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Productivity Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Aug 20
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1175: Reclaiming Time through Effective Delegation to Humans and AI with Ari Meisel

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

Ari Meisel shows you how to optimize, automate, and outsource your way into more time and freedom.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to build systems that don’t rely on you
  2. How to deploy AI agents to do work for you
  3. The rules of effective delegation

About Ari

Ari Meisel is a self-described, “Overwhelmologist” and founder of Less Doing. He helps entrepreneurs who have opportunity in excess of what their infrastructure can support, find focus, flexibility, and freedom in their business. His leadership skills, his coaching prowess, and his ability to inspire leaders to become more agile, have earned him the reputation as the preeminent Entrepreneurial Strategist. 

Resources Mentioned

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Ari Meisel Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ari, welcome back!

Ari Meisel
Thanks, Pete. Good to see you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your story and what you’ve been up to for the last seven years since your last appearance on How to be Awesome at Your Job. For starters, could you perhaps orient listeners who didn’t catch that one seven years ago, what is Less Doing and what’s that all about?

Ari Meisel
So Less Doing is the productivity methodology that I created, gosh, like 15 years ago now, and it is my company where I do productivity and business coaching for entrepreneurs, founders, executives, all over the world, and have been doing that for about a decade and a half now.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, beautiful. And so last time we talked about optimizing and automating and outsourcing. And so we’ll talk about some of that again with some new insights and tools and goodies. But, in your life, this notion of less doing took on a not just sort of a nice to have, but an absolutely critical must-do kind of a vibe. Can you tell us the story?

Ari Meisel
So when I got out of college, I was working in real estate development and construction, and built a big project in upstate New York. But I was really hands-on. I was working my butt off and not living a particularly healthy lifestyle and under a lot of stress, and ended up finding myself in quite a bit of debt when I was 23.

And I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. And Crohn’s is considered to be an incurable illness that affects the digestive tract. And I was able to overcome that illness and have been free of it for a long, long time now.

But the main constraint that I was faced with was I went from working 18-hour days to barely being able to get an hour of work done a given day. And that extreme restriction on my time is, honestly, what has led to everything that has come since then because, and it’s an exercise that I take people through, which is, “What would you do if you could only work an hour a day?”

And the question at that point, really, isn’t, “What would you do?” it’s, “What wouldn’t you do?” because if the things that you need to do have to get done by something or somebody, you’re going to have to figure that out so that that hour becomes a thing that only you can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful. And can you share with us, so you said you could only do one hour of work for those who are not as familiar with Crohn’s disease and its impact, like what would happen if you tried to push more than that?

Ari Meisel
So it was both a physical and, I’d say, a psychological barrier that I was dealing with because, first of all, any autoimmune disease, you’re, essentially, like at war with your own body, which is challenging in itself.

Crohn’s, again, it affects the digestive tracts. So not only is it difficult to eat and enjoy food and benefit from food, but there’s also like a nutrient deficiency thing that kind of happens because of it. And it just creates all sorts of problems.

So there was, literally, the physical weakness where there were days where I just didn’t even want to get out of bed. And then there were other days where, you’re diagnosed with a chronic and incurable illness, it’s like, “Well, what’s the point of doing any of this other stuff?” So it’s really challenging.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That’s brutal. So what did you do, precisely, in order to make work fit in an hour?

Ari Meisel
So, at the time, it was very different than things we can do now, of course, with AI. But the framework that I came up with was optimize, automate, outsource in that order. So we have to optimize and look at what we are actually doing and sort of do a bit of an audit, which sounds kind of basic, but most people just don’t do that.

The second step is, once we’ve done that, we look at automation. And, again, automation, the tools at our disposal have changed quite a bit over time, especially in the last year. But we automate what we can and then whatever that’s left over is the stuff that we give to a person that we might outsource or delegate to help with that, whether that’s a virtual assistant or a graphic designer or a coder or whatever it might be.

So it was really the sort of systematic approach to doing that, and that was the personal methodology, the Less Doing, More Living was what it was really called. And then over a few years, that morphed into a bit more of a business-focused methodology, which I would call the replaceable founder.

And the idea there is to make everybody in the business, including the founder, as replaceable as possible by creating systems and processes that stand in for the things that you do at a level that is not at your level of genius, essentially, everything else. And it, again, became this really systematic approach at making yourself more replaceable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you walk us through some of those steps in terms of the questions, the prompts, the activities that you do when you are optimizing and automating and outsourcing, and maybe share some specific tasks that you, with the condition, ended up working through those three steps?

Ari Meisel
So I’ll give you an example that’s going to sound like a really weird one, but anybody who’s got a family, in addition to their work and their business, and kids might be able to appreciate this. So I have five kids, and I have five kids right now that are in different camps, and camp requires lots of forms to be filled out.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered this where there’s entrepreneurs who are also parents and they feel like they have to be the one to fill out the form. Nobody else could possibly do that, “Oh, there are so many questions that I have to answer. And, also, like, it’s for my family, so I’m going to do it.” And there’s a lack of knowledge there and, first of all, in terms of like what actually could be done by somebody else. There’s also an ego thing and, like, a value thing, right?

And the problem with that is, if you’re working, and you’re efficient, you’re making money and you’re supporting your family, great, and then you come home and you have to spend an hour doing paperwork.

Like, there’s this weird stigma, it’s like, “Oh, I couldn’t outsource something like that. It’s personal. It’s for my family. And there’s also no ROI on it.” It’s like, well, there actually is because that hour is something that you could be doing with your family and having the human element there as opposed to sitting and filling out paperwork.

And I promise you, you’re not the best person on the planet to fill out paperwork. There are other people who can do that better than you. And now there’s, you know, AI agents that could do that as well or better.

So that, again, that sounds like a really trivial example, but you have things like that in business all the time where people feel like, “I have to be the one to do it. Nobody else could possibly check the boxes like I do.” And it sounds like I’m being facetious, but that is, literally, like the mindset.

I can’t tell you the number of companies I’ve dealt with where you have a COO of a multimillion dollar company booking travel for the CEO, because that’s the only person they trust to do it, right? Because you couldn’t possibly codify your seat preference and your, you know, the how many hours.

It’s true, though, and it’s crazy. Like, I actually just got off the phone with a client who runs an eight-figure company and he’s got a full-time executive assistant. He books his own travel. He’s got the apps on his phone. He just does it himself. And it’s like, “Okay, sure.” But it’s just so crazy. And that’s the one that comes up a lot.

And then you have the things where people have just been doing it a really long time, and they feel like the reason that they’re able to do it is because they know it better than anybody else. But if you know it that well, you should be able to teach it. It’s a really good sort of, you know, litmus test for how well you know something.

And if you can teach it, not only are you enabling yourself, you get to remove yourself as a bottleneck, but you’re doing something that a lot of people miss out on when they try to delegate something, which is empowerment.

A lot of delegation for people who do it is, “Here’s an annoying thing that I don’t want to deal with or I’m not good at, so I’m going to give it to somebody else who has less context, less information, and, at the same time, I’m expecting them to produce a superior result to what I was going to produce myself. So I’m literally just setting everybody up for failure and then I get to reinforce the idea that outsourcing and delegating doesn’t work for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that so much in terms of, one, getting over yourself. And we had Dave Kerpen on the show who talked about that concept, and has a book with a similar name, in terms of like, “No one could possibly do the camp forms or do the travel the way I like,” or there’s like a hang up, like, “Well, that’s just what a good dad or a good mom would do for their kids. They wouldn’t dream of outsourcing.”

And so you’re directly challenging these internal narratives, which I think is excellent, in terms of, “Well, no, if you took the time to really speak what it is you need in a seat…” because, in a way, I get it a little bit in terms of, like, when I’m choosing between three different flight options, there are trade-offs.

And how do I articulate to another person, “I’m willing to pay an extra $60 dollars if it means that I don’t have to hang with a two-hour layover. So what’s my layover minutes per dollar conversion rate?” Like, how do I algorithmically, contextually convey that? That’s kind of tricky. I don’t know. Ari, how do I do that?

Ari Meisel
So this is going to sound really reductivist, but a lot of times, people don’t convey the outcome that they’re trying to achieve.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ari Meisel
So I’ll give you a good example. Actually, it’s one of my favorite outsource, one of my favorite virtual assistant stories ever. I was going to Canada. I lived in New York at the time. I was going to Canada for the day to go to an event, that I had to be at the event, I think, at about 8:30 in the morning. And I go to this event somewhat regularly.

But I was sitting in the airport at 5:00 in the morning, or 5:15, whatever. And I get a text on my phone from my virtual assistants at the time that says, “Your flight is getting canceled, but we re-booked you on United Airways. Go over to gate B6.” And I’m like half awake. There’s a bunch of people around me. Nobody’s reacting or saying or doing anything. And I’m like looking around, “Okay.”

So I get up and I start walking, and I get about 100 feet away from the gate and they made the announcement that the flight was canceled and there was, like, pandemonium. And I just walked to the gate, got on the other flight.

And so the virtual assistants had booked the flight for me, and the outsource, what I had delegated was like, “I need to be there by, you know, 8:00 o’clock.” So because my flight got canceled, they didn’t stop and ask me, “Do you want to get on this seat or that?” No, they immediately, going with the goal, they re-booked me on a flight that would get me there and meet my requirements. And that was done.

So, that was amazing. That was like such an awesome experience. But, so, a lot of times we just say, “It’s like, oh, you know, update this spreadsheet with these 150 lines or, you know, sort this email.”  But we’re not conveying what the actual outcome is. Like, “Why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve?”

And to some extent, yeah, sure, sometimes I just need something to get done and I can tell you that. But when there’s any variability and you need to create sort of this sandbox within which a person can feel like they have some autonomy and, actually, not even autonomy, agency to overcome problems and get to that outcome, people engage with that work much better, first of all, because, again, it’s empowering. It’s not just like sweeping crap under the rug.

But what’s really amazing is that, a lot of times, the people who are delegating, the leaders, don’t even have an idea consciously of what that outcome is. They’re just sort of going through the motions.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And with flights, you’re right, it’s, “So I want to appear no later than this time in this location, with the minimum amount of stress and fuss and headache and rush at a reasonable price point for the fare. That’s what I’m up to.” And I guess you can elaborate a little bit, “Here’s what I mean by reasonable. Here’s what I mean by fuss.” And then go at it.

And so, in your case, what I love about that is your delegation resulted in an outcome far better than you could have achieved on your own if you were like out of it in the morning, and then everyone else was in trouble because they didn’t get the memo quick enough because your folks were on top of it. They were watching it and they knew what you needed and, bam, that’s fantastic.

And I felt that in my own world with regard to, I’ve been reluctant to let go. And then when I did, I was like, “Oh, this is just so much better. I should have just done that earlier.” Very true.

Ari Meisel
Exactly. Yeah, and that’s truly the power of delegation, right? It’s really supposed to be a multiplier in that way when you do it correctly.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Well, let us know. So if someone is listening and they don’t want to fill out the camp forms, what’s the trick on this one, Ari?

Ari Meisel
Well, now it’s AI agents. So I’ve built an AI Chief of Staff framework that I share for free on my website, anybody can get it, that is based on my years and years of experience, not only working with hundreds of virtual assistants personally, but running my own VA company. And I really think this thing that I’ve built is better than any of the ones I’ve ever worked with.

And so, actually, I think it’s doing something right now. So this was another good story. So I was on a call yesterday, on a Zoom call, and a text message came in from camp and said, like, there was some waivers missing or something for two of my kids for some place they were going to go next week. And I saw it pop up, I was like, “Okay, whatever.” I got off the call about 20 minutes later and it was already taken care of.

So my iMessages are connected to my agent through a tool called BlueBubbles, and, basically, the agent saw the message and felt like an action needed to be taken, and it logged into the camp website, found the waivers, signed the waivers, which it had done before, so it wasn’t just going completely off the rails, like I had asked it to do that before, and then updated the camp with a text message back saying, like, “These waivers are done.” So that was all done before I even got off the call.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is stunning. Wow! Okay. So we just go to LessDoing.com and we can get ourselves Chief Staff Agent like this?

Ari Meisel
For that one, you go to LessDoing.ai.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s wild. So many questions from that. It’s like, “How do I know it’s not going to go rogue and do something horrifically bad that I don’t want, that I can’t undo?” How do I do that?

Ari Meisel
And I’m not, like, gatekeeping here because it’s free, but there are actually, like, 18 foundational rules that I’ve developed that are in that AI Chief of Staff framework. So it’s actually not that hard to achieve. Everyone worries about, like, hallucinations, all this stuff.

One of the most basic things, there’s two really, really basic rules that I have for the AI agents, which, the fascinating thing about this for me is that you have all this stuff about like, “Oh, this is the 30-word prompt that’s going to turn your business into a billion-dollar company and, like, all these perfect prompts,” and it’s all total BS. There is no such thing as the perfect prompt. You need to have good structures and foundations in place, and then you don’t need prompts.

So, basically, two of those really important foundational rules, which are, well, so this is what I was going say. It’s not an AI skill. It’s delegation is the skill. It’s the same stuff I’ve been teaching forever. So two of those really important rules, which again, I would give these to a human also.

The first one is, anytime you do something, the next step is to verify that you did the thing that you were supposed to do. It sounds really silly, but most people, it’s like, “Have my AI send a whole bunch of emails.” And then the AI comes back and says, “I sent all the emails,” but it didn’t, or the emails were blank, or it wrote them but didn’t send them, or it sent them to the wrong address, you know, all these things.

So every single action that I have an AI agent do, the next step is now go, “You sent an email? Next step is go look in the sent messages and compare what was sent to what you were supposed to do. You’re supposed to put a Slack message? Now go read the Slack message. You’re supposed to write a document? Now go read the…” Again, it sounds basic, but people don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that, so people, when you give this duty to a human, I’d say people do it so automatically they don’t even realize that they’re doing it. Because I think about that with Slack, is like I type it, I push enter, you know, I do spend maybe a tenth of a second looking, “Oh, did that text show up in Slack such that it’s sent?”

Likewise, with my emails or attachment, “Did I attach the correct version to this email, and that’s the new updated, freshly saved version to this email? Oh, did this hyperlink that I pasted in, in fact, point to the URL I intended it to point to?” So, in a way, I think many of us are doing it so instantly, automatically, we forget that we are doing it.

Ari Meisel
Some of you are. I am not one of those people. I am not one of those people. Attention to detail is not one of my strong suits. And I’m aware of that. And that’s why I often hire for that when I would hire people. I’ll send it, and then I’ll move on to the next 16 things. And then someone is like, “Hey, you forgot the thing.” And I was like, “Oh, right. Okay.” So, yeah, you’re right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s great. Verify that you did the thing. Human or AI, verify that you did the thing. Cool. Next.

Ari Meisel
So that’s one. The other one is I do what’s called a nightly knowledge card. So you can do this kind of anywhere you want. It could be a Google Doc, it could be Notion, it could be Evernote. It doesn’t really matter. I use Trello just because I love Trello.

So every one of my agents, and I’ve got 32 active agents right now, every single night at 11:00 p.m., it updates a Trello card with a comment. And the comment is, “What you accomplished today, what automations ran, what blockers were encountered, what solutions were developed, and what is the plan for tomorrow,” every single night.

I have a couple agents that have been running nonstop for over 160 days now, and so there are over 160 comments on that card. So what that means is two things. One is it never, ever loses track because, every morning, it’s supposed to check that card and know where it’s off to.

So that’s first, like, that’s a very basic sort of cron job, you know, “Check your nightly knowledge card to see what you should be doing and where you’re at and compare that against the instructions that you already have.”

The other one is that, if I ever want to move to a different AI platform, agent platform, or I want to build that into another agent, or have a new agent spin up that’s based on another agent, that entire history is there. So it becomes really difficult, at that point, to sort of go off the rails. It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, we’ll drop by LessDoing.ai, but when you talk about an agent platform. For folks who just say, “I just know ChatGPT, I type some things, it’s like a better Google,” what do you even mean by an agent platform? Is that some software we go download or buy somewhere?

Ari Meisel
Yeah, so ChatGPT is an LLM, right, so that is a great resource for getting information, maybe compiling some documents, putting together an image or a presentation. It’s very much a push-pull, right, “I want something. You give me the thing.”

Agents are proactive, where it’s like, “Here’s the outcome. Here’s the goal. Now figure out and go do those things and run all day every day without having to bother me for things.” So a lot of the LLMs have agent platforms, but the most popular ones right now, I would say, are probably Claude Code and Hermes.

And the one that I use, which is Tasklet.ai. So Tasklet is a web-based platform. And, for example, you can take, if you go to that LessDoing.ai, you’re going to get a PDF with the whole framework of the whole Chief of Staff thing. You take that document, drop it into Tasklet and it will build it out for you and start asking you some questions of like, “Connect me to your GMail, and connect me to your calendar and let me get to work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you haven’t witnessed anything catastrophic happen to you or any of you the people you’ve hooked up to this?

Ari Meisel
Nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good news. All right. Well, that was a fun deep dive, a little treat. But zooming back out, optimizing, automating, outsourcing, so you’ve got two great rules that you shared with us with regard to when you’re delegating stuff to humans or robots. Any other powerful questions, guidelines, principles you’re using as you consider optimizing, automating, and outsourcing?

Ari Meisel
Yeah, so at a very fundamental level, sometimes we really need to ask why we do things the way that we do them, which again, sounds sort of basic, but they’re the most common answer to why in a business, you know, “Why do we use this accounting software? Why do we use this landscaper that mows the front lawn of our store? Why do we do anything?”

The answer most of the time is, “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it.” And that’s a really, really bad reason to keep doing something. Now, to be fair, a lot of smaller businesses, a lot of bigger businesses, simply don’t have the bandwidth to re-examine those relationships, those tools, consider the migrations. It becomes a very big headache very quickly.

But now with AI, we can do that in such a bandwidth, you know, unlimited way in some cases. So, for example, right now, I’m sitting in the Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad. We are the EMS provider, the ambulance provider for the town of Princeton, New Jersey, and I am the executive director here. It’s one of my side passions. I’ve been an EMT for about 15 years, and I was a volunteer here for about five years, and now I’m the executive director.

So this is an 86-year-old organization and there were a lot of things in place where it’s like, “Well, that’s the software we always use. And this was how we did these. And this is when we had our meetings,” and every single thing I’m able to say, “Hold on, let me take that bill and give it to my AI agent. I have a
Chief of Staff Agent that I built here. I also have a bookkeeper agent that I built here. Go out and get three quotes. See if this is competitive.”

“Oh, it’s not? Great. Send an email to this person with a negotiation and see if they can match it. Otherwise, let’s switch. Cool.” And that’s been huge for us here. Billing. “We’ve been billing at this rate for about six years now. We probably should bill more, but can we justify that? Well, let’s take all that data and crunch it and see what number we really should be billing at. Here it is. Okay, that’s what we’re going to do now.”

