

The average professional email user tends to look at each and every email they receive, on average, three to seven times before they finally take a smart action with that item. And I think a big part of the reason that’s happening is because they read it, they go, “I don’t have time,” they mark it unread, they flag it, they star it. It stays in the inbox. This is where your inbox mess is coming from too. And then what happens is you’ve just guaranteed you’ve got to go back and look at it again later.

And so, you’re not doing anything. I mean, you’re really not doing anything with that input, but you are giving it time that is basically worthless time that you’re throwing away. And so, one of the things that I share with the people is a little triage method, sort of based a little bit on the work of David Allen, who wrote the book Getting Things Done. I took training from him all the way back in the early ‘90s. And one of the things that I learned from him is, if something is quick, you do it right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Two-minute rule.

Randall Dean
Yeah. If it’s quick, you do it right now, and don’t you dare keep it for later. I love this. Somebody said, “Let’s go to Ohio. OHIO, only handle it once,” right? So, that should be your philosophy when you run into something quick. And I always challenge people in my programs, “If you’re looking at an email, you figure out what you need to do, and it’s only going to take you a couple minutes, and you don’t have time to do that? Why are you looking at your email? Shouldn’t you just keep working on what’s on fire? Why are you looking at your messages if you don’t have time to handle a quick little thing?” So, keep your focus.

But then, when I talked about what’s inside the software, both Outlook, classic Outlook, new Outlook, as well as Gmail have internal capabilities to take an email and quickly convert it into a related task or calendar item.

And so, I say take a few more seconds to get to the point where you know what you need to do next and then turn that item into a task or calendar item. And then once you’ve done that, if you haven’t got it done, but you got it on your task list or calendar, get it out of your inbox. Because, I mean, you’re done for now. It’s time to either file it for later reference or delete it if you don’t need it. And if you don’t have a good place to put it, make one and put it there. Not really rocket science.

I, sometimes, am surprised I get away with this as a living because, really, it’s sort of advanced common sense, but people just don’t think it all the way through, and they’re very inconsistent with how they’re triaging these messages.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, what’s interesting is, I think the reason you are getting away with it is because there’s some psychological things at play here.

Randall Dean

Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis

Because whenever you go to the email, it’s like, “Ooh, here’s new interesting things. Oh, and some of it’s really important and urgent. I better handle it right away.” So, we’re almost never in the mind space like, “Okay, fire up Outlook, fire up Gmail. Hey, you know what? I wonder what all this software is capable of?” Like, we’re not in that headspace to do that.

And those functions, I guess, we’re not as accustomed to them, as well as thinking about the GTD, Getting Things Done, David Allen kind of philosophies of the inbox is merely a temporary repository by which it means, “Hey, you haven’t looked at me yet. Process me out of here in one way or another.” As opposed to, “Let me be the long-term storage facility for messaging.”

Randall Dean

Far too many people are using their inbox for three things. One is to receive and process new items. Two, is their de facto, but very dirty and highly disorganized task list. And, three, is their Uber storage for all things that haven’t left that inbox. And my strong belief, especially with my background understanding some of the GTD-type philosophies is the only one of those three that’s valid is processing new items. That’s what your inbox should be for is processing new items.

If you can deal with it quickly, you get it done. If you can’t deal with it quickly, it then becomes part of your task list or calendar because there, in your task list and calendar, once you understand those tools, you’ll be able to say, “What is the best use of my time right now? Where should I be putting my focus?” And you can’t really do that easily in a big messy cluttered inbox with 200 things marked unread and flagged. It’s just not going to work well.

And then, of course, once you’ve either got it done, got it on your task list, got it on your calendar, get it out of there. You don’t need it in there anymore.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. So, help us out, if we’re worried, like, “Okay, I read a message and I realize, hmm, this is going to take some more thought and attention, and it is not to be dealt with now. I’m not leaving it in my inbox. So, what am I doing with it? And how do I make sure I don’t forget about it and lose it if it’s not in my inbox?”

Randall Dean

Now, simultaneously, when I teach the tip about putting it especially into your task list, I also show in both programs how you can turn on reminders. And then, so what will happen is that task will pop back up on your screen at a time when it’s better for you to see it. Not the email, the task, although the email text is typically inside the task that’s been created.

And so, that way you can say, “Okay, I’ve identified what needs to be done. It’s going to come back and find me when I need to see it. I don’t need to leave it where I have it right now. I can put this thing away if I need to keep it for later, or get rid of it if I don’t need it.” And, I think, by utilizing the reminders that are available in both task and calendar, you can relieve some of that stress.

Of course, now I’m going to say this, I regularly get my inbox down to close to zero every day, which makes a lot of sense because I’m teaching people how to work their inbox. But because of that, what I’m trying to teach people is, once you get that inbox down to close to zero, that’s when you shift your focus to your task list and your calendar by habit.”

“If there’s nothing on my calendar right now, no meetings or blocked time for anything, then I work my task list until it’s time to go back and check my email again, or go to my next meeting.” And so, you just sort of get into this habit of where you’re surfing across those three tools throughout the day, balancing your needs to get your critical focused work done with your needs to periodically get back to people.

And I think if you can get yourself into that habit, that flow, you can both reduce the distraction of your email, reduce the time spent on your email, and potentially increase the time you’re spending on your more important stuff, which is the goal of all this anyway.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, let’s say we’ve scheduled a time, we’re going to spend 30 minutes or so processing this email, and just rocking through it. How do you recommend we execute this step by step? You mentioned triage.

Randall Dean

Yeah. Well, like I said, I think if you’re going to open an email, you look at it once. If you look at it, what do I need to do with it? If it’s quick, deal with it now. OHIO, only handle it once. If it’s not quick, it goes on to your task list or calendar, and then you either file it for later reference or you delete it. And if you don’t have a good place to file it, make one and put it there.

And I will say this, nobody’s perfect at this. I’m not perfect at this. But the closer I get to following that triage mentality when it comes to processing new inputs, especially at the start of the day, but maybe a few more times throughout the day, the more efficient I feel myself getting at dealing with this, once again, necessary nuisance, and keeping the squirrels under control.

