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Oct 02
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903: How to Save Time Using ChatGPT at Work with Donna McGeorge

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Donna McGeorge provides practical examples of how to use ChatGPT to get work done faster and easier.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to get started with ChatGPT
  2. What ChatGPT does better and worse than a human
  3. Tricks and prompts to get the most out of ChatGPT

About Donna

Donna McGeorge is a passionate productivity coach with modern time management strategies designed to enhance the time we spend in our workplace.

With more than 20 years of experience working with managers and leaders throughout Australia and Asia-Pacific, Donna delivers practical skills, training, workshops, and facilitation to corporations—such as Nissan Motor Company, Jetstar, Medibank Private, and Ford Motor Company—so they learn to manage their people well and produce great performance and results.

As a captivating, upbeat, and engaging resource on time management and productivity, Donna has been featured on The Today Show, on radio interviews across Australia, and has written for publications including The Age, Boss Magazine, Smart Company, B&T Magazine, and HRM.

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Donna McGeorge Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Donna, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Donna McGeorge
Thanks for having me, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to be chatting with you about ChatGPT. It’s overdue, frankly, that we have an episode dedicated to this. And, Donna, you just happen to be an expert, and we already love you, so I’m stoked to be chatting again.

Donna McGeorge
Oh, look, it’s not as overdue as you think. I’m quite surprised at how I thought ChatGPT would be taken up by millions, well, it has, but it’d be over the place by now, but it’s been a little slower than I thought.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I just saw some research from Pew, and this was maybe in July, so it’s probably a little higher by now, that in the US, about 60-ish percent of people had heard of ChatGPT, and of those who had heard of it, who have college degrees, which is most of our listeners in the US, about 32% of folks had used it. Does that sound about right from what you’ve seen in your research as well?

Donna McGeorge
Yeah. And so, my research is mostly standing in a conference and asking people to raise their hand. And so, when I’ve got a room full of people, and I say, “How many of you have heard of it?” It’s the same, it’s around 60-70% of hands up. And then, “Keep your hand up if you’ve actually used it or you are using it?” and the hands dropped considerably.

And then I’d say, “Now, who’s loving it and using it pretty much for their everyday world?” and then the hands dropped again in terms of using it consistently. But, again, that’s pretty anecdotal just from watching crowds.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, it’s just good to get a fresher test on that because it’s sort of, in my world, it comes up a lot. And so, it’s just good for context.

Donna McGeorge
I don’t know if I’m just a bubble but, like, everyone I know is using it but it’s like I go out into the world and I find all these people that some have never even heard of it, it’s like, “Wow, you’ve been living under a rock,” because that’s how it feels to me anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think it’s funny, when it comes to many tools, I remember it had been years until I learned that I could enable shortcut keys in Gmail, and I was like, “How come nobody told me about this all these years? How many hours have been burned without me knowing I can enable shortcut keys in Gmail?” But then I did and I never went back, and, actually, I went with Superhuman to kick it up another notch. So, yes, tools can take a while to permeate.

And that’s what I want to talk about because there’s a lot of hype, and maybe why don’t we start with it since, hey, not everybody’s familiar. Let’s take maybe three minutes. What is ChatGPT? How do we get it and use it? And why bother?

Donna McGeorge
All right. So, I’m not going to go down the massive technical path that people are hugely interested in, the technical backend of it all. I’ll let them go Google that. But in terms of what you need to know to use it every day, it’s a large language model it’s been trained on. What that means is it has access to all published written communication up until about September 2021, so that’s all books, all articles, all websites, all research papers, pretty much everything.

So, the way I like to think of it is it’s like a librarian that has read every book ever written, read any paper, looked at every website, remembers anything, and can quote from it, ad nauseam, really. You ask it a question; it can pull from all of that knowledge to give you a reasonable answer. And so, look, it has its pitfalls. If you know a little bit about it, you probably read some of the negative stuff because it’s pulling data from all over the place, sometimes it puts stuff together that’s not true. The technical term of it is hallucination.

And, certainly, sometimes when I’ve asked it to give me references for various bits of stuff that I’m looking for, it makes up whole references, puts whole names of scientists together, and says they’ve written a paper, and they just never did.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, indeed. Well said. Thank you. All right. So, we’ve got an artificial intelligence, a large language model, it’s called, and it’s read the whole internet, or a fraction of it, and a bunch of books and stuff, and, thusly, you can interact with it. And so, if someone is like, “Whoa, that is cool. How do I do it? How do I get there? How do I play with it?”

Donna McGeorge
Okay, the easiest way is to go and register a free account with OpenAI, and you can get started straight away. What I’ll do is I’ll send you, and you can put it in the show notes. I’ve got a list of prompts across a range of different aspects of both our professional and personal lives, but it’s straight out of the book that I’ve written. But it can give people something to play with rather than just sitting there, looking at it, going, “I don’t even know how to start.”

Because it’s so big and it’s got so many potential uses that I hear someone, even today, say, “Hey, I used it for X, Y, Z,” and I’m like, “Well, I would never have even thought of that.” So, it’s not exactly something you can just go and sit in front of and start playing with. You got to have a reason. So, you go register for a free account. It’ll talk to you probably about the paid version. I would say 80% of my use it with the free version.

I’ve got the paid version but I mostly use the free version. And go play around with it with something that’s relatively harmless, like, I don’t know, meal planning and holiday planning just to see what it’s capable of.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. So, OpenAI.com, and you click Try ChatGPT, and so you can start taking a look. And you’re right, you just have a box, you can type anything into it, and then it will go for it. You can say, “Hey, tell me a poem about sand timers,” and it will tell me any number of things. I have a buddy who likes to say, “Hey, rewrite this email I just wrote but make it more polite,” and then it does the thing he forgets to say, like, “Hello, hope you had a great weekend.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, I probably should’ve said that. Okay, yeah, thanks, ChatGPT.”

So, that’s really where I think you can be super useful here, is to help us understand, like, what is overly hyped and just sort of silly? Like, are the robots taking over mankind, they’re going to enslave us? Is this the answer to everything? We’re all going to get fired. Like, what’s too much hype? And what is really possible for us right here, right now that’s useful that can save us time and increase our results at work?

Donna McGeorge
Okay. So, the overhyped stuff is, now, look, it could be because I come in from a more Star Trek optimistic future of the world where humans are awesome and everyone is getting along nicely, and we’ve got the occasional attack from Klingons. Like, that’s kind of it. So, I have a more utopian view of the future so I don’t believe robots are going to take over the world. I think it could be a thousand years from now, an evolutionary marker where humans just get, again, a whole level of smarter than the technology that we’re creating, it could be.

I certainly don’t think we’re going to see a wholesale loss of jobs no more or less than any other technological breakthrough that has created some loss of jobs but created some new ones. So, I’m old enough to remember when the internet first came out, and all the kind of palaver we’re hearing now about it’s going to take jobs, it’s going to destroy the world, all of that started to happen when the internet became a thing that we carried around in our pockets, it was on our desktops, it was readily available.

So, it’s the same kind of technophobia that’s been around since, frankly, the printing press was a thing. And so, what we’ll see is new jobs or new ways of doing work. So, my advice around this is let’s not worry, “Is it going to take my job?” I can’t remember who said this but it’s been floating around for a while, “Don’t worry about it taking your job. Worry about someone who adopts AI and use the tools of this. They’ll probably take your job.” So, if you don’t keep up with it, then you’re at more risk of that than losing it straight out to AI.

Having said that, gosh, there’s some mundane administrative things that we do on a day-to-day basis that AI could be really helpful for, like any kind of repetitive processing or data entry that has a human looking at some kind of written file, and then typing it into some kind of system. I mean, there’s already systems that do that. So, I suspect that’s the kind of work that would go away.

Pete Mockaitis
And for right now, today, something that professionals can use ChatGPT to assist them with, I’d love to get your perspective. I know that some folks, if English or whatever language, is not their first language, and is maybe a little bit rough, they’ll say what they’re roughly trying to say in the language that they mostly know, and then ChatGPT just give it an automatic polish that has a little bit more smarts to it than, say, a spell check or grammar checks, so that’s sure handy. Tell us, what else are you seeing is super useful that folks are doing right now?

Donna McGeorge
Right. So, look, so I don’t even know where to start but I actually think this is a massive literacy gamechanger. So, you talked about English as a second language. I’m going to go back to the kids that struggled at school because written comms wasn’t that easy for them or they were dyslexic so they left early and have now considered themselves not terribly well educated, can’t spell, don’t know grammar terribly well, and that holds them back.

And so, this is an absolute literacy gamechanger so we don’t ever have to worry about that again. In fact, there are already stories about people who are saying, “Here’s what I wanted to write,” misspelled, no grammar, really poorly strung together sentences, whack it into ChatGPT, and it comes with a “Dear Madam,” like perfect kind of phrased email.

So, what I know, as someone who writes a lot about productivity, is one of the biggest bugbears of many people is email. And so, first of all, it’s volume, so volume of email, then other ChatGPT can’t help with that just yet. But, certainly, sometimes the time we spend responding to something that’s a bit tricky, so, as you said before, your friend that had to, “Here’s what I want to say. Now, make it sound slightly empathetic and friendly,” well, people are using it, heaps are writing emails.

In fact, I predict, once Microsoft get their act together with this, there’ll probably be a button in your Outlook email in the future, maybe Google as well, that you click on, that says, “Compose a response,’ and it will automatically generate a response for you. So, that’s going to save us a pile of time. But right now, you can already do that.

I even did it myself recently, a delicate no letter. Someone wanted to work with me, not really my thing, they were pretty insistent, so I said, “Hey, help me write a really delicate letter that’s assertive in my no, I don’t want to roll over, but maintains the relationship.” So, I’m going to say any written comms. So, as a business owner, I struggle with writing about myself, bios, website copy, email newsletters, social media copy, that’s the sort of stuff I struggle with, so I use it for that.

In corporate, so I’m hearing people using it for similar things, putting proposals together, writing about products, and getting ChatGPT to edit and get feedback on product descriptions. So, if you say, “Here’s a product description. It’s for this market. Can you please make it sound more attractive or irresistible to this market?” and it will then put the words in it. Because of our humility frames, we’re not terribly good at talking up stuff, whereas, ChatGPT is shameless. It’ll talk to your stuff up no end.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Oh, Donna, I think you’ve just really nailed something there. Our humility frames that we have as humans, ChatGPT does not, is not a human, and it can be shameless. And I think that’s great, you said, “Hey, I have to say no but in a way that’s polite.” I think, whenever you have some written communication with some emotional resistance, like, “Aargh, this is kind of complicated and tricky. I sort of feel like I owe them but it doesn’t work for me,” it’s like you could just say, “Hey, write an email response to this letter, copy/paste, or email copy/paste, that is very polite and says no.”