Again, none of this is, like, rocket science. It’s so much easier to just keep going than to be like, “Hold on a minute. Let’s figure out if there’s actually a better way.” It takes more work initially to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
So when you say have an agent go get quotes, that sounds pretty sophisticated in terms of how much guidance do you have to offer? I mean, does that just consist of, “Look up vendor. Find email address for vendor. Email vendor. Describe situation. Ask for price,” and like that’s the series of tasks that they’re up to there?

Ari Meisel
Yeah, I mean, it’s not much more, but that’s the thing, right? Like, it’s not much more complicated than that. And, again, that’s just the thing where people are like, “I couldn’t possibly make that into a binary decision.” It’s like, “Yeah, you can.” “This is what we pay for this thing now. Do you offer this thing and how much do you charge for it? Is that number bigger or smaller than the number that I’m paying now?”

But, seriously, you have people that are like, “Nah, you know, you don’t know these guys and, like, I got to talk to them and explain the whole situation.” No, you don’t. You don’t. And you’re not the best person in the world to do that. No person that I’ve ever met is the best person at describing the situation that they’re in so that somebody else can give them a price for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. Oh, man, these are some hot takes. Well, I guess, though, the flip side is, sometimes, it’s annoying. When you’re trying to purchase services and you want a price, sometimes the sales folks are trained, “Oh, we don’t give that away without a call. You got to hop on the phone or the Zoom to get that info.”

Ari Meisel
My AI agents can make phone calls.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. It’s like, “Hello, Ari. What is the price for your coaching services?”

Ari Meisel
So, you know, it’s funny, they’re actually quite good now, because I’ve listened to the recordings of some of the calls, and this is just my anecdotal take. It’s kind of a known thing, I think, in the call center industry, this shouldn’t be shocking to anybody.

But a lot of times, for better or worse, when somebody picks up the phone, if they hear somebody say something with an accent, it’s like, “Well, it’s a telemarketer,” and they hang up. We know that that’s a thing. Same thing with agent. You have people like, “Human. Human. Human.”

So my anecdotal take on this, from my own personal experience, but also from hearing a bunch of these calls, is I don’t think people have a problem with the accent or with the AI, with the automation. I think they have a problem with bad ones where there’s a lack of understanding. There’s a delay. They have to repeat themselves.

The AI that I have right now work, and it’s not my technology. I use Bland.ai and RetailAI, they’re really, really good. And I’ve had people have full-on conversations with the AI where it’s, like, I really can’t tell if they can tell. And if they can tell, they don’t seem to mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. They’re not saying, “You stupid clanker.” You’re not hearing that on the other side?

Ari Meisel
No, I had my AI Chief of Staff call the vet to get, like, a bill. We needed a bill that they hadn’t sent me, whatever. And the AI voice agent spelled our cat’s name for the person at the reception, and it’s a French name.

So, like, they did it perfectly and did it clearly, and the person heard it and they didn’t have to repeat it. The person gave some information back, the AI understood it, didn’t have to repeat it back, like it was a very fluid conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is pretty mind-blowing stuff in that I’ve heard, like, enthusiastic hyped tech bros claim that this is what the future is going to be, and you’re telling me, “Oh, no, I am doing it right now easily without worry or catastrophe or trouble, and it’s been a delight.” That’s what I’m picking up from you, Ari.

Ari Meisel
It’s been the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ari Meisel
Let me just give you just some context to this, right? So do you know what the Jevons Paradox is?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’ve heard of it, but I forgot. Lay it on us.

Ari Meisel
So the original one was from the Industrial Revolution when there was coal production. And, basically, Jevons Paradox says that while we would assume that when something becomes more efficient – a process, an engine, whatever – you need less of it.

In a Jevons Paradox, the opposite happens, and we have this explosion. So coal production was an example of that, right? We could suddenly power all of America with a tenth of the factories, but now we quintupled the number of factories because we wanted to expand so fast. AI is another example of that. I am an example of that.

So I have, you know, famously, I mean, I’ve been quoted for this a bunch of times, but I spent several years where I was probably working 20 minutes a day doing all my coaching and everything, and that was legitimate.

Now I am busier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And it’s amazing, though, because I think that I’m accomplishing more than a hundred people could accomplish. I have my company, so my coaching business. I am here as the executive director of the Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad.

I have two other W-2 jobs because people now don’t want to just have me be a coach. They want to hire me on as an employee. For some reason, that’s been a new experience for me. I also sit on several boards. I’m on the school board here in Princeton, which is an elected position. I have five kids, three cats, two dogs, and I’m still able to sit here and have a really great conversation with you, Pete, because of all of this stuff. I have 32 agents working on stuff for me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Well, thank you for giving us a taste and a glimpse of that whole world. I wanted to hear about your profound love for asynchronous voice or voicemails. Because if you’re on LessDoing.com, that shows up pretty front and center that you love these voicemails. Tell us what’s so great about them.

Ari Meisel
Okay, so there’s a number of platforms to this. A lot of people are probably familiar with Voxer. You can do this with WhatsApp and iMessage, but they just don’t work as well, in my opinion. So I use Carbon Voice now, that’s my platform of choice. And it is, primarily, a voice platform.

And what I like about that, it’s funny, this actually came out of a weird, specific thing to me, and now this is such a different issue entirely. For so many years, I was known for all the virtual assistant work, I was doing all the outsourcing stuff, so it was always a constant thing where I would have to convince people that they were actually talking to me.

So it would be like, “Hi, Ari, or Ari’s VA, or Ari’s automation.” I was like, “No, no, it’s really me. Like, here’s today’s newspaper, I swear.” And with voice coaching, particularly, I don’t have to say, “This is not a VA. It’s not an automation.” And, of course, now we have voice cloning, but it’s not quite there. People can still tell.

So I don’t know, five, six, no, maybe seven years ago now, I switched from the traditional coaching model of meeting with clients one hour a week, every week, and talking through stuff to fully asynchronous.

So now, instead of a client having to wait till next Wednesday for us to talk for 45 minutes and get the three-minute answer that they need, now they can walk out of a fight with their co-founder on a Friday afternoon, send me a voice message. A couple hours later, I can listen to it, think through my answer and respond to them with like that 90-second silver bullet answer that they need to get through their weekend and focus on other things.

And it’s such a more effective form of coaching, but it also allows me to never miss a soccer game and take my kids to school and pick them up every day because I’m never on someone else’s schedule. Everything is, I mean, 99% of my communication is asynchronous.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so, as opposed to email or text message, I mean, you’ve got the richness of the voice and the emotion and the nuance and texture and tone. That’s cool. I guess you also do it faster than you type words. How else are you thinking about this versus email? And how do you deal with email, generally?

Ari Meisel
Yeah, so people, generally, speak four times faster than they type. I certainly do. I’m also a very audio-visual kind of person. So I’m not a great reader. I’ve never been my whole life. It just, I’m that person that reads a page and then they’ve been thinking about something else all the time and have to read the page again.

But, like, I can remember lines from movies that I saw when I was 15. Like, I don’t know that’s a good thing, but it’s just how my brain works. So I can listen and think through a problem with a client and then respond really well.

The other thing is, and this is another limitation I recognize in myself, my initial response sometimes is probably more aggressive than I want it to be because I can get annoyed very quickly because I’ve seen these problems so many times.

So having me have the ability to take a little space and be like, “Yeah, that’s not going to come off right. Let me think through that again.” And even, in some cases, record the voice message and then recall it because I was like, “Nah, that wasn’t what I wanted to say,” it ultimately ends up being a much better experience for the client, and it’s a really incredible, like, sort of learning experience for me as a coach. I get a do-over sometimes.

But I often will say that I can tell more about a situation from the way a client says something than what they actually say. And you just lose that in an email. Plus, at this point, so many, there are so many tools, so many AI tools for writing emails for you, imagine emails for you.

Like, when you’re dealing with voice stuff, you really know that you’re talking to the person. And, again, like, I have voice cloning on the app because it’s built in. So if I type something, it will speak it in my voice, but still, it’s more natural, but you know it’s not actually me. So there’s just something very intimate about that.

And also, one more thing about that, too, is it’s such a common practice, I feel like, for people to outsource their inboxes, which I have never ever been a fan of because I think it’s a real breach of trust, honestly.

And if somebody knows that they’re communicating with someone’s assistant through that person’s inbox, I think it just creates a very weird sort of scenario. This is always private and always like me and them, which is hard to achieve nowadays.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, tell us, what do you have running on your own inbox? I like Superhuman as an app, although it’s still me, Pete Mockaitis, the person, typing out the things. What are you doing there?

Ari Meisel
Just good old Gmail and some good habits.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, but, I mean, so super automation, outsourcing, you know, optimizing, you’re just like tapping away in Gmail?

Ari Meisel
Yeah, yeah. Well, yes, with one caveat. So I actually, unfortunately, I have to use Outlook also for a couple of organizations I’m involved in. I hate Outlook. But, basically, well, yeah, mostly in Outlook. So for certain emails from certain people with certain topics, my AI Chief of Staff will draft emails for me in response. And then I’ll usually just go in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you review and then send.

Ari Meisel
Yeah, and they’ll send them. But there are also quite a few where it can autonomously just send it without having to draft first. So, like in Slack, for example, this has actually been so fun. So I use Slack with a few different companies, too.

And, for example, I have an AI agent that was building a website for the company because I don’t have the attention to detail. I put it into the Slack channel with six people on the team and like, “Hey everybody, can you check on the website and make any comments of things that you see that are wrong?”

And what was so fun was, so someone would make a comment, “Oh, this page doesn’t load, this link’s broken.” The AI is in Tasklet, the agent, sorry, Taslet is in Slack, so it would immediately be like, “Oh, thanks for catching that. I’ve already rolled that into the next version and deployed it.”

So then the next person is like, “Oh, well, I see this thing and this thing. It would be great if this was here.” “Oh, great idea. Thank you.” So what ends up happening is you go through, you get to like v7 within 20 minutes and each person, we don’t have six people looking at v1 and giving comments. Every person that looks at it is seeing a better version than the last person that looked at it.

And so in a matter of 20 to 30 minutes, you’ve gotten this incredible iteration, and the website is fantastic now. And in that case, I’m not drafting anything. I’m not approving. It’s just going and it’s taking feedback, fixing it, and doing it again.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. So that was fun for that particular project, rather than we’re emailing a designer or a robot designer, and then waiting. And so, inside your Gmail or Outlook, you are just like a normal person, reading messages and replying to messages that don’t fit into the narrow AI autopiece. Well, you mentioned the AI is drafting kind of logistically, tactically. How does one get an AI up in their Outlook and/or Gmail reading and drafting replies?

Ari Meisel
So a lot of the agent platforms can just do that. You just say, like, “Connect to my Gmail,” and it’ll do that through whatever means it uses. But the key, of course, I would say, is to have it look back through a lot of the emails that you’ve sent to get your style and that sense of style.

The other thing that I’ll do, so I do manage my own inbox for the most part just because I have a whole methodology around this. I’ve been teaching forever called the 3Ds for Inbox Zero. But what I will do is, if I’m unavailable for some reason, like tomorrow, for example, I’m going to be at this event with one of my kids and I will not be on the phone at all for like six or seven hours.

What I’ll usually do in that case is if I get back on my phone and there’s like 60 emails, I’ll just go to my Chief of Staff and be like, you know, “Just triage the inbox.” And so then what it’ll start doing is it can draft, it can archive, it can answer things that it needs to.

And the example I gave of the camp waiver, like if it knows that an action needs to be taken and it knows that it can take that action, it is instructed to just do that and get it done.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. Well, Ari, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Ari Meisel
People should go to LessDoing.ai. There’s a free, like, five-day boot camp thing. It’s not an upsell or anything. You get this document and you don’t do anything else with it. I think that’ll probably be really eye-opening for people.

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

Ari Meisel
It’s a Robert Heinlein quote, and I look at it every year. So it’s, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

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

Ari Meisel
So I’ve been very interested in how environments affect our productivity, mood, all sorts of things, so whether it’s lighting or temperature, or even an interesting one. So I have a thermostat in my office here that doesn’t do anything. Actually, the building temperature is controlled centrally. So I’m not even sure why they set these up when they do this.

But if you give somebody a thermostat in their office and they think that they have control over their thermal environment, they will be more productive and actually happier. So I find a lot of that stuff very, very interesting, how you sort of set up your environment for greater productivity and happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Ari Meisel
Emergency by Neil Strauss.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Ari Meisel
Tasklet.ai probably would be my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Ari Meisel
I’ve gone through so many different seasons of exercise in my life, but I’m 43 now and I’ve got kids and it’s busy. Every morning, I do a kettlebell workout before 6:00 in the morning, basically, and sometimes it’s five minutes. But every morning, I pick up that kettlebell and I do something. And I think that that has a really measurable effect on how the day goes for me and mobility and just how I feel.

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

Ari Meisel
“You can’t read the label from inside the jar.” In seven years, you can say that back to me.

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

Ari Meisel
LessDoing.com.

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

Ari Meisel
Yeah, try to become more replaceable. So, try to take a list of the things you do on a regular basis, 10, 20 things, and then try to pick eight, or 80% of the things. So if it’s 20 things, 16 things from that list that, in six months, you will no longer do anymore. And then figure out if you’re going to optimize, automate, or outsource that thing so that you’re not doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ari, thank you.

Ari Meisel
Thanks, Pete.

Jul 23
0

1169: Tapping into the Transformative Power of Sabbaticals with DJ DiDonna

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DJ DiDonna makes the case for why taking more extended time off helps professionals get further in their careers–and shares tricks for actually snagging that time.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to convince your boss to let you take a sabbatical
  2. How sabbaticals act as “regret insurance”
  3. How to plan a truly fulfilling sabbatical

About DJ

DJ DiDonna is a senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches MBA courses on entrepreneurship and building meaningful professional and personal lives. He has spent his career translating social science research into real-world tools for positive change. In 2019, DiDonna founded The Sabbatical Project to define, explore, and research the role of sabbaticals in modern life. He has helped organizations around the world—from nonprofits to Fortune 50 companies—design and implement sabbatical policies.

His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, Time, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Previously, DiDonna cofounded EFL Global, a fintech company that enabled more than $2 billion in capital to underbanked businesses and individuals across twenty countries before its acquisition in 2018. DiDonna earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. On his sabbatical, DiDonna walked nine hundred miles on pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan, helped lead the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at his undergraduate alma mater, Notre Dame, and unskillfully remodeled his kitchen. Outside work, you can find him plotting how to be in the Big Outdoors.

Resources Mentioned

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DJ DiDonna Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
DJ, welcome!

DJ DiDonna
How are ya? Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Doing well. Doing well. I’m excited to talk sabbaticals. First of all, we’re going to use that word a lot, what are we talking about here?

DJ DiDonna
So it’s funny, when I first took my sabbatical, I instinctively called it a sabbatical and I didn’t know what that meant. I think a lot of people use it because it lends this prestige from academia. It lends this prestige of, like, here’s an identity that you can have when you’re doing something very uncertain and you’re oftentimes giving up your identity.

And so, you know, I created one, take it or leave it, but intentional extended leave from your job. So, “When you’re away from your job, are you not looking for another job?” which is what we tend to fill in the space with. “Is it a time that’s hopefully measured in months, not days or weeks?”

And you can do work, but it can’t resemble your routine job. So no little consulting projects, nothing similar, but people will do things like try to write a book or get certified in yoga or scuba. I remodeled a kitchen, which might sound like work to folks, but it’s like intrinsic work of your own choosing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds nice, and we’re going to get into the practicals and the pushbacks and the constraints and the difficulties soon enough. But, first, let’s hear, tell us, I mean, they sound like a swell time. Can you share with us any surprising discoveries or key benefits that we should know about?

DJ DiDonna
I think anyone who’s been on a vacation knows that vacations are great and you can easily imagine that a longer vacation would be even better. The reason I set out to do this research and write this book was because the profundity of the kind of changes that I experienced, identity changes, life changes, the joy, the density of memories from that time were such that I was like, “Okay, something very different is going on here.”

And so when I spoke to other people for the research, I realized that there’s something deeper on a personal identity, “Who are you? What do you value?” that is changing in a way that just is not happening with shorter breaks. So that was surprising that it wasn’t just, you know, my personal experience, but universal across everyone that I spoke to.

But the other thing I think that’s counterintuitive based on how you framed it is that sabbaticals can be really tough. I think, a lot of times, you’re getting to sabbatical land burnt out or it’s catalyzed by some crisis, like a personal crisis, a work crisis, a relationship crisis, a health crisis. And so you’re having to work out a lot of stuff, and the vacuum of your responsibilities and how you spend your normal day allows a lot of big thoughts to come in.

And so people will look and say, “Oh, my gosh, you’re off for three months. You must be having the time of your life.” But, oftentimes, personal development and identity change is hard work and it’s difficult and uncomfortable. So that’s what I would say some of the surprising things were.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, identity change sounds big and it sounds like that can go in very many, many directions. Could you give us an example? And is that a good thing? Maybe I love my identity. I don’t want to change it.

DJ DiDonna
I think that the most important thing is that you are looking at who you are and what your identity is from the perspective of someone that can change it and is in charge, right? I think one of the things you see in the research is that there are some debate about whether you have like a fixed identity.

And so you want to return back, you know, to your identity that might have been obfuscated by, like, hard work or stress or taking a job you didn’t want or being in a relationship you didn’t want. Or is your identity constantly shifting and it’s your job to kind of guide your life towards how you change and shift as a person?

And so I think, in sabbatical, what is being offered is you’re stepping away from your life long enough. People have talked about it as like a near-death experience. You’re zooming out from your life. You’re looking back at how you’ve lived it and how you feel living it now, and what you would like for your life between now and when you die, and getting to say, like, “Do I want to make changes or not?”

And some people are like, “Love my life. Love my work. It gives me meaning. I don’t love going in every day, but that’s a job. But I would like to have stronger boundaries between work and life.” And that can be enough to change your identity, right?

Like, do you see yourself as someone who is a super committed father that picks their kids up every day and coaches the teams? Or do you see yourself primarily as a person that’s doing work and not really of your choosing?

So I think that’s the invitation is just to say, you know, really pick yourself out and say, “What am I doing? And how does that align with who I am and who I’ve wanted to be?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s intriguing as you describe it in this way. It’s like the sabbatical provides a context or fertile soil for epiphany or revelation, and we sort of have the time for it, as opposed to, a lot of times, epiphanies, even the word implies, “All at once, I realized, ‘What am I doing?’ Or, ‘I had a panic attack and I… no, no more of this.’”

So with the sabbatical, it seems like we don’t have to get lucky or have a strike of divine inspiration in order to come to these major realizations that perhaps we would really benefit from coming to.

