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Productivity Archives - Page 19 of 24 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Feb 23
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265: Getting the Most Out of Each Day with Peter Shankman

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Peter Shankman says: "The majority of things I do aren't normal... but they work for me."

Peter Shankman walks through his unique take on productivity and lessons learned from ADHD that anyone can apply.

You’ll Learn:

  1. 4 simple rules to be more productive
  2. Tricks to eliminate distraction
  3. Why you should always ask for a deadline

About Peter

Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. An author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker, this “worldwide connector” is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about customer service, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, and ADHD. He founded Help A Reporter Out, ShankMinds: Breakthrough, Geek Factory, and more.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Peter Shankman Interview Transcript

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

Peter Shankman
My pleasure. Good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you have had a fascinating background which has been fun to learn about as I’m doing my research here. And I want to hear a little bit about some of your history when it comes to publicity stunts and people doing publicity stunts. Can you share maybe one of the most strikingly interesting, outrageously wild publicity stunts that come to mind from your experience there?

Peter Shankman
Well, first of all, I want to say it’s really funny to be on a podcast about being awesome at your job because I’ve had a total of one job in my entire life and it lasted two years, and when I went to go to my next job I realized that I just don’t play well with others. And so, I’ve been working as an entrepreneur for about almost 20 years now, and it is never once felt like a job. So, I think the number one key of being awesome at your job is do something that you don’t actually feel like you’re working at. It’s pretty awesome. But I love your podcast and I’m happy to chat.

PR stunts, what can I tell you? I can tell you that a PR stunt for the sake of a PR stunt is pointless. All the best PR stunts in the world they do several things. They drive product, they drive sales, they increase brand exposure, they increase revenue. You’re never going to find a CEO who’s a big fan of people who say, “You know what, we should do this stunt.” “Why?” “It’d be great. It’ll go viral.”

Pete Mockaitis
Go viral.

Peter Shankman
Like, “Shut up.” So, if you look at something like the – I’m totally spacing on it now – the guy with the abs, Old Spice. Old Spice, several years ago, they did these things on Twitter where people would tweet the Old Spice guy, and he’d respond by a video. It cost them about three bucks a piece to do, generated ridiculous amounts of brand exposure and sales, right?

I’ve had clients, we’ve done events where we’ve created massive, massive publicity, and massive, massive exposure that has led to sales. Some of the best ones I remember, God, back when domain names costs like 79 bucks a piece. We did one where we offered domains, it was a domain service, a domain name company, a TLD, and we offered free domains for one night to protest the fact that they cost 79 bucks when they shouldn’t, and we broke the internet.

It was back in 2000 where there’s still a lot of people on dial-up and we crashed the northeast seaboard. It was pretty impressive. But, you know, again, great exposure. After the promotion they sold like, I think, 40 times the amount of domain names in two hours they would normally sell in three weeks. So, if you’re going to do a stunt, at the end of the day if you’re going to present it to your boss with that, they will look at you and think you’re awesome if you come up with this great idea, but then also tie it into revenue, tie it into why it’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d like to hear. Any that just failed, bombed, where it’s just silly disasters?

Peter Shankman
Oh, I had tons. You look around, I’ve screwed up once. I mean, there were tons. Let me think about some great ones that have bombed. Any stunts that rely on going viral, right? You can’t make anything viral. What you could do is make something good. So, I would suggest that people need to focus on making things good, because if you make something viral that’s not going be that great.

The only thing that makes viral as far as I could tell is H1N1 or some source of disease. You want to make something good, you want to create something that people say, “Wow, this is pretty cool to look at. I’m a huge fan of this and I like this. I trust them.” No one believes how great you are anymore if you’re the one that has to tell them. Your goal is to create something that people understand and like and want and want to use without them saying, “Oh, yeah, I feel like they’re marketing to me or selling to me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Cool. All right. Well, thank you. So, I want to spend most of our time chatting about some of the ideas and applications that you’ve collected much of within your book Faster Than Normal. Can you share with us what is sort of the main premise of the book and why is this important here and now?

Peter Shankman
Faster Than Normal is the basic premise that a lot of us are undiagnosed ADHD. Some of us have sort of been diagnosed. I’ve had it for 10 years, but for 30 years I always thought I was just different and strange, right? At the end of the day, what you find is that ADHD, since it has come out as a disorder, has always been considered a negative.

And when I realized that I had, and realized there was a name for it, and realized what it was, I’m like, “Holy crap, this thing has actually done tremendously well for me. This disorder is actually responsible for the majority of my success.” And when I realized that I quickly became aware that ADHD can be considered a gift, not a curse if you understand how to use it.

And so, for me, I’ve spent the past countless years documenting how I use my ADHD as a gift, what I do to allow myself to use it to the best of my ability, to benefit my life, to allow me to sort of – for lack of a better word – do more than normal people. And it sounds crazy but it turns out that when you have a faster brain, as long as you know how to use it, you actually can do a lot.

Here’s a pretty good example. If I offered you the choice between a Honda and a Lamborghini you’d probably choose the Lamborghini, right? It’s a faster car. It’s a sick ride. It’s amazing. But you’ve got to know how to drive it. If you’re used to driving a KIA Sportage your entire life, and someone gives you a Lamborghini, if you don’t know how to drive it you’re going to step on the gas, expecting it to respond the same way that your KIA responds, you’re going to smash it into a tree or kill someone or fall off a bridge.

You have to understand how to drive your faster brain. Driving your faster brain is different than driving a regular brain at a normal speed, so there are pluses and minuses to that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, I’m really intrigued to hear your point, so that folks don’t tune out right away, it’s like, “Well, I’m not ADHD so this doesn’t apply to me.”

Peter Shankman
Oh, it applies to everyone.

Pete Mockaitis
So, when you said there are many, many folks who are undiagnosed ADHD, and I had a former girlfriend who kept insisting that I, too, had ADHD. So, what might be some of the telltale signs? And what do we do about it if we find ourselves in that case?

Peter Shankman
Well, I’ll take it a step further for your audience. You don’t have to have ADHD to appreciate the tools and the sort of life hacks that I use on a regular basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome.

Peter Shankman
You can be a normal girl or guy who just wants to get three hours a day back in your life productivity-wise.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds nice. Very nice.

Peter Shankman
Yeah, the stuff that I do allows me to get about three hours’ worth of productivity back in my life every day, and they sound crazy until you realize how beneficial they are. First example, I get up usually around 3:45 in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, 3:45 a.m.

Peter Shankman
3:45 a.m. And the first reaction of anyone who hears that is, “Wow, that’s crazy. What are you? A farmer?” And I get it. It’s not normal, but the majority of things I do aren’t normal but they work for me. I get up so early because it is the only time during the day – when I don’t have to be on my phone, or at my computer, or doing something with work, or focusing on my daughter – I can work out.

So, I get out of my bed and I either go to the gym, go for a run, or more often than not, lately get on my Peloton bike which sits literally six inches to my bed. I sleep in my gym clothes which, again, that’s crazy. But, really, what are your gym clothes? Your gym clothes are a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, right? Probably the same thing you’d sleep in anyway. And my socks. So, the second I wake up I thrown on my sneakers on, I’m dressed.

It’s kind of hard to talk yourself out of going to the gym when you’re already in your gym clothes. I have automatic lights that come on. My lights are all internet of things, my curtains, my shades, my everything. Everything in my apartment is internet of things so the second 3:45 a.m. hits, the light starts coming up slowly, so I’m awake with natural awake lighting, and the chance of going back to sleep drop massively.

Then, once I’m up, I get on my Peloton bike, I do like an hour or two hours of working out. Well, what that does is that gives you a ridiculous hit of dopamine, okay? It wakes you up. It gives you that dopamine which is basically the focus chemical. It’s the focus and happy chemical that says, “Hey, you are awake. Let’s go kick some ass.” It’s like a winner’s high. A winner’s high essentially.

You can get the same thing from speaking on stage. You can get the same thing from skydiving, the same thing from illegal drugs. It’s that dopamine hit that everyone craves. Well, I am now full of it by 6:00 a.m. okay? So, now, I’m out of the gym, I’m out of the whatever. I go to my closet to get dressed, and my closet has exactly two sides to it and they’re labeled.

The first side says, “Office/Travel,” and it’s full of T-shirts and jeans just like I’m wearing today. The second side says, “Speaking/TV,” and it’s full of buttoned down shirts, jackets and jeans. That’s it. My suits, my vests, my sweaters, my night shoes, all that stuff, my ties, those are all in my daughter’s closet in the other room.

Because if I had to go into the closet every morning and say, “You know what, I wonder what I should wear? Hmm, let’s see. Hmm, look at that sweater. Mom gave me that sweater. I wonder how well she’s doing. I should look her up. Let me check.” Three hours later I’m naked in the living room on Facebook and I haven’t left past.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. So, you’re saying that the key there is because of ADHD.

Peter Shankman
Elimination of choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, understood. Okay. Cool. And so, then, now a number of these rituals seem like, well, I don’t know if you chose to do them as a means of managing in particular your ADHD because they sound wise just in general. Maybe I want to back up just a little bit though. So, you wake up at 3:45 a.m. And what time do you go to bed?

Peter Shankman
Usually about 8:30, 9:00 o’clock at night.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool.

Peter Shankman
And here’s the thing, for everyone listening saying, “Oh, my God. I’ve missed out on everything. I’ve missed all the good networking.” No, you won’t. I’ve been doing this for years. I have not missed out on a damn thing because all the people who really have the power to make decisions they’re not out drinking, right? You’re having breakfast with them at 7:00 a.m. at the plaza, egg whites and coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Peter Shankman
That’s the real thing. I have never missed out on anything business-wise by going to bed early.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m with you. Well, so there we go. So, we talked about the elimination of choice in terms of in the closet a lot of things are elsewhere, and it’s labeled it. It’s so funny. I just labeled my closet recently because, well, there’s all sorts of clutter, I was like, “We just got to get really clear on what goes where in that way the clutter goes away.” It’s like, “Oh, this is the sweater kind of cubbie. All right. Now, I don’t get to think about it anymore. That’s always where the sweaters are.” And so, I dig it. It’s very cool. Now, you sort of gone ahead and sort of defined in particular four undeniable life rules associated with ADHD that are applicable more broadly. And so, what are those?

Peter Shankman
Well, the first one, like I said, is exercise every day. Second one is elimination of choice. The third one is the concept of eating healthy. When you’re ADHD you’re just driven, you tend to have two speeds and only two speeds. My two speeds are namaste and I’m kind of bitch. There is absolutely no middle ground. There’s no middle ground. And so, once you realize that it’s a lot easier to live your life.

So, for instance, you know how certain people who – and I know some of these people – they get home after work, and they’re like, “You know what, I’m tired. I don’t really feel like cooking. I’m going to order in a pizza.” And they order a pizza, and they have two slices, and they box the rest of it in a tin foil and they put it in the fridge, right? That’s called leftover pizza to have at another time, right? Okay, I’ve never had leftover pizza in my life. That is just not a thing.

Pete Mockaitis
You just devour the whole pie?

Peter Shankman
If the pizza is in front of me I’m eating the pizza. I have never once had leftover pizza in my life. There was a comedian, I remember, who said, “I don’t eat until I’m full of eating until I hate myself.” That’s what I do. I basically sit there and I will eat the pizza because, again, two speeds. And so, knowing that, there was a great movie that came out in the ‘80s, it’s called War Games, and it was about a computer with Matthew Broderick.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right with the news.

Peter Shankman
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
An interesting game, okay.

Peter Shankman
Exactly. And the computer understood. The very last line of the movie was the computer understanding that you can’t win at nuclear war, and he says, “The only winning move is not to play.” And so, I have determined that in my life the only winning move for me is not to play. I allow myself certain times in very constrained conditions to play.

For instance, the last two weeks of December, I knew I wasn’t traveling, I knew I wasn’t working, and I let myself eat, right? But sure enough, I probably ordered pizza every single day. Now, I’m back onto healthy, and because of that I cook all my food in advance. Like every Sunday I make a ton of skinless chicken, I make a ton of lean flank steak, things like that that I just carry with me. I have a ton of spinach salads, yogurts, things of that.

I take yogurt with me out the door, I’m eating as I walk to work. It stops me from going, “Oh, look, there’s a Dunkin Donuts,” or, “Look, there’s a McDonald’s,” or, “Look, there’s…” whatever. It turns that off because I simply know that that is not an option at that time. And I have those, and it sounds rigid but it has to be that way because I work in shared community and some idiot is always bringing in donuts.

For example, I walked in my office today, I haven’t been since early last week because of the holidays. I walked in today, some client delivered me a 10-pound box or one of those 10-pound tins of popcorn, regular cheese and caramel, right? I opened that, I opened the box, I took out the tin, I didn’t even break the seal on the tin.