Or, emotionally, I remember I had a landlord who, I think, just had some unrealistic expectations for what a tenant was supposed to do. I won’t go into details. But at one point, I thought, I’m sure this landlord is going to drop in and find fault with all sorts of things, and demand that we do all kinds of things, like, “How about you repaint some walls?” I’m like, “I’m pretty that’s not my job as a tenant.” But whatever.

So, I said, “Hey, write an email from a landlord that’s utterly disgusted with the condition of a unit in the nastiest language possible, taking the role in the nastiest thing, whatever.” And so, what’s funny was so I read it and it was sort of like an inoculation or a vaccine or a preventative measure, because it’s like, “Okay, this is not real. This is not a real human but this is just the AI writing it up.”

And sure enough, once I read this harsh language that was AI-generated, later on I did get a harsh email from the landlord that was like, “Oh, I was expecting this, I prepared for this, and this isn’t so bad.” And it genuinely helped my emotional coping with that situation because I don’t like being judged and told I’m doing a terrible job at something in any context. That’s me.

Donna McGeorge
Right. So, it took the sting out of that because you had somehow prepared for it. And chances are, the actual email you got was nowhere near as harsh as the one that ChatGPT generated.

Pete Mockaitis
No, it was about half as harsh.

Donna McGeorge
Right. And lots of people are doing around things like feedback. And so, if I’m writing something, and I say, “Give me feedback on my style,” I don’t get offended by…I call it Charlie, by the way. I don’t get offended by Charlie because it’s just a robot, and it gives me really good structural, editorial, to-the-point, very distinct feedback.

Now, I don’t know why I would take it better from Charlie than I would from a human, but two things I reckon. One is the emotional aspect of working with a human. And, secondly, the human probably wouldn’t be that harsh with me. They’d probably couch it with a little bit of cottonwool around it or something like that. And so, that’s one side of it.

The other side of it is Charlie doesn’t get offended. When you tell it, it writes you something, and you say, “Actually, that’s a big pile of rubbish. I need it done this way, this way, this way.” And it apologizes, “Sorry about that. I’ll have another go.”

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m sorry, Donna.”

Donna McGeorge
Yes. Not quite in the dulcet tones of how, which is probably showing my knack for anything but, yes, no it doesn’t quite speak spit to me yet.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so another’s thing. I guess now it can speak to you in the iPhone app and/or with some plugins. I haven’t played with that yet but I think that just might be handy like on the car. Like, you’re thinking about something, you could have a little bit of a conversation, I assume you could use the Siri activation button, I don’t know yet. Be safe, everybody, in your vehicles. Don’t look at your screen.

But I assume you can have some voice activation, get back-and-forth conversations, which can be handy so I can then read that later, and maybe actually get some good thought work done while driving, which is often hard to do because you’re not looking at a screen or a notebook to write it, so that’s really cool.

Donna McGeorge
Well, the thing that I find when I’m driving is accessing. Usually, if I’m driving, particularly long distances, which is just about everywhere in Australia that you’re driving long distances between one place and another. And so, I go into that really awesome alpha brainwave state, which is often when my creativity kicks in, so you’re absolutely right.

So, whether it’s, “Hey, Siri, make a note of this,” or, “Hey, Charlie,” or ChatGPT, “look, let’s have a conversation about this,” I think it’s a useful tool to think about. But you have done something else in here around, again, the aspect of literacy or creativity where some people say, “All right, I’m terrible at written communication but I can talk about my ideas.”

And so, maybe you’re struggling to explain in written form so you talk it through, record it into ChatGPT, ask it then to construct whatever output you’re looking for, like an awesome proposal letter or something like that, or lots of people are using it to help them get their resumes in good shape, their cover letters in good shape. But just be very careful that you edit it because it’s starting to get pretty obvious when people…there’s things you can do to not make it obvious.

If you’re not very well-versed with it, a straight copy and paste out of ChatGPT is a little obvious, it can be a little obvious.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. I found, because we’ve been experimenting with it in all kinds of contexts, in terms of writing episode titles and teasers and descriptions, it doesn’t do as good a job as we humans do, in our humble opinions of ourselves, but it can spark a few ideas, like, “Oh, that is a good turn of a phrase. Yeah, I’ll grab that. Okay. Oh, okay. I like that sentence there. Okay, we’ll take that.”

So, it can be a nice little starting point, and sometimes your copy doesn’t have to be smashingly captivating, it’s like, “Yeah, good enough. Good enough for this email response, copy, paste, done.” Other times, it can be a launching point. But one of my favorite little tricks is I’ll just ask for sheer quantity. I’ll say, “Give me 20 potential titles for this summary,” and then it’s like, “Ooh, I like this word from number two, and that word from number seven, and, thank you for your inspiration. Your work is done here,” even though I took none of the titles that it actually gave me.

Donna McGeorge
And that’s the shift that a lot of people are struggling to make because many think of it as something like Google, where you go in and you put a command in, and say, “Hey, give me a recipe for a banana bread,” or something like that. Whereas, you can go into ChatGPT, and say, “Give me 10 recipes for gluten-free sweetish snacks, and generate a shopping list that goes with that,” and it’ll give you the whole thing. So, the volume aspect is really powerful.

I did the same thing. I played around with blog titles. So, one of the tricks that I do is if I know my target audience, which is often women in leadership positions who want to level up, so I say, “This is my target audience. Give me a list of their hopes, fears, dreams, and aspirations. And then give me three suggested blog titles for each one. And then give me an absolutely irresistible captivating headline that will draw people’s attention.”

And, boom, before I know, I’ve got a quarter’s worth of social media, not copy because I’ll still go in and create much of it. I’ll get it to help me but at least I’ve got a plan in place and all my topics sorted out. And that sort of thing, this is where it really, for me, this is where I became interested in it. I became interested in the time savings that we can garner from it.

So, whether it’s spending time and energy agonizing over an email response, or the time energy to generate a social media plan for your target audience, or whatever it might be, research out of MIT says you’re saving at least 37%. I reckon it’s more for me. I reckon it’s taking me maybe about 30% of the time to do some of this stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool. So, lay it on us, what are some of the hugest timesavers, and if you’ve got them, special prompts, that you’ve generated that had helped you realize these time savings using ChatGPT?

Donna McGeorge
Probably the first one is teaching. So, I’m a writer, so that may be a bit different to some of you, so I’m regularly writing articles and things. So, I’ve taught it how to write in my style. So, one of the very first prompts I did was I told it its personality, “You are an expert, a writing style analyzer. Analyze the following passages and play it back to me in a way that I can then,” this is a bit convoluted, “…that I can then feed it back to you so future writing will be in this style,” and so it made sense of that.

I then copied and pasted a couple of chapters from one of my books, and it spits out, and says, “You have a very engaging conversational style using anecdotes and rhetorical questions.” I go, “Awesome!” Now, in the free version, I then I copied it and say, “I need an article, 700 words, for this publication on this topic using this style. Get a start for me.”

Now, to make a start on any kind, like a blank page, whether it’s an email, or a proposal, or anything, that’s often the hardest bit to overcome. So, you never have to wait again. So, I go in there, it gets me a start, and then I’d say, “Rubbish first drafts are around 50% useful.” That’s one thing, teaching it to write like me.

Just FYI, the paid version now has an option in it where you can permanently put information like that, “Anytime I ask you to write an article, use this information.” And so, you can now train it with your stuff. There’s also plugins where I’ve been able to put PDF versions of my books, and I say, “Write this article using the following content from the following PDFs.” So, I don’t know if we’re about plagiarism now because it’s using my stuff.

So, there are a couple of timesavers for me, straight away, that means that I can generate good quality content, still human edited, in a matter of an hour. Whereas, it could’ve taken me half a day, to a full day, sometimes to write something of reasonable quality. So, that’s the first thing, any writing task. I would say anytime you’re stuck, as someone who’s done a bit of research into what happens in our head when we start to get overwhelmed, we end up in cycles that uses a lot of energy, and two hours of agonizing and we’re still having got more than a sentence on a page. So, whatever you’re agonizing over, ask it, and it will give you at least some response.

I think the volume thing is a good one because we can cut straight to the chase, “Give me 10,” you don’t have to ask for one, “Give me 10, 20, 30” however many you need. Things of a personal nature, “I’ve got my 55-year-old sister-in law, likes 1980s country and western music. Can you suggest 10 gift ideas for her that aren’t records, as in CDs or music or whatever, under 50 bucks?” because I’m a cheapskate. So, boom, all my Christmas shopping now will be a list generated there.

Meal planning. Holiday planning, “I’m about to jump in the car with a couple of pre-teens, what’s some great podcasts we could listen to?” So, it’s an entertainment curator. They’re all the things I’m using it for that just mean I can put my time and attention on the things that only a human can do in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I like these sorts of themes we’re collecting here. So, emotional writing, we’ve got some hangups, we’re humble, we’re awkward. Just starting the writing. It’s a blank page. It’s intimidating. “Give me a volume of ideas. Give me 20 options.” A curator of things. And with that, I like it how you could say, “Hey, I’m looking for the music,” for example, like, ‘80s music, or, “I want music kind of like artist A, B, C and D. Now give me some more,” which I think is pretty cool.

And, likewise, even with podcast guests, it’s like, “Hey, ‘How to be Awesome at Your Job’ is about this. We’ve had some guests such name, name, name. Who might be some others?” And it’s funny, it’s sort of like, “We had them, and them, and them, and them.” It’s like, “Well, we’ve already had them but thanks for trying, ChatGPT. You’re in the right zone.”

Donna McGeorge
That’s why sometimes I think of it as an eager intern. It’s eager to give you more of the stuff that you want but doesn’t always give you the right thing. But, hey, just quickly on the playlist thing, there’s a Spotify plugin now, so you can now give it access to your Spotify account. So, when you say, “I like artists like this. Give me playlist for this. Oh, by the way, then whack it into Spotify for me.” So, that’s pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Also, with curation, it’s cool. Sometimes I’ll say, “Hey, I’m looking to do this. Give me a great book that will help me do just that.”

Donna McGeorge
Or, even better, “Give me 10. Give me 10 great books.”