So, that’s sort of the goal is, “I want to keep these squirrels from taking over. I want to be in control of this input stream.” And the way to be in control of that is by having a good consistent strategy, habit, routine on how you deal with them and try to stick as close to it as you possibly can.

How much time would you save over a year if you went from looking at the typical email three to seven times, down to once maybe twice max? How much time would that give you in a year?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds like perhaps 100 plus hours.

Randall Dean

I would think so.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, so you mentioned, learn the software. And I remember there was a day, and I was. I was just goofing around in Gmail, and I think in the settings, I saw enable shortcut keys.

Randall Dean

Yeah, yeah, I show that in my Gmail sessions. I actually go in the settings and I click on the link that says keyboard shortcuts. And, I mean, like that’s a classic example. It’s right there in your settings. You click on it, it opens up. It says shortcuts for computer, for Android, for iPad, right? And I’m like, “My gosh.” And then it’s got like 14 categories of ways you can use the shortcuts; each one is its own drop menu with a whole list of potential shortcuts.

And I tell people, I go in there and I show it, and I say, “Now look at this. This is a classic example. Print that. Print it onto a sheet of paper, set it right next to your computer, highlight two, three, four of these things that you want to get really good at, and then practice them for the next week or so. And then once you feel like you got those ones down, cross those out, highlight two, three, four more.

Once you get those done, then go back to the next drop panel and print that one and do the same thing. And if you just did that, picked up two, three of these keyboard shortcuts a week over the next year, you’d be like a maestro. I mean, you would be fantastic and so much more efficient at just doing the normal little stuff on your computer because now you don’t have to move your mouse to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. When I made the discovery, I was astonished at so many levels. One, I thought, “How is it that these have been here the whole time and I was not aware?” Two, “Why were these not just automatically turned on as the default setting?” because I guess it was not at the time. Maybe it still is not. And, three, “How come none of my friends, who know I love productivity, ever felt the need to share this with me,” probably because they assumed I already knew it, and it would be insulting to bring it up to me.

Randall Dean

I’m going to give you a different assumption.

Pete Mockaitis

All right.

Randall Dean

They don’t know about them either, because nobody has the time to go take a look. That’s why I said, especially if you’re using Gmail, just in the last week, I saw two things that have changed. They’re constantly working on things behind the scenes. One of them was really minor. They moved it from the little three dots at the top of the screen to the little three dots over to the side of the screen.

And so, I was doing a live program, and I go where it’s always been, and I’m like, “Uh-oh, it’s not there anymore.” And then, just out of nature, I went over to the one, “Oh, there it is. They moved it.” And they’re doing that kind of stuff constantly. And so, I think when you’re using a tool like Gmail, as well as maybe the new and Web Outlook because those are sort of Cloud-based, real-time being updated type tools, you want to go in and look into your toolkit quite frequently because there’s new stuff showing up all the time.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s telling. And you’re right, and doesn’t take a lot of shortcut knowledge. The ones I use all the time is J for next message and E for archive message.  And you can do a lot of damage if you just say, that’s how I like to triage, I go, “What are the emails I can archive without even really reading? Like, I can just know these can disappear in under three seconds.”

And I go J-E, J-E, J-J-E, E, J-J-J. And it’s just like, boom, flying through it. And it does feel like you’re a maestro. It’s cool. Can you share with us, what are some other software discoveries that are eye-opening and game-changing for people?

Randall Dean

Well, I think one of the biggest ones that most people don’t realize, both Outlook and Gmail, you can actually utilize the Signatures tool as an automated response template manager. So, basically, like let’s say there are certain messages you’re sending all the time, and the same question keeps coming up over and over again. You go into your Sent folder to find the last time you sent it so you can forward it again until the next time you need to send it again.

And every time you’re doing that, you’re spending, I don’t know, a minute, two, three looking for this thing in your sent folder. You could just copy and paste the text of that message. Go into your Signatures tool in both Outlook and Gmail, create a new signature, give it a name, paste that text into the copy field with your signature at the bottom and hit OK. And now from this point forward, that message reply is push button.

So, as soon as somebody sends you the message, you just copy their email address, you go up to your signature, you pop that into the message, put their name in the Send field, personalize the “Hi, Joe” and then, boom, in like five seconds, you’re sending that message. Not two minutes. Five seconds. And so, that’s like a great example of a way that once you learn the way the software works and what it can do. I always tell people get the word signatures out of your head, replace it with automated email sender, and use that three to five times a day, that you just got half an hour right there.

Pete Mockaitis

Lovely. Well, boy, there is so much we could cover. So, Randy, I’ll just leave it to you to curate. Could you give us maybe the top three transformational tips or practices in terms of this takes very few minutes but it will yield you very many hours?

Randall Dean

One of the things, and this is a little bit of a technical tip, so I’ll describe it, but it always gets the oohs and aahs when I’m doing my program. Did you know that you can just highlight a piece of text in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs? You can highlight it, release the click, then pick it up and move it to a different place.

And here’s the thing, it’s like almost like a shortcut to copy and paste, cut and paste. And the thing is that it works on all of these tools – Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Google Slides, even on a lot of web forms it works. And if you can get really good at this, it’s like this quick little thing that you can do to allow you to take a piece of information that’s in the wrong place in your document or file, and quickly move it to the right place in your document or file.

And little tips like that, I think, can, you know, I will say, you know, when I show that to people and they’re all going like, “I didn’t know that I could do that.” I go, “Ah, I just gave you three days this year. There’s your three days.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I guess we’re saving the Command X and the Command V steps in doing that. Okay.

Randall Dean

And, I mean, it’s literally going to save you a second or two every time, but that second or two, multiplied by 40,000 times a year, it’s going to add up. The other one that I love is that a lot of people don’t realize this. When you’re creating folders, that you can use a special character, like an exclamation point, or even a number, and that will allow your folders to supersede alphabetization. So, what you can do is identify the folders you use the most or that are most important, and move them to the top of your folders list.