I simply left my office, walked up to the administration desk up front and went to the two women who worked there, I’m like, “Hey, I got a present for you,” and I left it there. “Wow, you’re so nice.” “No, I’m simply ridding myself from sitting in my office eating 10 pounds of popcorn today.” So, again, eliminate that, know what works for you, know what doesn’t, so I try to eat healthy. My logic is if I’m grandmother wouldn’t have recognized it as food back in 1908, I won’t eat it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Peter Shankman
And then the fourth rule, I think I’ve touched on this earlier, simply getting enough sleep. So, it’s amazing what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. The second you don’t get enough sleep your body – and it’s the same thing with not drinking enough water – your body is unbelievably good at adapting, and so it will basically, if it says, “You know what, you haven’t gotten enough sleep. I’m going to make you do other things. I’m going to make you think that you want to do other things when I’m just trying to get you to sleep.”

Same thing with water, “You haven’t drunk enough water. I’m going to make you feel hungry but you’re not actually hungry. You’re thirsty. But I know there’s water in whatever food you eat and maybe that’s a way for me to get what I need.” The brain is amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the corollary then, on the sleep side, is what’s the body prompting us to do when we’re sleep deprived?

Peter Shankman
It varies. We could do everything from, “Oh, my God. I need several more cups of coffee,” or, “I need to take a stimulant,” or even just sitting in your office zoning out and not being anywhere near as productive as you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Peter Shankman
Right? And it’s so funny because people, “Oh, I wish I could eat or sleep. I don’t have the time.” Well, I’m pretty sure that where you live and where I live, the sun orbits the earth around, or the earth orbits the sun around the same time, right? If you live in one part of New York and I live in another part of New York, and you say you don’t have the time, but I somehow do have the time, I’m pretty sure it’s not that time has nothing to do with it.

I’m pretty sure that we both live on the same part of the planet that revolves around the sun at the same exact time so I don’t suddenly have an hour more in my day time-wise than you do. What I do have is the priority.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m with you. Cool. So, now I’m intrigued then, in a way it seems like the elimination of choice is one that really reinforces and supports all the other three.

Peter Shankman
No question about it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’d love to maybe go a little bit deeper then on that. So, we talked about the closet and the food. What are some other ways you think professionals could really be enriched by some application of elimination of choice?

Peter Shankman
My desk has my laptop on it, it has my screens on it, and that would be about it. Maybe it has a glass or a bottle of water. Keep your desk clean. Keep the stuff clean and you will find that there’s nothing to get lost in, right? I have to do work on Facebook for a living so I do kind of a wonderful extension for Chrome called Kill Newsfeed which does exactly that. All I see on Chrome is my advertising and things like that so I don’t get suck down that rabbit hole.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow.

Peter Shankman
I go into specific places. I have five books that I’ve written, and for the last three of them have been written entirely on airplanes, I mean, I fly a lot for work, but flying is also the best place where I can get work done. So, I have actually done things where I will go and I will fly – I flew to Asia – to write a book. I flew to Asia, I had two weeks left to my deadline, I wrote chapters one through five on the flight out.

I landed in Tokyo, I went through immigration, I went back through immigration, I had a cup of coffee in the lounge, got back on the same plane, same seat two hours later, wrote chapters six through ten . . . landed 31 hours later with a bestselling book. It sounds crazy but, again, if it works for you it’s not.

[00:18:14]

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve heard sort of different variance of that, writing a book was it J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter? She went to a hotel.

Peter Shankman
Yeah, she went to a hotel. Same thing. Same exact thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Or some others will go to a remote cabin or cottage.

Peter Shankman
My basic thing is if I need to work, I need to go to a place where I can go into… Cal Newport wrote a book called Deep Work, and the basic premise behind that is exactly that. On my plane, I’m in my, what I call my zone of focus, okay? Nothing can bother me. I have a flight attendant constantly bringing me water or soda, whatever.

It’s in-air in-flight internet which kind of sucks anyway, so I don’t have internet, right? All I have is my laptop, my comfortable seat, a bathroom 30 steps away, and 14 hours to do nothing. I use a wonderful program on the Mac called Ommwriter which allows you to shut down every other program, alert, whatever, on your computer as long as you’re using it, and only shows you a white screen that you can type on.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting. And so that’s just for writing then.

Peter Shankman
Yup, and I put on a really good headphones, I have some great work music and I just go to town.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear about the work music. What are you sporting there?

Peter Shankman
Oh, my God, it varies. It’s everything from themes, a lot of theme songs, a lot of movie soundtracks, some great ones. Everything from The Book of Eli which is all instrumental, all the way up to Rocky which has some really good powerful stuff on it, it keeps me going. For me, it’s really about listening, having that music play in the background.

Studies have shown time after time that music does help your concentration and, yeah, it’s really about having that. And I love my headphones, I have my Harman, P35 I think, great headphones. And I use everything I have to get what I need to get into the zone I need to be in, the place I need to be in so I can get everything I need to get done done.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with the music, are you deliberately choosing, “Hmm, I’m a little sluggish or sleepy. Let’s kind of pump it up,” versus, “Ooh, I’m a little bit all over the place. Let’s slow it down”? Or is that kind of how you’re playing that game?

Peter Shankman
Not necessarily. I have music. If you go to my work music it does tend to be a lot less vocals, a lot more instrumental, because if it’s vocals I’ll wind up singing along which might not often help. But it’s definitely a lot more instrumental. But, yeah, again it’s just music that I love. Whatever works for you, use. But, yeah, that’s the kind of stuff for me that I’m a huge fan of.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am intrigued here. It seems like one of the themes we were talking about here from the early rising to the flying to Asia and back is about sort of isolation or separation from distractions in general, but people in particular. And so, I guess I’m curious about the other people side of the equation. It’s like one approach is to just get completely away from them via they’re not awake or you’re in a plane and you can’t be accessed. What are some of your other thoughts for how that you manage that area kind of prudently and appropriately?

Peter Shankman
Well, I have a four-year old daughter, and when I’m with her I want to be completely and fully with her, right? I don’t want to be looking at my phone so I’ll leave my phone in my room and just go out and play with her. For me, it’s really about being in that moment and being as present as possible, and I know that when my phone is in front of me I’m going to look at it, right?

And so, I also know that I’ve set up my life in such a way that I’ve worked. By the time 5:00, 6:00 p.m. is when I head home to see her, I’ve been working since – what? 6:00 a.m.? 7:00a.m.? – so, I can take a break.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Peter Shankman
I can go enjoy myself, and that to me is huge. There’s no guilt there. And I shut off my phone at night when I go to sleep at night. I don’t just put it on silent. I shut it off. And what I found from that is that, “Oh, my God, what happens if I shut it off? Will I miss so much?” You know how many times I’ve actually missed something important, I think once. And the people who matter in my life are my parents, my daughter’s mom, they have my home number.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Peter Shankman
Worst case, if it’s 2:00 in the morning, they can call the home number. It’s never been a problem. We make a lot more of these problems in our minds than really exists.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m also curious to hear, you’ve dropped the name of several tools whether it’s a Chrome extension or a piece of software or your headphones. I would love to hear all the more. What are some additional tools or hacks you’re using with the tools, whether it’s the calendar, the to-do list, or whatever, that you find handy for running your brain and your life?

Peter Shankman
Yeah, I think you have to figure out what ecosystem you belong to and stick with it. So, I’m in the Mac and Google ecosystems, so I have my iPhone. But because I’m on Google, I also use a Huawei Mate 10 which is a phenomenal phone, so I use both of them. And the apps that I use vary for what I need. I use everything from, I’m huge on WhatsApp, on WeChat, all that stuff where I go overseas a lot, so how can I continue to be connected and not have to worry about losing that connection wherever I go. And then I’ll shut down when I need to.

So, what other apps do I use? I love shopping. Being able to think about something I might need, add it to my shopping order over the course of a week and then just hit send every Saturday. So, again, it’s really just eliminating the choice and eliminating the worry of, “Did I put that there? Did I take care of that?” Whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Now, when you say hit send with shopping.

Peter Shankman
So, I use FreshDirect. That’s only in New York. I’m not sure if it’s everywhere. But essentially FreshDirect, I just order everything online, it shows up four days later. It’s from a store out in the city. It’s phenomenal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. I dig Instacart here in Chicago.

Peter Shankman
Yeah, same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Okay. Well, any other things that you want to share when it comes to the creative energy or this mythical hyper-focus? How do we tap into some of these superpowers?

Peter Shankman
I would suggest one more thing, and that is that when you don’t have a deadline, that’s a problem. Like I can’t work without a deadline, and what I’ve learned is to tell my clients to give me an actual date and time that he wants something, because if they don’t, what ends up happening is it becomes the most important thing to do until the next project I get, and then that becomes the most important thing and I haven’t finished the first one.

So, if you tell me, “Oh, just give it to me whenever,” you’ll never get it. But if you tell me, “I need it by Tuesday at 4:00 p.m.,” you’ll get it on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. because now I have a deadline to work backwards from there. And we do that a lot. Most CEOs, we tend to not be able to complete things because there’s always something new coming up. So, if you give me a deadline I’ll make sure I get it.

And the last thing I’d suggest is make sure you have a tribe of people who understand what you’re doing for a living and understand what you need and how they could benefit you. Essentially, have a support system. We don’t talk about this but working for someone else, entrepreneurship, whichever work you’re doing, it tends to get lonely, right? Most people don’t understand what you do and unless they’re working right with you and want to share people right with you because then it becomes a competitive thing.

You really want to focus on having a tribe of people. I mean, for me, I run a Mastermind group, it’s called ShankMinds and we have just under 200 people in it, all of whom are either entrepreneurial in nature or work for themselves, whatever. And I could say, “Guys, do me a favor. I’m putting it out here. I want to make sure I’m up for it. I have a thousand words I need to write by March. Make sure I get it done.” And I’ll get emails 6:00 a.m. “Hey, done it yet? Done it yet? Done it yet?” and it forces you to do it. It’s great. So, I’m a huge fan of having a tribe, having a group of people who you trust.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, thank you for sharing. And so, then, anything else on tapping into the hyper-focus and creative energies?

Peter Shankman
I think, at the end of the day, you can’t force it. If you’re not in a mode or in a mood or in the right place to get what you need done done, don’t do it right then; do it another time, right? Do something else. One thing that I’ve had great success with is doing things that I love first. So, I’ll go for a run or I’ll do something.

I talk to kids in school all the time and I tell them, “Look, if you have two subjects in homework, Math and English, and you love English but hate Math, do the English first. Because you love doing English, that in itself will give you a little bit of a brain chemistry boost that will let you get through the Math.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I find that logical on one hand, and then I’ve got in my other ear, “Is it Brian Tracy Eat That Frog advice associated with procrastination or feeling like a bowling winner who knocks out the trickiest thing, at the end of the day and feels momentum?” How do you…?

Peter Shankman
Here’s the thing, at the end of the day, your homework is due tomorrow, either way. So, for me, I look along the lines of being able to, I want every bit of availability to be able to do the stuff I love. And I know that if I do the stuff I love first I’ll be excited about it, I’ll be happy about it and then I will feel that hopefully will translate into giving me just a little bit of brain boost to get through that I don’t love. Now, I totally understand what Brian said and all that. I get that. It’s just different ways of working.

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

Peter Shankman
Oh, we’re good. I think, at the end of the day, ADHD or just trying to get more out of your day is actually a good thing as long as you know how to use it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Peter Shankman
A friend of mine once told me this to me, he said, “If you can’t change the people around you, change the people around you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay. I see two levels there.

Peter Shankman
Huge fan. Always been a huge fan of that.

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

Peter Shankman
So, I used to date a woman who was neuroscientist, a Ph.D. neuroscientist, years ago. And she took me, she knew that I skydive, and she used to do studies on the brain and things like that. And one day, she said, “I want to your blood and do some tests on you for fun.” This test for me, she basically took my blood right before I jumped out of a plane, when I woke the day I was going skydiving because I have about 500 jumps, and then again when I came down. She said, “Yeah, when you woke up, you’re pretty much normal, classic ADHD, 25% less monoamine inhibitors, all those things,” I had no idea what she meant.

And she goes, “And then when you land, you’re pretty much a coke addict.” She goes, “You’re about as high as a kite, you’re about a mile away from being a full-pledged junkie.” I’m like, “Intriguing.” And so, it’s that sort of wakeup call that, “Yeah, this stuff really works and you can use it to your advantage.” I found that amazing. Getting your brain into that place where it’s just supercharged is such a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And now, how about a favorite book?

Peter Shankman
What’s my current favorite book? There was a great book called They Can Kill You But They Can’t Eat You, it’s by a woman named Dawn Steel. She was the first female head at Paramount, and she talks all about making it in that industry. It’s a great book when you’re looking for inspiration.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you’ve already mentioned several tools. But could you tell us about a total favorite of yours?

Peter Shankman
Like I said, Ommwriter is definitely a given. Anything that allows me to work better, faster, quicker without delay. So, whether that means not having to talk to people, it could be anything from an airline app all the way to my Canon camera which transfers photos from my real camera all the way to my phone automatically so you get great Instagram shots. Whatever it is.

Pete Mockaitis
How about TextExpander? I’m a huge fan myself.

Peter Shankman
I love TextExpander. Yeah, love TextExpander. I love, like I said, Ommwriter. All those things are great. I use a great one called Jing by TechSmith that allows me to grab, it’s a great screenshot program.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, yeah.