Pete Mockaitis
Exactly, yes. Like, “What’s a good book to help me reprogram my brain to enjoy effort, struggle, and mistakes?” ChatGPT recommends Mindset. And I say, “Can you give me 10 more?” And it says, “Oh, yeah. All right, here we go.” So, we got Grit, Antifragile, Ode to Happiness, etc. So, I just think that’s pretty darn handy.

And it works differently because sometimes it’s different than keywords because it’s, like, sometimes I don’t yet know the keywords, and sometimes I’ll specifically say, “Hey, what’s a word that means like Washington counts for like the seat of US governmental power that’s a figure of speech?” It’s like, “Oh, you’re talking about metonymy.” It’s like, “Oh, yes, thank you, if I’m even saying that right.” It’s like I didn’t know the keyword but it can generate that for me, so I dig that.

Well, maybe let’s flip it on its head now, Donna. We’ve been speaking breathlessly about how great this tool is. What are some of the limitations? What are some requests that it’s probably just going to fail us on, disappoint us on, and we would take its advice at our own peril?

Donna McGeorge
Well, first of all, it does make stuff up because it’s pulling information from all over the world, so it sometimes puts stuff together that’s not quite right. So, if you’re writing, for me, if I’m writing a book, and, by the way, to write my recent book, I did get Charlie to help me do that. So, if I’m writing a book, I still go back to Google to check my references and stuff like that because that’s important.

Look, I had to say it but it’s often about the quality of the prompts that we do that means that you get a bit of rubbish from ChatGPT. So, when people say, “Oh, I tried it once and I got a terrible response,” I’m like, “Well, did you go back and have a conversation with it? Did you tell it, it was terrible? Did you give it some more parameters?”

So, I got a bit frustrated this week because I was trying to get it to write me a story in the first person about some famous people, and it kept giving me almost obituary-style responses. And I asked it three or four times, and it still wasn’t getting it right, so I kind of pause, went off, had a bit of a break, came back, and re-crafted my prompt, and put the words in, “And I don’t want an obituary,” and I started to get the right thing.

So, occasionally, it kind of is smarter than its own good. It thinks that that’s what, in that case, it’s trying to outthink or be that eager intern that says what it thinks you’re looking for and add a bit of extra value, when I just didn’t need it to do that. So, for me, it comes back to the prompts. Certainly, if you’re looking for current data, just my point, asking it what the weather is like in San Francisco today because it will say, “No, I can’t help you with that because that’s not what I’m for.” I have had once, I violated their terms, the way in which they operated, there’s this little message that comes up.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, what did you do, Donna?

Donna McGeorge
I know.

Pete Mockaitis
You naughty.

Donna McGeorge
I was researching for a fictional book, and I was using a real-life person as the model for what I was doing. And so, I asked a pretty tricky question about this real-life person, and I think it was implying that I was either going to stalk him, or murder him, or something like that, I don’t know, so I had to go in, there’s a little, “Please explain” thing that I had to fill in.

So, on the one hand, that was a little bit frustrating, but, on the other, I was kind of encouraged by that. So, I would say that’s the efforts by the OpenAI folks to try and alleviate some of the fear that people have around it being used for evil.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And any other shortcomings you’ve seen? I guess I’ve asked it to write compelling headlines, it sort of fallen a little bit short but it just gave me a ton of options and I can mix and match and edit, and that’s cool. And I think I’ve also found that someone said it very well that AI can tell you, because that’s how it works, it generates the next most likely word to come, so it tends to give you the most obvious answers, as opposed to wildly creative answers, which I think I found that to be the case. But sometimes, the obvious thing is actually really handy, like, “Thank you. I should’ve thought of that.”

Donna McGeorge
Right. Yeah, if you need any obvious thing, it’s awesome, because sometimes I do that. I say, “Here’s a pattern that I’ve created. Here are two points in a pattern, because we know the world loves the rule of three. So, what could be the third? Give me 10 options for the third thing.” And the first one is the obvious one, and I go, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” So, that’s useful.

But I’ve told it, if I’m really wanting something different, I’ll ask it to be a critic of whatever I’m talking about. So, one time, I was writing about burnout, and I said, “Be as if you’re a critic of burnout, and write me three paragraphs on why you think burnout, or what criticisms you have of burnout.” Anyway, so it spat out this piece that said, “Burnout is just a thing made up by people who are lazy, and dah, dah, dah.” And I’m like, “That was fun.”

Like, I would never use it in the article, but it was just fun to kind of get kind of like what you did with your “Write me the nastiest possible email from a landlord,” thing. It gave me a bit of, “Whoa, that’s interesting.” But I do ask it several times, “Give me nonconventional, give me something out of the box.” It’s not quite capable of doing that. It’s not able to do really, I don’t think, yet the really abstract stuff that the connections that a human mind can make as well. So, often when I say, “Give me this stuff that’s nonconventional,” I still get pretty conventional stuff from it.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s true. And there was a Wall Street Journal article, which we’ll link to, and I’ve mentioned in a recent podcast episode, about how AI was generating more and more new creative product ideas than some MBA students, and I had to read the full text of the paper, as I do, and I wasn’t that impressed. I guess it can generate a lot of ideas fast, no doubt. That’s very impressive that it can do that. But the quality of the ideas were like, “A portable printer,” I was like, “Well, yeah, that’s nice but you didn’t invent that. That exists, there are many options for that.” So, it can’t do that.

But what I do like is sometimes I’ll ask for it to engage me in metaphor, like, “Hey, let’s say that running a podcast is like captaining a ship in the ocean. What would be some of the elements of the metaphor?” And then that can help just spark my own ideas, and I find it handy in that regard. Or, I’ll say, “Give me advice on this issue as Yoda would, or as Tony Robbins would, or as Marshall Goldsmith would.” And so, that’s just sort of fun to say, “Oh, yeah, I guess Tony Robbins probably would say something kind of like that. David Allen probably would say something like that.”

So, sometimes I think that helps me a little bit in terms of it’s not groundbreakingly novel but it gets my own brain a shove in a direction to help me get to novel with a little bit of help.

Donna McGeorge
Yes. So, I’ve got it because a couple of my favorite writers, because I love the way they think, Malcolm Gladwell and Steve Levitt, so I’ll say, “This is the topic. What are some quotes, if they were writing the article, what might they say about it because I’m looking for a slightly different angle?” But you’re right, it’s usually something to give me a bit of a poke or a bit of a shove in a direction when I’m stuck.

And so, I think this kind of comes back to this idea of, “In what aspects of your world do you just get stuck and you end up wasting your time spinning your wheels because you can’t find an answer?” On the more emotional level, I had a woman recently say to me that she’d been using it to help craft responses to her ex who she was divorcing.

Because she couldn’t afford a lawyer, and a lawyer had said, “If you give us the basic information we need, we’ll then spend a small amount of time crafting the legal documents that are needed. But all the research-y stuff and all the kind of the backend stuff, if you can do the bulk of that, it’ll save you a truckload of money.”

And so, she was using, she told ChatGPT, “Act as if you are my divorce lawyer, ask me a series of questions to be able to fill in all the paperwork,” and she was able to get all the documentation that they needed collated, and saved herself a whole pile of money as part of her divorce, which I thought was quite…

Just quick disclaimer now. Please do not use ChatGPT for legal documents. You’d still need a lawyer to submit all that stuff, but, yeah, it was a real gamechanger for her.

Pete Mockaitis
I also recommended ChatGPT to a friend going through a divorce in terms of like, “I’ve got all these questions I’m supposed to answer,” I was like, “Well, for a first draft, let me show this.” He’s like, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive.” So, that is cool. You say when you’re stuck, I’ve also found it helpful when you’re stuck, when you’re researching and your search engines aren’t getting it done.

And it’s because, well, hey, the sad state of affairs of the internet in terms of searching is that many of the top search results are there very intentionally by companies with a budget who have hired search engine optimization professionals to accomplish that very goal, and they have succeeded. And so, you might not actually be getting the most useful information. It’s just like the most “relevant and authoritative in the eyes of Google” information, and that’s, in many ways, gamed intentionally. And not everywhere, and often it works just the way it should, and so we’re delighted with the result.

But sometimes I found, when I can’t find a product, ChatGPT can find it. Like, “I need to find a car seat that’s super narrow so I can get three across,” and it’s like I’m having a hard time finding that in Google and in Amazon, and then this thing is recommending, ChatGPT is recommending stuff that was not popping up in those searches, like, “Well, that’s very helpful.”

Donna McGeorge
Look, I’m going to catch this with at this point in time, there doesn’t seem to be that kind of product bias. Like, if you pay someone a chunk of money, your products end up being at the top of the list no matter what search criteria is put in there. I would agree. But I’d also say the risk is that we treat it like a search engine because it’s not a search engine. It’s someone you’re having a conversation with.

It’s more like you’ve got someone sitting next to you that you turn around, and go, “Hey, I’m really struggling finding this product, and, clearly, my search string in Google is not working. Can you help me maybe redefine what might be the parameters I need to get Google to work better for me that also bypasses all the paid ads so I can actually get to the product that I need?” and get it to help you craft your Google search right.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it is. I think about it, I read somewhere, it is an intelligence but it’s an alien intelligence, and I thought that was well said. And I like to think of it as my alien intern who has read the whole internet or a good chunk of it, and so it’s like, “You’ve read a lot of stuff, alien intern. What do you think about this?” Alien because it’s got to be different than human, so watch out. And intern because, “Hey, I’m in charge. I am never going to blindly copy/paste what you say. I’m going to, at the very least, read it, and most likely edit, pick and choose, edit heavily.”

Donna McGeorge
Right. What you’ve actually got is an alien intern that has a hangover.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Donna McGeorge
And so, they’re keen and eager to do the work for you. It’s going to be a bit nonhuman and alien in its form, but you better check it because sometimes it’s just a bit dim on certain days if it’s had a big night the night before.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. An alien intern with a hangover. We can get some AI to generate art to that effect for us as well. That’s a whole another episode, I guess.

Donna McGeorge
That’s a whole another episode.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Donna, any final thoughts before we shift gears? Well, first of all, your book is called The ChatGPT Revolution. Got to make sure that title gets in there, right? It sounds like it talks about any sorts of things. Anything, specifically, you want to mention about the book proper?

Donna McGeorge
Only that you can grab it from any reputable online bookselling place, on my website. But, look, I’d say when my publisher approached me to write it, we were like, “Well, what’s the angle we want on it?” So, it’s very much “Get me started, I’m interested.” It’s probably already, in fact, I know this passage in it, it’s already a little bit out of date because the technology is moving very quickly, but it’ll get you started and get you going, and get you interested.