And that’s another one that is just like a no-brainer, super time saver, because now, instead of having to go all the way through the alphabet, you’re truncating that, and you can get to the folders you use most frequently right there at the top of your list. And that works not just in your email. It works in both Outlook and Gmail, but it also works in tools like OneDrive and Google Drive with your folders for your documents and files. You can actually move up your most used folders to the top and save a ton of time there, too.

Pete Mockaitis

Nifty. Okay. What else have you got?

Randall Dean

The other one that I really love is to get into the settings, you might need to go into rules in Outlook. You can also do this in New Outlook. You might have to go into Settings, Mail, Notifications. So, they’ve sort of moved it just a little bit. And in Gmail, you might have to go in and set up a filter to do this to make it all work.

But the basic tip is this, identify who your most important senders are. You know how I talked about the big angry dog? You want to identify, “Who sends me emails that are my big angry dogs?” Because what you can do in these tools is you can then go in and tell Outlook and Gmail, “These are my most important people. So, when they send me a message, I would like a pop-up or I would like a unique sound.”

And that means that you don’t necessarily have to get distracted by every squirrel, but when it’s one of those most important people, you certainly can. You can be, “Okay, boom! You know what? I’ll make a different sound, ‘Dun-da-dun-dun’ instead of ‘Doo-doo-doo-doon,’” you’ve been here for years and years, you’ll hear the “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.” “Oh, I got to stop for a second, I got to see what this one is.”

And so, that way you don’t feel like you have to look at everything coming in right now because you know that the really important things are going to probably jump up and get you, which means that actually, you might feel a little bit more comfortable keeping your focus on things, knowing that it’s going to tell you when the big angry dogs bark.

And I’ll even add one little micro thing about this. That same capability of setting up those rules can also allow you to set rules to auto-delete things that you don’t want to see at all. So, not only can it help you know when your most important people are trying to get a hold of you. It can also get rid of a bunch of the junk and spam automatically so it’s not even taking two seconds of your time.

Pete Mockaitis

Cool.

Randall Dean

So, it’s both sides. It helps on both sides of this. One last thing I’ll say is Outlook, specifically, will even allow you to set a priority level. So, like, I want to know when I get an email from my boss that is marked important. See, and it will only make the special sound when it’s from my boss marked important.

In that way if you’ve got an enlightened boss, who’s also taken my program, they’re going to learn that they should only mark emails important when they want faster action. Everything else can just be processed in normal strategy. And I always make the joke, “If every email you send is marked urgent or important, none of your emails are truly urgent or important.”

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. Well, tell me, Randy, any final things you want to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Randall Dean

Once you get this efficiency regained, then you can actually take advantage of some of the other tools in in the suite – calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, maybe tools like OneNote or Google Keep, Teams, Drive, Planner – to get significantly more prioritized and strategic with that extra time you’ve now created.

And if you can get to where, you know, you get that email under control, it’s not taking quite as much of your day, you’re getting some of these efficiencies in time, then maybe you can actually step your game up to be a little bit more prioritized, more strategic, more effective, because now you’ve got this new necessary nuisance under control a bit.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Randall Dean

Well, it’s funny. I put it in my book. The quote is from Gandhi. It’s, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But I then put right under it, “Be the change you wish to see in your inbox.” 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Randall Dean

It’s more than 20 years old now, it was by the group called Basics. And they actually did a study where they got permission to go into a whole bunch of different organizations, have their researchers stand around just waiting and watching for people getting unexpectedly interrupted, and they tracked what happened.

And they found an interesting thing, that people that get unexpectedly interrupted in the workplace, after that interruption has been handled, they answered the question, they had the conversation, they get off the phone call. The interruption is now over. If they’re not ready for that interruption when it first occurred, they will then spend an additional four to 15 minutes each and every time before they get back to what they were working on, because they lost their place and they forgot what they were doing.

And so, the little micro tip that I share is, if somebody interrupts you, you can just go, “One second, please,” grab a sticky note and write down exactly what it is you need to do next on whatever you’re working on, put that right on your computer screen. And the goal of that is so that you’re basically leaving yourself bookmarks throughout the day, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I was doing.”

So, the interruptions can still happen, and I even say, I think it will help your communication quality because if you don’t do that, what are you very often doing the whole time you’re talking to that person?

Pete Mockaitis

To remember you’re still doing the thing, yeah.

Randall Dean

Trying to remember where you’re at, which means what are you not doing, listening? And that is where mistakes and errors of omission creep in, too. So, I think that’s just a classic little study that can then morph into it. And I always conflate that, you know, four to fifteen minutes per, and then I will ask my audience, I’ll go, “What do you think, 10 to 25 a day, 10 to 25 unexpected phone calls, stop-bys, interruptions, text messages?” And people give me the head nod.

I go, “If I’m right on this, that means you’re losing 45 minutes to as much as two hours a day just because you’re getting distracted that many times per day. And if you can get it down to where you have a strategy for that, that could create another hour or two, daily.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And a favorite book?

Randall Dean

It’s called Clutter’s Last Stand by Don Aslett.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Randall Dean

Don’t start your day in your inbox. Start your day in your calendar for a few minutes. Not just looking at today, but looking forward to see if there’s anything coming you need to get ready for. Are there any blocks of time that you could block for more strategic use on your key projects or activities? And then build a short, focused task list for today that matches your key projects and responsibilities, but also your available time.

If you’re doing that right, that should only take you three to five minutes at the start of the day. But you want to do that before you even dare open your inbox. Because if you open your inbox first, it’s basically like going over the door of the office, opening the door, and saying, “Come on in, squirrels! Take over,” right?

So, I want you to get into your time, your projects, and your tasks for a few minutes before opening your email so that you put that email into perspective. And then if the email fully takes over, it probably should. It probably is the most important thing. But if you’re not looking at your calendar and your projects and tasks first, how do you know? You’re just guessing.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Randall Dean

I would just say go out and check out my website, RandallDean.com, pretty easy. That’s Randall, R-A-N-D-A-L-L. And if you go out to RandallDean.com, I’m also on LinkedIn. I would say search “Randy Dean” to find me. And I have a popular and growing YouTube channel too, and I think you could just type in Randy Dean, email, and it’ll probably, something of mine’s going to pop up right near the top of the list, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Randall Dean

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Pick two, three, four pieces of low-hanging fruit, do those first, baby steps. You don’t have to become an expert overnight, but find those really good nuggets wherever you find them and try to integrate those right away, and then build your system from there.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Randy, this is fun. Thank you.