Peter Shankman
So, you have tons of them out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

Peter Shankman
Dropbox, Google Drive. Again, anything that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget that you share that you sort of hear quoted back to yourself often?

Peter Shankman
You can’t make anything viral but you can make something good.

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

Peter Shankman
My link is at shankman.com, the Mastermind is at ShankMinds.com, and the podcast/book on ADHD is at FasterThanNormal.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?
Peter Shankman
If you do nothing else, get up a half an hour earlier. It’ll change your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. All right. Well, Peter, this has been such a treat. Thank you for sharing. And good luck in all of your writing and masterminding, and all you’re up to.

Peter Shankman
My pleasure. Looking forward to it. Talk soon.

Pete Mockaitis
Bye-bye.

Feb 09
0

260: Tools for Sticking with Your Biggest Goals with Dean Lindsay

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Dean Lindsay says: "The biggest challenge that we have to goal achievement is not goal setting; it's goal commitment."

Dean Lindsay shows how to achieve “PHAT” (Pretty, Hot And Tempting) goals by committing to them, strengthening reasons, and building true conviction.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why it’s better to have real commitment rather than a good plan
  2. What it mean to be truly convicted of a goal’s value
  3. Dean’s six P’s of Progress

About Dean 

Dean Lindsay is hailed as an ‘Outstanding Thought Leader on Building Priceless Business Relationships’ by Sales and Marketing Executives International as well as a ‘Sales-and-Networking Guru’ by the Dallas Business Journal. His books, How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals, THE PROGRESS CHALLENGE: Working & Winning in a World of Change, and CRACKING THE NETWORKING CODE: 4 Steps to Priceless Business Relationships have sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into Chinese, Hindi, Polish, Korean, Spanish and Greek.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dean Lindsay Interview Transcript

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

Dean Lindsay
Rock and roll. Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
We just discussed rock and roll and all of its implications. And so, well, I want to hear about you rocking and rolling, first of all. And how is it you ended up getting a role in the movie Twister? What’s the backstory? And how did that go for you?

Dean Lindsay
You know what’s funny? No one has ever asked me that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s what we aspire to as podcasters. It’s awesome.

Dean Lindsay
That’s right. there’s actually not only about it, about being in it, but Bill Paxton had actually a great deal to do as a catalyst. I was in that for Big PHAT Goals being created. Yes, so Twister is a long, long time ago. So, back in the ‘90s, ’97 when Twister was, I was in an acting endeavor trying to become an actor, had a little bit of success in Walker, Texas Ranger in a couple of movies of the week.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that Chuck Norris? Oh, nice.

Dean Lindsay
Huh? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it true the legends?

Dean Lindsay
He’s a cool kid. Yeah, that was a real fun experience. But the movie was being shot in Oklahoma, and I live in Texas, and they decided to have a casting possibility for Texas actors, and me and a buddy of mine drove up to Oklahoma City to audition, and I got the part. It was a really, really great experience. I was one of the bad guys driving the black vans, so I was there the entire time.

What I was going to say about Bill Paxton, two things. I write about Bill Paxton in my first book Cracking the Networking CODE because Bill Paxton was an amazing leader, an amazing happy gregarious man. And I wrote about him in Cracking the Networking CODE as just somebody who you just wanted to be around that guy. He was always there to help, he was always there to lift everybody up.

When we were making Twister the director of photography and the director had a falling out to the degree where the director of photography quit. And when he quit he took a third of the crew with him, and so we didn’t know if they were going to finish the movie, and a lot of the big stars actually went home. They went back to California or they went to New York City.

Bill Paxton did not. He stayed in Ponca City, Oklahoma at the Holiday Inn and he rallied the troops, and he would be out there playing touch football during the day, and he’d be leading conversations, and to evening, encouraging everybody to, “Stay, stay, stay. We’re going to get this movie made. We’re going to get this movie made.” And, sure enough, it did. It happened.

And then, in reference to Big PHAT Goals, I was working on Big PHAT Goals, How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals, off and on for about a year and a half and I had a cover design, and it was kind of slowly moving into existence. But on February 26 of 2017 Bill Paxton died. And when he died it was on my daughter’s birthday.

When he died and she came in and told me, I was like, “Man, Bill Paxton, a man who so full of life, who has no health scare, nothing that I had heard about or whatever, is just gone and it’s just over.” It just spurred me into action, and said, “You don’t get to throw or something that you’re going to do later down the road.” And so, I moved Big PHAT up to the very top of my list and got it out into the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s inspiring. Thank you. And a good reminder. Not easy to forget. Well, now tell us, what is this book How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals all about? And why is it so important to you to have the world have this?

Dean Lindsay
That’s a great question, Pete. You know, there are a lot of goal books out there, and this book really is a companion book to any goal-setting book, to any goal-planning book, to your daily planner, to whatever that you have, and this is not to compete with smart goals or anything like that. The biggest challenge that we have to goal achievement is not goal setting; it’s goal commitment.

Big PHAT Goals is about goal commitment. Especially at the beginning of the year, we set these big, lofty goals that we get tingles about, “Whoa,” you’re telling people about, “What we’re going to do…” and then we don’t forget that we’re going to do them. What happens is we don’t stay connected to why, so that goal is big enough but it’s not phat enough, and that’s the phat in the Big PHAT Goal’s acronym is how we must remind ourselves and continually strengthen the reasons behind the action.

Shakespeare said, “Strong reasons make strong actions.” Not just reasons; strong reasons. And that goes also with the competition of what you choose to do with your time as well. If you’re not pursuing your goals, you’re still pursuing something, and you’re pursuing something for a reason. And if you’re pursuing something other than your goals that means that those other things weighed heavier or phatter in your mind at that moment.

Not at the end of the day when you later hit on the pillow, and you think, “Oh, what I should’ve done,” or not in the beginning of the day when you’re rolling out your lofty plans and what you’re going to do that day; but in the nanosecond. Commitment is a moment-by-moment decision. And you can say you’re committed to something, but it’s not about saying it; it’s about consistently doing actions that you believe are going to take closer to your goals.

Big phat goals, How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals is a goal commitment program because if you stay committed to your goals, I guarantee you, you will get a lot closer to achieving them than if you have all the plans in the world. It’s not a plan you need; it’s commitment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, you keep saying phat, and so in text form, for the listener, you spell that out P-H-A-T. And I don’t remember what the movie trailer was but I feel like, when I was a kid, I heard repeatedly there’s a movie where a guy said that some woman was phat, and she was alarmed, like, “What?” And he said, “P-H-A-T, pretty hot and tempting.” And she said, “Oh, okay.”

Dean Lindsay
Good job.

Pete Mockaitis
What movie was that? I couldn’t find it.

Dean Lindsay
That was Money Talks, and it’s Chris Tucker.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, we know.

Dean Lindsay
Yeah, Chris Tucker, 1997. He was supposedly the first person to say it, and you’re also the very first person to ever to have that even that much information. No one else.

Pete Mockaitis
You see, Dean, I do my research.

Dean Lindsay
Yeah, way to be a kid in the ‘90s. Yes, so that basically, I had the program. Back in 2001 I wrote How to Achieve Big Fat Goals, F-A-T, and FAT was all about making your goal heavy in your mind. So, the premise was basically this aim. But then, when I found out what phat stood for, that it stands for pretty, hot and tempting, I said, “Wow, that’s exactly the same point I’m making.”

When we choose to pursue some other goal other than our goals, at that moment is prettier, hotter and more tempting to us. Now, you can say it’s not but it is at that moment. Then we go deeper into how we make something pretty, hot and tempting, I know by concept of progress versus chance, but that’s basically it. Yeah, it’s kind of cool to change the letters but if that was all I was doing in this book, was just doing a little spelling, have a little spelling fun with the word phat, I’d be really embarrassed.

This book is all about that. The whole concept of this book, the way to armor up, the way to compete and go to combat, really, with all the marketing of how you could, would, should choose to invest your time is to remember. You see is you got to remember you got to make your goals phatter. Yes, that’s a cool thing to do, right?

The only problem that we have, Pete, is that we don’t have like one great thing to do and a whole bunch of crappy things to do. We have a bunch of good things, there’s so much good choices, right? There’s so much good choices and there’s the one, of all the things that you could do that would move you closer to your goals, and they’re going to be phat.

The other options are going to be phat. I’m not saying they’re not phat. We need to be realistic, they are phat. Netflix is not making un-phat shows to watch. Every show is designed to be phat, right? Binge watching Orange is the New Black, you can’t say that is a bad use of your time, right? You can say it’s not your choice use of your time, but thousands of people do it. But is that going to move you closer to your big phat goals?

So, that’s what I’m trying to say here in this book, is people lots of times who went out to setting a goal and then trying to get a plan, but what they really need is commitment. Because when you implement a plan you’re going to run up against roadblocks and difficulties and challenges and guess your plan was not very good. And so, now, you got to have to fall back on that commitment to pull back together and try again.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m sold. Let’s talk about it. How do you amp up the commitment, I’d say, up front and then in the moment when you’re tempted with the Netflix program or whatever it may be?

Dean Lindsay
Everything. Anything. It could be anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Dean Lindsay
Well, I love a quote from Pat Benatar, “With the power of commitment there is no sacrifice.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dean Lindsay
With the power of commitment. No, I’m sorry, not the power of commitment; with the power of conviction. Sorry, I knew I said it all too simply. With the power of conviction there is no sacrifice. With the power of conviction there is no sacrifice. Now, to be convicted, that means you know your New Year’s resolution or the goal you set that is, of everything you could choose to do, that is it. You are convicted.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, let’s wait here. You know. What is it that you know?

Dean Lindsay
That the goal you have for your life is the best choice of all the other things you could choose to do with your time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I love it. Now, we’re getting somewhere. Now, this is a high bar that most goals don’t reach.

Dean Lindsay
They can reach but that just means we have to dig into the why. We have to continually say and think of all the different benefits that’s how you get the power of the conviction. I love this phrase from Pat Benatar because you just don’t get conviction. How do you get conviction? It’s about the pain of actually digging into it.

And in the book I lay out what I call the six P’s of progress, and it’s really kind of the big psychology. I studied Dr. Viktor Frankl’s work, local therapy, and that’s kind of what spurred me to create the six P’s of progress because local therapy is all about meaning therapy and how we derive meaning. And so, I looked at Dr. Viktor Frankl’s concept of meaning, and I kind of took it into the business acumen and tried to kind of chew on it for a while, and I came up with what I call the six P’s of progress.

And that is that everything we do, when I say we, I mean the big huge collectively; everybody listening to this, everybody who’s working, sleeping, whatever. Everybody. Everything. Everything we do, consciously or subconsciously we do because we believe the perceived consequences of those actions are that we will fill the unique right mixture of pleasure, peace of mind, profit, prestige, pain avoidance, and power.

And what that means, Pete, is that whatever goal, and let me say it this way, if somebody gives you an idea of something you could do, choose to do it with your time, listen to the way they say it because they’re going to say something, “It’ll be good for you, you’ll enjoy it, it’ll be fun.” Well, that goes right back to the six P’s of progress. It’ll bring you pleasure.

Now, I’m not saying it won’t bring pleasure. It probably will bring you pleasure. But is it bringing you more pleasure than you staying on task of what you were doing? There’s short-term pleasure and there’s long-term pleasure. But all marketing comes down to the six P’s of progress: pleasure, peace of mind, profit, prestige, pain avoidance and power.

And there are many, many people and professional organizations and associations, and commercials, everything, trying to get you to adapt a goal, trying to get you to pursue their goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, I kind of buy that product because that’s going to make me money, it’s going to be a lot of fun, it’s going to attract a phat lady or gentleman into life in or around you.

Dean Lindsay
Right. Right. Right. And so, if you’re going to pursue your goal then your goal has to be phatter.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dean Lindsay
Or you’re going to be more susceptible to those other things. So, what I encourage people in my workshops or in the book to do is to actually go through, and don’t just – I call it goal-crafting – don’t just craft a goal but actually go through a few exercises of, “How will this goal bring me pleasure? How will this goal bring me peace of mind? How accomplishing this goal…?” You see what I’m saying? So, that when somebody else has other choices of what you could choose to do with your time, or even you, you have weighed your goal down so much that, yes, those other things are still good, just not as good.

Pete, let me tell you something you might not have heard before. You nor I can do or have it all.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Dean Lindsay
We cannot.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m convinced. Well, indeed, I think Paula Pant says it well in terms of you can’t afford anything, you can’t afford everything, and I’m right with it when it comes to opportunity costs and that.

Dean Lindsay
Same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then, I’m really connecting with your sentence there that you are convicted when you know the goal you’ve selected is the top best use of your time. And I think that is absolutely true, and I’ve been there before, and so, you gave us a bit of a framework for the six P’s. And so, then, how do we go about doing the hard thinking, the soul searching, the questioning, the exploration, the decision making to arrive at that place of conviction? So, the six P’s is a handy framework, but I guess I’m thinking, again, there’s a billion potential uses of your time. So, how do we zero in on the one thing?