And in terms of, I think you started to say what would be a last message, I think, around this or any kind of last comment I’d say, I would say get interested, get curious, and a saying we have in Australia is just have a crack, have a go at it, go in and try it out, and play with it. Be playful at first, which is why the list of prompts that’ll be in the show notes, are not terribly earth shattering but they’re something to get you going with.

And you can’t break it. It’s not like you can get in there, and go, “Oops, I broke ChatGPT.” The worst that can happen is you just get a somewhat rubbish response, in which case you tell it, “Gee, that was a bit rubbish. Try again from this angle.” So, have a go, have a crack is what I would say.

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

Donna McGeorge
From David Allen, you mentioned him earlier, “The human mind is for having ideas, not storing them.”

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

Donna McGeorge
So, Taylor’s study, it’s called the pig iron studies from the late 19th century. I love him. He discovered that you can actually achieve way more if you take plenty of breaks throughout your day.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Donna McGeorge
Apart from my own, I can’t stop thinking about Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
And what do you love about the book?

Donna McGeorge
Look, it just got me thinking differently about the finite nature of time. And he has a really interesting angle around settling. So, we’re told nearly all our lives, “Don’t settle. You could always go for more.” And his position is, “Well, why wouldn’t you settle and make good with what you’ve got rather than constantly seeking this better job, better relationships, better something?” And I’ve not stopped thinking about that, actually. That’s really got me going.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Donna McGeorge
I’m afraid I’m going to talk about my own, which comes from one of my books, called The First 2 Hours, which is a way in which I think about how I do my work and how I do my to-do list. There are some things that are better to do in the morning and some that are better to do in the afternoons. So, I’m happy to share a PDF of that tool as well in the show notes if you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, thank you. And a favorite habit?

Donna McGeorge
Early to bed, early to rise. That’s me. I like to get plenty of sleep.

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

Donna McGeorge
Yeah, pay attention to the clock in your body, not the one on the wall.

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

Donna McGeorge
Just my website, DonnaMcGeorge.com. And I’m a shameless self-promoter, you’ll find me on my social media platforms, and my name is a bit unusual, Donna McGeorge.

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

Donna McGeorge
Absolutely. It’s a version of something that Sean Patrick Flanery said, which is, “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Donna, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun with ChatGPT and all you’re up to.

Donna McGeorge
Thanks, Pete. Great to be on the show. Thanks for having me.

Jul 24
0

884: How to Beat Distraction and Make Every Moment More Fulfilling with Dr. Cassie Holmes

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Cassie Holmes shares powerful strategies for finding more meaning and fulfillment from your hours.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why more time doesn’t make us more happy
  2. Two tricks to make drudgery feel more enjoyable
  3. How to keep distractions from hijacking your attention

About Cassie

Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, an award-winning teacher and researcher on time and happiness, and author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.

Happier Hour was selected as a Forbes Must-Read and a Next Big Idea Club Must-Read for 2022, as well as an Amazon Best Business Book of 2022. It’s also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Today Show, CBS Mornings, and much other media.

Holmes’s academic research has been widely published in lead academic journals and featured in such outlets as The Economist, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and more. The course that she developed and now teaches, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, is among UCLA’s most popular for MBAs. Prior to joining UCLA, Cassie was a tenured faculty member at Wharton, and she has a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Columbia.

Resources Mentioned

Cassie Holmes Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Cassie, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Cassie Holmes
Hi, Pete. Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, I’m excited to talk about the wisdom in your latest work here, Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most. I understand you had some happy hours, hopefully, recently on vacation. What’s the story here?

Cassie Holmes
Well, getting back from the fourth of July weekend, we had a great time up in Carmel Valley with good friends back from our business school days and their kids and our kids. And we picked up our kids from sleepaway camp. This is their first time away, and they were dirty but happy, and it was just fun to be outside in the sunshine with live music and yummy food and friends. What better than that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that does sound great. I was just going to ask, what are some themes associated with your happiest hours? And maybe you’ve already listed a few. Any other key ingredients?

Cassie Holmes
Yeah, we’ll pick up on some of these, probably many times during our conversation because they’re sort of goes back to those simple things of those relationships with the people that we love, noticing those simple moments and making the most of them. And so, yeah, it’s people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Makes sense, people. I hear you. So, tell us, as you’re putting together and researching Happier Hour, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you made on the journey?

Cassie Holmes
Yes. So, I think that what Happier Hour is, it’s sort of me pulling together my entire career of research on how we think about and spend our time for greater happiness and joy in our lives. And what’s interesting about that is that my relationship with time actually started off as not very happy at all. In fact, I felt, for me, for my own personal happiness, time proved to be this single biggest barrier.

And I share a story that I used to open the book which I think many can relate to and very much motivated my research agenda since, as well as writing the book to help others by applying what I found in my research to their lives, is that it was this day earlier in my career when I was still an assistant professor living in Philly. I was at Wharton at the time, and I traveled up to New York to give a talk that day.

And I was sandwiched between back-to-back meetings and then I’m rushing from those meetings, then to this networking dinner, and then rushing to catch the very last train that would get me home to my four-month-old and my husband asleep in Philly. And I made the train that night, but I remember it so vividly, I was absolutely exhausted.

And I was like, “I don’t know if I can keep up between the pressures of work, wanting to be a good partner, wanting to be a good parent, wanting to be a good friend, the never-ending piles of chores.” There simply were not enough hours in the day to get that all done, let alone to do any of it, while, let alone to enjoy any of it along the way.

And that feeling, which now in my research what we’ve been sort of unpacking, is what we referred to as time poverty. It’s this acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. And it’s a really bad feeling in my experience of that on the train that night. I actually considered quitting. I considered quitting my entire sort of career that I worked so hard for, thinking that, “If only I had a whole lot more time, then I would be happier.”

But before I sort of marched into my boss’ office, and like, “I quit.” And before telling my husband, “We need to pack up our house. We’re moving to the beach,” where this relaxing existence that I was daydreaming about would occur, I was like, “Is it true? Is it true that people who have a whole lot more time are, in fact, happier?” And I recognize this is an empirical question and, one, as a social psychologist, that I could test and should test.

And so, I did, and I recruited a couple of my favorite collaborators, Hal Hershfield and Marissa Sharif, and we looked at, “What’s the relationship between the amount of discretionary time people have and their happiness?” And what we found across our studies, including our analyses of the American Time Use Survey data that looks at, for tens of thousands of working as well as non-working Americans, how they spent a regular day, and we could calculate how much time they spent on discretionary activities and relate that to their happiness.

And what we found was, to answer your question, a surprising finding, was this surprising pattern of results, which was basically an upside-down U shape. And this is interesting because…

Cassie Holmes
What it means is that happiness goes down on both ends of the spectrum. So, yes, people with too little time are less happy, those time poor amongst us. But what was also interesting was that other side, and that surprising side was that there is such a thing as having too much time, that we found that those with a whole lot of discretionary time were also less happy.

And, then digging into the data, they’re unhappy for different reasons, and we can talk about that, but I think it’s absolutely surprising and an important finding for us to keep in mind, in those sorts of hurried days where we do feel time poor, it sort of cautions us away from quitting, and tells us that, in fact, for greater happiness, it’s not about necessarily having a whole lot more time available to spend however you want. In fact, it’s actually how you invest the time that you have available.

And that’s actually then what propelled my research agenda since, it’s, “How do we invest hours of our days so that we feel more satisfied in our days, so that we feel joy along the way, so that, looking back at the end of the week, even if we’re busy, we feel fulfilled as opposed to just having an overly full schedule?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Cassie, there’s so much good stuff in here. Oh, we’re going to have fun digging into this.

Cassie Holmes
Where do we start?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Cassie, I don’t know if this surprises you but I’ve actually been on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use survey numerous times.

Cassie Holmes
Oh, great.

Pete Mockaitis
For my own fun. That’s right. I’ve researched things for fun. And so, first, let’s just confirm that this is legit, if I may, because you’ll know this so much better than I. Because when I’m up in there, I am surprised at certain numbers, like, “How is that even possible?” Like, the average amount, hours per day for civilian population, spent on housework is 0.57 hours.
So, can you maybe, first of all, for the sliver of the audience who has nerdly crawled all over the American Time Use Survey, can you confirm that it is more or less valid and legit and share why I see some numbers that I find hard to believe?

Cassie Holmes
Yeah, it’s a great question, and when you do dig into the data, and I actually would say, even before you dig in, if you’re not digging in, if you’re just looking sort of at that first glance at averages and some of the maxes and means of the various variables, that’s where you’re like, “Well, what the heck? How is it possible?” For instance, in some of our analyses of the amount of discretionary time people have that they are spending 20 hours of discretionary time, which discretionary time are spending on activities that people want to do.

And so, I’m like, “Well, when do they sleep? They only have four hours of sleep and there are chores.” And for many of us, it’s more than 0.5 hours. So, what I would say is that this is based off of data averaging across a whole bunch of people, and it’s sort of capturing a particular day. And what you need to do is look at, “What are the patterns?” like, the overall patterns so that you’re not relying on one weirdo who has literally, I don’t know, watched TV for 20 hours in a row, discretionary activity, and slept only four hours and not done anything else.

It’s you’re looking at, “All right, what are some actual interactions and moderations? And who is feeling these particular ways? And how are they spending their time?” Now, what we wanted to make sure is that, so that we’re not sort of relying on any one idiosyncratic person and/or relying so heavily on just averages, looking at, “Okay, if we cut up the data in different ways, how does this pattern play out?”

But what’s so interesting is this pattern, this such thing, or this finding that there’s too little or too much that is bad and that is associated with less happiness, is quite telling.

And going to how we even calculate, “What does it mean to spend time on discretionary activities?” We didn’t want to rely on our own idiosyncrasies of, “What are activities that people want to do?” versus obligatory activities, activities that folks have to do. And so, what we did is that we took all activities from the American Time Use Survey, so it’s like 139 activities, and we presented them to a sample of 500 individuals, and we asked them, “Is this a discretionary activity? Is it something that you want to do?” and we said that we would count any activity that more than 90% agreed was discretionary.

And those activities that more than 90% identified as discretionary included passive leisure, so this is watching TV, relaxing. It is also, though, includes active leisure, like playing sports, engaging in a hobby, exercise. It also includes spending time with family and friends. So, this is what we calculate for each individual. Now we’re getting into the weeds. You have me start talking about data which people never ask about.

But actually, interestingly, this pattern emerges, this negative quadratic relationship, also when we use the sort of 75% of people agree, so it is robust. This having too little time is bad, and digging into the data for why with additional studies, the answer is that, for those who are time poor this is no surprise, it is heightened feelings of stress. How could it be that other side of the spectrum, how could having a whole lot of hours in the day to spend exactly how you want it be associated with less happiness?