DJ DiDonna
Yeah, I mean, I would think about it also as imagine if you could manufacture a scenario that would produce an insight that would change your life forever, right? So if you look at what’s called peak life experiences, like a lot of those are fomented by negative things that happen.

So a health crisis, you know, we’ve all heard about “The Bucket List” or seen it. Like, a health crisis makes you think, like, “What have I been doing and how do I want to change?” And what a sabbatical says is, you know, you can basically carve out time, you know, six months off in the scale of a 40- to 50-year career is like 1% of your working life.

And you can carve out 1% percent and say, “I want to try something on that I’ve always wanted to do. I want to write a book. I want to, like, become fluent in a foreign language or live in a foreign country with my family.” And then just have that experience as opposed to it being an emergency or something that happens to you.

I mean, another surprising thing from the research is that we found that about two-thirds of sabbatical takers, a sabbatical takes them, right? And so it is this fomented by a crisis as opposed to something that’s regularly planned.

And my intention is to identify these kind of inflection points across your life, from gap year early on in your education, to like a twilight career where you can take a pause and figure out if you’re heading in the right direction or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I think, already, brains are firing off, it’s like, “Oh, it sounds nice, DJ, but no way that I could pull that off.” But even before we dig into some of those particular practicalities, I’d like to get a sense for some examples of these identity-shifting perspectives, insights. Like what kinds of things have popped up for people and how does it go down?

DJ DiDonna
You know, Pete, for the skeptics, just to make sure they get through the episode, right, like take the word sabbatical away and just think about it from the perspective of you, upon retirement, or upon your deathbed, or with your grandchildren, you know, bopping up and down on your knees, like, what is something that you would like to do in your life that doesn’t fit neatly into vacations, that certainly you’ve thought is important so far, but you clearly haven’t made time for?

And so it takes this, like, grandiosity around, like, “Taking a sabbatical is difficult,” and makes it more personal around, like, “I want to go on a road trip with my family to see the national parks.” Right? That’s an often one I hear. Like, how are you going to do that without a bigger container of time?

So I think I would encourage folks to think about, actually, what’s passionate for them as opposed to getting hung up on the term or the amount of time. Because, I think, once you start having this idea and it becomes concrete, it grows and germinates.

As far as the actual tangible outcomes, what we saw is an increase in confidence. So people come back having done a thing that is pretty rare. It’s certainly not the typical story of how we work, you know, at least in the States. And they come back stronger, you know, having healed personally and mental health-wise. And found out a little bit more about their capabilities outside of work.

A lot of people will do some sort of physical expedition, right, like a long hike or get in shape for a marathon or something like that. And that lends confidence about what’s possible. Creativity, so one of the cool things about a sabbatical is instead of doing like a vacation, you’re just being yourself. You’re just being.

And a lot of times that means you’re picking up some hobby that you used to have, you’re tinkering with something that is just for fun, there’s no purpose. And that kind of spurs our creative brands. Like, you’ve heard about the creative process where there’s no bad ideas and let’s get everything out there first and collaborate.

The other thing I mentioned earlier is just about perspective. So because you’ve disengaged from your work identity being governed by your calendar, that kind of thing, for long enough, and people will say it takes about six to eight weeks to fully disconnect, you’re able to get perspective about who you are, where you want to be going and whether how you’re allocating your time and resources is getting you there or not.

Pete Mockaitis
And so could you share some stories of some folks who did this and the realizations that they had?

DJ DiDonna
A couple of my favorite stories, one, there was a family that took a sabbatical on an island off the coast of Norway. So the father had been working in tech, had kind of burnt out, and his wife had taken a few years off from teaching in order to stay at home and raise the kids, right?

So she had wanted to get back into the workforce, he had wanted to take some time off, and so they spent a month above the Arctic Circle off the coast of Norway. She was, like, one of two teachers in kind of a one-room schoolhouse type situation for the island, and he was just experimenting, spending afternoons with his kids, doing little projects and hobbies.

He learned how to fish, learned how to smoke fish, learned how to catch fish, things that just aren’t that seemingly productive. But then he also wanted to go back to his hobby of being a computer developer. He was at management level, and so you’re not really down in the weeds.

And so mobile app development was coming out, this was about 10 years ago, and what he did was he created just a simple kind of text-to-speech app. His father had done work with kind of vision-impaired folks, and so it gave him the idea.

And as a result, he created something, published it on the app store, and it actually started gathering some steam, you know, people paying ten bucks a year. And when they came back to Boston, not only had they completely changed their relationship to money, because they had lived on a relatively meager teacher’s salary in Norway, it gave him the confidence that he could spend another year, a year and a half, building it up to support the family.

He designed the business such that he could take summers off because he was like, “Why would I not spend summers aligned with my wife’s calendar, spending summers adventuring with my kids being present?” And it gave his wife things on the resume and experience to get back into the workforce in the States. I love that story.

I think on the opposite side, it’s also important to know what you don’t want to do. So a lot of people use sabbaticals to test, like, “What’s the counterfactual to the life that I’m living?” There was someone, in the book, who was a career trial lawyer. He studied English in college, always wanted to write a novel, but kind of found himself starting a family early on, wanting to support the family.

And so after 25 years, he took six months off to write. And it allowed him to walk his kids to school, cook them dinner at night, be more present with the family, which his job hadn’t before. But, more importantly, he wrote for about two months and then he printed the manuscript out, tore it into pieces, put it in the trash, and was like, “Actually, I want to go back to being a lawyer.”

And so this concept that, like, part of navigating through life and navigating your identity is, “What are you good at? What are you not good at? What do you like? What do you not like?” And I think about sabbaticals as regret insurance, because you get to try things on for size that you would have regretted not doing at the end of your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I’m thinking about, well, first of all, I believe that’s Winston Chin, right, who made the Voice Dream Reader, an app that I use and love. And Kwame Christian did, like, a whole episode about how that’s a key part of his life.

DJ DiDonna
Oh, funny.

Pete Mockaitis
He could see, but he likes having notes read back to him at rapid speed while he’s doing other things. So that’s pretty cool. Hey, sabbatical enriching all of us.

DJ DiDonna
Developed over the winter, you know, dark, dark winter in Norway.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So that’s really cool. And then you’re right, the regret insurance thing is resonating. I’m thinking about, I remember at Bain, they had a program, and they might still have it, they called it Take Two, which is basically this.

It’s, like, you could take two months off, I believe it was unpaid, but you keep your health insurance benefits, and you could just do whatever. And what was interesting is it was a real win-win for the consultants trying something else, like, “I always thought I wanted to work in sports.”

And so then they work in sports for two months, like, “You know what? I like consulting better.” So they come on back and they have that retention of an employee for longer because they could scratch the itch, they could take a look, and they come back and say, “Actually, this is really a pretty sweet gig. Let’s keep doing this.”

And it’s great for the people because, you know, sometimes they do discover just the thing, or they put to rest that lingering doubt. Regret insurance is well put, it’s like, “Ah, I wonder what would have happened if I worked in sports? Well, I know. I tried two months and it wasn’t all I hoped it would be.”

DJ DiDonna
Yeah, I have a fair amount of examples from the consulting field because, as you know, it’s project-based and so when you’re on, you’re on, and you’re on like 11 out of 10. And then when you’re off, you’re totally off.

Like, you’ve finished the engagement and so there’s not work to do that lingers. And I think that the economy is heading more towards this, like, cyclical project-based, like you see it in tech product development cycles.

And so I think, as the economy heads more towards natural inflection points every four or five, however many years, I think it gives you these opportunities to say, “Okay, let me step back and recharge. Let me maybe, right now, right, like let me step back and learn AI from a curiosity standpoint. Like, build something that’s interesting to me,” as opposed to, like, trying to fit it in in everything else that you have to do with life.

And then you’re actually training yourself for the next job. So I like the consulting example and a lot of consultants in the study would use that time off. You know, McKenzie has Take Time, Bain has Take Two, where you would run an experiment.

Someone in the study thought that they wanted to own an eco resort when they retired. Sounds idyllic, right? You live in a beautiful place, and he worked in Costa Rica and in Hawaii over the course of his sabbatical, you know, in the kitchen, in the front office, and he was like, “This is miserable.”

And so it’s this, like, just how can you test different hypotheses about your life so that you’re more fulfilled in the life you choose or the next life you choose?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so lay it on us, if folks think, “Yeah, that’s great, but…” where do we go from there?

DJ DiDonna
You know, I think the first step is nurturing that seed of an idea, as kind of woo-woo as that might sound. Like, you really have to think about something concrete. Go to a cafe for an hour, no phone, no music, no friends, and just think, like, “What are things I want to do before I die?”

And I think that’s important because it just makes it more tangible because I think, then, you start to build this intuition, like, “Wait a minute, why can’t I? I’ve always wanted to do this. I’m X years into my life. Like, why have I not done this?”

For me, it was about the spiritual search, right? I felt like I was spiritual. I grew up in a religious household. I wanted to, like, nurture and investigate that side. I felt like it was important, but I wasn’t allotting time to it. And I think it’s something that takes a fair amount of time. So find that thing that is so important that you start to realize, like, “This is not fair. I will not be happy with life if I don’t get a chance to do it.”

The next thing is, I think, take your time scale away from the next 90 days, the next year, and put it into, like, a five-year plan. Of course, a sabbatical is out of reach for almost everybody. If you don’t have a company supporting it with a policy, if you’re talking about taking off three months from now.

But what are you doing in 2032, right? And kind of like plant a flag somewhere in the future that sounds impossibly far away, and say, “I’m taking the summer off with my family in 2032. We’re going to align schedules, we’re going to tell our bosses three years in advance, and it’s just part of how we live our life,” as opposed to waiting until some emergency kind of, you know, clutches you and takes you out of routine life.

Once you do that, then you can financially save 5, 10% a year. You can work out the logistics. Put it far enough in advance that it becomes logistically feasible. Dream and understand what your what the stakes are. Like what does it cost you not to do this over the course of your life?

And then the other thing that’s important, in our research we found that one of the most enabling factors of taking a sabbatical is having an example in your life of someone who has taken it. So ask far and wide, “Is there anyone in my network who has taken extended leave, who has taken a sabbatical?”

I mean, don’t be afraid to post it on LinkedIn. There’s a career break feature on LinkedIn that was rolled out in 2022, and millions of people use it. So that, like, norm around like work devotion, I think, is disintegrating pretty quickly.

But once you can get some advice and some proof and permission that it’s okay to take extended leave from someone you know, the barriers start to break down a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us about the career break feature on LinkedIn.

DJ DiDonna
So when you’re putting in the employer that you have and how long you worked for them, there’s a career break employer. And then you can kind of say, career break, skills development, personal needs, whatever, whatever.

I thought it’s pretty revolutionary, like, to have every person who’s displaying their resume online include career breaks.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you, in terms of the normative piece, because I think there’s some old career resume advice somewhere, like, “Oh, make sure there’s no gaps in that resume. That’s a big red flag.” I don’t personally evaluate any candidate or talent in such a way at all.

I don’t know if maybe you could demystify some of that for us. If we have these fears about, “What will others say or think or do? Or how will this impact how I’m judged or viewed or evaluated, assessed?” What’s the scoop there?

DJ DiDonna
I think, first of all, like flipping that on its head, if you’re looking at a few different resumes, and one person says something about their life that’s interesting, right, it shows that, so there’s this concept called the red sneaker effect.

That if you have the confidence to dress unlike other people in an interview, or if you have the confidence to say, like, “You know, I took six months off to sail across the Pacific, or to take care of my parents,” that actually sends a signal that, like, “My work will kind of stand for itself. This is who I am as a person. Here’s a tiny glimpse on the resume.” So I would encourage people to think about it like that.

And then, on the negative side, if someone is going to screen you out for taking three months off to care for a loved one, probably not a good fit. You know what I mean? Like, if you’re looking for a signal that the company doesn’t value you as a human being, I think there it is.

And we know that younger generations are more likely to trade autonomy and mission and purpose and flexibility for compensation. And so it’s bubbling up within the economy anyway, as you said, outdated story. And so you can either be a part of this and encourage it and support it, or you can be kind of left behind and, you know, working two jobs and sleeping under your desk.

Pete Mockaitis
And, likewise, with regard to the, “What do other people think?” situation, if you give the boss a heads up, “Hey, three, four years from now, I want you to know I’ve got this sabbatical on the calendar,” how do those conversations tend to go?

DJ DiDonna
I mean, listen, you have to compare apples to apples, right? So in Silicon Valley, the average tenure at a company is, like, two years. And so I think if you’re saying to someone, “I want to stay at this company. I view my tenure here to be long. I like it. I want to grow here. And in four years, I want to take two months off with my family to live in Spain,” I think that’s totally manageable.

Like, people are leaving their jobs. And when people leave their jobs, managers have to scramble and hire someone else. They have to, like, train that new person. People go on parental leave. Like, you have a bit more notice, but maybe five, six months notice.

And so what you’re doing is you’re helping the organization build resilience around, “Can you survive when someone leaves the company?” You’re being super purposeful about, “Here are my tasks. Here’s who I kind of delegate them off to. Here’s how I onboard them back.”

And I think, most importantly from an employer standpoint, it’s an equitable benefit. Like, if you’re carrying water for someone else because they’re on sabbatical, and then you can take a sabbatical, that’s very different than if you’re carrying water because the staffing needs were messed up, you couldn’t hire a replacement, you’re working way more, or someone else goes on parental leave but you’re not planning on having a kid.

So I think it creates this world where, like, our humanity is honored outside of work, as opposed to just pretending like no one ever quits.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you’re right. If you’re hearing that, it might actually be very appreciated by your employer. Like, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were planning on being here for four plus years. Most people don’t. That’s pretty cool. Okay. Well, we could probably figure that out. Sure. Thanks for the heads up.”

DJ DiDonna
Yeah, every company can figure that out, right? Like, companies have to figure out when people leave. They have to figure out when people go on parental leave. And so it’s not easy, right? This is not easy at the current state where there aren’t enabling policies for everyone. It’s not financially feasible for everyone.

But, again, like, looking at the trajectory of the paid parental leave movement, and the US is still the only high-income country in the world that doesn’t have, like, government-supported paid parental leave, but it’s increased over time. I think 40 states offer paid parental leave. And then if you apply to a job that doesn’t, it’s a bit of a head scratcher.

So I think the evolution of sabbaticals and sabbatical policies, I see taking that same trajectory, which is just, “Wait, I can’t take three months off every four years?” Like, it’s not a lot of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, any pro tips, top do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as we start walking down this path?

DJ DiDonna
I think the first thing is to make sure that you are sufficiently disconnected from your routine life. So if you’re stepping away from work, and you’re coming back to your job, making sure that auto-away messages, emails are being deleted, like, “I will return on X date,” making sure you have support inside the organization to say, like, what’s the break-the-glass moment where, like, “If someone reaches out about this, like, here’s my phone number, but otherwise, no.”

If you’re leaving a job, I think the way to be disconnected is, like, don’t post about it on LinkedIn, don’t tell people you’re taking time off. Just do it. You can post at the end and say, “Here’s what I learned, and many of you might have noticed,” but no one notices. Like, everyone is focused on their own life.

Most often, you’ll hear, like, “You were gone for six months? Like, oh, my gosh, it felt like you were just here yesterday.” People are busy. And that second aspect of disconnection is making sure you’re gone long enough, right?

So, again, best practice, if you can take three months or more, awesome. If you can’t, take as much as you can. I think that it’s like a gateway drug where you take a month off, and you’re like, “That really flew by, and I didn’t get to do 90% of what I wanted to do. Maybe next time in five years, I’ll take more time off.” But just start to experiment with, like, why it’s so different to take extended leave off.

And the other thing, I would encourage people to take that time to get a coach, right? A coach or a therapist to try to, like, process who you are, and use that opportunity to grow as a person. And then, finally, a lot of people shift directly from, like, work-productivity mode into, like, life-productivity mode, and they’re like, “All right, I’m done with work. Now I need to become fluent in Portuguese,” or, “Now I need to do this project I’ve always wanted to do,” which is understandable.

But I encourage people to take a beat. Take a couple weeks, just heal. Get out of your head into your body. Do things like ceramics or yoga, like things that don’t just, like, swap out one brain thing for another, or one laptop thing for another. Like, return to kind of being human again, return to body movement, all that kind of stuff, music, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And what you’re saying about the gateway drug and our beliefs and associations, I think, somewhere inside of us, I think we have kind of a belief that, “If I disappear for a while, you know, disaster will strike,” or, “If I can disappear for a while, then I guess I’m not all that essential.”

And so I’ve heard, talked to people who are taking paternity leave who have said such things. And I remember, I, one time, went on an eight-day silent retreat. And so my phone was totally off, and so I had this extensive email autoreply, as well as voicemail.

And it’s like, “Hey, if you need this, ask this person. You need this? Ask this person. You need this? Ask this person. If you really need something and it can’t wait, you know, here is the number of the retreat house.”

And I guess you can already guess, DJ, how many people felt the need to call the retreat house over eight days? Zero. And so, yeah, the world continues, and yet, we are also missed at the same time, you know?

DJ DiDonna
Yeah. I think that, listen, silver lining from COVID was that we all, especially knowledge workers, right, we found out that you actually don’t have to be in the office to get most of the work done. We had the technology to do it before that, but this kind of, like, forced us to say like, “Oh, my gosh, we can’t be in the same room. How do we get the work done?”

And so I think taking time off can be the same thing. It’s like, “How do we get this done when they’re not here?” Like, what changes when you step away from the office? I think we’re scared of change, we’re scared of uncertainty, you know, understandably, especially this kind of like age of AI.

But at the end of the day, like, you’re replaceable anyway. Like, no company, at least not any good ones, fail because one person leaves, right? And in America, you know, you are employed at will, right? And so you can be fired, for the most part, for no reason.

And so I think you have to, like, lean into that and be courageous, and say, like, “How can I arm myself? How can I improve myself in this age of uncertainty?” And in order to do that, it’s making sure you’re healthy and whole, right, you’re not burnt out, you have energy to kind of persist.

Making sure you have creative ideas for yourself and what you want to do in the future, and making sure you have confidence about what value you offer, like, “Oh, I got fired,” or, “That company shut down, like, I can find another job,” because you you have to, and that’s how the world of work is now. Like, no one is watching out for you and saving up for your retirement for you, unfortunately.

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

DJ DiDonna
A quote that I have in the book that really stuck with me is Wordsworth who says, “To begin, begin,” right? If you want to have the life that you’re not going to regret, if you want to check things off your bucket list before it’s too late, you got to begin.

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

DJ DiDonna
I think this concept of how you rest and recover. So I think everyone thinks that the best way to rest and recover is by doing nothing. And what we found in kind of drafting off other research is that, actually, engaging in activity that’s intrinsically chosen is a great way to recover.