Dean Lindsay
That’s a great question. I’m not sure, are you asking about the one goal or the one action?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m thinking about the one goal. Or there are multiple goals, you tell me. You know, in your framework, are you thinking about use this for one, two, three, four, five goals or priorities of your life? Or how are you envisioning the load of phat goals a life can handle?

Dean Lindsay
Yeah. You know, I kind of purposely stayed away from that aspect because it works on any level, whatever goal you want to have, if it’s a big goal as far as, I mean, it could be as simple as choosing to eat healthy, you know. Or it could be as much as trying to get a master’s degree but the same workings go into it as far as continually selling yourself on the benefits of that goal.

I did not write Big PHAT Goals to have any kind of sway over anybody on what they should do except to say that if you want to control your mind and your choices, control your why, control your understanding of, and be a lot more realistic about other people’s perceived benefits for the actions they want you to take, “Come out with us tonight. Come out.”

“You know, I plan on getting to bed early,” because you’re going to get up and go run, or you’re going to get up and do some research for your sales call the next day, right? And so, there’s pros and cons to every activity so I don’t necessarily think that this book should guide you to a direction in life. It’s a book to help you stay committed to that direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you’re saying that what I’m really pressing on is not what you have created. Yours is more about maintaining commitment as opposed to arriving at an optimal upfront decision.

Dean Lindsay
I do have some stuff in the book, yeah, I guess you could definitely say that. I wouldn’t know, I mean, I don’t know how you could even start in the book like that. I mean, then you go open a Pandora’s box of everything people could do and that includes the Peace Corps. What are you going to do? I say I don’t know your deck of cards. I don’t know the influence you’ve gotten from other people.

The only exercise I do in the book to help kind of spur this kind of conversation because it’s a framework that then people can go back and use over and over and over again. I do have an exercise in the book that has you kind of vison board the next 15 years of your life, everything you want to have accomplished and done, and big stuff and little stuff, and the food you want to have eaten, and people you want to have met, and bands you want to have seen in concerts, and learning to play a guitar, and you run through everything you want to have accomplished in 15 years.

And then that exercise takes a couple of deep kind of turns to where you do start to see some certain things bubble to the top as far as the ones that are the biggest ones that you kind of going after. But, even then, it’s a very general thing. In some of the workshops, when I do in small groups or webinars, we’ll go through the classic wheel of life type thing where you’re looking at your life and spiritual and financial and family and health and all those things. You kind of get a gauge of where things are but that’s also, and as it should be, very subjective.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so, I think that you’ve surfaced up one or two kind of tools where it comes to imagining up the course of 15 years, what really are the long-term dream that this thing is connected to, thinking about the extent to which there is alignment within some goals versus others. I know we’re both fans of Jay Papasan with The ONE Thing. That’s one thing that would make everything else easier or unnecessary. I think it’s an awesome question and book there.

So, yeah, so thanks for playing ball as I really put you on the spot here, but I think that that is some of the really hard work upfront in terms of arriving there. But you got me really fired up and inspired about how when you arrive at that point of conviction, you know the goal you’ve selected is the top best use of your time. I think you really are unstoppable.

And so, you’re saying then, once you got that in play you keep it fresh by making it phatter, digging into the six P’s. And any other pro tips for renewing and refreshing that commitment as the temptations arise?

Dean Lindsay
Yeah, one of the things that people talk about writing down goals, and I really believe in writing a goal but also it’s also how you write the goal. I don’t encourage people to write a goal just as kind of a reminder of the goal but actually write it in such a way that it becomes a self-fulfilling affirmation. You know what I’m saying? What you do want, not what you don’t want. Not using future tense. Making sure that you’re saying things in such a way that it actually gives your mind momentum, that you’re crafting it so it propels you into action.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, any final thoughts before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Dean Lindsay
Well, I really like what you were throwing out there, Pete. I thank you for shaking it up because you’re right, you’re touching on something that there’s so much competition of, you know, you said it earlier, of options. We have so many options and that can get incredibly overwhelming, and that’s the reason we need to do the deep work to decide, well, what we’re supposed to be doing.

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

Dean Lindsay
Very cool. Well, I told you that one. That was the one that I definitely… the quote from Pat Benatar. But my other favorite quote, I’m pulling it up right now, it comes from my man Dr. Viktor Frankl. The one that I like a lot is that, “Between stimulus and response, there’s a space, and it is in that space that we have the power to choose our response.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Dean Lindsay
Man’s Search for Meaning.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And a favorite tool?

Dean Lindsay
Yeah, I was wondering what that meant.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Yeah. That means sort of like it’s an app or piece of software or something that you use frequently that helps you be awesome at your job? Some people say a hammer, a measuring tape, or Google Docs, whatever it may be.

Dean Lindsay
What do I use a bunch? I use Canva. Have you ever used Canva?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ve heard a little bit. Explain.

Dean Lindsay
Canva is a great tool for making JPEGs and putting quotes and making social media posts then brochures and LinkedIn headlines. It’s a great tool for making JPEGs.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And do you have a favorite habit?

Dean Lindsay
Do I have a favorite habit? Yeah, ones that I’m proud of? You know what, I do. I do actually, Pete. About two and a half years ago, my walking shoes or running shoes are right at the back door right now. I walk every morning. Talk about a five-mile loop.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Dean Lindsay
I recommend it. I don’t even put headphones and I just kind of greet the day and be in the open and taking a lot of deep breaths, so that’s definitely a habit I’m very happy about.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget you share in your speeches or writing that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they retweet it, they quote it back to you? What would that be?

Dean Lindsay
It’s a two-word phrase.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dean Lindsay
Be progress. People must view you as – for them to want to be in a relationship with you – they need to view you as the unique right mixture of pleasure, peace of mind, profit, prestige, pain avoidance, and power, the six P’s of progress. You must be progress.

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

Dean Lindsay
DeanLindsay.com, D-E-A-N-L-I-N-D-S-A-Y.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a favorite challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dean Lindsay
Compliment somebody. Thank them, compliment them, tell them they did good.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Dean, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and wisdom and time. You have planted a tantalizing question deep inside me; how does one know the goal you’ve selected is the top best use of your time. And you’ve give us a great starting point there. I have a feeling I’ll be chewing on this for years to come. So, much, much appreciated, and good luck in all you’re up to with Big PHAT Goals, and more.

Dean Lindsay
Thank you, Pete.

Jan 08
0

246: Doing the Most with Your To-Do List with Suzanna Kaye

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

 

 

Suzanna Kaye says: "Productivity... really has only a little bit to do with the tools, 80% of it is the psychology that goes into it."

Professional organizer Suzanna Kaye shares her tips on optimal to-do lists for optimal productivity.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to cope when your tasks are too overwhelming
  2. A common mistake when working the to-do lists and apps
  3. Guidelines for identifying your priorities

About Suzanna 

Suzanna Kaye is a speaker with a passion! She can be found training and speaking to audiences both locally and internationally about how to structure their lives in new ways to be more productive and organized. Suzanna is the founder of Spark! Organizing, LLC as well as a former CFO for a national corporation. She brings a creative, encouraging, and judgement-free approach to productivity and organization. Her favorite topics include Productivity, Organization and Time Management. As a LinkedIn Learning author, she really does make productivity look effortless.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Suzanna Kaye Interview Transcript

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

Suzanna Kaye
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take, you’ve done a number of jobs over the course of your life. But you said that one was noteworthy, and that was as a Disney Ferry Boat driver. Can you give us the backstory there?

Suzanna Kaye
Yeah, I was lucky enough to be living in Orlando, Florida when I was younger, and one of my first few jobs that were beyond babysitting was driving the Ferry Boat at Walt Disney World, at The Magic Kingdom, which was a fantastic job and the best customer service training I could’ve ever asked for.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued. So, now Ferry Boat driving, that sounds like it could also get pretty intense at times with regard to the people and the potential for being packed in there. Any noteworthy stories?

Suzanna Kaye
I actually had to dock the Ferry Boat during a hurricane once. It was the last run of the day and they were shutting down the Ferry Boats because, you might not know this, but there’s only four feet of those Ferry Boats that are under the water and the rest is all above the water so it’s basically a giant sail. So, as the winds were whipping in it was very difficult to get that docked to this little slip, and they were just pulling the plug on it and it was the last boat to make a run, and it took me, I think, 12 or 13 tries to get it into that slip finally. But I cheered when I finally got it in. It was nerve wracking.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I bet. Everyone’s watching.

Suzanna Kaye
It was great. I felt very successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is cool. Well, so now you are the founder of Spark! Organizing. I try to put the exclamation point in my voice there. And so, you have some experience as a professional organizer and a CEO and I guess organizer of other organizers. So, maybe, could you kick us off by sharing, do you have any really cool stories with regard to how you saw just like an amazing transformation occur in the realm of organization and what difference that made for someone?

Suzanna Kaye
Yeah. Well, there’s so many. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and it’s just been amazing seeing some of the changes that go on with people just simply having your space under control or your schedule. I can think of one in particular that just amazed me because the great news just kept coming. Her name was Mary and we got her home under control after she’d suffered a big loss and was trying to get back on her feet.

So, giving her home back in control was step one. But once her home was in control, the confidence and the feeling of just having her life back in control then helped her increased her salary and her position at her job, it helped her lose weight and she actually ended up in a new relationship all simply from getting her space under control and feeling more confident from it. It was amazing and I still get updates from her, that’s just amazing things happening. It’s wonderful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is absolutely so cool. And so, we’re talking about to-do list here today, and I think that a lot of times the to-do list problems we bump into have some sort of deeper issue with regard to kind of unresolved priorities, or values, or decisions, or some psychological stuff that’s going on under the hood, under the surface there. Could you speak to maybe a pattern or two or three you’ve noticed when it comes to working with the people behind the to-do list?

Suzanna Kaye
Oh, yeah, that’s the great thing about – the fascinating thing to me about productivity is that it really has only a little bit to do with the tools, 80% of it is the psychology that goes into it which I love. So, one of the things that I find most common is this feeling of overwhelm that people have whether it’s from the task seeming too daunting, or something that’s tapping into one of their fears, or simply the quantity of them, and if they’re unorganized it can be very overwhelming, and that’ll just shut you down immediately. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, the first thing that you do is just absolute shutdown and don’t make appropriate decisions or stick your head in the sand and make no decisions at all.

So, that’s one that I see very often. And then the other one is not knowing your priorities. And like priorities is the true priorities, not what’s on fire at the moment but what will move you forward towards your goal and fit into your value set more than anything else on the list. And when you got a very long list, or you’re being pulled in multiple directions, it’s really common to lose sight of what that is and then you feel unproductive because you get a lot done but nothing important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. And so, then, when it comes to that overwhelm piece, I guess, do you have sort of an SOS or an emergency stuff drop-and-roll protocol for, “Uh-oh. Uh-oh”? When you’re in the overwhelm place rather, as you said, making dumb choices or no choices, what do you do to sort of quickly snap out of it so that you minimize the amount of time that you’re in that suboptimal zone which can have some cascading negative consequences?

Suzanna Kaye
Right. Well, there’s a couple of strategies depending on where the overwhelm is rooted. One of the common strategies – I don’t know if your listeners have heard of Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. It’s a fantastic book. But the concept there is to do whatever the scariest, ugliest, nastiest task is on your list first thing in the day.

A lot of times our overwhelm is because there’s something on that list that is just growing bigger and uglier that we’re avoiding. So, eating the frog first thing in the morning, doing that nastiest thing first is going to set you up for that day to be amazing after that because there’s nothing else that will be as bad and your brain is not making this one task worst and worst and putting it off and feeling guilty that you’re not doing it. So, that’s one of the best ways to get over that overwhelm if it’s a seriously nasty task or a daunting task that you’re not looking forward to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Any other kind of quick tips come to mind?

Suzanna Kaye
Some other quick tips: knowing your priorities, like I mentioned. One of my favorite things to do is called the top three. And when you got that hundred-task long task list, knowing which three items out of all of them are the most important and fit into your goals and your values, that means that you can mentally let go of the rest.

So, you no longer need to be overwhelmed by that other 97 items because you know none of those are as important as the three that you have highlighted that you’re working on now, and that can just give you that sense of relief. But when you don’t know, when they all seem equally important, that’s a great way to get you to shutdown right away. So, that’s another one of my top go-to ones.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. Well, so then, I’m curious then. I want to dig into some particulars which is just to make sure I don’t overlook any of the best stuff. You’ve got a whole LinkedIn Learning course about to-do list which I think is pretty cool to go into some depth on this topic. And so, I’m curious, when it comes to all the work you’ve done with all your folks, what do you see as being some of the most high-leverage suggestions that you offer in terms of folks making the most of their to-do list?

Suzanna Kaye
The one that I have come across with almost every single coaching client that I worked on for productivity is over-organizing it, over-thinking it, working with tools that aren’t appropriate. So, for example, I had a coaching client that was international and he would frequently change his task management programs because he was trying to find the perfect one, that Holy Grail of task management that’s going to solve all the problems, and it’s not out there.

There’s no one that’s perfect for any one person. They have all have some issues. You just have to find the ones that work with your personality type and then – and this is the part that nobody seems to grasp easily – to stick with it and keep working on it through the growing pains of it and the learning process of it. And once you’ve committed to it, really commit to it long term so you can then analyze it and see what parts of it could be better.