And what we found is that we are driven to be somewhat productive. We are averse to being idle. And so, when we spend all the hours of our days, day in and day out, this isn’t vacation, with nothing to show for, it undermines our sense of purpose. And from that, we feel less productive. And without that sense of purpose, we feel less satisfied.

And what’s interesting is that we saw, as additional sort of evidence to this role of purpose and wanting to be somewhat productive with the time that we spend, we found that those who actually engage in discretionary activities that they are “productive and worthwhile” like exercise, like engaging in an enriching hobby, actually, like investing in relationships, spending time with family and friends. You don’t see the too-much-time effect. It’s actually the too-much-time effect is driven by spending a whole lot of those hours in the day in ways that are discretionary, things that you want to do, but it’s more of that passive leisure.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. So, folks who are spending tons of discretionary time can break the rules of the upside-down U if that discretionary time is high quality, family, friends, hobbies instead of Netflix binging.

Cassie Holmes
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And then, also a quick data clarification, how are we measuring “happy”?

Cassie Holmes
Yes. So, with the American Time Use Survey, it’s people reporting their…I think, it was on a five-point scale of how satisfied they are with life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, lay it on us then, on the upside-down U, what is the magic sweet spot that puts us in the top happy spot we want to be? How much discretionary activity time?

Cassie Holmes
Well, we find that, and I don’t want to sort of hang my hat on these exact numbers, but in the American Time Use Survey data, we found that between two and five hours of discretionary time is that sweet spot, that is those with less than approximately two hours of discretionary time in the day, they were less happy because of those heightened feelings of stress. Those with more than approximately five hours of discretionary time in the day were also less happy because of a lacking sense of purpose.

But I would say that what is more, I think, the bigger takeaway here is that it is not so much about how much available time you have or how much discretionary time you have, it’s really when you’re engaging in activities that feel worthwhile. And they can feel worthwhile from different sources. They can feel worthwhile because they bring you joy. They can feel worthwhile because they give you that sense that you are being productive and contributing. They can feel worthwhile when rightly placed because they are rejuvenating and relaxing.

So, it’s about identifying for yourself what are those worthwhile ways of spending, but also when you’re spending that time, how you are engaged? What is your mindset? And that very high level is the answer here. And then I would love to talk about some of the strategies for folks to identify for themselves, “Okay, what are those worthwhile activities?” for you so we’re not relying on averages across people, or even averages across a particular example of any type of activity, but also some strategies that, when you’re spending that time, how do you make the most of it, how do you make it so that those hours that you’re spending are, in fact, heavier.

And yet another sort of answer for you. You asked me, whether it’s some surprising findings, perhaps even the most surprising. I think one was that too much time is a thing, and that having a whole lot more time isn’t necessarily better. But another is that there is incredible amount of happiness available to us in the time that we’re already spending but so often we’re missing and not noticing it.

And so, the extraordinary happiness that can come from ordinary moments, if you’re paying attention, if we are engaged in the activity in that time in such a way to make the most of it, can be so, so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, that’s beautiful. Let’s do exactly that. First, let’s talk about worthwhile. How do we get really clear on what is worthwhile and not worthwhile for us individually?

Cassie Holmes
Yeah. So, the research tracks people’s time, so how you’re spending your time over the course of the day, and whether you’re feeling across the day, so researchers can pull out, on average, whether those activities that tend to be associated with the most positive emotion, what are those activities that tend to be associated with the most negative emotion.

That research points to our happiest activities being social connection. So, whether intimately or physically, as well as spending time with family and friends. Our least happy activities tend to be commuting, work, and housework, which is a bummer because those three activities together comprise a bulk of our work week. But, again, as I said before, those are based off of averages.

So, the average person as well as the average example of any one of those activities, but, of course, within your work hours, there are some activities that are going to be more fulfilling and worthwhile, and others that are aren’t. So, what I encourage folks to do is to track your own time over the course of a week, writing down in those super simple PDF sheet that you can download from my website, if helpful.

Basically, for every half hour, writing down, “What are you doing? What’s the activity?” and being more specific than just working or socializing. If you’re working, what is the work task? If you’re socializing, whom are you with and what are you doing? And, as importantly, rating, as you’re coming out of that half hour, coming out of that activity, on a ten-point scale, how happy are you? And not the sort of, “Oh, it was just enjoyable.”

When people are rating their happiness, it is picking up on how satisfied you feel, how worthwhile was it. And so, while, admittedly, it is tedious to track your time over the course of the week, it’s totally worth it because you have this fantastic personalized dataset that you can look for yourself, looking across your activities or your rating sheet, your time tracker, you can see what are those activities that got your highest ratings.

And what’s as helpful is not just looking at the particular activities that are sort of your highest ratings versus your lowest ratings, but what are some commonalities among them? So, you might find, for instance, like when I did this, I found for myself it wasn’t socializing per se that was necessarily fun. For me, it was one-on-one time whether with a friend, whether with a family member, as opposed to the whole group going out.

Also, I found in my work hours, actually going on a coffee walk with a colleague as we’re talking about research, that is super fun time versus the group lunches at work, or the group dinners at home, or cocktail parties. And so, I found that, for me, actually, one-on-one time was very worthwhile. And by tracking your time, you can identify, “Okay, what are the sources of fulfillment and joy in the way you spend your time?”

You can also see just how much time you’re spending on your various activities so you can pull out, “Holy cow, I had no idea that I was spending X amount of time on said activity that is not fun, and, in many cases, not necessary.” And this is, for those of us who are time poor, it’s very helpful to, like, “Okay, this is time that I can reclaim and reallocate.”

Can I share an analogy to highlight just how important this is?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Cassie Holmes
Okay. Because our time is limited, and there’s an analogy that I love and I continue to touch back on in my own time spending decisions as well as I actually teach a course to our MBAs and executive MBAs at UCLA that is pulling the research together, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design is what the course is called.

And in the first day of the course, I share this short film which shows this analogy so well. And in the film, a professor walks into his classroom, and on the desk in front of the class, he puts a large jar. And then into the jar, he pours golf balls, and then he asked his students, “Is the jar full?” The students nod their head because it looks full, but nope. Then he pours pebbles into the jar, and the pebbles fill the spaces between the golf balls up to the top. He asked his students again, “Is the jar full?” the students nod their head, “Yes, it looks full.” But nope.

Then he pours sand into the jar, and the sand fills all the spaces between the golf balls, between the pebbles up to the top, “Is the jar full?” By this point, the students were like laughing, and, “Yes, the jar looks full.” But, no, there was one more step. He pulls out two bottles of beer, he opens one, pours it into the jar, he opens the other, and then he goes and sort of perches himself on the front of the desk, and he explains, and he takes a sip of the beer.

And he explains, “This jar represents the time of your life. The golf balls are those things that really matter to you, your relationships with your family, your friendships, the work that you do that is so in line with your purpose and your goals that feels really worthwhile. The pebbles are the other important things in your life, like your job, your house. The sand is everything else. The sand is all of that stuff that fills your time without you even thinking about, like, unintentionally, without you even choosing it.”

And what’s really important to know is that, had he poured the sand into the jar first, all of the golf balls would not have fit. That’s to say that if we let our time get filled, it absolutely will get filled but not necessarily with the stuff that matters to you. And so, what you need to do is put your golf balls into your time jar first, into your schedule of the week. Put those activities that are so worthwhile, those activities that do connect you with these people that are so important to you.

The work hours, like the work project or tasks that is so important to you and as fulfilling and will sort of propel you forward in what matters to you, put those into your schedule first because sand will absolutely fill everything else, but at least this way, at the end of the week, even if you were busy, you can look back and feel fulfilled because you’ve invested in those things that matter to you.

So, what the time tracking exercise does is it allows you to identify what are your golf balls, what are those things that you can put and should and must from a sense of satisfaction and offsetting burnout and a sense of fulfillment and happiness, is you have to put those into your schedule and protect time for them. Others won’t do that for you. You need to take the responsibility for that. And then, yes, this other stuff will fill in.

My sand is email. Others, when I have my students do this, their sand is whether it’s social media or meetings that are not all that necessary, but it’s so important that our weeks don’t just get filled with sand and keeping us busy but not necessarily spending our time on those things that matter. And then one of the students was like, “Professor, what’s the deal with the beer?” And I was like, “I’m so glad you asked.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I wanted to ask. Glad you went here.

Cassie Holmes
Yup. And the beer goes to show that no matter how busy you feel, how full your schedule is, you always have time for a drink with a friend. So, whether it’s beer or soda, it’s just to make this point that, absolutely, amidst the busyness of our lives, it’s those people that we do and can and must sort of make time for.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, I also have to hear about, when you talked about how we engage with things in our mindset can improve anything and everything, maybe even…

Cassie Holmes
No, overstatement but not, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, even the commuting and the work and the housework, even if you’re only spending 0.57 hours on that housework, like the “average American.”

Cassie Holmes
I agree with you. Who is that lucky person?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m putting my hat on those lots of zeroes from folks who are traveling, like, “Hey, I don’t have to clean my hotel room.

Cassie Holmes
It’s also averaging. Yes, there’s a lot of zeroes because this is picking up the American Time Use Survey data. It’s picking up on a day, and you might be catching people, whether they’re on a holiday or on the day that they’re not doing housework.

But, that aside, there are, of course, ideally, sure we would spend all of our days and our entire schedule on golf balls, but that’s not the reality, right? We do have work to do. And there are strategies to make these times that are less fun more fun.

Bundling is a super easy one. So, this is taking from some of the motivation research by Katy Milkman and her colleagues, and it’s such a simple idea that is so effective is taking an activity you don’t want to do, like commuting, and bundle it with an activity that you do want to do so that that time itself feels more fun.

Like, commuting. Instead of sitting in the car and, like, mindlessly flipping through radio stations, if instead you turn on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
There we go, Cassie. Well-played. Thank you.

Cassie Holmes
Yup. Then, all of a sudden, that time in the car feels more worthwhile. Or, one of my readers, she reached out, she’s like, the bundling strategy was so awesome because her husband, all of a sudden, ironing was his favorite activity of the week because, what he did, Saturday afternoon, he would set up the ironing board in front of the TV, and that was when he watched sports. So, it was bundling the chore of ironing with watching sports. And then, all of a sudden, that time was his sort of delectable time that he got to watch sports and nobody got to bother him about it.