So you don’t have to just sip coconuts on the beach. Many type A achiever people are, like, concerned, like, “What would I do on sabbatical? I’m going to be so bored.” You can do work, but it’s work of your own choosing. It’s intrinsically motivated. It’s something that matters to you. I thought that was a pretty empowering study to read.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

DJ DiDonna
Anything by Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity is a really good one. And I think anything by Johann Hari, I think, does really good kind of journalistic investigative work. I’m reading The Three-Body Problem right now, which has been on my shelf forever. So I’m a sci-fi person as well.

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

DJ DiDonna
I don’t want to say what everyone says about using Claude Code, but it’s been pretty incredible to go through all of my notes over the ten years kind of investigating sabbaticals and help surface and identify people that I’ve spoken to who might be interested in the book. It’s been really nice to have like an assistant through the process.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

DJ DiDonna
It’s honestly doing the dishes in the morning. That sounds really lame, but I actually learned to love it on a meditation retreat. We should circle up on our meditation retreat experiences afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear a smidge more. Learning to love it in what sense?

DJ DiDonna
I think appreciating something like washing dishes as, like, work for the household that adds value, and also work where you can just focus on nothing else. There’s, like, a Nintendo Switch game which is about power washing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it’s a top seller.

DJ DiDonna
Which is crazy, but I get it, right? I mean, you wash dishes, you kind of give that gift to your family, you leave the kitchen better off. It’s the most kind of mid-40s dad thing to say possible, but there it is.

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

DJ DiDonna
I think people talk about the cost of a sabbatical, the price, you know, “Does it affect your retirement?” I think it’s, “What’s the cost not to?” So, really, asking people, like, “What is the cost of living your life without pursuing your dreams, without identifying things on your bucket list, and going after it?”

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

DJ DiDonna
TheSabbaticalProject.org. If you search sabbaticals and DJ, I’m all over the internet. This is not the identity that I thought I would have, but here we are. And I am on LinkedIn a lot as well.

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

DJ DiDonna
I think, even outside of sabbaticals, this annual reflection of really looking back and saying, like, “How was my year? What do I want the next year to look like?” But I think one thing that people don’t do, you know, I teach at a grad school, and when you apply to college, when you apply to grad school, you have to fill out these applications and these essays, “What are three things, three mistakes, three successes? What do I want to do after I graduate from this place?”

I think, often enough, we don’t apply to the next four or five years of our life. So I kind of encourage my students, I’ve created a template where it’s like, “All right, four years from now, like what life are you applying to? Like, no one’s going to read the essays,” but as opposed to just like a one year frame, I like that four year apply to life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, DJ, thank you.

DJ DiDonna
Great to meet you.

Jun 29
0

1164: How to Pace Yourself for Success and Long-Term Thriving with Elizabeth Svoboda

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Elizabeth Svoboda shares expert tactics for finding the right pace to sustain your energy for the long haul.

You’ll Learn

  1. The subtle warning signs you’re overpacing
  2. How to structure your day for maximum energy
  3. How to streamline your day with selective mediocrity

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Svoboda is an award-winning science writer and contributor to Scientific American, Discover, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and other publications. Elizabeth is a winner of the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Writers, and her work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. She lives in San Jose, California, with her husband and young sons.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Elizabeth Svoboda Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Elizabeth, welcome!

Elizabeth Svoboda
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, I’m excited to be chatting about The Art of Pacing. And congratulations, release day is here, now, the day of our recording. I bet that feels good.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yes, it’s surreal, but it feels great. I’m kind of riding the wave here and hoping it lasts, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, so tell us, could you share, for starters, a super surprising or particularly fascinating discovery you’ve made about pacing as you’re doing your research and putting this all together here?

Elizabeth Svoboda
So the genesis of this book was I started having some interesting conversations with, like, high-level coaches, Olympic athletes. And the thing that surprised me the most at first was, well, number one, just how seriously they took the business of pacing, which meant taking much more rest and much longer periods of recovery than most of us actually allow ourselves on a day-to-day basis.

Like, we all kind of have this stereotype in our heads of, like, the Olympic athlete who’s toiling from the break of dawn until the sun goes down, but it is just not reality at all.

And so having these discussions, I started to think, “What if we could all start to pace ourselves as thoughtfully, as deliberately, as these athletes who, again, are amazing or doing world-level things? And what would that produce for us in our lives?”

And I think that initial element of surprise was really what helped propel the entire book forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is striking to think about in an athletic context. And you could see it elsewhere. I’m thinking there was a podcast, I think it was Father Mike Schmitz. He’s a priest, and he was telling a story about even if you’re saving the world.

Like, let’s take a look at some nuns who are actually, like, saving the world, they’re right up in there in the midst of poverty and, like, doing the good-est of things, right, you could imagine. And their order of life, it’s locked in there. Rest, prayer, dinner.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Totally. And, especially, in the context of service or somebody like a nun, somebody who is really devoted to that, you have to be, like, healthily selfish in a way. Just like they say on the airplane, you got to put on your own oxygen mask before you serve others.

And when you see these nuns with these schedules that they take their rest time, maybe they take their naps, 45 minutes every single afternoon, that is them tending to what they need before they tend to other people.

And I think, from the outside, we kind of see it as the other way around, like they’re doing all these amazing unselfish things, but the fact is, in order to be able to do those unselfish things over a sustained period of time, they’ve got to keep pouring into themselves.

And I think I knew that intellectually before I started writing this book, but the research really does support that. And so I believe it even more strongly now.

Pete Mockaitis
And, well, in a totally different context, I’m thinking about parenting and how that can be so often brutally exhausting, in that, like, if there’s not thoughtful, plan-ful moments, it’s like these precious little ones will take every minute there is.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Exactly. And to be honest with you, like, my kids are a little older now, they’re 10 and 13, but I was very overwhelmed, especially when they were at that toddler stage, like when one was 18 months, the other was, like, four, and I was just going crazy at times.

And so one of my sort of impromptu pacing strategies that I devised at that time, and I worked it this out with my husband, but I was, like, “I need to take, like, a 24-hour retreat. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get a hotel. I’m going to check in, like, early afternoon one day. And I am going to do two things.”

“I’m just going to sleep. And then I’m also going to work on, like, the writing passion projects that I haven’t had time for, that I’ve really been wanting to dive into and haven’t.” And so for that entire 24-hour period, that’s exactly what I did. Like, I alternated between the writing and the resting or just conking out.

And at the end of that, I was shocked how much of a difference it made for me, especially after being immersed in, like, kid world, kid universe constantly. I just felt so refreshed and so restored. And, honestly, I’ve been doing a few of these every year ever since.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fantastic. I recall a good friend and listener of the show, Lisa, they said, “What do you want for your birthday?” And she said, “I want 24 hours completely by myself.” And she did. She got a hotel and it was everything she hoped it would be.

So, well, those are cool perspectives. I think we can resonate naturally with the notion of, “Yeah, sometimes you feel overworked and tired and stressed, and rest is really great.” So I think it might be easy to overlook it, or overlook the importance of it.

Could you share with us a story of someone who figured out this pacing thing and kind of what the before-versus-after picture looked like for them?

Elizabeth Svoboda
Well, I learned so much about pacing when I spent a day with the Olympic middle distance runner Ajee Wilson, and I love her pacing philosophy. It’s something that she calls rigid flexibility. So, obviously, she has these very important, like these kind of non-negotiable things that she wants to accomplish each day. That’s the rigid part of it.

So every day, she does a pretty intense, two-, two-and-a-half-hour practice session, like all different lengths of runs, taking these little micro breaks in between, but really, really intense. But then what she does after that, and this is where the flexibility element comes in. You know, I kind of asked her, “Well, what do you do at the end of your long practice every day? Like, do you have a hobby? Do you go out with friends? Like what do you do?”

And she’s, like, “You know, this might sound kind of boring, but to be honest with you, I crash out. I will often take a really long afternoon nap.” And maybe we don’t all need, like, that two-, three-hour nap, but I think what was really striking to me is she was taking the amount of rest that was sort of commensurate with, or that matched, the intensive effort that she put in.

And so you had this rigidity, like you do have to do this thing, that this is a non-negotiable this practice, but you are putting way more padding and way more flexibility around that, and way more recovery than most of us typically do.

And I think that we can also adopt this approach at work. Like, obviously, not all of us are world-level, Olympic-level athletes, but, you know, let’s say you have a work project that you absolutely have to get done this week. Like, that’s the non-negotiable thing.

So, sure, like, you commit to putting in some time on it each day, but you give yourself a big cushion. Like, you give yourself a lot of recovery time between work blocks. And when you’re not working, you do something that’s as completely unrelated to what you’re doing at your desk as you can.

Because, you know, just scrolling your phone in between times, that’s not going to cut it, that’s not going to restore you, that’s not going to give you any energy. Like, actually get out into the world. Like, meet a friend, do something in “meatspace,” I guess, some video game players call it.

So I think that this rigid flexibility is something that, as I observed Ajee, I was determined to create my own version of that. And I think she learned that, too, through tough experience. Like, world-level athletes, they all, many of them, anyway, have this tendency to go above and beyond. They want to push, push, push. They want to do more.

But for her, she found that when she pushed too hard, and when she didn’t give herself enough time for recovery, she would come up with an overuse injury at the very worst minute, like right before the biggest competition of the year.

So I think, as an athlete, you sort of learn these things in a very visceral way. And that’s a very memorable lesson.

But, you know, those of us who aren’t athletes, maybe sometimes it takes us a little bit longer to learn that, because we can keep going through the motions of our day for a long time, even though we are still crashing out inside.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s well said, it takes us a while to learn that. I’m thinking about my sweet mother, and whenever I got really cranky about something disproportionately, and this was well through my teenage years, she would ask me if I was hungry. And, in a way, I kind of didn’t like it.

I was like, “I’m not hungry. I’m mad about this thing.” She’s like, “Yeah, I understand that. But, also, you know, when was the last time you ate?” I was like, “I don’t know, maybe like nine hours ago.” She’s like, “Okay, well, how about we have a little break and eat something?”

And so, I’m like a 17-year-old here, you know, I think I’m almost a man. And, yeah, I was slow to learn that. And, likewise, I think I was slow to learn, even as a young adult in the workplace, it’s like, “Hmm, I find that I’m substantially grouchier and less enthusiastic about all the ‘boring’ ‘BS’ I have to deal with if I’m properly rested.”

If I have enough sleep, I am able to appreciate, “Well, you know what? There’s something kind of interesting about this task. And it makes some sense that I’m being asked to do this, even though it’s not quite how I would do it. I kind of hear where they’re coming from.”

I was just much more understanding and cheerful and interested. And for me, again, it’s also subtle. It’s, like, “What is enough?” Like, the difference between 5.6 hours of sleep and 6.8 hours of sleep doesn’t seem all that substantial. Maybe an episode or two of Netflix at night. And yet, for me, I found that really will show up.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yeah, like, one thing that really was driven home to me so many times in researching this book is there are certain physical states that are not conducive to clear thinking or reasonable thinking at all.

And so, yeah, getting not enough sleep might be one of those things. But just like if your nervous system is in a super activated state, you’re going to be having all these squirrelly thoughts all the time, “Oh, I screwed this up. I screwed that up.”

And a lot of that, I mean, I think we tend to believe everything our brains are telling us, like, take that as the gospel truth. But what I have learned, I think, through direct experience as somebody who tends to get spun up in this particular way, is that when you get your body into a more settled state, your mind actually will follow.

And sometimes it’s hard to remember that at the precise moments when you’re feeling the most spun up. But that said, it is absolutely true, and if you just sort of persist. And, you know, there are sort of spin-down practices that work better for different people.

Like, I’m pretty much a terrible meditator. Like, I do not have that kind of focus. And so I do deeper breathing, like a specific breathing tactic that a psychiatrist taught me called modulation breathing. But, yeah, for you it might be meditation, it might be like walking meditation, you take a walk outdoors.

But the point is, whatever it is for you that gives you that feeling that, “Okay, I’m starting to spin down now. And let’s see, let’s give a more objective reading on this situation. Like, what is really true here?” And you’re going to be much more likely to come to terms with what’s happening. And it might not be great, but, like, you’re just coming to terms with what’s happening.

And then, “What can I realistically do about it?” And it is really, really hard to do that sort of essential assessment process if you were in that monkey-mind squirrelly state. So I would say, like, the first thing, tend to the physical spin-up before you try to get into the deeper thought and make the next best decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is shocking how much that state, the emotional weather or vibe, and the internal weather going on there, has a profound impact on our decision-making, and we’re often unaware of it.

I mean, I think we know. Okay, if I’m enraged and I want to fire that person, maybe now is not the time. I should probably think about that before I just lash out. That’s probably a smart move. So I think we’re aware of that.

But I think the subtler shades of emotion are also coloring our decision-making, what we think is true versus false, or a wise move, or an unwise move. And I think, for many of us, it can pass right by our awareness and we don’t even know how much that’s influencing us. That’s just a theory, a hypothesis, my own experience. Has your research revealed some of these things?

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yes, I was just thinking, that is exactly right. And so I’ve come to see these spin-down tactics, whether it’s the breathing or whatever gets you into that more centered state. Like, it’s not just a good short-term pacing tactic that allows you to get through the day. It’s a good long-term pacing tactic.

Because once you’re in that more centered state, you are going to make decisions that serve your present and future self long term.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And, again, I think that we can forget about all kinds of little things in the, like, “Oops. oh, I haven’t had any water or beverage for six hours. Oopsie! And I’m a little thirsty, but that’s probably not causing me to be super irritable. Well, maybe it very well is, you know.”

So the squirrelly state, that’s a good turn of phrase. What are some of, perhaps, the subtle yet reliable signs we should be on the lookout for, like, “Oh, maybe I’m in the squirrelly state, and it would be better to do some of the spin-down stuff”?

Elizabeth Svoboda
For me, what it is, like, I won’t have any trouble getting to sleep at night, but I will just bolt upright in bed at 4:30 a.m. and my heart will be pounding, like, to beat the band.

And after that happens, as you can imagine, it’s really, really difficult for me to get back to sleep at all after that. And I’m just like, I’m just spun up. And I remember talking to a psychologist about how this happens to me.

And he’s, like, “Yeah, this is what happens. Like, if you are in a more chronic or a more elevated stress state, that burst of cortisol that normally would just wake you up more gently, it’s going to pile on top of all this cortisol you’ve already got going, and it is going to give you a jolt like you wouldn’t believe.”

“And you’re going to have, like, this fear signal. It’s, like, you’re not afraid of anything in particular, but it’s, like, you don’t even know where this fear signal is coming from. You just sit up and you feel terrified.” And so, for me, that is a major red flag. That is a warning sign.

But, you know, for you, it might be something a little bit different. It’s when you start skipping meals, or forgetting to drink, or just not feeling hungry or thirsty, that is often a sign that your system, for whatever reason, it’s trying to deal with whatever crisis it perceives is right in front of you, or on the horizon, instead of just tending to the boring daily things that you have to do to get yourself through the day.

So when you notice those signs, and if you’re listening, you probably have some idea what these signs might be for you, that is really a warning, like, “I need to pause here. I need to maybe do a little bit more spinning down. And then I need to ask myself, like, ‘Okay, what’s the next wise choice? Like, what do I need in this moment? And how can I fulfill that need?’”

And it might be something super mundane. It might be just like taking your water cup and just sticking it under the tap and making sure you get a couple swallows of water in your mouth. But I think a lot of us are not alert to those earlier warning signs until it’s kind of too late, and we get into a full-fledged bout of depression, full-fledged burnout, and that is just really, really dangerous territory.

There was one study that really shocked me when I came across it, and it was about, like, 200 people, and they were diagnosed with exhaustion, which is basically like a burnout state, and they received initial treatment for that.

But then they followed those people up for several years after the initial exhaustion, and they found that fully a third of them still qualified as exhausted, as basically burned out. And so the fact is once we sort of crash, we can kind of limp along in this languishing, in this burned out state for years on end.

Like, you kind of think it’s going to go away once it happens. Well, if you don’t tend to it, if you don’t make real steps to, like, refill your tank, it is going to persist. And I think a lot of us don’t like to admit that to ourselves but it’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so when it comes to refilling the tank, I think folks are perhaps quick to dismiss that, like, “Okay, yeah, I know that’s good, and maybe I’ll do that later after this project, after this move, after…” whatever. And so do you have any pro tip, research-backed suggestions for, “Ah, science suggests that this is a super rejuvenating spinning-down move, you know, per minute required of your life”?

Elizabeth Svoboda
Well, I mean, of course, if you can take a longer break from work, that is a great thing to do. But that said, I know a lot of us are in a position where that is just not available to us. Like, maybe we just started working at a particular company, we’re not quite senior yet, and we don’t feel like we can make a request to take a month off, right?

And in those situations, what has been really helpful, I think, for me, is a practice that I call energy management. And I’ve talked with a number of athletes, too, who use this. And as far as the biggest bang for your moment of effort, it’s hard to beat, and it’s very simple to start.

Like, what you do is you identify which times of day that you naturally tend to be most alert or most focused. So for some people, like, for me, it’s around mid morning, anywhere from like 10 until 12:30 or whenever I break for lunch.

But for other people, it might be afternoon, or for some creative types, sometimes it’s like late at night. And then what you do is you plan your most mentally demanding, like, work that matters the most that day to coincide with those natural energy peaks.

And so all it is is about aligning your toughest efforts with the moments when they’re naturally going to feel the least effortful. So it’s like your body is going to kind of give you these waves. Like, if you think about a surfer, the surfer waits for the wave before they try to ride it.

And so you are riding your energy peaks as you know they tend to come up. And then after lunch, like a lot of us have a huge energy slump, and that is totally normal. It’s to do with digestion and a bunch of other things.

And so if you can’t take a full traditional Siesta-style break at that time, you can still sort of downshift by doing something that’s a lot less demanding.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, yes. So identify those moments. And I’m thinking, for me, what’s more obvious is the moment I am the opposite of super alert, and it is almost exactly 1:45 p.m. Central Time, and regardless of how much I slept, what time I woke up, whether I had a delicious latte, even shortly before that, or whether I ate, whether I ate a lot, whether I ate a little, no matter what, right around then is, like, “Oh, I am sleepy.”

And it’s just great to know. And I actually try to get at least 10 minutes of straight up, literally, in a bed during that zone because it just feels so right in terms of, “It’s lined up, having a power nap would be great, generally, and this is the ideal time I might do that.” So I pull that off most days.

Elizabeth Svoboda
And that is amazing, and I would say, yeah, if you can get away with doing that, taking that 10-minute nap under your desk, or whatever you need to do, do it because that is going to give you a boost like you wouldn’t believe, and it can even help ease you into your next energy peak.

Like, for me, I tend to have not the highest energy peak, but, like, a smaller one starting around 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s funny, and sometimes I have, like, a little shot of espresso just to kick this off a little bit more.