But at the beginning it’s way too early to be changing to another platform again. You’re not gathering all the information you need about your personality and what’s working and what’s not working, so don’t grab that overly-complicated list thinking that it’s going to be that wonderful problem solver unless you’re willing to stick it out and see which parts that are truly useful. So, don’t keep popping around, don’t choose the over-complicated options, go for just what you need and stick to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. Thank you. So, now let’s talk a bit more about the priorities matter in terms of a lot of folks, they start from a place where their priorities are unclear. You had a tip earlier just there about the zeroing in on the top three as antidote for overwhelm. And so, then, what are kind of the key questions or rules of thumb you use to quickly surface, “What’s the true priority here?”

Suzanna Kaye
I think setting your goals is the important first step when you talk about priorities. You don’t know what your overall goals are. You don’t know how these different tasks fit into them. So, when I’m assessing priorities I sit down with what my goals are and specifically what my highest goal is at that point in time, because you know we always have more than one. We got a bunch of things that we want to do.

So, knowing which top goal you’re working on, that will then help you see which of those tasks will help you reach that goal fastest. So, out of your tasks list, figure out which one is going to move you closer to that finish line the fastest while still fitting in with your values of who you are. A lot of times we leave values out of our goals, and that’s a surefire way to come to a crashing halt because our insights resist reaching a goal that does not align with our values.

So, if it’s not inspiring to you it’s probably not a good goal. And the same thing with the task, if it’s not inspiring to you, you don’t feel like it’s part of that passion, it’s probably not supposed to be on your tasks list.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s intriguing when it comes to priorities is I think that some of the goals could nest into much bigger sort of macro goals, like areas of life. So, I think like many, many, many things on my to-do list could sort of fit into the realm of run a great business or grow wealth. And so, I think sort of within that area I can get a means of prioritizing metrics such as estimated wealth creation per hour invested is a metric I use as I’m kind of thinking through different potential initiatives.

But there are other important goals like be a great husband, make my wife feel loved and cherished and great, which are a little trickier in terms of finding a clear unit for prioritizing that. And then there’s the bigger question in terms of the prioritizing across sort of disparate life areas and sort of what takes the cake. And so, then, this is almost like an existential or sort of deep human purpose type question. But how do you help clients navigate those trickier questions of priority setting?

Suzanna Kaye
That’s a very big question and there’s so much that I would love to just dump on you with this answer, but I’m going to just pick a couple of areas and focus on those. First off, I do believe that you do need a broad set of goals. There’s not just one area of your life that you’re trying to achieve great things in, such being a great husband need to go along with building wealth.

I think making your goals SMART goals is very important in order to make sure that you’re working towards the goal in the way you want to achieve it. And for those who aren’t familiar, a SMART goal, there’s very different words for the acronym depending on where you learned it. But, basically it is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

So, you need to be able to set a value to know when you have achieved this. So, for me, being a good wife might mean my husband absolutely loves when I cook dinner. It makes him feel very loved. So, being a good wife, my goal might include cooking dinner two nights a week for the month. And then at the end of the month, I can then look back and say, “Okay. Well, I had time-bound, it’s within a month. I had a quantifiable number, it’s measurable, two times a week. It is attainable and realistic. It’s very specific. Did I achieve this?”

So, knowing those SMART goals makes it a little bit easier to see exactly what you’re working towards instead of just being a good wife which can be a little overwhelming and daunting as well because you don’t know how to do that unless you set a measurable number to it.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you help me? I’ve wondered about this. I’ve seen a variety of this SMART goal acronyms and done a few speeches on it myself. So, can you distinguish for me between attainable and realistic? Those kind of sound like the same thing.

Suzanna Kaye
They do sound a lot like the same thing, and depending on, like I said, where you learned them from. Back in my days in business school those were the words that they used. But in the way that I use it, attainable would be if it’s something that can be achieved within the reasonable amount of time that you’ve set.

So, if I were to say, “I’m going to cook dinner eight nights a week,” that is not attainable. Realistic in this sense kind of crosses over that. For me, realistic fits into how my life is structured. If I were to say seven days a week, for me that’s not realistic. Yes, it’s attainable but it is not realistic in my scheduling and my lifestyle. That’s the framework I use. Like I said though, depending on where you’ve studied, they have different acronyms but it also falls into that same framework.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you. So, then, for priorities, so we talked about some of the big questions. Anything else you want to say about zeroing in on and establishing priorities?

Suzanna Kaye
Yes, another part that I love to use with people as far as priorities, because we’re all in different points emotionally in our lives, at different points in our lives, if you search it online you can probably even find a sample of it, and I can always send you a link. But if you create a pie chart that shows the different areas of your life such as spirituality, relationship, financial, health, all of those major areas, and then rate how you feel about your life right now in each of those areas and just color it in up to the point where you feel like you are succeeding in that area, then that’s going to be a great visual about what areas you need to focus on as far as your priorities and goals go.

So, if it’s being a good wife, if my relationship is a 10 out of 10 right then, or an 8 out of 10, that’s great. But that means that those goals might not be as high on my list as maybe my health which might be a 5 out of 10. So, that’s going to help me figure out which of those goals in my life as a whole should be more top focus so I can keep that a balanced circle rather than some being in the one or two areas and not even noticing it until it’s too late.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. Now, I also enjoyed hearing your “if only one thing” approach. Could you unpack that a little bit?

Suzanna Kaye
This one goes along very well with my type of personality. And I am definitely one of those people where I naturally rebel against other people telling me what I should do, as well as myself telling me what I should do. So, some days I simply need to feel successful, and I have on my desk a picture frame with a framed piece of paper that says, “If I can only accomplish one thing today, it will be…”

And within that there’s a box, and I take a Dry-Erase marker and I write, “The main goal, for me, if I complete this one thing, I can feel that the day was a success.” Most of the time this is my frog. It might be just something that really has a tight deadline that needs to be done, and I know that once this is off my plate I will feel better.

But this is my one thing, in that way no matter what breaks out during my day, what fires happen, what goes wrong, if that was completed at the end of the day I can still give myself a pat on the back because that one thing was achieved, and that was my goal. I had one. So, on those really rough days it’s the only thing that keeps me away from the Ben & Jerry’s.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Well, so then, I’m thinking about all these things and so if we’re going to get into some systems type approaches. And I like how you mentioned the personality and the differences and the preferences, and how that all kind of plays in together. So, whenever I’m talking to productivity folks, I like to get them to weigh in on what are your thoughts when it comes to David Allen and Getting Things Done or GTD?

Suzanna Kaye
I think it’s a great system. I think that there are so many great systems out there actually. And, like I mentioned before, it has a lot to do with your personality type. Currently, I have my absolute favorite book, I keep buying copies of this book and giving it to people because I think everybody should read it. It’s called The Four Tendencies. I don’t know. Are you familiar with The Four Tendencies at all by Gretchen Rubin?

Pete Mockaitis
Just from what I’ve read in the summary because I haven’t read the whole thing myself.

Suzanna Kaye
Yes. Well, it is a must-read because it really digs into not only what your own personality type is as far as accountability, but also those around you. So, I understand the people who work for me better, I understand my husband better because of this book, but I primarily understand myself better. All of a sudden it clicked that I am not the type of person who works well with a very structured list. It’s just everything that I naturally fight against.

So, there are four tendencies, in general, when it comes to how we meet expectations. There is the upholder who can meet both inner and external expectations without much problem, that’s the one I wish I was but I’m very far from it. There’s the obliger who does really well with meeting outer expectations which are if somebody else needs it, they’re really good at making sure to get that done, but they’re not as good as getting it done for themselves if it’s just an internal desire.

Then there’s the opposite, there’s the questioner. They’re really good once they feel that it’s logical. They’re good at having those internal expectations met, or if it’s an external expectation, when somebody asks for something, if it falls into their own logic, they’re really good at meeting those. And then there’s the rebel, and that is where I fall.

We need to see it as part of our identity. We have to really have it resonate with who we are a lot of times in order to get things done. So, simply having somebody else ask for it, or deciding that we should do it is not enough for us. So, knowing these tendencies about yourself tells you a lot more about the systems that will work for you.

So, some of these very structured systems are fantastic for somebody who might be an upholder or a questioner, and who’s really good at those internal expectations and doing what they’ve decided they want to do. Now, somebody like an obliger or a rebel might have a little bit more difficulty with the structure because there’s no external accountability for the obliger so it might be a little bit too much and it might be a little too overwhelming, they’re just too detailed.

And then, for a rebel, the details, when you get down to that level, can be kind of suffocating. It’s way too much detail, puts a whole lot of pressure on it. You’ve spent so much time planning just to let yourself down. So, that being said, somebody like a rebel does really well with a looser system, so something like beginning things done or some of the more robust task management systems, something like OmniFocus or Todoist or WunderList that have all these great bells and whistles. Those don’t work quite as well for a rebel because there’s just too much detail.

But if we can work with our moods and our emotions and our energies within a simpler list, so I use Clear myself, or there’s also Google Keep is a really good one, and they’re just very basic list, and you can have a list of lists within them but without all of the flagging and tagging and all of those things, those work really well for rebels because they’re very simple and you can go with your mood and go with your energy when you feel the pull to do these things.

Now, upholders, they do really, really well with things like the Getting Things Done system or OmniFocus or Todoist, those are great for them because they love the details and, like I said, I wish I was more of a detail person but us rebels have some good things too.

And then there’s also the Bullet Journal which is a fantastic system for people who don’t necessarily want to be tied to the technology, so not everything is necessarily good online for everyone. So, if you like something more paper-based, a Bullet Journal, it does not have to be drawn on all pretty and you don’t have to spend hours setting it up, but that can be a really good system for people too.

So, know your personality type and test some out and see if it works for you really well then just adjust the few things that need to be changed. But if it’s just a struggle then it’s probably the wrong system for you and you should go to something either more simple or more structured or offline.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m intrigued there when it comes to if it’s a struggle for you then maybe you need to change your system. But thinking about your previous advice when it comes to, “Don’t kind of always be flip-flopping and jumping to the next thing,” I guess I’m wondering if there might be some, I don’t know, fundamental kind of mindset or discipline or habit things that need to kind of be in place to make any system work, and without them all systems will fail. Can you comment on a couple of those sort of universal human fundamentals that may be at play here?

Suzanna Kaye
Most definitely. And, yes, you should not just jump crazily from one to another. I think, if everything, if you’re going to try it, try it solidly for at least 30 days. And by solidly I mean if you fall off the wagon, get back up, and then go for 30 days from there. Don’t miss a week and then hop back on for another week and say that it’s not working.

So, that’s one of the basics with humans, 30 days, 28 days, there’s varying numbers but they’re all around the same area to build a new habit. If you do something consistently for approximately 30 days, that’s when the habits start to get built, and that’s when the struggle becomes less because, now, it’s just something you do instead of something you have to try to remember. So, with any of these systems, building that 30 days habit is important because if you’ve done that, after 30 days and it’s still a struggle that’s when it’s obviously the system and not just the underlying habits.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. And a Bullet Journal, can you elaborate, what is that, how do we get our hands on one?

Suzanna Kaye
Sure. A Bullet Journal, you have your hands on it right now. It’s simply a book and a pencil or a pen. And a bullet journal begins with an index usually, or you could put it at the end. I put mine at the beginning. But the first part is an index, and it indexes all of the different topics you’ve covered within the journal. And then within the journal you can have multiple things you track. The main thing is going to be your daily activities.

So, for today, I would have my 10 or so tasks, and then I would index the page that those tasks are on, of I took meeting notes with those tasks, the meeting information, those that that page is on in that index. So, my index can now tell me where my notes are or what page that it’s on that I did certain tasks and certain activities for tracking purposes and to look things back up which is one of the things that paper system you lose, you don’t just do a search.

So, it’s kind of a couple pages of your search function is what that is at the beginning, referring to the page numbers of these different topics, these different key words. And then within it’s your task list and they have a series of symbols that tell you at the end of the day whether you completed the task or, “Did you migrate it to the next day?” or, “Did you delegate it to somebody else?”

There are just different ways that you can use these symbols in order to show what happened with that task, and keep it on your radar so it does not just die on that day and you aren’t writing all of these tasks over and over and over. They’re specifically moving to the next day or to a specific calendar date or being delegated or completed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. And when it comes to the icon demarcations, how do we know those or do we just make them up ourselves, or is there sort of a master reference list?

Suzanna Kaye
There is a master reference list if you just Google online bullet journals. But I’ve got my own because my brain likes to identify things differently so, to me, having an X next to something does not mean the same necessarily as to you. So, when I complete a task, I like the X versus a checkmark or versus crossing it out. So, I say make up whatever works for you, just be consistent with it. I like to put a dot next to anything that’s delegated because, to me, it’s kind of like a period, so, done.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so funny, as you talk about this, it really is coming to life. When I am writing things down as sort of like a temporary or sort of like a daily type view because I do love OmniFocus myself. I guess I’m upholding. It’s tremendous. But when I am doing a paper thing maybe to try to kind of focus my day, it’s like, “All right. This is what’s up for today,” as opposed to OmniFocus having the omnibus compendium of all commitments and actionable ideas ever conceived in my brain. It’s kind of the storehouse of that.