Randall Dean

Yeah, I had a good time.

1024: Crafting your Own Ideal Time Management System with Anna Dearmon Kornick

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Anna Dearmon Kornick shares essential tools and tricks for managing your time and energy well.

You’ll Learn

  1. What most forget when planning out their day
  2. How to keep little tasks from distracting you 
  3. How to arrange your week to maximize energy 

About Anna 

Anna Dearmon Kornick is a highly sought after time management coach and keynote speaker, top 1% globally ranked podcast host of It’s About Time, and founder of the It’s About Time Academy. A true Louisiana firecracker who has become known for making time management fun, Anna helps busy professionals and business owners struggling with overwhelm manage their time using her personality-driven HEART Method.

Building on more than a decade of experience in the fast-moving, high-stakes world of political and crisis communications, it’s no surprise that Anna thrives on creating order out of chaos. Early in her career, she wrangled media for a Lt. Governor and managed the hectic schedule of a U.S. Congressman. Her rapid response background and relentless approach to problem-solving position her as the go-to expert for purpose-driven time management for busy professionals.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Anna Dearmon Kornick Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anna, welcome!

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Hey, Pete, how you doing?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m lovely. How are you doing?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’m doing great. Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear some of your time management wisdom. You have had some cool experiences from wrangling some hectic schedules in your professional world, so, I’d love to hear any really surprising insights about time management that you know and we don’t, but we should know?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll tell you an insight that I learned very early in my, I guess you could call it time management career. My first job straight out of college was as a scheduler to a United States Congressman.

And my very first week on the job, I was so excited to dive in and create the most perfect schedule anyone had ever seen. And on day one, mid-morning on Monday, our chief of staff Clayton walks up to me, and he says, “Anna, we have a problem.” And my heart absolutely sank, I had no idea what I could have done wrong. And he points out that I’d forgotten something very important, and it’s something that a lot of us actually tend to forget.

And he shared with me that the boss was not a robot, and that he needed bathroom breaks built into his schedule. And I was absolutely mortified. And it was such an important reminder very early in my career that we are all human, and that taking breaks is just as important as making sure that there’s time allotted to get things done.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, we are all human, and time needs to be allotted. As we’re having this conversation, this is the day that, well, President Jimmy Carter’s funeral is occurring in the Washington Cathedral. And I caught some of the news showing that live broadcast. And it was sort of a unique moment watching all these presidents.

Just sitting and waiting. Just like the rest of us, like there are times, it was like, “No, a funeral is about to start. We are sitting and we are waiting for things to occur because even though we are super powerful, wealthy, important, that’s just kind of a reality. Like, they, too, need bathroom breaks and need to eat and sleep and do all the things, though that’s not put on the news stations.” So I think that’s a great point right there, is that whether or not you’ve scheduled it, these things must happen.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you’re in a highly scheduled environment, it sounds like that was your duty to literally put a line item in the calendar, which says, “Restroom.” Or, how is that operationally executed, if I may ask, Anna?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You know, that’s a great question. It really looked like making sure that there was 15 minutes of buffer. Between every two meetings, there needed to be 15 minutes of buffer just in case, so often, when we think about time management, we tend to think about getting as much accomplished as possible and squeezing in as many things as possible into our day. But if that is the only lens through which we look at time management, we’re setting ourselves up for failure because the perfect day, maybe on paper, where you maximize every single minute of your day, it just doesn’t work in real life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, I’m so fascinated by the notion of scheduling every minute of another person’s life and what that experience is like for you when you’re fresh into your first kind of professional role there.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I know it’s a crazy concept to think about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so I guess help me out, literally, in that calendar, you’re having sleeping, waking up, and showering. Like, you have this written in there for every piece?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yes, that was all completely time blocked. So, I know your audience is no stranger to time blocking. It’s creating a block in your calendar that represents how you’ll spend that time, and we essentially knew that in order. So, as a congressman, as anyone in a high-powered, high-responsibility position, you have to divide your time in a lot of different ways. 

And so, without having a minute-by-minute itinerary for the day, it’s nearly impossible to divide your time between all of these different pieces that have to be tended to.

And, of course, it took a really important upfront conversation of, “What do you want your day to look like? What type of breaks do you need?”

But it really had to look at, “Okay, so you want to work out, in the mornings. How long do you need to work out? What does that transition time look like from the gym back to the office? How much time do I need to block out?” I got really acquainted with using Google Maps and traffic projections in order to understand transition time from point A to point B because that was so key in making sure that buffer time was included.

Really, every single thing had to be thought of and accounted for to ensure that the day went smoothly and that we were able to have him show up everywhere that he needed to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what I find intriguing about this notion is, I guess maybe I’m just sort of like a creative, free thinking, I like to get into my flow. Like, that’s my favorite is like, “Oh, there’s nothing this afternoon. Let’s just dream up some things.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, you should not be a congressman then. I would not recommend that path for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think for several reasons, but I guess what’s funny though is if you are proactively taking into account every minute and the travel time, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that having a schedule that looks visually jam packed actually feels emotionally stressed, rushed, hurried, exhausting. It’s like, “What’s on my calendar? Oh, 45 minutes for strolling to the gym, exercising, and strolling back. All right then, I’ll just enjoy doing that now. Cool.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I mean, what’s so interesting is that. A lot of my work as a time management coach now incorporates your personality and the way that you think, the way you make decisions, the way you approach structure, closure, open-endedness, all of those things, it deeply impacts the way that you spend your time and manage your time.

And for many people, a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule feels freeing because everything has been accounted for, and they’re not having to make minute-by-minute decisions as their day goes on because everything’s been planned. All they have to do is adapt as they need to. But for other people, having a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule is just an opportunity to rebel and do the opposite of what is on the schedule.