But, like, at that time I know I can go writing, I can go deep into the creative stuff for about an hour before the hangry starts to sort of get the best of me. And I’m like, “Okay, I think that this is a good time to break now.” So look for those smaller peaks, too, in addition to those, to the lulls and the bigger peaks.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay. And we had Dr. Michael Breus on the show, he’s a sleep doctor, talking about your chronotype. You may naturally be an early-morning person or a late-night person. And his suggestion is, to the extent that’s possible, try not to fight it and see if your family, workplace can accommodate you as as much as you can, because it can be pretty tough being a night owl in an early-bird’s world.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yeah, exactly. And if you’re doing shift work and things like that, it’s just very, very difficult, too. It’s basically asking you to find a peak at a time when you normally would not find that. And the research shows that if you’re trying to do that, maybe like for a month you can get through it, but if it’s like years on end like that, where you’re forcing yourself past your natural chronotype, you are going to have more chronic disease burden, the health issues that are associated with that are just going to build up.

And so, yeah, as much as possible, like, ride those natural energy waves, catch them when they happen, and don’t beat yourself up when they’re not there because everybody is going to have sort of those fallow periods, those lie-flat periods in their day.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you’ve got a fun term of a phrase, ludic loop. What is that?

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yeah, so this is something that actually happens to us, a lot of us anyway, when we get into this trance of scrolling our feeds or clicking for the next notification online. And the term ludic loop, it actually came from some research that an anthropologist did.

And what she was studying was actually slot machine gamblers. So these people who were sitting in front of their machines, like, over and over in this trance, just pushing the lever over and over again. And then what some other research shows is that when you are doing these repetitive things, you are often getting a little bit of a dopamine burst associated with that.

And it’s not just from doing the thing itself, it’s from the anticipation of what’s coming next. So you might be getting a dopamine burst when you click on your notifications, and that’s because you’re anticipating, “I’m going to get a new message. Somebody is going to like my post,” or whatever it is.

And that’s okay, like, as far as it goes, but it just tends to draw us into these endless loops of consumption. Like, we get the dopamine burst, and that kind of motivates us to keep scrolling until we get the next dopamine burst, and the next, and the next. And so it’s kind of a very shallow engagement.

What happens, just like at the slot machine, people get up from the seats after five hours and are like, “What just happened to the last five hours of my life?” I think a lot of us have had that experience, whether we’re scrolling Instagram, scrolling TikTok, like, “What just happened to that last 45 minutes? Like, what kind of went down the hole there that I’m never going to get back?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I always wonder, “How can I use that for good?” It doesn’t seem to happen to me when I’m folding laundry or processing email, unfortunately.

Elizabeth Svoboda
I mean, if you’re familiar with the flow state, like deep creative engagement, I think of the online scrolling as a sort of shallow flow because it’s like a passive flow where you’re not engaging, you’re not making any progress, you’re really not contributing.

And so what I tell people is if you’re going to try and swap out some of that sort of shallow flow, that shallow scrolling time, find something that you know helps you get into a deeper flow. So if you’re a writer like me, it might be working on your latest story. If you play an instrument, even just getting into practice, a lot of people get into this deep flow.

And the great thing about flow is it’s, again, a state that makes you feel like you’re hanging onto a tow rope and you’re getting pulled along, like you are enjoying the process so much that it’s easier to keep going than it is to be allowed.

So, yeah, like, replacing that shallow flow with deeper flow, that’s going to be the best thing because then you’re not going to feel like you’re at loose ends, like, “Oh, well, now I’m not scrolling. What am I going to do instead?”

Once you’re in that flow, that question is going to be answered for you. You’re going to be so engaged that you’re just going to want to keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, Elizabeth, tell us, what are some of your favorite tactics that are just fantastic for this?

Elizabeth Svoboda
One thing that has been really fun and really freeing for me is practicing selective mediocrity. And I, first, heard Whitney Casares, she’s a doctor, she’s on Instagram, she was talking about this.

And so basically what selective mediocrity is, is you are choosing, you’re deciding, like, “I’m going to do all these different things in my day, and I’m just going to do an adequate job at them. Like, I’m going to be just okay. Like, I’m going to send the one-line email if it answers the questions, and this five-paragraph thing that somebody sent to me.”

“I’m going to blitz through this project evaluation if I’m pretty sure that my manager is just going to skim it for five seconds and then put in the pile on his desk,” right? And so it’s about giving yourself permission to streamline in that way, to do just enough, like, just good enough, but don’t do more than good enough.

This is what one psychiatrist told me, like, he tells his clients, like, “Don’t do more than good enough unless you’re just totally passionate about the thing that you’re doing.” And when you do that streamlining, then you’re going to have more energy to put into the things that matter the most to you that you really absolutely care the most about doing your best at.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us some top examples of these are great candidates for being selectively mediocre at?

Elizabeth Svoboda
At work, it’s just kind of there is so much busy work that so many of us have to do, whether it’s, like, a survey, a progress report. And I’m not saying, like, blow it off entirely, but it really is okay to, like, set the timer for five minutes and just make a goal, like, “I’m going to get through this in five minutes. And if I’m done, I’m just going to be done and I’m going to turn this in. I’m not going to obsess over it for 20 minutes or half an hour,” not that I have ever done this kind of thing in my life.

But just like that kind of stuff, that kind of cruft that accumulates in the corners of your work life, your everyday life, that is the kind of stuff that just be selectively mediocre and embrace that. And it’s just so freeing and it gives you a feeling of power, I think, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a very nice piece to highlight there because I would say, busy work, I mean, whenever there is a process in which you suspect your input is not all that mission critical, I think is a great place to be selectively mediocre.

Like, sometimes, this is me, I love human development and learning and growth and improvement, right? And so if I get a survey, it’s like, “Oh, you know what? I would relish the opportunity to serve you by sharing with you as much insightful, actionable feedback as possible. So let me really just…”

Yeah, I’ve done this before. I have gone deep. And then you wonder, it’s like, “Will anyone ever actually read and ponder this? Or is it just sort of like, ‘Yeah, it’s on the checklist. Send out the survey.’”

Elizabeth Svoboda
And to be honest with you, like, a human may not even be reading that. It’s probably going to get scanned through ChatGPT or whatever. So why do we do this to ourselves, yeah?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me, Elizabeth, any final do’s and don’ts here with regard to pacing?

Elizabeth Svoboda
One of the things that I always sort of stress to people is pacing, it’s not just like a one-time thing, like, “Okay, here’s my pacing plan. Here’s what I’m going to do this week. Here’s what I’m going to do this month. Let’s have ChatGPT optimize that for me.”

It’s a lot more fluid than that. It’s sort of a process of ongoing noticing what’s going on and being responsive to that. Like, checking in maybe more often with yourself than most of us typically do, like, “Where am I now? Where am I actually headed? What direction am I heading in? And what adjustments or what pace changes can I make that are going to be most likely to get me there?”

And even that finish line, don’t be surprised if that starts to evolve as well. Like, you might have a certain goal right now, and for you in this moment, that’s a really meaningful finish line in what you’re pacing yourself toward.

But as you get more knowledge, as you get more experience, that may change, that may evolve in ways that are sort of a happy surprise to you. So I think just sort of being open to that and just knowing that fluidity and flexibility are really at the core of what it means to pace yourself in a smart way.

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

Elizabeth Svoboda
So I love, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Father Greg Boyle, who founded the Homeboy Industries. It’s like a gang rehabilitation program in LA. And he says, “Systems change when people change. They’re bite-sized moments to be able to reflect back to people the truth of who they are. Then you watch them become that truth and they extend that truth to other people.”

And so that resonates so much for me because part of what I outline as a good pacing strategy is becoming skilled at finding those bite-sized moments to remind people of what you see in them, the potential that you see in them, and where they’re headed.

And in the book, I call them brief candle moments, and creating those is so fulfilling. If you are the initiator, or if you’re the recipient, and it may not be a long time.

It may be like two or three minutes, but you learn something in those moments that you look back 30 years down the line, and you’re like, “If I hadn’t heard that in this moment, my life might look very different than it does right now.”

So just those trajectory shifting moments that you can create for other people, like, that is going to be enormously fulfilling to you, and that is certainly something that I try to put into play as part of a longer-term pacing strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, boy, I remember that’s resonating. Back in episode 14 with Dr. Marcia Reynolds, she made me cry when she told a story when she turned 20 in jail, and someone there just said to her, “You have no idea who you are,” and talked about how she was so smart and courageous, and she had all these opportunities and advantages and strengths and things she could do. And she just felt really seen. And, bam! It really was transformational, sharing that piece in that moment.

Elizabeth Svoboda
That is incredible. And, yeah, people often do get emotional when they recall these moments. And so I was a volunteer in a mentoring program one time, and I knew this guy named Tom. And Tom was, like, a retired guy in his 60s, but he was the best person that I know at offering these moments to other people.

So the kids in this program, they were sort of in this category that, at the time, was called Youth at Risk. Maybe some of them had been in trouble with the law, they were having trouble at school, they were just struggling in different ways.

And Tom, he just had this way of offering these brief candles of really conveying to somebody in this capsule that packed a punch of, like, what he saw in them, the potential that he saw, all the things that he loved about who they were.

And I just watched it transform them, and I’m kind of getting emotional thinking about it because if we could all be a little bit more like Tom, I think the world would be a much better place.

Pete Mockaitis
This also reminds me of “The Lion King.” And no spoilers, anyone, it’s been out for a while. But when Simba sees his dad in the stars, “Remember who you are,” I mean, that’s powerful stuff. That’s powerful stuff.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yeah. And, like, people don’t realize. Like, you can really give this to somebody, and it’s like this infinite thing that you’re giving them, and it’s going to take two minutes of your time. And I think if that came home to more of us, we would all be looking for these opportunities on a daily or, like, an hourly basis because that’s the impact that they can have.

Pete Mockaitis 
A favorite habit?

Elizabeth Svoboda
It’s a practice that’s in the research, it’s called resonance frequency breathing, but I’ve come to call it modulation.

And so what it involves is actually breathing at a pace in which there’s the greatest variability between the way your heart rate speeds up as you breathe in, and then slows down as you breathe out. And so if you’re a fitness gadget person, you might’ve heard about heart rate variability.

And so breathing at this pace, which for most people is about five breaths a minute, that is going to get your heart rate variability in the highest possible place. And that is going to facilitate you getting into that calmer state faster.

And I had a really crazy experience when I first tried this type of breathing. It was in the office of a psychiatrist, Joe Arpaio, who teaches modulation to his patients. And so what he did, like, he clipped a little heart rate monitor on my finger, and he had me do my modulation breathing. For me, it was like 5.2 breaths per minute. Do that for about five minutes.

And I was watching, like on his laptop screen, there was like a little tracing, and where my heart tracing started out like real jaggedy and unpredictable, they were just slowly relaxing into these smooth, these more like S-shaped sine waves, showing that my heart rate variability was improving.

And at the end of those five minutes, Dr. Joe, he turned to me and he was, like, “You know what? You just calmed yourself down way faster than if I had taken an IV sedative and I pushed it into your arm right now.”

And it really struck me because I had gone into that day pretty, pretty skeptical. I mean, we all hear about, like, different breathing practices, and we try different things that we read about in magazines, and maybe it doesn’t really work for us. But for me, sustaining that about five, 5.2 breaths per minute for…you got to stick with it for more than 30 seconds. It’s got to be, like, three, four, five minutes.

But you can do it alongside everything else in your life. Like, I do it all the time when I’m waiting at red lights or when I’m chopping up the food for dinner. Like, it kind of weaves around just the daily practices that you’re already doing.

And so I can attest that this really does work, and it really is better than taking sedatives and hoping for the best.

Pete Mockaitis
No, that’s awesome stuff, yes. And there are apps, even the Calm app on the free, before you subscribe, will give you four seconds in, six seconds out, which approximates that, or as well as Elite HRV with a heart rate strap will give you that kind of a visual experience if you’re into it. So that’s real. That’s my experience.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Yeah, I love Elite HRV too. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Elizabeth Svoboda
I’m kind of obsessed with An Interrupted Life by Etty Hillesum. Now not a lot of people have heard of this, but, basically, what it is, it’s a collection of diaries and letters that were written by a Dutch Jewish woman during World War II.

And over the course of these diaries and these letters, you see very clearly how she evolved over time from somebody who was pretty anxious, very self-focused, like always getting spun up, as we’ve been calling it. And she really evolved into somebody who was so dedicated to service. And it’s sort of, I mean, I feel like I’m nowhere near being there yet, but it still, it gives me hope that all of us might be able to evolve, at least in that direction, no matter what craziness is happening around us.

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

Elizabeth Svoboda
I have been spending a fair amount of time on Instagram these days. My username is svobodster, so that’s S-V-O-B-O-D-S-T-E-R. It was a nickname given to me in fifth grade by my best frenemy. So there you have it. Also, you can find me at my website, ElizabethSvoboda.com, and I do have a beehiiv newsletter as well called “The Art of Pacing.”

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

Elizabeth Svoboda
If you find yourself during the day in mental overload or just in the midst of a crisis that really caught you off guard, first, just take a few minutes to do your spin-down.

And then once you reach that state where you’re feeling a little bit calmer, ask yourself, “What’s the wise choice here?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Elizabeth, thank you.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been a blast.

May 25
0

1155: How to Escape the Procrastination Trap and Achieve Your Goals with Jon Acuff

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Jon Acuff talks about the hidden fears, assumptions, and overwhelm that are keeping you stuck in the procrastination trap.

You’ll Learn

  1. 
What it really means to have “more executive presence”
  2. How to “make tomorrow easy today” with simple preparation
  3. How to go from stuck to unstuck in 4 steps

About Jon

Jon Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. His titles, including Soundtracks, Finish and All It Takes Is A Goal, have sold more than one million copies. Named one of Inc.’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers, he’s delivered keynotes to companies such as Microsoft, Walmart, and Comedy Central. Host of the popular podcast All It Takes Is a Goal, Jon has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to overcome overthinking and finish what matters most. Jon lives outside of Nashville with his wife and two daughters.

Resources Mentioned

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Jon Acuff Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jon, welcome back!

Jon Acuff
It’s good to see you again, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about procrastination. You got a whole book about this. Tell us, what do you know or have discovered about procrastination that’s new and fresh and surprising and interesting that we should know?

Jon Acuff
Well, I think the really interesting thing to me is that it’s not necessarily a problem. People use it as a solution. It’s just not a good solution. Meaning, if they don’t want to tell their mom they’re not coming home for Thanksgiving, procrastination goes, “No problem. We don’t have to do that for, like, seven months. We can wait until the last second.”

Or, I’m afraid of getting negative reviews of my book. Procrastination says, “No problem. I’ll solve that. You’ll never get a negative review. I mean, you won’t get to write a book, but you’ll never get that.” So it’s not a laziness problem, which is why so many of the willpower discipline things we do don’t ultimately work.

It’s really more of a figuring out how to give yourself permission to do those things that you really want to do or really need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Permission to do the things you really want to do or need to do. I’m also curious about the things we don’t want to do. I guess we need to do them, but we don’t want to do them. I think that’s where it gets me. It’s not so much…

Jon Acuff
Like what? What do you procrastinate on?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Well, I think there’s tax things. It’s a joke, every year, my accountant is like, “Yeah, we’re deferring, right? Yeah. Didn’t need to ask.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, that’s funny.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah.  there’s plenty of things in terms of, “Oh, it would be good to have…” I think that’s for me, like, “It’d be nice to have the result of that thing, but, ugh, doing the work seems exhausting and overwhelming, and I just don’t want to right now.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I think that’s 100% fair. I love that you admitted having the result would be great. I think a lot of people won’t admit, “You know, I’d really just like to have done the thing, but I don’t want to do all this.” For me, entitlement is when I go, “I wish my LinkedIn profile, and I had a better LinkedIn presence.” And you’re like, “Yeah, you haven’t used LinkedIn for, like, five years.” Like, “Yeah, it’s really suffering somehow with my complete lack of effort.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, go figure.”

Jon Acuff
And to me, that’s entitlement is when I go, “I want blank, but I haven’t done any of the work.” I just think, as far as doing stuff you need to do, but don’t want to do, it’s about selling yourself into doing it. Like, in the book, one of the ideas is, like, you’re the greatest, Pete, salesman in the world because, before every decision you’ve ever made, whether it was good or bad, first, you sold yourself into it.

So I think a lot of goals comes down to your ability to sell yourself into doing something you want to do or need to do, but you don’t feel like doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re going to need to talk about that at length, but I want to zoom out a smidge and get the big picture. What’s your overall message about procrastination and the latest insights from your in-depth research here?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the overall is there’s four permissions you need, and if you do these permissions in this order, it’s almost impossible to not be successful. And I want to say very clearly, I couldn’t have written this book as book two.

If, at 36, Jon Acuff wrote a book called Procrastination Proof: Never Gets Stuck, I’m an arrogant guesser. I’m going, “Maybe, I don’t know. I’ve written one book before. Clearly, I’m great at not procrastinating.”

But by book 11 at 50, I’m like, “Yeah, for someone as distracted as I am, for somebody who has such a hard time focusing to have written 11 books, I figured out how to kind of do some difficult things that maybe you shouldn’t put off.”

So the ultimate idea behind the book is permission, and the four types of permission are permission to dream, permission to plan, do, and review. So those four actions – dream, plan, do, review. And if you do those in that order consistently, everything gets really easy and often really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, I want to hear about these permissions. And can you tell us a bit about the research process by which you landed there? So you did some substantial surveying, right? And talking to folks and identifying some real themes and patterns that appeared at high frequency.

Jon Acuff
Well, the benefit to my job, Pete, is that the way I write a book is I find a problem in my own life and I figure out if there’s a solution for it, and I spent a few years doing that. And then I ask, “Do other people have it?”

And if a lot of other people have it, then I go research to figure out, “Okay, how does it apply to other people, not just me?” It’s not a helpful book if it’s, essentially, how Jon Acuff beat Jon Acuff’s procrastination. That’s not a good book. That’s a manual for me.

So what happened with this book, I worked with this PhD named Mike Peasley, he’s a professor at MTSU. And so it started with, we did a study on, “How many people think they’re living up to their full potential?” meaning there’s something they really want, but they’re not doing it.

And we asked 3000 people and 96% of them said they were not living up to their full potential. So then I go, “Okay, there’s this huge audience.” And then the research kind of goes from there into testing it in a community online, testing it with real live audiences. Like, it’s one idea.

It’s one thing to have an idea in this office, it’s another thing to take it to a Fortune 500 company and go, “Hey, here’s how this permission works.” And you can tell instantly, “Oh, no, that’s not their world at all,” or, “Oh, no, the permission to dream is not helping the cattle ranchers,” or, “Permission to plan is not helping the engineers.”