And so, if I’m doing it for the day I’d really like to cross out the item, or sort strike through, that’s what we call it, strike through with a green marker. I don’t know. It just feels like that’s so done, like green or cache. I don’t know. So, that’s there. And when I delegate I like to have it be a triangle with the point – I guess it’s not equilateral – but it sort of points it to the right, kind of like, “Hey, this goes to somebody else, not me.”

Suzanna Kaye
Exactly, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I hear what you’re saying, like make the icons your own, but the Googling might spark some inspirations.

Suzanna Kaye
Yeah. Now, I will warn you, when you Google it you will see a number of these bullet journals where people have taken a lot of time to draw out either make it beautiful or draw different charts and structures, and you can do that if that’s what you want to do. And for some people it’s a really good meditation at the beginning or the end of the day, and it really helps them connect with their day and have that peaceful time as they lay out this journal of their day.

So, some people really thrive with that, but you don’t have to do all of that. So, a lot of people will see online these pictures of these bullet journals that look so complex. Just remember that they don’t have to be. You can even create one one time and print it out each time you need it and put it in a three-ring binder if that helps. If you’re like me, and when I get to your day, instead of drawing out your day for an hour, then it can be done with a bullet journal. Do not let it scare you off.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And I also want to get your view on when it comes to tasks and calendars, I hear a couple of schools of thought. And one is that, “Well, the calendar is for the hard landscape of that which is scheduled,” which is sort of, “I have an appointment with Suzanna at 4:30 p.m. Central Time, and that’s there.”

And so, then when it come to putting tasks on the calendar, do you have some perspective? Like some would say, “They don’t belong there,” and others would say, “Oh, no, no. You should absolutely schedule the things because what we don’t schedule just sort of maybe never happens.” So, how do you navigate the pros, cons, distinctions, guidelines when it comes to putting tasks on a calendar?

Suzanna Kaye
That’s a good question, and you’re going to hate it because I’m going to come back to my answer of it depends on your personality type. But I think it’s a good practice to do every once in a while whether it’s putting it on the calendar or tracking your time, no matter what your personality type is, in order to make sure you’re being realistic about how long your tasks truly take.

So, spending a week putting them on all on your calendar is actually a really good practice to do every once in a while to make sure that you are still being realistic about how long each of these items take, because most of the time we grossly underestimate how long a task takes.

Now, if you’re the personality type that loves to schedule them on the calendar, then that is perfect. I think the calendar is a great place for it and, especially with these digital calendars these days, you can have multiple calendars that you can show and hide so I don’t see why you would not have a task list as one of them if that’s something that you do well with.

I, personally, have been known to schedule batching on my calendar. Now, what batching is is it’s taking similar tasks and doing them all at the same block of time. So, for example, when I schedule a batch day, I might have one hour of answer emails, I might have one hour of making phone calls, and these calls could be for different subjects and different projects, but it’s me being on the phone for one hour.

Or me being on the computer, or me being in the filing cabinets doing actual paperwork items, similar items in one time-block, and does that really well on a calendar if you don’t want to write each individual task on the calendar, that’s fine. Batch them and then your brain does not have to lose that productivity time switching between tasks types because it takes a little bit for our brain to go from a phone call to an email to a computer file. It just takes a moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. Well, Suzanna, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Suzanna Kaye
I can’t think of anything else. I think it’s most important just know your goals and the values that are attached to them. And when you’re thinking about your goals and the priorities for the day, also one of the questions I like to ask myself is, “Is this going to matter in five years?” So, sometimes when it seems like you’ve got these different tasks that are equally important, some of them in five years it will have made an effect, and some of them it won’t, so that’s a good question sometimes to bring a little bit more clarity as to what’s the bigger priority.

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

Suzanna Kaye
Ah, I’ve got two, of course, because I’m a quote person. I am very focused on helping others achieve more in their lives, so one of my favorite quotes that’s out there right now is, “Empowered women empower women.” And I have that on a T-shirt, I’ve got that on my wall. And then my other favorite quote that I’ve had since I was younger is by Edith Wharton, it’s, “Be the light or the mirror that reflects it.” And, to me, that simply means I don’t need to be the one that shines all the time if I’m helping other people shine in the world, and that just means a lot to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Suzanna Kaye
Oh, I mentioned The Four Tendencies. Everybody needs to read that one by Gretchen Rubin. I think it’s fantastic. And I heard about Gretchen Rubin actually through Oprah. If you don’t mind me telling, another podcast, or the three podcasts that are on my favorites podcast list: it is yours, it is Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, and Mary Forleo’s, and I think that those three are the top hitters, and that’s where you find out about all these big mind leaders that are in the world today, it’s those three.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. I’m flattered. You probably say it to every podcast who interviews you, “Oh, it’s you and Oprah. It’s you and Oprah.”

Suzanna Kaye
But it’s true, it’s those three. I love to find the thought leaders of the day and the people who can bring me and people to a successful way, I just think are wonderful. So, those are some of the other two of it. If they’re listening to the podcast here, they already know about you, then those are the two others that need to be on their list.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research you find compelling?

Suzanna Kaye
Oh, I am frequently amazed actually by research on the storage industry and the amount of clutter in our lives, of course, being an organizer. But there’s just so many billions of dollars spent each year on storage and it is one of the fastest growing industries in America today. And it’s very unique to America to be such a huge industry. It just blows my mind and I’m fascinated.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I don’t think I knew that. So, you’re talking about like self-storage lockers type stuff.

Suzanna Kaye
Yes. All of these places that we put our things temporarily and then forget about them but keep paying the bill for those places, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so, okay, if you could indulge us, any intriguing numbers? So, there’s many billions spent on it, it’s high growth, I’m wondering what’s the average length of time that someone maintains a storage locker because in some ways I think that makes sense. It’s like, you know, “Hey, I’ve got an internship for three months in this other city, and I’m not going to take everything there and back.” So, I think there’s certain contexts where that makes total sense. But you’re saying that it’s quite common that folks just shove it there for years and years and forget about it but keep paying.

Suzanna Kaye
They do. And I don’t have a statistic on how many years, but one of my favorite statistics is that the U.S. has upwards of 52,000 storage facilities which is more than five times the number of Starbucks which is amazing because you see a Starbucks everywhere you go, and there are more storage facilities than that.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. That is intriguing in so many ways. I’m doing up business ideas as we speak, I don’t know, “Bring it back. Bring it back.” And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Suzanna Kaye
I think my favorite tool is actually my Label Maker. I love my Label Maker because if you can see things nicely labeled your brain can read it and register it better even if you’ve got great handwriting. It registers it better if it’s printed so it just puts your brain at ease and makes it easier.

Pete Mockaitis
And the high contrast, I find, because. Now, you’re using the DYMO I saw on some of your photos?

Suzanna Kaye
I have two because, as an organizer, if one breaks you need a backup.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Suzanna Kaye
I don’t think everybody needs two. My favorite is the Brother though.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Suzanna Kaye
The P-Touch by Brother.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Say it again, what is it by Brother?

Suzanna Kaye
It’s called P-Touch. The letter P and the word Touch.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Any thoughts to the pros and cons? That’s right, we go detail here, let’s hear it.

Suzanna Kaye
Yeah, the DYMO is simply the cost and wastes of label tape because they leave so much blank tape on the end of each label. It’s simply more cost-efficient to use the Brother’s P-Touch version than the DYMO. I’ve learned that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it sounds like you’re saying that the P-Touch is overall fundamentally superior.

Suzanna Kaye
I believe so.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I saw a picture of you with the DYMO Label Maker, and I thought, “Oh, I’ve got the same Label Maker. That’s so cool.” And now you come in here and say, “Actually that one sucks.”

Suzanna Kaye
“Actually, my other one is better.” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, good. Well, I’m glad I asked.

Suzanna Kaye
DYMO looks better for the pictures, it’s cheaper to use.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, and it’s a sleek-looking unit, I’ll hand you that. So, at the very least, not to trash DYMO. I will say DYMO has served me well. It’s very quick. It’s very portable. I can even operate it one-handed, I’ve large hands, and it looks good in a photo. So, we’ll give them that.

Suzanna Kaye
It does, yes. It’s a very handsome and it does work well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. All right. And then when it comes to habits, in terms of things you do to be awesome at your job, what are they?

Suzanna Kaye
Gratitude. I think gratitude is the habit that I can tell when I start to slack because things just don’t run quite as smoothly or as well, and I miss opportunities because my brain and my eyes are just not opened to them. But by focusing on the things I am grateful for and the why, why I’m grateful for them. It makes me aware of so many other opportunities out there when I come across them instead of being closed off to them. So, it’s been the best habit for my personal life as well my business life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget that you share in your speaking or trainings that seems to really connect and resonate, and getting folks nodding their heads and saying yes and taking notes?

Suzanna Kaye
I think the main thing that I share that resonates with people is it’s okay, everybody has their thing that they’re not at the level they want to be at, and just keep going, you’re not alone. So, if your home is not where you want it to be, if you’re not as productive as you think that you should be, or as successful as you feel like you should be, it’s okay as long as you’re still taking that next step every day. Keep going because we all fail, we just don’t do it publicly. So, we’re all in the same boat. I’m pretty sure even Oprah has rough days that she just does not post on Facebook but we can relate to her.

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

Suzanna Kaye
I would tell them to find me on my Facebook page. Just search for Spark! Organizing on Facebook, and that’s where I’m always having conversations.

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

Suzanna Kaye
I think probably my call to action would be to figure out what your breakthrough goal is and keep that in mind. And by breakthrough goal I mean that one thing that if you could achieve it, it would change your life. And just know that and keep that in front of you each day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Well, Suzanna, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing. It’s been a lot of fun. I wish you much luck with your organizing and speaking and training and all you’re up to.

Suzanna Kaye
Well, thank you so much. I truly enjoyed it.

Dec 08
0

239: Building Yours Systems for Success with Sam Carpenter

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Sam Carpenter says: "Your life is a collection of separate systems."

Sam Carpenter explores how you can effectively work with the collection of systems that make up your work and life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The benefit of seeing your complex life as a simpler collection of systems
  2. How to analyze and fix the kinks in your system
  3. Top systems that are most often dysfunctional

About Sam 

Sam has a background in engineering, journalism, publishing, forestry, construction management, and telecommunications. An author and entrepreneur, he is president and CEO of Centratel, the premier telephone answering service in the United States. Other businesses he founded and operates are Work the System Consultants and PathwayOne, an online marketing firm based in Italy.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Sam Carpenter Interview Transcript

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

Sam Carpenter
Thank you, Pete.  Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it was really fun chatting with you, that in between the time you said, “Yes, I’ll do this interview”, and this interview happening, you announced a run for governor.  How’s all that going?

Sam Carpenter
Right, in the state of Oregon.  Very well.  We’re ahead in the polls, I’ve got 50,000 followers on Facebook, and I only announced three weeks ago.  So, it’s fun.  And I ran for US Senate two years ago, and that was not fun. [laugh] It’s good to be in the lead and it’s good to have a lot of people behind you, so it’s been very fun actually so far.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.  I’m glad you’re not just sort of losing your sanity along the way.

Sam Carpenter
I didn’t say that.

Pete Mockaitis
Fun and insane – I guess not mutually exclusive.

Sam Carpenter
I may be insane, but I’m not losing my insanity in any sense, no.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we chat with folks with all sorts of ideas along the political spectrum, but the idea I’m most interested in learning from you is as an area of your deep expertise, when it comes to systems – you’ve got the books Work the System and The Systems Mindset.  So, could you share with us what are the big ideas behind these books and why they’re helpful?

Sam Carpenter
Well, the two books – they are interesting – one was written in 2008 and the other one was published in 2016, and they both have the same thread.  And the central thread is this: It’s that our lives – and I’ll get a little sort of metaphysical here, but not really – our lives are collections of systems and processes.  And in our houses – and you and I were just talking about our houses for instance – I can turn around here from my computer and I could go to the sink and turn the water on and the water will come out, because the system of delivering that water is a good system and the water pressure is right and the little town here in our second home here in rural Kentucky, the water system works well.  And I could go flip the light switch on over there – that’s a separate system.

Those systems have nothing to do with each other, anymore than your heart has anything to do with your kidney.  I know they’re connected and I know they work together, but really, they’re separate.  And it’s the same for your radio in your car and your brakes in your car.  And every tree that’s outside my window right now is separate from the trees next to it.  Your life is a collection of separate systems, and if that’s the truth, the hand of God reaching down is not going to get you where you want to go, some new law isn’t going to do it.  What’s going to do it is seeing your life as a collection of systems.  And moment to moment, since 1999, when I walk through a room I see a collection of systems, or when I’m driving in the car – every car is a separate system, every driver and every car is a separate system.