There’s also bundling during our work hours. So, I talked about social connection is so important for happiness. For many Americans, a lot of their hours spent working are not particularly happy. And figuring out, “Okay, how can we bundle social connection into our work days?” And this is so important. Gallup has a funny question in their poll, which asks, “Do you have a best friend at work?” And I say it’s funny because it sounds like something my fourth grader would ask, like, “Do you have a best friend?”

But it is so predictive. And I’m sure the numbers aren’t too far off, but pre-pandemic, only two out of 10 Americans said that they had a best friend at work. Those who did were more than twice more engaged in their jobs. They’re better performers on their jobs. They’re more satisfied at work. And job satisfaction is a very big predictor of overall life satisfaction.

If we can infuse friendship into our work hours, then that is, like, I’m framing it as bundling, but then that work itself becomes more fun, you look forward to the work day because you get to see your friend. When you are sort of confronted with challenges in work, which, of course, we all are, you have that person that you can rely on and sort of find that social support. So, it’s like wins are more fun and losses are less painful when you have friendship in the workplace. So, that’s one way.

Another is identifying your purpose. So, I know it sounds so lofty but, actually, in the book. So, Happier Hour, as I mentioned, I teach this course Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, and each week I give my students an experiential assignment so that they can apply these empirical findings to their own lives and feel the benefits of it. And every time I’ve taught the course, I see significant boosts in the sense of meaning, happiness, a sense of connection, a sense of accomplishment.

And in Happier Hours, since not everyone can take my course at UCLA, is I share those assignments as exercises in the book so that readers can apply them. So, the time tracking exercise is one. There’s another exercise that helps you identify your purpose, and it’s called the Five Whys Exercise. And so, what it is it’s you asking yourself, like, “Okay, what do you do for your job? Why do you do that?” And then your answer for that, you ask yourself, “But why is that important?”

And once you ask yourself why, five layers into really why you do the work that you do, what it uncovers for you as an individual is what really motivates you, “What is your purpose? Like, what is your why?” And the reason that this is so helpful is because it makes even those un-fun parts of your job more fun because you feel better because they feel more worthwhile, you know why you’re doing it.

So, when I did this exercise, I found it so helpful because it helped me identify my own purpose. So, what is my job? I’m a business school professor. Why does one do that? Well, to create knowledge through research and disseminate knowledge through teaching. And then I ask myself, “But why is that important?” And then my answer to that, why is that, and what I uncovered is that, for me, the purpose of my work is to create knowledge about what makes people happy, and to disseminate knowledge about what makes people happy.

This is helpful for a couple of reasons with respect to time, is that it helps me filter out what are those activities, work activities, that I should be saying yes to or should be saying no to if it’s something that is in line with helping me create knowledge about what makes people happy or disseminate knowledge about what makes people happy, then I will do it. Like, joining you and our time today, this is about disseminating knowledge about what makes people happy.

But not only does it help me decide what activities to spend my time on, it makes even un-fun work activities more palatable and more fun because I know the why of it. So, email, I do not like. That feels like sand. It can absorb my entire work day, work week, and I feel like I got nothing accomplished. But when I’m like, “Okay, actually, email with a research collaborator, that’s about creating knowledge about what makes people happy. Emails with my students, oh, that’s about disseminating knowledge about what makes people happy.”

So, all of a sudden, that particular activity of email feels better because I know the why of it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, with the five whys, so you lay it on your purposes to discover and disseminate knowledge about what makes people happy. And I don’t know if we landed there from the third or the fourth why.

Cassie Holmes
That’s the fifth one.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess, if I may, what happens if I say why again to that? Why does that matter?

Cassie Holmes
Because I want to spread happiness. And, for me, that’s really important. And what’s really helpful about this exercise is that what you identify for your purpose, it is unique to you. It doesn’t have to align with other people’s notions of what is the sort of ultimate worthwhile metric of success, which is so helpful because this idea of what success means, there are so many dimensions that go into it, and there will always be individuals who are doing better than you on one of those dimensions, but those are things that might not actually even matter to you.

So, what this, by identifying your own purpose, that’s what you should use when you see a gap between what you’re doing and what you aspire towards, that should be the motivator. When you actually see that you’re making progress, it’s so much more fulfilling compared to what we generally do is rely on social comparison, and like, “How am I doing in life?” or, “How am I doing in my job?” By looking at how you’re doing compared to others, which through social comparison, it’s one of the cognitive biases, or, in this case, our cognitive tendencies, our psychological tendencies that can really serve to undermine our happiness.

Now, if your question of like, “Well, why is spreading happiness important?” then I can tell you my seventh why of pointing to research that shows that happiness, while some might think as sort of this frivolous or even selfish pursuit, research shows that when you feel happier, when you take care of your emotional wellbeing, it allows you to show up better for those around you in the work that you do.

Being happier has positive consequences across our domains of life. Study shows that it makes us perform better in the office. So, when we are made to feel happier, it makes us more creative, we become more adaptive in our problem-solving, we’re more collaborative. Happy employees are more engaged, they’re more likely to show up at work, they’re less likely to call in sick. And so, it helps in not only you in your work but organizations.

It also helps us in our interpersonal relationships. When we feel happier, we like others more, we are liked by others, it makes us nicer, and there’s even work that shows that when we feel happier, it has positive health benefits, too, that we’re more likely to stick to our treatment routines, we have higher thresholds for pain, we react better to physiological stressors. Happier people live longer.

And so, by helping people be happier, based off of the research not just by opinion, based off of the research, then it allows them to not only feel happier, which is such a wonderful outcome, but also it allows them to show up better within their organizations and within their family, so it’s sort of spreading this goodness. So, that’s, like, my eighth why.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Well, I guess what I’m driving at with the whys is that all sounds super awesome. But just to illustrate the technique, I will say, and why do all those things matter, Cassie?

Cassie Holmes
I felt very satisfied with my fifth layer. But, yes, it’s really helpful because when individuals do this, it uncovers for them what drives them in their work. And, oftentimes, that first layer of why is your job description, or it can be some people are like, “Well, it’s to make money.” It’s like, “Well, why is that particular job the way that you’re looking to make money?” Or, it can even help uncover what’s really driving you in wanting financial security. If it’s like ultimately to make it so that your kids are less stressed, or if you’re going in the job description route, like, “Well, why does that matter to you?”

So often, in just two layers more of whys, folks identify for themselves, like, “Oh, the thing that actually matters to me is this.” And in recognizing that, that can help you figure out, all right, what are those work projects that you want to take on because they are going to help propel you in your particular direction that is “success” for you and are in line with your goals and values.

One of the most painful ways, actually, in the time tracking exercise when people are looking across those least happy activities of theirs, what the dimensions, the sources of the unhappiness, a common one is a waste of time. That is, like, you spent your time on something that just felt meaningless and unnecessary. Those are the same things but they show up.

And so, in the workplace, for example, those meetings that are like, “Oh, my gosh, that was such a waste of an hour,” those are the work hours that bring those averages way down because it’s like, “Ugh, my time is precious.” All of our time is precious. The hours of our days sum up to the years of our lives, so how we spend our hours is how we spend our lives. And when those hours are wasted, that’s the thing that’s sort of a soul sucking.

And so, whether during the work day or even outside of work, the social media often gets picked up as the sort of like people reflect back, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, that felt such a waste and it felt not good.” And this isn’t someone else being like, “You shouldn’t be on social media, or you shouldn’t spend 10 hours a night watching TV.” This is in their own ratings.

And what’s interesting is also in the time tracking, like one student in the reflection piece afterwards, they’re like, “I thought an activity that would be really fun was actually less fun than it was.” So, they thought that TV was their happy time, but they realized that after that first hour, all subsequent hours were actually quite unhappy.

And then there were these activities that they dreaded, that in their ratings, they actually got nines and tens, like socializing. This person dreaded socializing. This person dreaded exercising. But then, in coming out of these activities, they’re actually, apparently, according to their own ratings, actually made them feel really great and fulfilled and is worth the time even when we feel like they don’t have a lot of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, that is powerful when we have those surprises come up. And I’m thinking about Dr. David Burns’ Feeling Good. There’s a lot of exercises along those lines which, “Hey, surprise, this thing you were procrastinating wasn’t that horrible, was it? Hmm, how about that?” Or, “Surprise, exercise and socializing is amazing.”

Cassie Holmes
What I think that would be yet another helpful strategy in terms of where, as I mentioned, so like we want to not only identify and spend our time on those activities that are worthwhile, but also how when we are engaging in those activities make them worthwhile because a whole lot of the time we’re distracted.

So, research shows that we are distracted, not thinking about what we are currently doing, almost 47% of the time, that is almost half of the time. And so, in this research, what they did was they would ping people over the course of their day, and ask, “What are you doing?” as well as “What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about what you’re currently doing? Or are you thinking about something else? And how happy are you?”

And, as I mentioned, people are not thinking about what they’re doing a whole lot of the time. More than half of the time, or almost half of the time, they are not thinking about what they’re currently doing. And also, what was interesting is that people are less happy when their mind is wandering than when they are engaged in their activity.

And so, if you’re thinking about, like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re just at this so much of the time.” And if you’re spending time on the golf ball, on something that matters to you, but you’re missing it because your mind is somewhere else, like planning for what’s next or stressing about what’s next, then you’re missing that moment and the time that you’re spending.

One of the big sources, a huge source of distractions are our cellphones. These are these very handy devices that allow us to get so much done, and by being able to constantly do other things and be aware of what other people are doing on social media, because you’re like, “Oh, my gosh,” at every moment, there are other things that you could and maybe should be doing, it draws us out of the moment.

And so, something that is very effective is actually carving out time as no-phone zones, as in putting the phone away, out of sight, which makes it more out of mind so that you can be more engaged in what you’re doing. This helps during the work day, like for that important work that you’re doing, that needs your deep thinking.

Put your phone on silent away. Close out of emails so that you don’t get those interruptions that are pulling you out of the moment, that are keeping you from getting into flow, that flow state where you’re so engaged in what you’re doing you lose sense of time, and that’s when you’re most creative, that’s when you’re at your best. But it’s not just during the work day, it’s like on in the evenings when you’re with your family, or weekends, us carving out, putting your phones away, making them no-phone zones so that when you’re spending that time, your mind isn’t somewhere else.

So often, something I mentioned earlier is another really important and perhaps surprising finding is that a lot of our happiest moments are in very ordinary activities. So, even if you forget time tracking, just reflecting, thinking back over the last two weeks, when did you feel the most joy? So often when I ask people to reflect, their joyful activities are so mundane. One of my most joyful activities is my weekly coffee date with my seven-year-old daughter.