So a lot of what I do is then go test it on the road and then, eventually, it ends up in a book. So it’s a longer process than my other books used to be, but I think it turns out a better product.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then could you speak to us about these permissions?

Jon Acuff
They’re really, really simple. I mean, the first one, permission to dream, you have to have a reason to change. No one ever changes just because. I’ve helped a million people with their goals. I still haven’t met somebody that said, “I woke up today and decided to have grit. I just woke up today and decided to sacrifice.”

No one willingly leaves their comfort zone, and they shouldn’t. It’s comfortable. The only reason people leave their comfort zones is there’s something outside it worth being uncomfortable for. And it’s usually one of two things – desire or disappointment.

Desire, meaning they bumped into something they really want. Disappointment, they woke up at 42 and their career wasn’t where they wanted it to be. They lost their job to AI and they don’t have much of a choice. The disappointment finally got loud enough to go, “I got to change some stuff or this isn’t going to work.”

So that’s the dream. You got to have a sense of why you want to do something and what you want to do before you even move it into planning. And planning is you answer the question, “How will I do it?” Doing is, “Are you doing it?” And review is, “Did it work? Are we headed in the direction we want to go?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now let’s talk about the word permission in terms of it’s just me. I don’t have to appeal to some authority as the principal or a government official for the permission, the access to do any of these things. So can you unpack this word here?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so I’ll give you an example. Somebody the other day told me they had a weight loss goal, but if they lost weight, they’d be breaking family norms. Because in their family, they grew up in their family of origin, food was comfort. Food was security. Food was family. Food was tradition.

Big Southern family, like you had big Southern plates of food, and to be health conscious felt like divorcing the family you were from. And so he needed permission to go, “No, I have permission to love my parents where they are, but I don’t have to repeat my childhood. I don’t have to. I get to lose weight. I have permission to have a healthy lifestyle. I have permission to care about what I eat and how I look and how I exercise.”

So a lot of times, even if you’re an individual, that doesn’t mean you’re free of kind of hangups that are getting in the way. So a lot of times it is that sense of like, “What are some of the broken soundtracks I believe?”

Take money for instance. Money is the last taboo we have in our country. Like, I know men that’ll tell me the worst things they’re dealing with. But if you go, “Hey, what’s the financial number you’re thinking about retiring with?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, we don’t talk about that. That’s super sensitive.”

And some of them have hangups about money because they grew up in a family where money was considered evil or must be nice or, “They’re rich, we’re not.” And if you get to a certain level of success, you therefore, become greedy.

So they need a permission to go, “No, I have permission to do. I have permission to go as hard as I want at this business on this job.” So there’s so many different areas where the lack of permission holds you back.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. And talking about money, I guess, I’m thinking in terms of you hear so much, at least I do, in terms of scams, and scandals, and swindles, and crypto rug pulls, and extractive private equity yuckiness that feels gross to me, such that I think I’m vibing with what you’re saying is I do feel a little bit of resistance internally in terms of really going after some money-making opportunities, because it’s like, “You know what? I’m doing fine. And I don’t want to be like those mean private equity dudes. Hmm.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, “I don’t want to step on next. The only way to get ahead is you have to take advantage of people.” Or, the one that I saw somebody asked the other day, it was like, “Why is it binary where I can either have a really great business or I can be a great dad? Why does our culture present it as like…?”

Because I’ve had friends, and I’ll go, “I think you should really start that business.” They go, “Ooh, I don’t want to, like, forget my kids names. I’ll never see them.” As if there’s only two options – not pursue your dream or get a divorce and not attend your daughter’s first communion.

And it’s like, “Whoa, there’s a lot of options. It’s just you’ve made it very binary.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So how do we grant ourselves or acquire this permission if we’re feeling some of this conflictedness?

Jon Acuff
Well, part of it is identifying it. Some of it’s just labeling it. Like, there’s a really great exercise that we talk about a lot where it’s like you write down a goal and then you write down your reaction to the goal. So you write down, “Okay, I want to retire with $5 million.”

And you write down like, “Oh, that would be impossible,” or, “Oh, I don’t have enough time for that,” or, “Oh, I’ve already made too many bad decisions,” or, “Oh, somebody who has that amount of money is always like this.”

And you start to identify, “Oh, these things are going to hold me back.” Most of the things we wrestle with in life are mindset issues. They’re not physical problems. Where we live, like at least in the Western world, I never have to fear a tiger.

I never leave my house and I’m like, “Just, hey, be careful. There’s a lot of physical predators out there.” It’s only things like procrastination, imposter syndrome, inner critic, overthinking, you know, perfectionism.

And so a lot of times, it’s identifying those things so that you can actually start to work with them. That’s a great first step to go, “Oh, this is holding me back. I’m overreacting in this situation because I have something that’s holding me back. Let me identify that so I can actually deal with it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about that weight and big Southern cooking plates situation. Let’s say someone has identified that, “Okay, I would like to be slimmer, but, ooh, that feels hard, that feels risky because of these beliefs, these associations, this history,” what do I do with that?

Jon Acuff
Well, I mean, I guess it would depend on, like, if it’s an event you’re talking about, meaning, “I’m trying to be in shape, and I’m going home for Thanksgiving,” or, “I’m going home for Christmas, and I know that there’s going to be a lot of food, and a lot of food discussion.” Like, having a game plan and going, “Okay, what do I want to do with that?”

My favorite definition of discipline, which I put in the book, is “Make tomorrow easy today.” Make tomorrow easy today. What can I do today that makes tomorrow easy? That’s constantly how I’m thinking, “What can night me do to hook up morning me?” “What can Monday me do to hook up Friday me?”

So in a situation like that, if somebody said to me, “Okay, I’m trying to break these family norms,” I’d go, “Okay. Well, is it, like, related to a specific thing? And if it was, then we’d come up with a plan for that thing.”

If it was related to the decisions you were making of like, “Oh, man, every time I feel stressed, I do this and I know it’s a short-term solution.” Well, let’s change that. You know, like, let’s change the rhythm of that. Let’s find a different way to deal with stress than that. Like, if you know that’s where you tend to go, you have permission to make different choices.

And then maybe it’d be, let’s get some community. So now you have a communal sense of it. Like, for me, I worked out alone a long time, and I joined a community called F3 where it’s a free men’s workout in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s fun.

Jon Acuff
And I love it. And that changed my approach to working out. Like, that gave me new norms. Now I’m with a bunch of other dudes at 5:30 in the morning. That’s a new norm for me. What’s fun is if you do this long enough, not doing it becomes weird.

Meaning, when you first work out, when you first write, when you first build a business, whatever, it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable. But then you get into such a rhythm that, if you miss a week or two, you’re like, “Oh, this isn’t right.” There’s this really sweet spot where the good habits, when you miss them become weird and it flip flops.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I totally feel that, experientially. And I think about it almost, like, a dirt road when you got the groove established. It’s easier to be in the groove than out of the groove. Like, today, I had an odd early meeting. And I knew, and actually set multiple alarms because it deviated from my regular schedule so often.

And so I dropped the kids off, and I knew I got to get right to the office for my early meeting. And, mindlessly, I’m driving to the church for, because that’s usually what I do is I hang out in the chapel for some prayer, post-kid drop off.

And I was like, “Wait, no, no, not today. That’s not…We do that almost every day, but today, I have an early meeting. So I got to get to the office right away.” And so it’s so funny how the autopilot move is just, “Oh, I turn here toward the church.”

And I think that is the case with, well, almost everything in terms of, “Oh, I’m working out in the morning, so that’s what I do.” And then it’s like, “Oh, no, no, today is a different day. We don’t do that.” And so it really tracks that, like, the first one or two or three times it’s like a force of will, effortful, intense. And then it’s easier and easier.

And I guess different people put different numbers on it. But, Jon, if I may, when do you think the groove has more momentum than the new groove?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, like, I love if you Google “How long does it take to start a new habit?” there were nine million answers, and it’s like 30 days, 90 days. I mean, for me, I think, at least, it takes a season, meaning like it takes a fall, it takes a summer.

Like, it takes a, you know, for me, three to four months chunk of time of like now F3 for me, like getting up at 4:55 is crazy. For, like, the first eight weeks, I was like, “This is the dumbest thing ever.” Now, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Now I’m into it.” So, for me, it usually takes at least a season.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you.

Jon Acuff
How does it take you? I mean, what’s your number?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, well, it’s not binary, you know? It’s hard for me to, like, establish the cutoff because I’d say the second day is easier than the first, and third’s easier than the second, and the fourth, and so on and so forth. So I don’t know where I would draw the line. But, I don’t know, maybe 40-ish.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, that feels good. I’ll hold you to that, 40-ish.

Pete Mockaitis
At this point, it feels harder to not do the thing that I started doing 40 days ago.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so permission to dream. And let’s talk about planning.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so where people get stuck there is dreaming runs on optimism, planning runs on realism. So dreaming, “Anything is possible. This is going to be amazing. It’s going to be huge.” And then you have to transition kind of into the real world, into reality.

And one of the simplest tools you can do is really just be honest about your calendar. I meet people all the time that’ll go, “I have these 30 different goals. I have 10 different dreams.” And I’d go, “Well, let’s put a number associated with them.”

And then they put an hour or timeframe with them, and I’ll go, “Well, how many hours of free time do you have in your week?” And they go, “Free time? What are talking about? I’m very busy. I’m slammed right now.”

And you go, “Well, you have a 12-hour goal chunk and a week that has zero hours, like that’s why you’re going to keep procrastinating. It’s not because you’re just delaying. It’s because you don’t have the time to pay that bill. Let’s figure that out.”

So that’s a big part of it for people with planning is, “Okay, how do you actually pay the price of the thing you want?” And maybe you don’t want the thing. Like, I would argue, if you won’t spend half an hour with Claude or ChatGPT having it interview you about the thing, you probably don’t really want the thing.

And maybe you’ve just carried that goal along for a long time of, “I think I need to write a book,” “Someday I want to start a business,” “I’ve always wanted to run a marathon,” but if you won’t even spend, like, half an hour kind of just investigating what would that take, maybe it’s not a goal you care about. And that’s fine. Like, I love getting rid of fake goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us about this half-hour AI interview protocol. How does this go down?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so, for me, if I have something I want to do that’s new, that I don’t know how to do, I often will say, “Okay, one, I love the whole, like, tell me how to write the best prompt to get the thing I want.” So then I’m not even really writing the prompt.

But if I might say, okay, like, an example for me is I’m doing something called Stage & Page, where it’s a one-day intensive for speakers and a one-day intensive for writers. So I might say, “Hey, you know, I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I want to be able to help people that have just started. Interview me about my first year of public speaking because I know these things, but it’s been a while.”

“You’re the best journalist in the world. You write for a magazine called Stage & Page, and I want you to ask me 10 really insightful questions about my early experience as a speaker.” And then it interviews me, and then it’ll summarize that, it’ll create content out of that. But it’s a really easy way versus just a blank piece of paper.

So if I was going to run a marathon, start a business, you know, figure out how to lose 10 pounds, I would say, “Interview me,” so that I really have a sense of why I want to do it, what I want to do, what are my limitations, “Oh, you’ve got a couple injuries. Let’s figure that out.” Like, the interview format is so much easier than just trying to willpower your way into a blank piece of paper.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So you are engaging in that conversation to get the beginnings of some kind of plan going. Is it fair to say, you don’t expect the AI to spit out the perfect plan, but rather it gets you going so that the planning has begun and the ideas are multiplying?

Jon Acuff
Well, and, no, the problem with AI, the fatal flaws, I still have to do it. Like, I keep working with people and they’ll like give me like, there’s like this AI document arms race that happens in small businesses where I go, “Hey, I think we should try blank.”

And then somebody comes back with a 30-page document that they haven’t even read. Like, AI just created it and now we’re going back and forth on documents. So, yeah, I don’t expect AI to come up with the plan because it’s never really been a lack of information.

Like, if you don’t do the thing, you have a great library in your town. Every town has a great library. So I still have to do it, but it gets me from stuck. The book is designed deliberately to move people through it quickly, meaning it’s 71 short chapters.

And I did that deliberately, and they’re short and they’re punchy and they’re all connected. I did it deliberately because nobody wants to read a thousand-page book about procrastination. Like, if your procrastination book has 90 pages of notes, you’re not a procrastinator. You’re a monster.

Like, that’s Jane Goodall writing about monkeys. I’m a monkey writing for other monkeys. So I just want the person to get started. And if they go, “I have to figure out the perfect plan for this goal,” they’re never going to do it.

But if they say, “Can I be interviewed for a half an hour?” even a podcast, they could take you and go, “I really like Pete’s show, and here’s an episode. I like his style of asking questions. Interview me about a book that I want to write as if you’re Pete.”

And then, like, that’s the easiest, most casual way to go, “Oh, okay. Now I’m feeling a little bit.” It’s not that intimidation of like, “I got to figure this out.”

Pete Mockaitis
And then, so that gets you started. How far do you go with the plan before you do?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so, for me, I like to do what I call audition a goal. I think a lot of goals fail because people try to commit to something for a year they’ve never done for a day. That’s like marrying somebody you just met at speed dating.

So if you told me, “Hey, I have this thing I’ve been putting off that I want to do,” and it was sizable. Like, we’re not talking about, like, you got to clean out one closet. Like, we don’t need to roadmap that. It’s like one closet. Like, I don’t want you to interview yourself. Like, “You run California closets and are asking me about how I store my socks.”

But if you had a goal that was at least a month’s worth of time, I would say, “Hey, let’s do a one-month audition. Like, what if we just tried this thing for 15 minutes a day for 25 for the next 30 days?” Because I don’t want to trigger perfectionism.

But if we tried that and it was like, “Let’s just see.” And then at the end of the 30 days, you can double down and do half an hour. And at the end of that next 30 days, you can add more time, more time, more time.

I would try to ease you into it. I wouldn’t try to get you to plan an annual thing, like, right out of the gate. Or, “From start to finish, here’s how I’m going to write and publish and market my book.” Like, no way. No way. I’d try to get you to write for 15 minutes a day for 30 days in a row, and see if you even like writing, and see if you even like this exercise at all. So, yeah, that’s the next thing I would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Audition a goal. So, like, the goal is auditioning before you, the director, who will determine if it gets the role.

Jon Acuff
“You’ve made it through. You now get to be part of my summer. Like, I gave you May and, congratulations, I just picked you up for the summer. You’ve now made it for the next summer. And not only have you made it, resources will be dedicated to you. I’m going to give you time and maybe even money. Like, oh, that’s exciting.” You’ve won the audition.”

Pete Mockaitis
Do I need to have a director’s chair and beret when I’m auditioning a goal?

Jon Acuff
I don’t think a beret ever makes a situation worse. Like, maybe a funeral. Like, if you don’t own a beret and then, all of sudden, at your mom’s funeral, you show up in a beret, lot of questions, lot of questions.

Pete Mockaitis
These are the key insights, Jon, that we count on you for. Thank you.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I hope people are taking notes right now. I hope they pulled over. Probably pulled over on that one, like, “Wait a second. We’re going into berets now, Pete.” And you probably didn’t even put that in the description, if I know you. It’s just a surprise.

Pete Mockaitis
No, not yet. And let’s hit the permission to do now.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the first two are great, but if you don’t actually do it, it ultimately doesn’t matter. So the thing that I like about doing that I think people have a hard time with is maintaining motivation. We tend to think motivation will grow as we work on a goal. That’s just not how it works. Motivation is often the first thing to leave.

So I spend a lot of time helping people make it through the middle, or what I call the montage. Like, we love a montage in a movie. We don’t like being in one in our own life. Meaning, we love to watch Rocky IV, and there’s an eight-and-a-half-minute scene where he trains against Drago.

A prize fight training camp takes eight to 12 weeks. So we saw 1% of the experience, but when we try to write a book, start a business, you know, parent teenagers, whatever this big goal is, there’s a lot of middle.

And so a lot of what I do is teach people how to build a motivation portfolio. Meaning, collect enough motivation so that when you’re discouraged, which you’re going to be, you have a long robust list, not just one thing.

If you only have one why, like that why won’t show up most of the days, and you’ll go, “Ugh, I’m not even going to do the thing.” But I’d much rather you have a whole list where you can go, “Oh, it took me till number nine.”

And here’s a silly example, because you said, it seemed like you were familiar with F3. Like, one of my motivations for doing it is, the night before I text three friends and say, “I’ll give you a ride tomorrow,” because I’ve just put myself into a corner.

And I know in the morning I’m not going to text three guys and go, “Hey, it turns out I’m a wimp. Never mind.” Like, I now have some accountability there. I now have that motivation to fulfill what I promised to those three guys.

So that’s what I try to help people when it comes to doing. I’m never, like, anybody who listens to this show or reads the kind of books I write, it’s not a question of whether they’ll do it. It’s a question of whether they’ll keep doing it. And that’s where you really have to lean in.

Pete Mockaitis
So I like that. A motivational portfolio, we’ve got multiple sources of support pulling upon you. One was some of that accountability. People are expecting you to show up and give them a ride there. You said nine. Give us a quick rundown of maybe a bundle of things that might go in a portfolio.

Jon Acuff
A couple others? Yeah. I mean, for me, like, I wrote this book, Soundtracks, and we ended up turning it into a Soundtracks card deck, so it’s 52 cards. So sometimes I’ll have these in my pocket, and one will say “Hills pay the bills.”

And it’s a reminder to me of, like, when I have to do the hard things, if I do them and if I climb the hills, other people don’t, I get to see vistas other people won’t. And that could be something like a canceled flight in Chicago in January, where I had to spend the night, like, at the worst airport next to O’Hare. Like, nobody wants that. Nobody.

But, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, hills pay the bills.” So sometimes it’s a soundtrack. Sometimes it’s a literal song where I know when I hear this type of music, I always feel this type of way. Sometimes it’s a movie clip. Sometimes it is a friend that I go, “This is my most uplifting friend. And anytime I’m stuck, if I call so-and-so, 30 seconds of conversation, I feel like I can conquer the world.”

Sometimes it’s 10 minutes of walking around the neighborhood because I need some endorphins and some sunshine. Sometimes it’s caffeine. Sometimes it’s like, yeah, an espresso would really help at two o’clock when I’m struggling.

So I think everyone should be a great note taker about themselves. I think you should be the best documentary filmmaker about your life because, then, you figure out how you work best, and then you can repeat that. And so that’s what I mean by a motivation portfolio.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like this a lot. We had Dr. Ethan Kross on the show, who wrote a book, Shift, about your mood, and so this is kind of reminding me of that because he mentions music specifically as a tool. So when you say portfolio, you just have a big old list of options in terms of, “This is the thing I could remember or do to take the action.”

Jon Acuff
Well, because I know I’m not going to want to. Like, why pretend I’m always going to feel motivated to write a book? I’m not going to. Someday, the financial motivation will motivate me, I’ll go, “Oh, it’s how I pay the bills. It’s how I put my kids through college. Great.”