Like, “No, nobody is going to tell me what to do, not even me and my calendar.” And so, it’s really important to understand. I mean, you mentioned, “Hey, if I’m a creative type, I want to have time to think.” Having that minute-by-minute schedule probably wouldn’t be the best route for you to take. I would recommend something else for you. But if you have that type of personality where the structure feels like freedom, then time-blocking the heck out of your day or your week is going to feel right for you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. Well, I’d love it you could perhaps share with us a cool story of someone who saw a transformation with regard to their relationship to time management, where they were, what they did, and where they landed.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, it really makes me think back to a client that I worked with a few years ago. I’m going to call her Amanda. And when Amanda and I started working together, she was completely overwhelmed to the point where she felt hopeless. She was working in a job that honestly had her working 24/7. She was never putting her laptop away. She was missing out on spending time with her family and friends. She felt like life was completely passing her by and that she was completely just drowning in work, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

She reached out, and she said, “I feel like this is my last hope. Let’s work together, let’s figure this out.” And so, working with Amanda, we started, step by step, sorting out what it is she actually wanted her life to look like. And the thing is that, for so long, she had just been kind of swept up in this wave of everyone else’s expectations, of what her parents wanted for her, of what she thought that she was supposed to be doing.

And she realized that she wasn’t really doing anything that she truly wanted to do. And so, for the first time in her life, she actually started to create a vision for her life and what she wanted. And she started getting really clear about what she wanted for her future. And a lot of times you might think, “Wait, what does this even have to do with time management?” But without a vision for your future, you have no direction, you have no decision points about how to spend your time.

And so, I encouraged Amanda to write a letter to herself from a future version of herself. So, we worked together in 2020, and she wrote a letter to herself from 2025 Amanda. And in this letter, she poured into all of the things that she was currently doing, that she owned a home, that she was in a job that she loved, that she worked in an office with exposed brick and huge windows, that she had time to spend with her family and friends, and that, more than anything, she was happy and proud of herself.

Now, staying in touch with Amanda over the last five years, because it’s 2025 now, I’ve had the opportunity to watch her set boundaries in how much time she spends working. I’ve had the opportunity to watch her take care of herself by leaving work in order to actually go to the gym and work out. I’ve watched her invest in her health. I’ve even seen her, she called me the day that she bought a new car, the car that she had always wanted.

And it was such a huge step for her because she was finally doing something for herself that she wanted. And she reached out to me a couple months ago, and she said, “I’m about to step into 2025 Amanda, and almost every single thing that I wrote in my letter five years ago has come true. And it’s come true because of the vision that I created and the way that I shaped my time to match that vision.”

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. All right. Well, I think we’d all love a little more of that going on in our lives. That’s delightful. So, tell us, I think we’ve all heard some tips or tricks, some listicles, maybe we’ve got an app or some tools that we dig, can you share with us perhaps, fundamentally.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, a lot of times when we want to make a change to the way that we’re spending our time, we want to go straight to our calendars or our to-do lists and start rearranging things. We want to download an app or try a habit tracker. But the thing is that, whenever you go straight to trying to rearrange things or add a new hack or an app, you’re starting in the wrong place. The biggest mistake that most of us make when it comes to improving our time management is that we skip the most important first step.

And it’s exactly what I shared about Amanda. It’s creating that vision for your future. And the thing is that, when you have that vision, you have a direction to move in. You know where you’re going because every single decision you make about how you spend your time either gets you closer to or further away from that vision. But let’s say you have that vision, you know what it is that you want, then what? How do you actually make that happen?

So, that’s where I like to share basically my time management Swiss army knife. I really think that there are three core tools that really serve as the foundation for time management once you have that vision in place. And that’s time blocking, task batching, and theme days. Time blocking, task batching and theme days. When you are able to pull one of these tools from that time management Swiss army knife, you’re able to do a couple things.

So, there are two productivity pitfalls that all of us are constantly fighting, whether we realize it or not. One of those is Parkinson’s Law. So, Parkinson’s law tells us that work expands to fill the time available. And you might be like, “No, Anna, I would stop working at some point. Work’s not going to expand all over the place.” But the thing is that it does.

When we don’t have a clear understanding of what done or complete or enough or success looks like, there’s always something else that we can tweak or adjust or edit in order to get ever so much closer to impossible to reach perfection. And so, we just kind of keep going without a limit. But when you use time blocking, you’re able to beat Parkinson’s law because a time block gives you a set start time and a set end time. And it helps you contain that work within a specific timeframe.

Anybody who has ever said, “I am so good at working under pressure. You give me a last-minute deadline and I can crank it out.” That’s Parkinson’s law making that happen. Because when you have that set deadline, you find a way to make it work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, when it comes to the time blocking, I totally hear you that the work will expand to fill the time allotted for it. Although, I don’t think that the reverse quite works, in the sense of, if I say, “I’m going to accomplish this thing in 12 minutes,” but, like, it’s actually impossible. How do you think about setting an appropriate amount of time for a thing?

Because I’ve heard studies show that we humans are not the best at estimating how long something actually takes. But at the same time, I see there is value in having a number there that keeps us from spinning our wheels and going to unnecessary layers of iteration that are really not that helpful. So, I think you can assign too much time, you can assign too little time, and we’re not that good at it. How do you go about blocking an appropriate amount of time?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Okay, I love that because you actually stepped right into the next productivity pitfall, which is the planning fallacy. So, that thing, that study show, it has a name. The planning fallacy states that humans are terrible at estimating how much time things take. And when you know that that exists, then you can do something about it, right? Because it’s kind of like the first step is acknowledging that there’s a problem. Our first step to getting better at estimating how long things take is acknowledging that we’re all naturally pretty terrible at it.

So, I really encourage my clients to kind of create their own formula. My rule of thumb is if you think something is going to take an hour, add an additional 30 minutes. If you think something is going to take 12 minutes, give yourself an additional 12 to 30 minutes, just in case. Because most of the time we are going to underestimate. So, anytime you think, “Hey, I think it’s to take me about this long,” add more time. You’re probably going to need it.