And then you can fix things.  If your life isn’t going very well, then take it apart and find the most dysfunctional systems and work on those first.  But another loan from the bank isn’t going to help, and another wife is probably not going to help.  So you take things apart.  And so, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, which was published in 2008 and is in its third edition and we’re just doing another printing now – I think it’s our 12th printing – it talks about business and gives you documentation and processes, and how to document your processes, how to define them, how to pick them out, how to correct them and how to make sure they stay good.  And then The Systems Mindset: Managing the Machinery of Your Life – it’s the same thing, but it’s designed for people who don’t own businesses.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool.  Thank you.  And maybe could you help define a little bit for us – when you say a “system”, do you have a precise definition on the components, or what makes a system a system?

Sam Carpenter
It’s an entity that stands on its own with a purpose.  For instance, a car is a separate primary system, okay?  And its purpose is to get whoever’s in it from point A to point B.  And a house is a system – an enclosed system – which is a collection of subsystems designed to house you.  In a business a separate system would be your phone system.  Another system would be how you answer the phone at the front desk.

At Centratel – and I’m sure we’ll talk about Centratel – how you answer that phone at the front desk is very well defined.  There happen to be seven steps: You pick up the phone, you put a smile on your face because if you put a smile on your face, there is a smile in your voice, and you answer in a very certain way.  And anybody who answers the phone, answers it exactly that way.  And the way we got that system to be perfect was we took all the people together who answered the phones, including me – the owner of the company – and defined what a perfect answering system would be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m intrigued.  If we could maybe make this come to life all the more.  So, could you walk us through what is a perfect phone answering system, that could come in handy for anybody who picks up their phone.

Sam Carpenter
Well, I gave you the first two steps, and then you define how you want to… I can’t remember how they’re doing it at Centratel now; it seems to me it’s changed a little bit, but it’s something like this: “Centratel, this is Mary.  May I help you?”  Very generic, but if John’s answering, it’s the same thing, except he uses his name.  And then the next couple of points in that process: Try to help the caller get to the destination they want to get to, whoever it is – our CEO, our tech guy, whatever it is.  And then another system will take over once it’s delivered.

Everything is documented too; everything is exactly documented – how our operators answer the phone, how we handle a complaint, how we do a sales pitch, our marketing.  There are many, many, many processes.  Now people don’t walk around reading those processes; they are documented.  But the fact that they’re documented and on our hard drive means that they’re paid attention to.

And here’s the other thing, Pete, which is pretty cool.  If your life is a collection of systems, and therefore your business is a collection of systems, wouldn’t it make sense to work on those systems 24/7 and have other people do the actual work?  So, my management staff of seven at Centratel – we have about 40 people there, we do 400,000 a month at the call center, the little answering service.  All of those managers do nothing but work on systems, and if I catch them doing the work, I give them a lot of grief.

For instance, I found my CEO Andi was answering the phone because we had a real rush.  We take messages and deliver them – that’s what our answering service does.  So she has a console on her desk, and it got really busy in there and she jumped on to help the 15 or 20 TSRs that were out there to handle the traffic.  And I said to her, “Don’t ever do that again.”  We were laughing, don’t get me wrong.  And she says, “I know, I know.”  I said, “It’s so heroic, and I guess there’s some value in showing everybody out there that you care, but don’t do it anymore.  I pay you way too much money to do this other stuff, and the TSRs understand that.”  Our telephone service representatives – regular people that answer the phones.  “They understand that you have things you have to do in here.”  For instance, we’re putting $100,000 new heating system in our building – that’s got to be her top priority and she can’t get distracted.

But my point is this: It’s that everybody who’s in management works on processes and systems.  And so she’s working on this process and working on this system.  And we have three words that we use, Pete: automate, delegate, delete.  That’s what a manager should be doing all the time.  Automating it so you don’t have to do it over and over.  Anything you do over and over again, you shouldn’t be doing probably.  A real chief, a real manager, is always on a new project doing creative things.  Automate, delegate to somebody else – an assistant, for instance, or off site.

Automate, delegate, delete.  So many things we do we shouldn’t be doing at all; there’s no pay off.  And you go back to the 80/20 rule, which is absolutely the truth of the matter: If you can get rid of all the superfluous stuff that has no ROI – return on investment – you’re going to have more time to expand on the things that are profitable.  I do consulting, because Work the System is a book on how to do all this stuff, and you wouldn’t believe the businesses we run into, you wouldn’t believe the government of Oregon.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  So, I’d love it if you could maybe walk us through some examples of let’s say… The audience here are professionals, they want to be awesome at their jobs.  Can you give us some examples of some systems that probably could benefit from some attention, or maybe some transformative innovations or interventions that you’ve brought about for some folks, that can spark actionable ideas here?

Sam Carpenter
Yeah.  The innovation that most companies should have, and most don’t, is what we call – and it’s a document – it’s called the Strategic Objective.  And you can get my book at WorkTheSystem.com and download it for free.  The whole book, audio, or any number of text iterations.  And we fixed over 500 businesses in the last seven years – Josh Fonger, my main guy and I.  They don’t have documentation.  And so, the main system you need is a system of what is it you do and where do you want to go.  And it’s got to be more than a mission statement.  A mission statement is a total distraction.  “Oh, we want to be the best and we want everybody to love us and we want our employees to be happy and all our customers to be happy”, and blah, blah, blah, blah.  It means nothing.

What you need is to take it apart in more detail.  Instead of a little paragraph it really needs to be on one sheet of paper, maybe 300 words, and you list what you do, where you want to go, kind of how you’re going to do it, the things you’re not going to do, sometimes the tools you’re going to use.  And you have to get everybody going in the right direction.  And if everybody is going in a different direction, they all have their own little individual ideas of where you’re going, it’s going to be a dysfunctional mess, and 9 out of 10 businesses are dysfunctional messes, small ones.  The big ones didn’t get big by being dysfunctional messes.

Now, I have a system of documentation I use – there’s other systems – the point is, everybody has to get on the same road, whatever process they use.  And then another document is the Operating Principles.  So we have 30; we call them 30 principles.  These documents are in the back of the book, in the appendix.  And the principles are like, “There will be no clutter in the office”, figuratively or literally.  I’ve got the book here – I could read through them, but you get the idea.  There’s 30 principles and we use these principles for gray area decision-making, when you’re not really sure really what to do.  “What would you do here?”

Well, another one is the simplest solution.  Occam’s Law – the simplest solution is invariably the correct solution.  And I had somebody define it – a new employee, a manager that I think I’m going to hire for the campaign – she said, “The simplest system is the most elegant system.”  And that’s a beautiful thing.  So, that’s just one of the principles.  And we have 30 principles there, and the person could go to the book and plagiarize both the meaning and the tone of both of those two documents I’ve mentioned.

And then the last series of documents – there are three – are the Working Procedures.  And that is where we document how you answer the phone, how you handle a complaint.  We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of them in the office.  But if you don’t get everybody going down the same road and doing things the same way, you’re going to have a mess.  And the other thing is you don’t have a system for them to say, “Hey, this is changed over here.  Process A over here is no longer any good, because one, two and three happened over here.  We’ve got to change the process.”  And then you’ve got to let everybody know the process has changed.

So you can see how I, as a leader, work on processes and systems and protocols, and these are the things that get everybody going in the same direction, and you become efficient, because the thing that kills businesses is inefficiency.  Fire killing – that’s what it is.  Fire killing destroys businesses, fire killing destroys administrations and government, fire killing destroys marriages, it destroys everything.  You want to get from A to B in the most efficient way possible, and you can’t be waylaid by problems that come up because you didn’t have a process to prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  So I want to get super, super tactical here, if I could.  So Sam, do you have a system for doing your laundry or having others do your laundry, and what is it?

Sam Carpenter
No, this is very interesting.  The new book, The Systems Mindset, is for anybody who doesn’t have a business.  And in there I say you don’t need to document this stuff in your personal life.  You need to document how the car wreck goes on the car – you need to write down somewhere that the front connectors are 18.5 inches back from this corner of the windshield.  And maybe how you change the filters in your HVAC system, maybe, if somebody else is going to do it.  But there isn’t much documentation in your personal life; it’s a matter of thinking.

So The Systems Mindset subtitle is Managing the Machinery of Your Life.  But in a business, because you’ve got a lot of people doing this stuff, John needs to know how Mary does it, and Mary has to do it the same way Frank does it.  You’ve got to get everybody doing things the same way, and then those are the people who create the processes.  It’s not top-down like military; I don’t write up all the procedures.  I wrote up the first procedures for the first few months – that was in 1999.  I haven’t written a procedure in a couple of years.  And the one I wrote was for me in the office.

But they write the procedures.  What a great way to do things is to have the people who do the work do the procedures, because they know how it works – they know how to talk to the customer, they know how to do this, how to do that.  Now, my CEO and I keep everybody going down the same road.  “No, we don’t want to have this new service; it just isn’t in keeping with where we want to go.”  And you can go back to the strategic objective and figure that out and make an argument for it.  But for instance, if we had extra space in our office, we could have a tanning salon for example.  I mean, it would make sense; there’s people there 24/7.  It could be Bend, Oregon 24/7 Sam’s Tanning Salon, and it would probably make money.  But we’re not going to do that because it’s got nothing to do with our main concern, which is telecommunications and so forth.  So, it keeps you going.

And so when you ask me for, “Give me a process, give me a system” – those three documents are critical.  And then you can go down to how you handle a complaint, how you can… So, what happens is, and I’ll get to your main question, which I think I understand, is when Josh goes out in the field, what he does is go in… And either one of us can walk in any business and tell you in 20 minutes what the problem is.  And sometimes your brother-in-law does need to be fired, okay?  Sorry about that, explain it to your wife, but he’s a problem.  We get into that too, but once we get into the business, we see how it’s run and what are the mechanical – and “mechanical” is such a great word – what are the mechanical irregularities and dysfunctions?  And you fix the biggest problem first.

And maybe the biggest problem is your brother-in-law needs to go – okay, I get that.  But within the business there are processes that need to be documented.  For instance, if there’s something that’s handled by six different people – say it’s a 20-person business – six different people and they all handle it a different way – that’s ridiculous, because some are going to do it real well and some are going to do it in a horrible way.  Why don’t we all do it the real, real fine way?  Put all six people down at the table, “Okay, what’s the first thing you do?”  And then it’s, “Number one – do this, number two – do this, number three – do this, number four – do this.”  And then when that process is done and everybody agrees it works, you put it into place and you move on to the next biggest problem.

You really do start with the biggest problem, I don’t care what it is.  I can almost guarantee you the second problem won’t have anything to do with the first problem.  It will be something completely different, I don’t care what kind of business you’ve got.  And you work through based on what are the biggest problems first, and all of a sudden you get through five of those big problems and things start to smooth out; there’s not so much fire killing.  You might’ve fixed 60% of all your problems by fixing those five things.

And it could be anything; in a machine shop, it would be how the guys are doing a certain piece on the machine, and everybody is doing it in their own way.  It might be a drill press, it might be a lathe, it might be anything.  But you’ve got to get the guys together and sit them down and say, “What’s the best way to do it?”  And Frank over here is doing it this way and he says, “Oh John, I didn’t know we could do it that way.  Yeah, man, it’s really great.”  And then John is going to learn something from Frank too.  It’s really the most simple thing and it’s all based – at the beginning of our chat here, Pete – it’s all based on the mechanical fact that our lives are collections of systems and processes.

That little beagle that’s sitting on the couch in the sunroom there – he’s a separate system too.  And I just got this Garmin tracker for him because he’s a hound, and when we go out in the woods, he’s gone, man.  If he gets a scent of anything, he’s gone.  And so this fabulous tracker – and it took me about a half hour to figure it out on how to work – I can take him out and it’s got a little antenna that comes up, and the documentation is the little book I got with it.  But he can run anywhere and I know exactly where he is.  He got out 600 yards from me the other day and I just went back and got him.  And it’s even got a little what they call a “stimulator” on it – it’s actually like a chock that you can adjust.  And I adjust it so he knows it’s happening, not so it hurts him.  But if he gets out too far, I can just hit a button and he knows to come back to me.  That is a separate system too.  It’s a separate system from the beagle; the beagle has nothing to do with it; they just work together very well.

And that’s how a business should be – if you could take your business apart and stop believing you just need to hire a better manager or if you could just get that other loan – no, no.  Instead you go exactly the opposite and you take it apart piece by piece, but you’ve got to get this thing in your head, about the separate systems.  So Work the System and The Systems Mindset.  The Systems Mindset book is a smaller book.  It’s in two parts.  The Work the System is in three parts; the middle part is about documentation.

But essentially the first part of each book is getting the systems mindset, and that means you can walk down the street and you see separate systems; you don’t see this massive confusion.  I like to say “a mass confusion of sights, sounds and events”.  The barking dog over there has nothing to do with your belly ache, has nothing to do with the dog on the end of your leash.  And the trees when you’re walking by have nothing to do with each other; they’re all separate.  When you can drive down the road or walk down the street or sit in your house and really see that – that’s called the systems mindset.  And it usually comes in an instant, it comes in a flash.

It did for me, it happened one night.  I won’t go into how that happened, but I woke up the next morning and I saw the world differently.  And that was in 1999 and my whole life got cleaned up at that point.  I was a mess.  I was a mess in the business, I was a mess in my personal life. Everything cleaned up beautifully, because I started facing reality.