Some days, I won’t care about that. Some days, showing my kids an example of hard work will motivate me. Someday, it won’t. Like, sometimes I’ll be like, “They’re not even really watching. Like, I can take it easy on this,” you know?

So, yeah, collecting those and that’s, to me, part of that is just self-awareness. Like, if you have self-awareness, it’s a lot easier to accomplish your goals, because then again, you figure out, “This works. This doesn’t work. I should repeat this thing that does work. I should stop doing this thing that doesn’t work.”

Like, a simple example. Pete, if my phone is in my bedroom, I stay up later. I don’t need another test of that. I’ve checked that box. I know that. So a simple hack for me is I leave my phone downstairs when I go to bed.

Like, imagine me going, “Man, I found a sleep hack. It’s unbelievable. Here’s how to like…” It’s the simplest thing. I just realized over and over and over again, if I have my phone near me, I’m going to look at my phone, and I’m going to stay up later than I really want to.

So I found a workaround, which was leave the phone downstairs. Like, it’s not complicated. That motivates me to go to bed earlier. Like, “Eureka!”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Jon, I love that specific example. I was once, true story, in Vanderbilt’s Sleep laboratory, having all sorts of things attached to my body. And I said, “So what are the top sleep tips?” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s don’t bring your phone in your bedroom, but no one wants to hear that,” as she continues strapping electrodes to me.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Simple as that, “Okay, that was that.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, jeez, that’s so funny. Were you doing it for money or to fix your own sleep? Like was this a…?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we were curious if I had sleep apnea. It turns out I had mild sleep apnea. I’ve since overcome that. That was fun.

Jon Acuff
Survivor. Survivor.

Pete Mockaitis
I am. So that’s really cool. The motivational portfolio, it’s like layers upon layers upon layers of backup systems.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I want it to be easy. I want, like, again, make tomorrow easy today. So I know, like, because nobody’s job is easy. Like, writing a book has a lot of, like, identity and emotion around it.

I’m right now in the marathon part of the book release, meaning I’ve already released the book. I sprinted to the finish line and now I’m in the marathon part, and I need to talk about it constantly and I need to promote it.

And every author loves writing a book. Most hate selling a book. But guess what? If you don’t sell it, you don’t get to write other books. And so now I’m like, “Okay, for me, in the next six months, how do I motivate myself to do 500 different types of promotion around Procrastination Proof versus I hide from it. I hope Oprah discovers it in her dentist office, whatever.”

And I was like, “No. For me to do that thing will be difficult, how do I make it easy? How do I motivate myself to stay on top of this book?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think this is so good, if I may. Could you give me three more things that can go in a portfolio to get motivation cooking?

Jon Acuff
Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, an item you want to buy can go in a portfolio. There’s a woman I know that grew up in Indiana, kind of small town, and she always wanted to buy a Louis Vuitton purse. That was her thing, like, “When I make it, when I become an executive…”

Like, that was her symbol to the point that when she went to Paris, France with her husband, he tried to buy her one, and she said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” She was like, “I don’t want you to buy this for me. I need to do this. This is something I’ve thought about.”

So sometimes it’s okay, “I want to buy this thing,” or, “I want to be able to give this person this thing.” That’s a great one. Another one can be, “By this date, I want to accomplish blank.” Everybody has had the vacation moment where you get a lot of work done right before vacation.

Because you’re going, “How do I make tomorrow easy today? I want to have a really peaceful vacation. So if I clear these things off my plate, I will.” So you get a boost of energy. You could just say, “Where are some deadlines like that that I want to say before I go to this, I’ve done these three things before I go to this. I’ve done these three things?” To me, that’s another one.

And then the third one, I’d say, is like this principle of do difficult things in beautiful places. Meaning, if there’s something you’re putting off, go do it somewhere beautiful. Like, don’t try to crank on something in your office. If you’re stuck, go to a coffee shop.

Don’t run somewhere ugly. Like, make that part of the reward, like, “Oh, I’m going to go to, you know,” I don’t know, “Pinkerton Park, because I love that park,” versus, “I’m just going to run around this treadmill.” You’re already doing a difficult thing. Why add more difficulty?

And so, again, you just get creative and curious about yourself, and you’ll start to notice. Like, last one I’ll give you, I bought a Timex watch. I don’t mean to brag, but, obviously I’ve achieved some success. I bought a Timex watch that has Snoopy on it jumping into a pile of leaves.

So on the days when I feel tempted to write a boring, serious book devoid of humor, I can wear that watch and be like, “Oh, that’s charming. That’s delightful. Like, look at Snoopy having so much fun. He’s with Linus. They’re jumping in the leaves.” Very silly trigger for me. Wouldn’t work for most people. No problem.

One year, I wanted to write a book faster, so I bought carbon fiber Nike running shoes. Bright green. Obnoxious. The most expensive shoes I’d ever owned from a running perspective. Wore them every time I wrote that book. Ridiculous? Totally. Totally ridiculous. But it was another one of those things.

And the more you study high performers like you do, the more you find they’re playing games like this all the time. They’re playing little games behind the scenes to do the things that most people don’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
So if I perceive that I have many lucrative opportunities and I just need to go to work, I should put a large pickaxe in my office because there’s a gold mine that just needs me to go to work on it.

Jon Acuff
Gold, you could do that. Yeah, or get rid of your chair and do a little cart, like one of those carts they carry the gold in. Maybe you just sit in that. Maybe you, overalls, like Yosemite Sam or something. I don’t know, we’re just spitballing, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, I want to hear the one-minute version of permission to review and then how procrastination is the most well-funded fear in human history.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the one minute is, I’ll give you the soundtrack for it, “Data kills denial, which prevents disaster.” Data kills denial, which prevents disaster. All the review is telling you is what’s really going on. And we hate a review, dude. We hate it.

The first time I saw this, I was at a restaurant in New York, everybody was going to get a crazy meal. They opened the menu and they had put the calories next to the menu. And everybody’s order changed. Everybody changed their order to sad grilled chicken salads with dressing on the side, not the side of the plate, the side of the restaurant.

So all that to say, if you want to go the direction you really want to go, become friends with data, become friends with a review.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Now this well-funded fear, what’s the scoop?

Jon Acuff
Well, yeah, so Netflix doesn’t fund perfectionism, Hulu doesn’t fund inner critic, but every single one of those modern-day services funds procrastination. In 2017, the CEO of Netflix said, “Our number one competitor is sleep.”

They are actively funding procrastination, meaning they don’t want you to go to sleep. They don’t want you to get in shape. They don’t want you to write your book. They don’t want you to publish your podcast. They want to turn your time and attention into ad revenue.

And I like those services. That’s not a criticism of them. Just know the score. Like, it’s easier now to procrastinate than it ever has before because you have a pocket casino. Like, that’s a real thing. And in the same way that Dr. Vanderbilt told you, “Yeah, the trick to sleeping is to leave your phone in another room.”

If you said to me, “What’s the trick to writing a book?” I’d go, “Well, why don’t you open your screen time and take an hour back from your greediest, hungriest app, and apply that to writing.” Like, that’s not, even the busiest people, if you ask them to open their screen time will go, “Oh, my gosh, I had no idea I spent six hours on Facebook last week. I would have said, I would have guessed an hour.” Like, that’s what I mean by it’s the most well-funded.

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

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so we have a quiz. If you go to JonAcuff.com/quiz, that’ll show you where you might be tempted to get stuck and what to do about that. So it’ll put you into one of the four categories. You’re a dreamer, you’re a perfectionist, you’re a hustler, you’re an analyst. So JonAcuff.com/quiz will be a whole lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jon Acuff
I love Jim Rohn’s quote, “Don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better. Don’t wish you had less problems. Wish you had more skills.” Like, that’s one of those, that’s in my motivation portfolio. Like, when I go like, “It’s so hard.” Like, “No, I wish I had more skills to deal with this challenge. Am I being invited into a skill?” That’s one of my favorite quotes.

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

Jon Acuff
Daniel Kahneman wrote about it in Thinking, Fast and Slow, where they had college kids make sentences out of words. And one group of college kids had words related to being old in their collection: slow, retired, bald, Florida, etc.

And when they tested how fast they walked later, the students who had read the words about being old physically acted old. They, unknowingly, acted like old people just from reading the words. My favorite study because it speaks to the power of your mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Jon Acuff
I always say War of Art, Stephen Pressfield. That book, for me, really kicked off my own writing journey.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite nugget, something that Jon Acuff shares that gets quoted and tweeted a lot?

Jon Acuff
I often say, “Starting is fun but the future belongs to finishers.” So starting is fun but the future belongs to finishers is one of the things. And then the other one that gets tweeted a lot is, “Be brave enough to be bad at something new.”

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

Jon Acuff
JonAcuff.com is my site. I have a podcast called All It Takes Is A Goal. And I’m big on LinkedIn now. If you listened to the whole episode and just didn’t skip to this, I’m big on LinkedIn. Hit me up.

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

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so I would find somebody 10 years ahead of you and 10 years behind. The 10 years ahead, we know. It’s a mentor. It’s a time machine. Somebody who’s been to the future you want to get to, and will tell you how to do it.

Person 10 years to 20 years behind, they grew up in the new way and can teach you the new way very quickly. I grew up in the old way. I’m 50. For me to do the new way, I have to unlearn the old way first. When I connect with a 27-year-old and they show me something about AI, like, it speeds me up.

So I would just encourage you, know somebody 10 years ahead of you, somebody 10 years behind you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jon, thank you.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, thanks for having me.

May 07
0

1150: How to Reclaim Your Schedule and Own Your Time with Laura Vanderkam

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Productivity expert Laura Vanderkam shows you how to take charge of your schedule so that you can make time for what truly matters.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why you feel like you don’t have enough time–and how to change it
  2. How setting aside 15 minutes can change your whole workday
  3. How to become the ringmaster of your schedule circus

About Laura

Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and 168 Hours. 

Her 2016 TED talk, “How to Gain Control of Your Free Time,” has been viewed more than 5 million times. She regularly appears in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. 

She is the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and four children, and blogs at LauraVanderkam.com.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Laura Vanderkam Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Laura, welcome back!

Laura Vanderkam
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about Big Time. You’ve got a simple path for us for time abundance. And we talked a little bit about this notion of time scarcity versus abundance last time. Tell me, what have you discovered with your new research adventures?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah. Well, Big Time is all about moving beyond a sense of time scarcity, and what happens when we truly believe that we have enough time for the things that we want to do in life. I really do think it is possible to fall in love with our schedules, and I’ve got lots of practical tips, talked to lots of people who are making it happen. I think that time can, ultimately, be our friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds enticing. Can you share with us some of the on-the-ground investigative research studying you did to discover these bits?

Laura Vanderkam
Well, one thing I did is looking at how people spend their work hours. And how people feel about work is a very complicated question.

You know, if you ask people, in general, how do they feel about their jobs, most people will say they’re reasonably satisfied. If you look at people’s happiness during the day, like in a 10:00 a.m. staff meeting, they tend to be pretty unhappy. Like, they are watching the clock, hoping that time is moving faster.

So we have this, you know, gap between, like, we’re reasonably happy with our jobs overall, but during the hours we are spending at our jobs, we may not be as happy as we could be. And I really hate to have people wishing time away in their lives because time is so precious.

So one of the things I had people try out is a couple of strategies for making the experience of working hours better. Like, are there things you can do during an average work day to have you watching the clock less? And they’re pretty simple strategies.

I mean, one was spending one more hour per week on your favorite sort of work. We all have things we don’t like about our jobs but, hopefully, there’s something that drew us to the job in the first place. And so spending one more hour a week on that.

Spending just 15 minutes deepening a work friendship. So even if you’re not enamored with your job itself, like you probably have at least one colleague that you could be friendly with, and building a relationship with that person can make the experience of time at work a lot better.

And, finally, taking intentional breaks, taking two short breaks each day that you have decided ahead of time what to do with, turns out can also vastly increase the happy feelings at work. And so taken altogether, when I had a couple hundred people try these out over the course of three weeks, their workday satisfaction rose significantly.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing because, if folks are in a situation where they’re not enjoying their job, the idea of spending more time working, like your first tip there, might seem very unpleasant, like, “Heck, no. I don’t want to spend one more minute than I have to.”

Laura Vanderkam
No, not that you need to be clocking 41 hours a week instead of 40. No, I mean, re-purposing some of the time that you are already working. And even when people don’t have a ton of control, a ton of discretion over how they spend their working hours, there are often still things you can do to change it on the margin.

Whether that’s asking your supervisor to assign you to something different than what you’ve been or to spend a little bit more time on one project and try to be a little bit more efficient on something else.

There’s always things you can do just on the margins to increase the number of minutes spent on enjoyable activities versus less enjoyable activities.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so the re-purposing, that’s a great distinction. Although, I might suggest, you tell me, that even if you do spend the 41st hour instead of 40 hours, well, I’m thinking of Mary Poppins got that tune in my head, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

Laura Vanderkam
That’s true. That’s true. It might be worth a 41st hour just to change the experience of work. You know, it’s so true. I mean, there was one ridiculous study I read with psychology that had people put their hands in freezing cold water.

And when they made it slightly less cold at the end, people rated the experience as so much better. And so maybe it’s the same thing if you spend the last, you know, 15 minutes of your work day, but maybe even if you work 15 minutes later on something you really enjoy doing, maybe that could make the whole experience different.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly, and the notion that you’re taking control as opposed to work is happening to you, it’s like, “No, no, no, this is the 41st hour. I am choosing to do this discretionarily.”

And in so doing – and I’m just totally making this up, so give me your hot take – that you can have some transformative impact on your own associations and relationship to the experience of work by going there.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, and I think having that mindset of, “I have some agency over this situation,” is huge. And, again, I know a lot of people don’t have complete control over their work or their working hours. But even if you don’t have complete control, you have some. And using whatever agency you have to make your time better can just change how you feel about life in general.

I mean, we don’t spend the majority of our waking hours working. There’s that adage that, “Oh, you spend the majority of your waking hours working.” Most people do not. But, that said, we do spend a fair number of hours working.

And so if there is something you can do to move those hours out of the wishing-time away category and into even the neutral category, that can be a major life satisfaction boost. And something like deepening a work friendship.

I mean, you think about a friend as somebody that you would spend time with off the clock. So wouldn’t it be exciting to be able to spend more time with somebody that you enjoy on the clock? And, in general, friendships are built through the accumulation of relaxed, pleasant time spent together. So the more you can throw at that pile, the better.

Pete Mockaitis
And with regard to these categories of the experience of work, can you unpack a little bit of the names of the categories, how you kind of think about which vibe is appropriate for a given activity, the tracking, a little bit of the nuts and bolts for these bits?

Laura Vanderkam
I think one way to think about how you’re spending your time at work and how you’re feeling about your time at work is to give yourself, honestly, a mood score or an energy score as you go through your day.

I’m a big fan of time tracking, in general. I’ve found, through other research I’ve done, that when people track their time for a week, they tend to feel better about their time overall because it turns out that many of the catastrophic stories people tell themselves about their time are not true, right? Life isn’t actually all that bad.

We don’t work around the clock. We do get some sleep. We have some time for ourselves, even if it’s not as much as we want. And so as you’re tracking time, you could also keep track of, “How do I feel about my time? Am I happy?” Is it all clouds and rainbows and unicorns? Or is it, “I’m hating the universe?” and sort of somewhere between zero and 10. And probably most of the things we do in life are around a five or a six. But maybe some stuff is better.

And if you are going through your work day and you find that some categories of work are edging up, like you’re feeling like this is maybe a seven or if it’s in certain circumstances, it might be even an eight, well, obviously, if you can come up with a way to spend an extra hour of the week in that seven or eight category, as opposed to maybe a two, three, four kind of category, you’re going to see a big boost in overall satisfaction.

Same thing with energy. Actually, it’s interesting, because one of the problems that creating intentional breaks helps solve is that people’s energy dips a lot through the day. People have been working for a while, and then you feel like you need a break, but if you don’t take an intentional break, you’ll probably take an unintentional one. For many people that looks like scrolling around online, checking email after you just checked it five minutes ago.

And so if you find yourself with your energy dipping, like that’s trending down, maybe 10 as you’re ready to run a marathon and zero as you’re flat on your back, that’s a good sign that it’s time to build in something that would boost your energy, something like taking a quick walk, talking with somebody you like, getting some fresh air.

And as people try that, they’re going to find that the numbers after that break start trending higher.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us just plenty of fun stories in terms of practical, tactical, experiential, individuals who figured out how to make that switch to re-purpose an hour to have more engaging goodness, what they did for their breaks, and how that was transformative?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, sometimes it’s about noticing the work that is already there and savoring it when you’re doing it, because so much of life can just be mindless. Like, you’re going through the day, you’re doing stuff, but your mind is somewhere else, so you’re always thinking about the next thing.

So, for instance, one health care provider who was part of the study would take a minute to look at her schedule coming up and what was going on. And she realized that some of her favorite visits were with babies, right? She loved to have babies come into the office and take care of them and talk to the new parents about how they were doing.

And so when she would see these on her schedule, she would consciously be like, “Oh, yeah, I’m looking forward to this, right? I’m getting to do this favorite work coming up in one of my patients this afternoon, and would savor it while it was happening and take a moment afterwards to pause and be like, ‘Yes, I love doing that. That’s my favorite kind of work.’”

And, you know, the kids were on the schedule anyway, right? The same patients are coming no matter what, you know, if her mind is somewhere else or if she’s fully absorbed and enjoying this. But her experience of work was so much different by anticipating, experiencing, savoring in the moment and reflecting on it afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s super – the anticipating, savoring, and looking back. Boy, that’s powerful. You can do that with just about every day, there’s something worthwhile.

Laura Vanderkam
It could be even that you had a great conversation with a colleague before a meeting.

Like, you can pause and notice that, be like, “Oh, yeah, I like that person. That was a moment in my job that was a wonderful thing.” And it’s the same with you mentioned the breaks, like, stories of people taking breaks. This was almost people had to teach themselves to take good breaks.

I always say people take breaks anyway. People cannot work straight through. Even if it’s just to go to the restroom, there’s some break happening in any sort of work. The problem with a lot of information work is that they are unintentional breaks.

Like, you are going along, doing your work, you get distracted by something, you’re on your phone for a minute. Next thing you know, you’re cycling through headlines, you’re checking your WhatsApp messages. These are breaks, but it doesn’t feel rejuvenating at all.

So I was having people really learn to take real breaks. And some people were very nervous about it at the beginning. Like, I had people, you know, somebody printed out an e-book so it looked like they were working on a document while they were taking a break.

But I’m happy to report that, over the course of trying this out for a while, people realized like the earth does not crash into the sun when you take a 10-minute break. Most of us are just not that important. So you can do it.