And this started when she was really little, borne out of a very functional routine on my way of dropping her at her preschool, before going into the office, I wanted caffeine. And so, we would stop at the local coffee shop, and it was just 30 minutes that was time for the two of us. She got her hot chocolate, I have my flat white, we munch on croissants, and we’re chatting. It’s like the two of us together.

And this routine, we turned into this treasured ritual. And we actually went, today is Thursday, we went this morning. Four years later, we still do this. And it’s just 30 minutes but it’s so powerful in affecting how satisfied I am and how happy I feel in my days. And what’s interesting is often though happiness comes out of these ordinary moments, so often we miss them because we’re distracted or because we’re subject to hedonic adaptation, that is our tendency to get used to things over time.

When we do the same thing again and again, we are with the same person over and over, we stop noticing them so much. They don’t have as strong of an emotional impact on us. Now, it’s good that we adapt in the face of negative experiences and activities because it makes us more resilient, but it’s bad when we adapt to the good stuff because we stop noticing, because it leads us to miss out on the joy that’s right there in the time we’re spending.

And I share a couple in Happier Hour a couple of exercises or strategies to help offset hedonic adaptations so that we do continue to find joy in our joys in life, and one of them is counting times left. Because, so often, because these are everyday experiences, we assume they will continue to happen every day just in the way that they are, but that’s not true. Time passes and our circumstances change.

And so, in counting times left, first identify this activity that brings you joy, then calculate, “How many times have you done this in your life thus far?” So, for my coffee days with my daughter, Lita, we’ve done it for over a bunch of years now. And then counting that as well as during my maternity leave where every day I would bundle it up and go to the coffee shop for sanity. I calculated we’ve gone on about 400 coffee days together so far.

Then the next step is, calculate, “How many times do you have left in your life to do this, accounting for factors that will change in your circumstances?” And if your joyful activity involves someone else, accounting for factors that will change in their circumstances. And so, I calculate it, so Lita is now seven. When she’s 12, I suspect she’ll probably rather go to the coffee shop with her friends instead of me. And then she’s going to go off to college, and then she’s going to go live in New York, wherever it is. I calculate we have about 230 coffee dates together left.

And then the last step in this exercise is calculate, of your total times, what percentage do you have left. I realize that Lita and I have 36% of our coffee dates together left. That’s way less than half and she’s only seven years old. Now, what’s the effect of this? It is, at first, you’re like, “Meh, sad.” But the positive effect far outweighs any initial sadness because what it does is it motivates me to make the time. This is a golf ball, I put it in my schedule. I am not taking meetings before 9:00 o’clock on Thursday mornings. Actually, it’s summer so we could do it on Thursday now that she’s not in preschool anymore and school starts earlier. It’s moved to Saturday mornings, in general.

But it makes me make the time. No matter how busy the week seems, that we spend this half hour together. We prioritize it. Also, it affects how I engage during that time because, knowing that this time is precious, knowing that these dates, these minutes that we have together are, in fact, limited in this sort of lovely connecting way, I’m like my phone is away. So, this is a no-phone zone.

And, also, that sort of constant to-do list that runs in my mind, always thinking about planning for what’s next gets quieted because I’m like, “This is the time that matters, not what’s happening next.” I draw my attention back to the here and now so that I don’t miss it.

And, as I said, from the outset, it is those connections, those relationships that are so crucial to our happiness, whether it’s having a best friend at work, or having those people in our lives whom we love and who we feel loved by, that it absolutely makes it feel worthwhile.

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

Cassie Holmes
I love the quote by Abraham Lincoln, or he’s said to have quoted, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” because what I think that shows is that happiness is a choice, and if we’re intentional with how we spend our time, we can choose to be happier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Cassie Holmes
Well, my own book, Happier Hour but also, I love reading fiction. And there’s a book called The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which references the life and work of Virginia Woolf, but it’s actually I love the novel because it picks up on sort of what I said today where there’s so much life that is lived in those moments, lived within the hours of our days that color our sense of satisfaction and purpose and the story of our lives.

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

Cassie Holmes
I would point them to my website, CassieMHolmes.com, and there is where my research is, you can find more information about my book Happier Hour. And then I am on LinkedIn, so you can connect with me and follow me on LinkedIn. I’m not on other social media because, in my time tracking, I found that wasn’t fun time for me.

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

Cassie Holmes
I would say identify those hours or those activities within your day that bring you that sense of purpose and joy, and invest in those times wholly and protect time for those times.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cassie, this has been a treat. Thank you. I wish you many happier hours.

Cassie Holmes
Thank you so much for having me, Pete. This was fun.

Jul 13
0

881: How to Find Focus, Fight Distraction, and Boost Your Attention Span with Dr. Gloria Mark

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Dr. Gloria Mark shares her science-based solutions for overcoming distractions and finding more flow. 

You’ll Learn:

  1. The biggest hurdle for your attention span
  2. What drains your attention span tank–and how to refuel it
  3. How to design your day to maximize productivity

About Gloria

Dr. Gloria Mark has published over 150 papers in the top journals and conferences in the fields of human-computer interactions (HCI) and Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and is author of the book Multitasking in the Digital Age. Her work on multitasking has appeared in outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Atlantic, the BBC, and many others. Her newest book, Attention Span: Find Focus and Fight Distraction, is out now.

She is the Chancellor Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD from Columbia University in psychology. She has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. Her primary research interest is in understanding the impact of digital media on people’s lives and she is best known for her work in studying people’s multitasking, mood and behavior while using digital media in real world environments.

Resources Mentioned

Gloria Mark Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Gloria, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Gloria Mark
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to talk about your book Attention Span: Find Focus and Fight Distraction. But, first, I want to hear a little bit about how you did not start your career in the science research professor world but rather in the art world. What’s the story here and how did you make the switch?

Gloria Mark
That’s right. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I studied art, never thought I would be doing anything except art. Graduated from art school and then I discovered the hard reality of making a living as an artist. Now, it turns out that I was also good at math and science, and I also found those topics interesting. So, I made the switch into a science field but there is a story there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, do tell.

Gloria Mark
Yeah, I was originally just going to do a terminal master’s degree in biostatistics because you could get really good jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
It sounds like a good job field.

Gloria Mark
So, I thought that’s a relatively easy thing for me to do. But while I was at the University of Michigan, I applied for a job as a research assistant because I needed a job, and I walked into the office of Dr. Manfred Kochen. And he asked me, can I code? No. Do I know network theory? No. Do I know Fuzzy Set Theory? Nope. And I started to walk out, and he said, “Wait a minute. Stop. What can you do?” And I said, “I can paint.” And he said, “Well, come back in.” And he said before he got his Ph.D. in math at MIT, he studied art at The Art Student League in New York. And we talked about art for the next two hours.

And then he said, “Do you think you could do research on the discovery process of artists?” And I was very young and naïve and bold, and I said, “Of course, I could.” And that’s how I began to study cognitive psychology, and before I knew it, I ended up getting a Ph.D. in psychology, and that’s what I’ve been working on since.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. That’s really cool. And I’m excited to hear your insights and wisdom gained from a career spent in this domain, particularly in the zone of attention, and us humans and how we pay attention, and can do that better, and distraction and that stuff. Could you share any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about attention over the course of your career?

Gloria Mark
Oh, I’ve made a number of surprising discoveries. Maybe one of the most surprising things was actually how short our attention spans are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lay it on us. I’ve heard about goldfish. Let’s get this straight, the straight info from the source.

Gloria Mark
Yeah, the goldfish result is not exactly correct, so that shouldn’t be our starting point. So, when I first started tracking attention, and I’ve been studying this empirically, so using methods like computer logging techniques. We actually started studying this using stopwatches where we would shadow people and click the stopwatch every time they switch their attention. When we first started doing this 20 years ago, attention averaged about two and a half minutes on any screen. I was astounded at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Too big, too small.

Gloria Mark
Yeah, I couldn’t believe it was that short. We continued tracking attention. Around 2012, we found it to average 75 seconds, and in the last few years, it’s averaged 47 seconds. And also, others have replicated the result. And so, again, these are all done with objective measures. We’re not asking people to self-report how short their attention span is or how long it is, but we’re actually measuring the length of time people’s attention is on any screen, computer or phone.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m intrigued here, look, I’m the sort of guy who, though not a researcher, will frequently want to read the full text of the scientific journal article and be frustrated I can’t get it for free online.

Anyway, all that’s to say I’m actually very interested in the details of how you conduct this research. What are you observing on the screen? And what are we seeing was two and half minutes, and now is 47 seconds?

Gloria Mark
Yeah. So, let me back up a little bit and say that most psychologists tend to bring people into a laboratory to study them. So, they create this simulated environment, this model of the world inside of a laboratory, and then they perform tests. But I thought that if we’re studying attention on our devices, it’s so much important to study what people do in the course of their everyday lives. Like, why should we pull people out of their environment? So, let’s go to where people are.

So, I created what I call living laboratories, where I used a variety of different kinds of sensors. So, these are measures that are not obtrusive. They don’t interfere with how you do work, such as computer logging techniques that will log the length of time a screen is in the foreground, and it’ll log that in the background.

We have people use wearable devices. We’ve had people wear heart rate monitors. We have had people use wrist wearables to get measures of stress. And we’ve had people wear these cameras that are called SenseCams, very lightweight cameras, you wear around your neck that can record photos. They take continuous photos so that you can then detect who people are speaking to. Are they having a face-to-face conversation? Or, are they rather online?

We sync together all these measures in real time so that we create a fairly comprehensive picture of what people are doing on their devices when they’re at work or if they’re at home. Most of the time, we’ve done this in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, that’s intriguing. So, we’re putting together a picture based on logging in the background what’s happening on the machines, as well as the photos. And so, I’m thinking, we had Dr. Amishi Jha on the show earlier, and she talked about the SART, the sustained attention response test. It sounds like maybe that’s the main difference in terms of constructing a laboratory in which you come on in.

And so, what I’ve heard is like those results are actually somewhat stable over time. Like, hey, by that measure of attention span, it looks like it’s about the same. However, you’re telling me – was it in vivo, what’s the right word, science-y?

Gloria Mark
In vivo, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
In vivo, yeah, got it. Feeling good. In vivo, we see a substantial decline from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds. Is that a fair state of play under the two different ways of looking at things?

Gloria Mark
Yes, that’s right, because, don’t forget, when people are using their devices, think of everything that’s happening in their environment. So, they’re trying to stay focused on their tasks, they’re dealing with email, they have this urge to check social media, they have people interrupting their office, they’re experiencing stress, some of it might be chronic stress.