And if you want to take it even a step further, so let’s say that it’s something that you do on a regular basis, maybe it’s submitting invoices, or doing some type of report, or just something that you’re doing on a regular basis, time yourself. Next time you do it, time yourself. See how long it takes because that’s going to give you a much better example to refer to in the future is when you have some actual data to work with.

Me, personally, I am not a huge fan of time tracking for the sake of time tracking. But sometimes one of the most valuable exercises that we can do is a time study where you spend time tracking how you are spending your time for the course of a week in 15-minute increments because it is so telling and it exposes all of those places where we waste time, that we don’t even realize that we’re doing things that we don’t even realize that we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that is handy, yes. And I also like the notion of when you put more time than you estimate is necessary, I think that creates just really nice psychological feedback things going on because sometimes I get frustrated with like, “Ugh, this thing is taking way longer than it ‘should.’” And that makes it more aggravating as opposed to, “Oh, wow, I allocated an hour and a half for this thing. And by good fortune, it only took 52 minutes.” Well, then, one, I feel like a winner, like, yay me. And, two, it feels like there’s a little bit of a present, like, “Ah, well, here we have this extra time right here.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Bonus time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, “What shall I do with this surplus?”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I love that. I love that. You know, that actually reminds me of something that I shared with a client yesterday called the shiny things list. So, we can have the most pristine organized environment to work in, we can turn off all of our notifications, put our phone in airplane mode, but we still have ourselves and we can sometimes be the most distracting thing in the room. We’ll start working on something, like you said, “I gave myself an hour and a half to work on this and it only took 52 minutes.”

And in that 52 minutes, we remember that we need to order toilet paper and have it shipped, and that we need to get a birthday card for our mom, and that we need to follow up with Tony about the Jones report. And so, what we tend to do naturally is we stop what we’re working on to order the toilet paper to have it shipped from Amazon, and we stop what we’re working on to order a birthday card, or to make a note, or to stop what we’re doing and we check in with Tony about that report.

And we end up ping-ponging around to all of these different things, which ends up slowing us down, causing us to make more mistakes on the thing that we’re trying to focus on and just making it take a lot longer. And so, what I encourage people to do is to have a notepad right next to your desk so that, as you are working, let’s say that you have an hour and a half to get something done, so at the top of our notepad, we’re going to write down, “One o’clock to 2:30 because, boom, that’s the time that I’m committing to work.”

And then below that, we’re going to make a list of the three things we’re going to accomplish in that timeframe. Now, you might only set out to do one thing, but what if you finish it in 52 minutes? Then you have this bonus time. And what do most of us do with bonus time, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Social media. News.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You got it. We just kind of flop into default mode when we could transition that focus time into something else useful. So, I love to recommend, “Okay, what are the one, two or three things that you’re going to accomplish during that focus time so that you’re able to go straight into the next thing without having that waffly decision mode?” And then once you have those three things decided, you draw a line underneath it, that’s your line in the sand, and then you write, “Shiny things.” The more scribbly you can write shiny things, the better because it really emphasizes, like, the frivolity of them. And then you get to work.

And every time something pops into your head, instead of acting on it immediately, you write it on your shiny things list. You contain your shiny things instead of chasing them. And so, after you finish this work block, and you have this list of shiny things, now you have some decisions to make. You can decide, “Do I need to do these now? Do I want to defer them to later? Do I want to delegate them to someone or delete them altogether?” But the point is that you didn’t go off on a million different rabbit holes. You stayed focused because you didn’t chase your shiny things.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s a good feeling, too, because there’s a little bit, again, psychologically, when I have the idea, it’s like, “Ooh, there’s a thing that I should do,” and it comes into mind, we do tend to do them right away, because there’s a little bit of a tension. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to forget. This is in my mind, and that’s the way to relieve that pressure of it being in my mind.” But you could also just write it down, and then it’s like, “Oh, and here they are all captured here. How handy.” Super. Okay, so we got time blocking, task blocking. And then theme days?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Theme days, yes. So, I love theme days, and theme days are especially a good fit for people who want flexible structure. So, if you’re the kind of person who, having a minute-by-minute time blocked schedule, makes you feel itchy, then a theme day is probably going to be the best bet for you. So, it’s basically choosing a different theme for each day of your week.

So, let’s say you’re in a marketing role. And maybe Mondays, you want to make that social media Mondays. And that’s the day that you focus on creating social media content. It doesn’t matter if you write captions in the morning or in the afternoon, as long as it gets done on social media Monday. Maybe on Tuesdays, you call it, “Tell them all about it Tuesdays.” And that’s the day that you put together PR pitches and do media outreach and write your newsletter. Again, it doesn’t matter when it happens during the day, as long as it happens.

Go a step further. Wednesday could be website Wednesday. You can come up with a different theme for each day of the week. And what this does is that it creates some mental consistency for you. It puts you in a consistent mindset all throughout the day so that, even though you’re working on a collection of tasks that are related, you’re not jumping from one moment writing a social media post, to then sending an invoice, to then updating a website. Those are all three very different mental processes and ways of thinking.

And so, it enables you to really streamline your energy, your creativity, and your focus and to basically shape your day around each of these themes. It’s also really cool because it helps you create consistency and set expectations for yourself about when you can accomplish certain things. And it helps you set expectations with your team if you’re collaborating with others. Because if your team knows that, “Hey, every Wednesday is Anna’s website Wednesday,” they know that they’ve got to get any updates to you by Tuesday afternoon so that you can incorporate them on Wednesday, you know?

And so, theme days can be a really great way to introduce some flexible structure that helps you be more efficient with your time, your creativity, and, plus, it’s just fun to use alliteration and come up with fun names for theme days. I mean, to me, that’s like half the fun.

Pete Mockaitis
I was asking if alliteration was required.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I mean, personally, I think it should be, but you do whatever you want.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s nifty about themes is the organizing principle of the theme can be any number of things. Like, when you say website Wednesday, it’s sort of like, “Okay, on website Wednesday, there are a number of,” let’s say, “environmental context things in play.”