And somebody would go outside and sit and look at the sky for 10 minutes and come back in. And it’s pretty hard to tell yourself, “I am starved for time,” when you’ve had 10 minutes to just kind of watch the clouds. And just little things like that can change your entire experience of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really good in that, by physically doing a thing, it’s like your brain gets the memo, “No, actually, you’re not wildly scarce in time because look what just happened.”

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, we could change our story like that all the time. Our time narratives are based all on what we are noticing. So training our brains to notice things that are not just these stressful moments can completely rewrite the story from one of time scarcity to time abundance.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to these breaks, so you say two 10-minute breaks and just build them into the day, is that like one in the afternoon, one in the morning?

Laura Vanderkam
Sure, whatever works. I kind of think of these as in addition to a meal break that people might take in the middle of the day. But, obviously, you could add on a few minutes to take a longer lunch break instead if that works better for your schedule.

Some breaks are formal. Sometimes people are, like, you take it at this specific time. For a lot of people, it’s more you catch it when you can. But looking at your schedule ahead of time and kind of proactively choosing when might work is another very smart way to exert agency over your schedule for the day.

Because that sort of strategy is what can then have you say, like, “Oh, well, look, I actually have a longer break between these two meetings, and I could do something else. I could work on some of my favorite work in addition to taking a break.” And when you start to see those kinds of things, you take more charge of your working day.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share with us some breaks that folks have just been loving in terms of finding them super rejuvenating? Staring at the sky sounds fun. What else do you recommend?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, well, anything that can get you moving physically is going to be a big win. There’s some pretty solid evidence that people who engage in physical activity will see their energy levels go up quite a bit, even through very short bursts of energy.

So if it is possible to get outside and go for a brisk walk, that is going to be at least two things right there that will boost your mood and energy. If you can take a work friend with you, good. That’s even, like, three. That could be even better.

But so people definitely enjoyed that. Now, obviously, you can’t always get outside. But are you somewhere that you could go up and down the stairs even? That would make people feel much more alert than they had.

You know, I had people take, like, little adventures. If there is, say, a park near your office, you might be able to walk out the door, walk there for 10 minutes and come back and have the boost of seeing something different in the course of your day.

But it could be other things. It could be calling a friend. It could be listening to something inspirational like a soaring movie soundtrack. People might find that a little bit exciting. Meditation works for people. Reading something, especially something upbeat.

Even if you, like, read something fun for 10 minutes twice a day, that’s 20 additional minutes of reading you’ve gotten in your day. And if you do that five days a week, that’s 100 minutes, which is an hour and 40 minutes. Like, this is a lot, you know, it does add up. You could probably read an extra book a month that way if you wanted to.

People looked at art online. Even, you know, watching funny videos, as long as you’re doing it intentionally. I think a lot of people are just sort of, you know, pull up YouTube shorts and see what’s there, which, you know, I get it.

But if you have maybe saved up a clip from a favorite stand-up comedian or a clip from a favorite sitcom that you used to watch back in the day, those can be the kind of things that will make you laugh, and a laugh will boost your energy quite a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot, and I’m a believer in breaks. In this office, it’s wild. I’ve got like a little basin of water I will dip my face into. I’ve got a little rebounder trampoline I’ll just jump on. I’ve got an acupressure mat. I’ll lie on it. I’ll stand on it. I joke that it’s the recording studio and wellness spa with all these amenities.

And it’s so true. When I really stop and engage with these things, it creates a great energy boost as opposed to, if you blast straight through, it’s like the body will demand a pause. And so often, yes, it is a scrolling of some sort. I like your phrase – an unintentional break asserts itself.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, I refer to that as our electronic hobbies, right, because it fills so much time. And a hobby could be a great thing to do on a break, particularly if you work from home some days. I mean, you know, 10 minutes you could go play a musical instrument.

You could go do some knitting, or needle point, or color in one of those adult coloring books, or even go outside and weed a few things in the garden, if that would be, you know, something you’d find relaxing. But instead, we tend to default to these electronic hobbies of scrolling around, reading social media comments, opening your inbox again, even though you just opened it five minutes prior.

And by naming that as a hobby, I think it gives people pause, because it’s like, “Well, that’s not what I’d choose to do as my hobby.” It’s like, “Okay, well, then we need to re-purpose that time for something that you find more enjoyable.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s super. Let’s talk a little bit about the tracking of time. It seems there are many tools that would love to avail themselves in this domain. What have you found works great for you and for others in doing this?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, so I’ve been tracking my time for about 11 years now. Nobody else needs to do that, but I have been doing that because I find it very useful and it’s also very easy. And I just check in three to four times a day, write down what I’ve done since the last time I checked in.

Each check-in takes me about a minute. You know, three minutes a day, same amount of time I spend brushing my teeth. So it is not something that I find incredibly onerous. But I just use spreadsheets. It is a basic Excel, standard thing.

It’s got the days of the week across the top, Monday through Sunday, half-hour blocks down the left-hand side, 5:00 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. So 336 cells representing the 168-hour week, and I just fill it in as I go.

However, that’s not the only way you could do this. There are lots of time tracking apps on the market.

My podcast co-host on “Best of Both Worlds,” Sarah Hart-Unger, was having trouble tracking her time for years, even though I was constantly preaching the benefits of it. And she came across Toggl, T-O-G-G-L, which has a free version that is a more digital version of this.

Like, you just… it’s on your phone, you say what you’re doing, start and stop. You can go back in and correct the record later if you’ve forgotten to hit stop, and so you’ve been commuting for the last six hours. You can go back in and change it later.

But she found that fairly intuitive and something that fit in with her busy life. So that’s something that people could give a whirl. You could also walk around, like, with a little notebook. You want to look all artsy, like, “I look at my journal as I’m going through the day.” That works too.

Like, the tool itself doesn’t really matter. It’s more like, “Can you do it? Will you do it? Will you stick with it for at least a few days?” and, ideally, a week. And if you do, I think you’ll learn a lot about your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, and I’d love to zoom out and get some of your big-picture perspectives. You’ve got a mindset or metaphor of being the ringmaster. Can you expand on this?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, this is probably one of my favorite metaphors for time and how we think of our lives. So when people tell you, “My life is a circus,” they tend to mean it is chaotic. But that is such a slander against circuses because circuses are the most organized performance you will ever see.

Nobody is getting shot out of a cannon at the wrong time, right? If there are supposed to be tigers in one ring, they are not in another ring. They’re not coming on at the wrong time. They are there when they are supposed to be there, right? And so I think we should aspire to have our lives be as organized as a circus. A circus is complex, but it is not chaotic at all.

And so I’ve developed this metaphor of, like, I am the ring master in charge of my life. My life has three rings, right? So this is a three ring circus of career, relationships – so meaning friends and family – and self, the things I need to do for my own physical, mental, spiritual, emotional health.

So all the time, you are monitoring all three rings, you are making sure that what is supposed to be happening in each ring is actually happening, that the logistics are thought through, that this all looks like a good time. And one of the additions of this metaphor is that a lot of circus performers, acrobats and stuff, perform over a net. And the net is there for when things go wrong.

And, to my mind, a net is a net, but I have interviewed circus performers and they have informed me that, “Oh, no, no, no, no, the net has to be very well thought through. The net is exactly where it’s supposed to be. The net is inspected frequently. We train ourselves on how we land in that net so that we don’t injure ourselves if we fall or something goes wrong.”

And so I was like, “Wow, that’s a good metaphor for life, too. We all need nets under ourselves. We need backup plans for when things go wrong. We need to actually think of those backup plans. Like, do they work?”

It’s not just, like, “Oh, I think maybe if my kid is sick on a day I have a big presentation, I could avail myself of this backup plan.” It’s like, “Well, no, no, no. Let’s make sure. Let’s test that net. Let’s make sure it’s there.”

But when you do that, the circus can go off with much less stress, with much less worry that when something goes wrong, it turns into a disaster.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s super and inspiring. Like, we should be so lucky to have it.

Laura Vanderkam
We should all be a circus. We should be a circus. And not just that, you want to manage it for delight, right? Another part of the metaphor is that a circus isn’t cool if it’s all drudgery. Like, if people are just going through with no smiles on their faces as they’re doing their tricks.

You want to make it look like it’s enjoyable. And as we manage the complex but not chaotic three-ring circus of our lives. We want to make it look like a real performance and truly enjoy it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s your philosophy on embracing your golden hours?

Laura Vanderkam
So the golden hours are the hours after work and before bed. If you think about how people talk about the golden years for retirees after they stop working, they have time for leisure and family, it’s the same that we get a miniature version every weekday evening.

After you’re done working, you get time for leisure and family. However, many people find this time incredibly hard to use well. And that is because we are tired, right? We’ve used up a lot of energy in the course of the day. In many cases, it’s this march toward bedtime. And sometimes people are even counting minutes as they are getting through the evening.

And again, time is precious. I hate to have people wish any time away. So I am all about embracing our golden hours. Partly that’s just a mindset. If you think of that time after work and before bed as your golden hours, you’re going to have a different mindset than if you’re thinking of it as a second shift or just the time that’s left over after work.

I think it’s a good idea to set just small, possibly low energy intentions for the evening so it feels like something happened, right? So it’s not just all this time passed between the end of work and bed. It’s like, “Oh, well, I did a puzzle for 30 minutes,” or, “I went for a walk outside with my family for 30 minutes,” “We had ice cream on the patio because it’s nice outside tonight.”

And if you have something you can point to that you enjoyed that actually happened in the evening, you’ll feel more like this time exists and life isn’t all just these have-to-do’s. There’s some want-to-do’s in there as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Golden hours, golden years. Understood. I guess I’m thinking about, in the universe of time tracking, I find that sometimes our hangups are not so much about having the time available to deploy on something, but finding the will, the audacity, the motivation to push past resistance or avoidance to go make amazing things happen with time.

So it’s, like, sometimes time is the bottleneck resource, and other times it’s more of like an emotional will type vibe. How do you think about these two resources in conjunction with each other?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, I think time gets blamed for all sorts of things, that it is not really a time matter. When I have people track their time, often people find that they have a reasonable amount of discretionary time. It’s just that a lot of it happens in chunks that we haven’t thought about, right?

We haven’t thought ahead of time, like, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to have four hours after work and before bed. Only two of those are going to be spent on childcare,” for instance, “I’ve got two hours after that. What would I like to do with it?”

But, you know, by that time, you’re kind of tired and at the end of your rope and feel like you’re out of energy and out of sorts, and that’s the end of it. And so nothing happens except those electronic hobbies, as we talked about earlier.

I think intention goes a long way. So if you know that this evening you are going to go play a board game with your partner or something, like, you’ve got that on your brain, you’re managing your energy toward it so you’re not surprised by it and feeling sort of resistance to it in the moment, even though it’s something you actively chose to want to do.

So knowing it ahead of time is often helpful for sort of getting ourselves in the mindset for doing something. When my kids were little, I would sometimes even think about that, like coming into the evening, “What could I suggest that we do that I wouldn’t hate so I don’t get, like, ambushed by the request to play Candy Land, which I definitely did not want to do?”

So it’s that kind of thing. Like, can you go into it with an intention? Because the intention will shape how you handle your energy going into it. I think, also, you got to be careful about making sure you’re setting intentions for yourself to do things you truly want to do.

And I think a lot of people just have not thought about this. The things they say they want to do are not things they actually want to do. And so it’s like you get to that time in the evening, you’re like, “I need to learn Spanish.” Do you actually want to learn Spanish? Like, is that something you’re telling yourself you should do?

Or, you know, is it just, you know, the thing that feels responsible and productive to do with your leisure time, like, “I should be on Duolingo”? Well, you know, maybe you don’t want to be. Is there something else that you feel less resistance to?

And if that is the case, maybe you should re-shape your goals to be more in the direction of things you truly do want to do, like things that make you feel more energized when you think about them, as opposed to thinking like, “I don’t want to,” in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a really good distinction. And we might have any number of “shoulds” that, like, “I should learn this language,” “I should build big muscles,” “I should learn AI, apparently.” Do we all need to know AI?

Laura Vanderkam
That’s another one. We’re all going to be behind the game on that one.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So any pro tips on distinguishing between a should and a genuine desire of our heart, our values?

Laura Vanderkam
I think paying attention to that energy that you feel with something. If you think about like, “Ooh, that sounds exciting,” or, like, “I feel a little bit more energized as I think about it.” I’m not saying it’s going to be automatically easy, but like if you saw it on your calendar, like somebody had put “Spend two hours doing X,” like, would you be excited about it?

You know, some things I would, like having dinner with a friend. Absolutely. Like, reading one of my favorite books. Yes, I would. Learning Spanish, not so much. That’s not one of my goals. So I think that can help quite a bit.

In general, in life, I’m always encouraging people to spend less time on the things you are trying to talk yourself into. You might want to spend a little more time on the things that you are trying to talk yourself out of, because it sounds logistically difficult, or it’s outside your comfort zone. Like, those are things you can deal with.

Where that comes up and people are like, “Oh, you know, it would be so cool to sing in a choir again. I really enjoyed that in college, but I’m a busy person. I have a job. I have a family. I can’t make time for that.”

But that’s when you’re talking yourself out of something. Whereas, if you’re talking yourself into it, like, “Well, I should learn Spanish,” “I should be doing this,” those are things that maybe are not the direction to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a master key right there. Wow! It’s so funny because that really does cut to the heart of it. When you’re talking yourself out of something, it means that you have a desire. It’s there and you’re fighting against it, by definition, it’s like, “Oh, that’s not practical. That’s too expensive. It’s like, I’ve got all these other responsibilities.” So that’s really intriguing. And I guess, sometimes, I see a two-by-two matrix in my mind’s eye, Laura.

Laura Vanderkam
Oh, boy.

Pete Mockaitis
You can’t take the consultant out of me. There’s the internal desire and then there’s the argumentation. And sometimes you don’t argue with yourself at all. It’s like, “I should really get a burrito. Yeah, let’s do it.”

Laura Vanderkam
“Let’s do it. We’re on it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s that. And then it goes in every combination of the two-by-two. And so, yeah, I think that you’re right. That really is a zone of opportunity there in terms of you have the desire and yet you’ve been talking yourself out of it. Maybe go ahead and give it a try.

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah, you know? I mean, logistics can be figured out. You can always try something for a while and see how it goes, too, right? You can go back to life as it was after a trial period or whatever, but you might be surprised at what you can fit in.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Well, Laura, tell me, any critical insights you want to make sure How to be Awesome at Your Job listeners hear before we hear about your favorite things?

Laura Vanderkam
Yeah. Well, I’m always preaching the time tracking. So if anyone’s listening to this and thought, “Well, hmm,” I’m going to say, well, that’s maybe a should that we should try at one point in our life.

Because I do think many of us walk around with stories about our lives that just aren’t true, that, “I work around the clock,” or, “I’m working late every night,” or, “I spent my entire weekend working,” “I never see my family,” “I don’t get enough sleep,” or, “I sleep terribly all the time,” “I never have free time,” all these things, “I spend my life doing housework,” various stories that people tell themselves.

And almost universally, time tracking will show that those stories are incomplete, right? Even if you work long hours, you are probably not working around the clock. There are probably some other hours where you are awake and not working. And so you can see where those happen and maybe start thinking about, “Well, what would be the best thing for me to do during that time?”

You may have a bad night or two. Many people do, but often, over the course of the week, we tend to average out toward what our bodies are needing. And when you see that, you might start thinking, “Huh, well, given that I’m not saving any time by sleeping less on Tuesday and crashing on Saturday, maybe I could try to get the same amount of sleep every night and feel better and more energetic overall.”

You might see that there is some discretionary time, but, you know, what you spend that doing is kind of up to you, and that’s the nature of discretionary time. And sometimes we’re spending more of it than we like on our electronic hobbies, but we can do something about that, right?

We can challenge ourselves to do things that sound a little bit more fun, rejuvenating, relaxing, you know, for just a few minutes before going toward that YouTube binge for the rest of the night. So I really do think that time tracking will make time feel more abundant.

And you can believe me or not, but I did have several hundred people try it and they felt better about their time afterwards. So I take comfort from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Now could you share your favorite quotes, something you find inspiring?

Laura Vanderkam
So many years ago, one of the first people I interviewed about how she spent her time told me that “I don’t have time” means it’s not a priority, and that has stuck with me forever.

And there may be consequences to making different choices, but it reminds us that time is a choice. And also it means that I never tell anyone now that I don’t have time to do something.

Pete Mockaitis
You just tell them they’re not a priority?

Laura Vanderkam
It’s not a priority, sorry. I try to be nicer about it, but, you know, that is fundamentally what it comes down to.

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

Laura Vanderkam
I would say that the one I mentioned earlier about people just getting short bursts of activity, like, five, 10 minutes of physical activity, their scores on an energy scale went from, like, a three to an eight or something. It was, really, I’m misquoting it here, but the idea is that it doesn’t take much. And we can’t make more time but we can definitely change our energy levels.

And when you feel more energetic, you can just do more than if you feel less energetic. So even though you can’t make more time, you can sort of have the equivalent of making more time by paying attention to how, you know, where your energy levels are and what you can do to get them back up again.

Pete Mockaitis
And, to be clear, five-ish minutes of activity raises the energy level for hours, or…?

Laura Vanderkam
At least an hour. I remember from that particular study, people took like five minutes to do a burst of activity. And then their levels right afterwards, I think, it was a nine. And then an hour later, it was still north of a six. So if you go from a three to the rest of the hour spent north of a six, like, how could you not be getting more done? That’s the difference between feeling like you’re flat on your back and feeling like, “Hey, I can do stuff with my life.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. And a favorite book?

Laura Vanderkam
This is, honestly, what I read in the course of writing Big Time is I read War and Peace, and I loved it.

Pete Mockaitis
I just got War and Peace.

Laura Vanderkam
Okay, you should read it. Yeah, I mean people look at it, and it’s like, “That’s a really big book,” and it’s true. But it is very accessible. It has 361 very short chapters. So if you read one chapter a day for a year, it only takes a couple minutes each day and you’ll get through it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a key habit?

Laura Vanderkam
So I have started listening to, like, all the works of a particular composer over the course of a year for the past three years. So this year, I am listening to Mozart in the car.

And that’s a lot better than other things I could probably be listening to. And so it has definitely upgraded the running around that tends to happen in my life. So that music choice habit has definitely elevated my listening game.

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

Laura Vanderkam
Please come visit me at LauraVanderkam.com. You can learn more on my website about my books and podcasts. You can get time tracking spreadsheet if you want to do that. You can also reach out to me at Laura@LauraVanderkam.com. I love hearing from people.

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

Laura Vanderkam
Maybe today you could think about what your favorite sort of work is and challenge yourself to spend just a few more minutes on that favorite sort of work, and then reflect afterwards on how it went. And I think you’ll change the experience of your work day completely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Laura, thank you.

Laura Vanderkam
Thanks so much for having me.