Do you know what it means to be red pilled, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Is that from The Matrix?

Sam Carpenter
Yeah, man.  It was the greatest science fiction movie ever made, in my mind.  So, listen to this: “Morpheus…”  And this is 1999.  “I’m trying to free your mind, but I can only show you the door.  You’re the one who has to walk through it.”  And so in the campuses there’s this thing called redpilling, and that is all of a sudden seeing reality for what it really is.

But back to The Systems Mindset – redpilling in my mind is seeing your life as a collection of separate systems.  Very few people will get it right away.  Some people who are listening to this get it right as they’re listening to it, but most don’t; it takes a couple of weeks.  Download the book, look at it – your life will change forever.  You’ll get what you want out of life.  I got everything I wanted out of life.

I’m going to run for governor for just the hell of it.  I mean, that’s not really true – I’m going to run for the hell of it because I’ve got the time, and I want to make some big changes in our state.  The forests are burning down, the government’s out of control. I mean, why not go for something big?  I see it in that sense: Why not do something big, because the rest of my life has come together so well?  I have the time and the money to do it.  I have more money than I need, I’ve got more time than I need.  This is something I can do.  And I’m in my late 60s, and this is the time of my life when I want to help.

I have a non-profit overseas and people say, “How come?”  And I say, Why not?”  There’s a bunch of teachers over there; you know what they make in these back-country Pakistan towns?  $15 a month, Pete.  And the kid’s tuition is $1 a month, and that’s high.  And so, I can go over there and get so much bang for my buck with my non-profit to help those kids. So if you could see your life in this way, everything comes together, everything starts to make sense and you start getting what you want out of life, because the reality is, your life is a collection of systems.  And if you treat it that way and go for the most dysfunctional systems first, or the biggest system that you think you can get a grip on, all of a sudden things will go your way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you give us some examples then, in terms of for individuals for systems they have that are frequently dysfunctional, or how do we zero in on, “Of all the systems in my life, this one is probably the most dysfunctional and should get my attention first?

Sam Carpenter
Are you talking about in a business environment?

Pete Mockaitis
No, I’m just talking an individual professional.

Sam Carpenter
An individual professional.  Okay, number one – communications.  And so, that’s what we were talking about before we started talking here.  So, we have these tools; one’s called EVM, and we’ve been using it for many, many years.  It’s relatively new, and if you have an iPhone or Android, doesn’t matter, but there is a way to attach a voice message as an attachment on to an email.  It’s powerful stuff.  It’s how I run my companies.

So, I’ve got 40 people at Centratel.  I could get on the phone after we finish here and I could say, “Hey everybody, just want to let you know I’m coming back tomorrow.  I am, by the way, flying back from Kentucky.  And we had a great report, great numbers, our bottom line was terrific.  I just want to thank all of you.”  And I say that, I attach it to a group email and everybody gets it.  Josh – Josh is my field guy and we’re partners.  He’s in Phoenix, but he’s on the road all the time.  I don’t even know where he is most of the time.  So, “Hey Josh, I was thinking about this or that, and what do you think about this?  Get back to me.”  Well, he might not hear it for a few hours ’cause he’s working with a client, but he will get back to me in the same way.  We very rarely are on the phone at the same time, and it’s the same with my CEO, and it’s the same with my campaign people – very, very seldom.

So to the professional who’s got people that he or she works for, I would say, do that, because our tendency, Pete – maybe your tendency, and it used to be my tendency – is to sit down and write a long email.  I’m sorry, it takes 20 minutes; and with an EVM I can do the same in two minutes.  And you get your tonal inflection in there, the whole thing.  The only thing we document are processes, and anything that is very sensitive or complex information, we sit down and do an email.  So, if your professional is super efficient, they will be better at what they do.  And there’s other tools out there, other communication tools too.

One of the big things I changed recently, because this tool has been bugging me… And what happened was, I had my PC computer, we were down in Savannah, Georgia, and I lost it.  I lost it in the hotel.  It turned out somebody had found it and picked it up and it got put in the wrong place.  I ultimately found it three days later, but it ruined the vacation, because I knew half of it was on the Cloud and half of it wasn’t.  And Diana and I said… I know that I can get another PC and download most of it, but there’s so much that I’m going to miss and I’m going to be struggling to put the pieces together for a year, and it’s going to be like my house burned down.

So we had been talking and she’s kind of had the same problem, where booting her computers all day long.  It’s a Microsoft problem – sorry about that, Bill Gates.  But I got my computer back, everything was fine, but you know what we did?  We said, “To hell with it.  We’re switching to Apple’s computers.”  And we switched to the Mac Pro, and I’ll tell you what – replacing that system with this system was one of the best movies I made in the last 10 years.

Pete Mockaitis
And so now it automatically backs up then to the Cloud?

Sam Carpenter
Everything’s on the Cloud, everything makes sense, everything’s intuitive.  You know what?  What do you use, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
I also have a MacbookPro.

Sam Carpenter
Yeah.  So, everything’s intuitive, it never breaks, you could go a month without having to reboot it.  You know what I’m talking about.  I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with a PC, but you want to kill yourself.  I’m sorry, you want to put a bullet in your head half the time.  And 30 years I was a PC user, because of the systems we used professionally in the call center.  I don’t need to do that anymore because I don’t do much in a call center.  I don’t do more than an hour of work a week at the call center.  So, the process, “How’s your computer doing?” or, “How’s your…”  We went from Androids to all iPhones, because they’re just more reliable, and everybody doesn’t have something different.  And I don’t care how many extra apps you can get on an Android; the basics never fail on the iPhone.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell me, this electronic voicemail – I assume that’s what EVM stands for – it sounds pretty handy.  How do I start doing that in my life?

Sam Carpenter
Well, there’s a native on the iPhone that works.  I like Say It & Mail It.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that a website I can go to?

Sam Carpenter
I think you can find it on Google.  I like that, I use them both.  Say It & Mail It – you’re pretty much limited to five or six minutes, and you can’t stop it and then start it again.  So if it’s something quick, you know what you’re saying, if I’m leaving a message for Diana or something – it’s real fast and I use that, and you can get it on an Android too.

Pete Mockaitis
So I can do this natively in email on my iPhone.  How does that work?

Sam Carpenter
Yeah, it’s there.

Pete Mockaitis
The menus, the settings for mail.  Okay, got it, cool.  So communications is one system – make sure that your technology isn’t causing you all kinds of headaches and frustrations and crashes and restarts and delays; your email isn’t dominating your life, in terms of lots of long messages that take a lot of time.  What are some other systems you think professionals can get some big gains?

Sam Carpenter
Yeah, here’s another more of a mental thing, and I know you’re into the mental part in the consulting you do.  Don’t ever have more than 30 emails in your inbox, okay?  Ever.  And you know what I do with my email?  I don’t have a task list – there is another simplification.  My task list is in my email.  When I open my computer and look at my inbox, all my tasks are there.  Oh, I have some on my calendar, like this one, so I don’t forget meeting with you today.  But I have all my tasks and all of my correspondence is in one place.  Obviously it’s on my iPhone too.  Think about those processes and systems.  So take apart your day.  What are the things that are frustrating you?  Figure out a way to make it really good, automate it, delegate it or delete it, and work on the processes of your life.  You know what I mean?

Your car.  Okay, so I have this argument with people all the time, and half your listeners won’t like what I’m going to say.  I don’t believe in buying a used car, because when you buy a used car, it’s used for a reason, usually, unless some young kid went off into the military and didn’t expect to, and this kid is perfect.  Some used cars out there are perfect, but why would you want to give up the best years of a car’s life – the good smell, you know it’s not going to break, you know you’ve got a great warranty.  I always buy a new car.  People say, “Well, as soon as you drive off the lot…”  Yeah, that’s true – as soon as you drive off the lot it loses value, but with a used car, the best years of its life are gone.  So you buy a used car with 40,000 miles – I’m sorry, it’s going to be the muffler, it’s going to be the belts, it’s going to break.  I guarantee you almost all the time there’s some big problem that made that car be a used car.  So, one of the systems I have in my life, one of these mental systems, is I buy close to the best and I always buy new.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool.

Sam Carpenter
These are head processes, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  Well, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Sam Carpenter
Well, another thing we did, and people can’t run right out and do this, but we built this house we’re in.  We moved in the last day of July, and this house is exactly the way we wanted, right to the size of the TV to where the hearth is to how the lights work.  Try to design where you live. But take the time to work on the place where you study, the place where you live, the place where you sleep.  Take the time to do it.  Clean the garage, get everything in order.

There’s that, and then you go back to the business.  You’ve got to document your primary systems if more than one person is doing the processes.  That’s number one, and it could be anything.  I don’t know what people do out there – they sell cars, they sell insurance, they’re working for a big corporation, they’re an engineer with a high tech company – you’ve got to document the main things that the people around you are supposed to do.

And it makes a lot of sense in some cases to document the processes you do, because when you get them down on paper, you can say to yourself sometimes, “Why am I doing this like that?”  And then you get them down on paper and you say, “Why am I doing this at all?”  And you get super efficient. And everything I’m doing with the campaign right now has to do with building the machinery of the campaign.  And when I get elected, I will go into Salem, Oregon and I will do the same thing there and work on the processes and the systems.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool.  Thank you.  Well, now could you share with us a favorite book?

Sam Carpenter
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World – Harry Browne.  This was written a long time ago, back in the ’70s.  He did a second version in the ’90s.  He ran for president on a Libertarian ticket.  And he’s deceased now.  And it says, “Freedom is living your life the way you want to live it.  This book shows you how you can have that freedom now, without having to change the world or the people around you.”  It’s a brilliant book.  I don’t have any problems at all with it, and I’ve read it a number of times.  This hard copy here cost me $140 on Amazon, used.  It’s out of print.  And I give it to my very best friends and closest people and I say, “This is mandatory reading if you breathe.”  [laugh] It’s my favorite book.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.  And tell me – how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s effective?

Sam Carpenter
My clean-up habit.  So I take 30 minutes every day at some point during the day and I just clean stuff up – I pick up the table, I do something in the garage, the car may need it.  I spend 30 minutes a day, at least, cleaning up after myself.  Not that I’m a slob, but if nothing needs to be cleaned up, I do some organizational thing to jump ahead.  That is a really good personal habit to have.  And I exercise every day, of course.  Maybe not every day, but five days out of the week.  It’s so important to get some aerobic exercise and some resistance training if you can, to keep that brain system working right and keep this incredibly complex miracle that is our individual bodies working properly.  And I am convinced that aerobic, heavy breathing, pushing your heart, cures a lot of evils and cures a lot of problems that you’re never going to have.  It prevents them happening.

Here’s another saying, and this is mine: “You can’t measure the bad things that don’t happen.”  You can’t measure them.  And that’s a very important thing, and I think keeping the clutter picked up and getting out in the woods and climbing or skiing or doing whatever it is anybody wants to do, cycling – very important in keeping your brain together, but you can’t measure it really.  You can’t measure the good that it does you, and you can’t measure the bad things that it prevents.

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

Sam Carpenter
WorkTheSystem.com is a good place, and there is a link there to TheSystemsMindset.com, and you can go there.  And people can Google my name and there’s all kinds of stuff out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool.  And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sam Carpenter
Yes, I do.  Right now, right this moment, even if they’re not at their jobs, even if they’re driving in the car or listening to this on their smart phone walking down the street – just look around, wherever you are, even in your living room or your desk at work – but look around and see the separate systems around you.  As I described right at the beginning here, Pete, I don’t care what environment you’re in – you can see 100 separate systems around you if you look for them.  And do that little routine over and over, and all of a sudden it’ll dawn on you, “Oh my God, that’s the way the world’s put together.”

My big TV down here has nothing to do with what goes on in the laundry room over here, with the washer.  They just have nothing to do with each other; they’re separate from each other.  Yes, they all work together – I get that.  But here’s the thing – let me leave you with this – if you walk down the street and you get hit by a car and your leg is shattered, you know what?  They’re not going to take you to a dermatologist.  You’re going to go to an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in that.  And so, keep that in mind – the people who do well in life learn to compartmentalize the world around them, so they can find the dysfunction, see the dysfunction and get it fixed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, beautiful.  Well Sam, thanks so much for taking this time here off the campaign trail and such, and I wish you much luck in the systems of life and the impacts you’re looking to make!

Sam Carpenter
Well, thank you, Pete, I enjoyed this.  Will catch you later.

Aug 30
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199: Supercharging Your Productivity with Erik Fisher

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Erik Fisher says: "Productivity has way more to do with energy management than time management."

Productivity podcaster Erik Fisher shares how to optimally manage your energy throughout the day to improve productivity while avoiding overloads and burn-outs.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to manage your energy for peak productivity
  2. The power of hydration
  3. Why shorter to-do lists beat longer ones.

About Erik

Erik is a Productivity Author, Podcaster, Speaker and Coach. He talks with real people who practically implement productivity strategies in their professional and personal lives. You’ll be refreshed and inspired after hearing how others fail and succeed at daily productivity and continue to lead successful and meaningful lives.

Read More