Like, “Okay, I’m going to be in an office at a computer with some quiet. I’m going to have a few pages or tools open and at my disposal.” And so, in so doing, there’s time savings that just shows up because I’m not logging into a new thing, and they got the two-factor authentication, you know, blah blah blah blah. It’s like, “I’m doing that once, and then, all right, and then I’m in the thing, and then away we go. Cool.” And, likewise, you are well equipped. It’s like you’ve got all your stuff for doing the thing at hand.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Your mise en place.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and you’re in the mental groove, and you have like a bit of expectation and understanding of, like, in a way, you’re almost warmed up. So, I see a lot of value in the themes. And in my experience, sometimes you can even just have like a theme half day in terms of, “Well, hey, before lunch is this theme, and after lunch is that theme.”

Anna Dearmon Kornick
One hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
And in the startup communities, they talk a lot about the maker schedule versus the manager schedule, which I think is fantastic because those feel wildly different. Like, “I’m creating some stuff thinking deeply and I’m not available to anyone, go away,” versus, “I am super responsive. I am your most accessible, friendly, quick manager and collaborator you could dream of because I’ve got the slack. I’ve got the email. I got all the text, window. I got all the things to message and communicate up a storm quickly,” and they do feel totally different.

So, I would love some of your pro tips from your clients in terms of like themes, categories, contexts, mind states. What are some buckets that you find pretty handy for holding a variety of things together in a theme?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, I love this. I love this question so much. And if you have not had a chance to read the book, Mind Management Over Time Management, I think is the name of it. It’s by Dan Kadavy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, David Kadavy. That sounds like David Kadavy.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
David, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he’s been on the show a couple times. He’s a buddy.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I thought so. I loved that book so much, and I’ve actually taken a lot of what he shared and incorporated that into some of the way that I teach theme days because it’s just so good. But when we think about different ways to approach theme days, we have to think about the way that our mind works. And that Monday morning time block is when we are freshest, typically when we are most energized.

And so, any opportunity that you have to give yourself heads down work on Monday morning is going to be huge. So, that could look like thinking about what is your most important project right now, what is the most important thing that you need to do in order to move your goals forward, and stick that Monday morning, if that’s when you’re going to be at your best.

I’ve had people make that their book writing time. So, Monday is for content. Monday is for marketing. Monday is for really just that heads-down thought work because that’s when we’re at our freshest. And we decline during the course of the day. Our energy gradually drops. We have a little bit of a second wind in the early evening, but, typically, we start fresh. And so, like you mentioned, using the half day theme concept.

It’s also great to think about your day in terms of two parts, “What is your before-lunch theme? What is your after-lunch theme?” I have some clients who arrange their days based on the different industries that they support. So, I have a handful of consultants or PR advertising agency folks, and rather than, in one day working on an industrial client and a health care client and a food and beverage client, instead, they align their days with, “Okay, Monday is my healthcare day. Tuesday is my hospitality and hotel day. Wednesday is my education and nonprofit day.”

And this, again, allows them to align their thinking in a streamlined way. They get into that groove, that flow state, even though they’re performing different tasks, it’s all under that same umbrella. I have different clients who have created research theme days, if part of their work involves research or academic writing so that they’re able to identify when during their week are they at their best for that type of work, and they arrange their theme days accordingly.

I’ll say that the most consistent theme day on Friday is admin and, like, financial catchup because a lot of the time, by the time we reach the end of the week, we’re kind of spent. We need to kind of take it easy. And so, a lot of times my clients choose to make Fridays either a no-meeting day or a light meeting day, and they use it to catch up on tracking metrics or completing reports or updating databases because it’s a light lift before they do an afternoon planning session heading into the weekend.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I also like the notion of when it is, is that groove. Like, sometimes I enjoy, I don’t know what I would call it. I call it in my brain, like, task slaying in that there are many little things.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Pebbles.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go. Pebbles. That’s fun. And, I’m just going to obliterate them. And it feels so good because a lot of them, it’s sort of like they’ve been lingering for a while. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got some laundry there. I should probably handle that.” So, it’s sort of like, it’s surfaced in my consciousness numerous times. And there are things like tidying, replenishing supplies, email. I like the OmniFocus Task Manager. There’s some time management dork-ness for you.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, old voicemail clutter. It’s like there’s lots of little things and they’re kind of weighing on me a little bit, and have been weighing on me a little bit repeatedly, and to decide, “This is the afternoon in which I’m going to annihilate many of these things in quick succession,” feels just phenomenal.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, yes, it does. Pete, you would love a pebble power hour.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
You would love them. So, when I’m working with my clients, we like to break down the things on their to-do list, the things in their life as boulders, big rocks, and pebbles. Boulders being those things that are important and not urgent that help you show up as your best self. Big rocks being your project-oriented tasks, the things that really move the needle in your life and work. But then there are pebbles, and pebbles are everything else. Those are those little tasks and to-dos that weigh on you.

My favorite example of a pebble is filling out a reimbursement form because I can think of a few things that are less mundane than filling out a reimbursement form, and like tidying up your email, and all of those things. And so, I really encourage people, over the course of the week, to put all of those little tiny tasks in a different place. Don’t let them swim alongside your most important tasks.

We want to separate out your pebbles because, let’s say Friday afternoon, you schedule a pebble power hour for yourself. You’ve got just set a timer for an hour and knock out as many of those little bitty insignificant tasks as you can. You’re going to feel amazing heading into the weekend because you’ve just done this total dopamine burst of accomplishing so many little things.

And you’re clearing your plate and you’re lightening your load because individually each one of those tasks is small, but they add up to weigh on you, and they pull you down and they hold you back from really giving your all to what’s most important. So, hey, maybe you need a Pete’s pebble power hour on Friday afternoon to knock out all those little things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, even more alliteration. Okay. And Anna, I’d love your take on what is some common advice that is just wrong or bad or ill-advised and you recommend we disavow entirely?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’d say that the worst advice that’s out there, really, can be applied to any, so any time management system, okay? If you do not follow it 100 % and correctly and by the book, the way that it is written, then you are failing. And let me make sure that I’m super clear about that. There are so many different ideas and books and thoughts and methods around time management and organization. And what is so disheartening to me is to talk with someone who has tried to follow a system, but it doesn’t work for them. And they think that they are the problem.

But what’s really happening here is that the system as written is not a match for the way that they think. It’s not a match for their lifestyle. It’s not a match for who they are. And I hate to see people think that there’s something wrong or broken about them because a system that worked perfectly for someone else didn’t work for them. And so, the flip side of that advice is, adapt. Take what’s out there and use what works for you.

If you find an amazing book on time management and you try some things, but maybe part of it doesn’t work for you, it’s not a you-problem. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. Just adapt it, treat it like an experiment, keep trying. The more self-awareness that you have and the better you’re able to understand yourself and how you think.

I mean, this is exactly why I have my clients take the Myers-Briggs as soon as we start working together because it’s so incredibly revealing, and it’s such a boost to their self-awareness, which helps them take what they need and leave what they don’t to create a system that works for them instead of trying to copy and paste something else that’s out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Anna, I love that a lot. It reminds me, we had a conversation with BJ Fogg from Stanford, who’s fantastic, and he wrote the book Tiny Habits, in terms of he likes to think about it as, I believe he calls it behavior design, which is just fun because design conjures images of whiteboards and Post-it notes and Sharpies. And it’s, like, we’re trying to design something that works. And if what we have done hasn’t worked, it doesn’t mean it’s a moral failure, “Oh, I’m lazy. I’m insufficiently committed. I have an addiction to social media,” or whatever, and, hey, maybe we do.

But it’s not like, “Through my fault, my own grievous fault, I’m bad and evil.” It’s just that, “No, this design isn’t quite fitting. It’s not quite working.” And I like to think about it sort of like when you’re organizing a space, if an item does not fit on a shelf, it’s not because the item is bad or the shelf is bad. It’s just that these shapes and sizes of these things are not compatible with each other. There’s no value judgment. It just means that shelf is not the ideal place for this item and we have to figure out where is a better fitting place.

And, likewise, with some of this tiny habit stuff or these systems, I likewise feel that satisfaction just as it is, at least I find it, and I’m not that organized of a person, it is delightful when you have an item that fits perfectly into a place. 

So, too, I think about that when you’ve got a real great lock for an activity and a schedule. It’s, like, “Oh, this matches my groove and my mode and my flow and my energy and the time available. Like, this activity matches this space in my calendar, oh, so just right and it feels delightful.” But the flip side, I’m thinking also about David Allen, Getting Things Done, and he’s been on the show, and I think he’s phenomenal.

But he will mention, and I think it’s kind of a tough reality that the mind-like-water mental clarity amazing space is primarily achieved when, in fact, you have completely absolved your brain from the task of remembering things. And so, if you do not have a system that you sufficiently trust and have sufficiently downloaded all of the stuff from your brain into that system, then you will not experience the peace and freedom that comes from exercising the Getting Things Done, GTD system.

So, it’s a little bit tricky because it’s almost like, “If you’re not doing it perfectly, you’re not reaping the benefits.” And yet, I think it’s semi-true that there are tremendous diminishing returns from being able to completely trust your system and having all contents downloaded out of your brain than being able to 92% trust your system and have 92% of the contents downloaded out of your brain.

But at the same time, it’s not like a shame-on-me value judgment thing. The answer is more of a, “Okay, how could I tweak my system to get that lingering 8% out of there and experience all the wonders that can be enjoyed?” What’s your hot take on all this distinguishing, Anna?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll never forget, I was listening to an episode of Beyond the To-Do List podcast. Love that one. And David Allen himself said that he does not follow GTD 100% all the time. And hearing him say that felt like such a wave of relief washed over me because, to that point, I was struggling because I’d implemented a lot of what was in GTD, and it was before I’d become fully confident in taking what worked and leaving what didn’t.

And it almost felt like permission to customize it to the way that it worked for my life. And I’ve had so many clients come to me feeling like failures because they were unable to use another system 100% copy and pasted. And so, I aim, instead of for, “Hey, let’s go all in on whatever this is.” Let’s not focus on all or nothing behavior, or all or nothing implementation. Let’s look at all or something. What’s the good, better, best?

You know, like you said, the 92%. What if I trusted 92%, and I have 92% of my things downloaded? Sure, there’s still that 8% there, but, like, is it even worth it to struggle and push to get that remaining 8% out of your head when 92% is really freaking good? That’s nice. That’s awesome. And so, like, let’s celebrate getting really far, and let’s celebrate the progress, and let’s be really happy with how far we’ve come instead of how we’re not doing it perfectly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, sounds good. Well, Anna, let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, my favorite quote of all time is “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” by Albert Einstein.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, actually, I think that instead of jumping straight to something that a scientist has done, I just want to give a shout out to Laura Vanderkam and the work that she has done with collecting time studies and what she has learned about the way that women, professionals, people actually spend their time during the course of a week.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
The One Thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And a favorite tool?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I can’t live without Asana.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Every Sunday evening, I like to refill all of my supplements while doing a face mask. And I like to pair those, like do some habit stacking, habit pairing, and it’s such a really nice way to take care of myself heading into the week. You should try it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
It’s that time management doesn’t start on the pages of our planners. It starts by getting to the heart of what matters most.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, so I would love for you to head over to check out my podcast. It’s called It’s About Time. It’s a podcast about work, life, and balance, with new episodes that go live every single Monday. You can find it in your favorite podcast app. So, that’s where I would love to keep in touch with you.

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

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah. So, if you’re looking to be awesome at your job, my challenge to you is to think about what do you want your life to look like five years from now? What’s that vision that you have for your life, and not just at the job description level? What do you want your house to look like, your relationships, your family, your fitness, your wellbeing, what’s going on inside of your head? All of that is what adds up to create your vision. And when you’re clear on your vision, every single decision you make about how to manage your time becomes so much easier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anna, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many beautiful days.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Thank you, Pete. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me.