You’ve got career trajectories that people are worried about. Someone might’ve had a conflict in the workplace. So many things are going on and it’s just not possible to simulate all of that inside of a laboratory. And laboratory research is great if there’s a particular thing you want to test in an ideal kind of environment. So, something where you won’t have variables that can affect the thing that you’re trying to study, then it’s great for that. But if we’re talking about what really happens with attention in the real world when people are at work, this is what we see.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the human capacity to pay attention is relatively the same as it’s been for decades but the real-life experience of how we pay attention has declined dramatically. Like, the vast majority of attention span has been decimated. It sounds like two-thirds reduction there. And so, when did we have two and a half minutes? And when did we have 47 seconds? What’s the rough timeline history for us?

Gloria Mark
Yeah. So, we started doing the research in 2003. It was first published in 2004. That was two and a half minutes. The 47 seconds, this is not just my work. Again, it’s been replicated by others through the pandemic. So, the last study that was done actually was published in 2020, and we find the estimates ranging from 44 seconds to 50 seconds, and 47 seconds is the average of those studies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, Gloria, this seems like a big deal for our species, can you contextualize this for us? What does this mean? What is the implication of living lives this way?

Gloria Mark
Yeah, there are a lot of implications. First of all, this kind of fast attention shifting, it’s associated with stress, and we know that, and that’s been documented. We know in laboratory settings, when people are performing, when they’re multitasking, we know that their blood pressure rises, both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. There’s a physiological marker in the body that indicates that people are stressed.

In my research, when we measure stress in vivo in the real world, we see a very strong correlation between fast shifting of attention and stress going up, and that’s measured by heart rate monitors. We’ve also used wearables to measure heart rate.

Pete Mockaitis
And, if I may, is the physiological marker something like cortisol or heart rate variability, or what are we looking at?

Gloria Mark
It’s a more complicated marker, and it’s probably not something that listeners have heard of.

Pete Mockaitis
Gloria, I might very well get my blood tested for it. So, lay it on us.

Gloria Mark
So, we know that fast shifting of attention leads to the decreased secretion of immunoglobulin A reactivity, and that’s known as a marker of stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the fast attention shifting is associated with increased stress. Well, then this kind of makes me think of maybe a little bit of a reinforcing loop. Might the increased stress also impact the way we can pay attention?

Gloria Mark
Absolutely. When we’re stressed, we’re not making the best use of our attentional resources. Absolutely. And it’s harder to focus. Another impact of this fast attention switching is that it leads to what’s called a switch cost. And a switch cost is the extra amount of time that it takes for you to reorient to a new task when you switch. So, it’s not like you can immediately switch to a new task, dive in and get focused right away, but it takes some time for you to get into this new task.

And the best way that I can explain it is by using a metaphor. Imagine that you’ve got a whiteboard inside of your mind, and every time you’re switching tasks, you’re erasing the mental model of the task that you just did, and you’re rewriting a new mental model for the new task. And just like in the real world, when you erase a whiteboard, sometimes you can’t erase it completely and it leaves a residue. And that can also happen in our mind.

And so, imagine you’re reading the news, and you read about some horrific catastrophe, and then you try to go back to work, and that stays with you. Or, you’ve just had an email and discovered that the deadline is a lot sooner than you thought it would be. That stays with you and it affects your ability to focus on the next task, leaves a residue.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, the task switching, leave a residue, we increase stress. What are some of the other implications?

Gloria Mark
Well, another really bad implication is that switching attention so fast leads to errors. So, we know, again, from laboratory research, decades of laboratory research, people make more errors when they’re switching their attention between different tasks. There was a study done with physicians not too long ago, where they observed physicians when they multitask.

So, they shifted their attentions, they’re continually being interrupted by nurses, by other physicians, patient queries, and they made, out of over 200 different prescriptions that they wrote, they made roughly like 80% to 90% errors in the prescribing. And some of those were very serious errors in terms of writing the wrong drug or the wrong dosage.

Pete Mockaitis
So, 80% of the prescriptions were wrong?

Gloria Mark
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
In a highly distracted, interrupted condition.

Gloria Mark
Do you want me to tell you the exact number?

Pete Mockaitis
Please.

Gloria Mark
So, in 2018, there was a study done of physicians, looking at the effects of them multitasking, which is shifting their attention rapidly. And physicians, of course, are distracted pretty often. They’re distracted by nurses, by other doctors, patients. And in this study, it was found that out of 239 prescriptions that the physicians wrote, 208 of them showed errors.

And most of these errors were just incomplete prescriptions but 12 of those were really severe in the sense of writing the wrong drug or the wrong dosage. So, there can be very serious consequences to multitasking. Let me also point out that people think multitasking can lead us to perform better. The idea of multitasking, of doing two things at the same time, is a myth. Humans cannot perform two things at the same time. What we are doing is shifting our attention rapidly between different tasks. And that’s what we picked up when we studied people’s attention on screens.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, with these prescriptions in the interrupted condition, the good majority of them were errors, most of those inconsequential, so I guess that’s nice. And then in the uninterrupted condition, do physicians get it right, I mean, 99 plus percent of the time?

Gloria Mark
So, this study was done in situ, which means in the real world, and so they didn’t have a condition where physicians were not interrupted.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re never not distracted.

Gloria Mark
Right. So, they couldn’t really compare what physicians do if they’re in a perfectly peaceful environment without distractions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, increased stress, switching costs, residue. And then maybe can you show us the light on the other side? Maybe is there a cool story of someone who improved their attention span and saw cool results?

Gloria Mark
Well, there are cases. So, there are ways that we can regain agency over our attention. And people very often will tell me that some of the techniques that we’ve discovered do work for people, and they’ve been able to focus better. It’s really important to consider that when you’re shifting your attention so fast, it affects our wellbeing. It leads to higher stress. And as you pointed out, we get into this cycle where, if we get more stressed, it becomes even harder to focus.

And so, people have reported the benefits, for example, of being able to take, really, significant breaks. Also, the benefits of becoming aware of when you’re starting to feel immensely tired, and taking a break, pulling back to replenish. Because by doing less, by pulling back, we can actually do more and we can be more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say significant break, what does that mean in terms of length or approach, like what you’re doing?

Gloria Mark
Yeah. So, first of all, let me talk about when is a good time to take a break. So, it turns out that people are not able to have extensive nonstop focus. And if you search the internet, you’ll see a lot of sayings that advertise, “Use this technique and you’ll have nonstop focus,” “Ten hours of nonstop focus,” “Hours of nonstop focus.” It’s just not humanly possible. Why? Because people have a limited capacity of attentional resources. You can think of it as a tank.

We start our day with a tank of attentional resources, things we do over the day drain our resources. Focusing drains our resources. Shifting our attention very rapidly, that also drains our resources because of the switch costs that we talked about and because of the stress. And so, we have this limited capacity for attention.

What can we do to optimize our attention? Well, we can take breaks. Now, first of all, starting your day with really good quality sleep gives you a jumpstart on your attention, and you can start your day with a full tank of resources, or nearly full tank. So, you would be in really good shape to start your day off with a good night’s sleep.

Now, people tend to have a peak of focus around mid-morning. Most people, for them, it’s 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning but it depends on your chrono type. So, if you’re an early type, your peak focus will be much earlier. If you’re a late type, your peak focus will be later. People tend to have a second peak in the afternoon, usually mid-afternoon between 2:00 and 3:00. Again, it depends on your chrono type, if you’re an early type or late type.

Now, it’s important to understand when your peak focus time is, and you plan your breaks around that peak focus time. So, you want to make sure that you’re really well-rested and that you’re alert before it’s time for you to really dive into doing that hard work. And after working for a while, it’s really important to probe yourself and understand whether you’re starting to become mentally exhausted. And if you are, it’s time for a break.

Now, you can take quick breaks, 10-minute breaks. Those would be very useful. The best break of all that we know from research is to walk outside for 20 minutes in nature, and that’s the best replenishment that we can have for our attentional resources. I realize that not everyone can do it. If it’s the middle of winter and you’re living in the northeast, you may not be able to simply walk outside in nature.

I live in California, so, of course, it’s a lot easier for me to do that year-round. So, if you can’t go outside, you can at least move around. Take a walk, move around, make sure you’re focusing on things at a distance. You don’t want to be walking around using your smartphone, checking your email. Really detach, pull away, and make sure you have really one, two, or three significant breaks a day like that. And make sure that you plan those breaks around the time that you’re really starting to feel that your mental resources are getting exhausted.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There we go. So, pay attention to chrono types when you’re feeling alert and when you’re not, and then take those significant breaks. We don’t have unlimited attention. To the sleep point, can you tell me, does it matter a lot or a little if, let’s say, an ideal amount of sleep for a person is seven and a half hours but, on a given night, shucks, they only got 6.2 hours? Is that a little deal or a big deal?

Gloria Mark
So, one night of poor sleep is not going to make that much of a difference. What will make a difference, if you consecutively acquire what’s called sleep debt. And sleep debt, it’s like if you keep removing money from your bank account and you’ve got more expenses that you have to pay than you have money for, that’s debt. And same thing happens with sleep debt.

And we’ve done in our research, we found that as sleep debt accumulates, people have a harder and harder time paying attention. So, if you’re looking at sleep debt accumulating over a week, you see people’s attention spans getting lower and lower over the course of the week. So, it’s really important not to let sleep debt accumulate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’d also like to get your view in terms of the amount of attention resources we have. We can’t do for 10 hours straight, like this is not possible even with whatever miracle supplement is being sold. Roughly, what is reasonable? If we are well-rested and we’re going to attend to something for as long as is reasonably humanly possible, what kind of time ranges are we talking about here?

Gloria Mark
So, I think two hours. If you can get two hours of focus at a stretch, that’s pretty good. That’s really good. It depends on a number of things. It depends how intrinsically motivated you are. If you’re really motivated in what you’re doing, you’ll be able to spend longer time. Time will seem like it’s flying by. If you’re less intrinsically motivated, it’s going to be more work for you to try to stay focused.

But think about two hours, but don’t despair. If you can only get 30 minutes of focus, that’s fine as long as you make sure you take a break, get yourself replenished, and then you can go back and try it in 30-minute segments. And so much of it depends on the nature of the work as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then by focusing, if there were an exercise, so we talked about the rest portion of this, sleep well, take breaks, watch when you’re sharpest in terms of attention based on your chrono type, are there any sort of exercises or practices we could do to bring us? If we’re on the 47-second world, what could bring us back to a two-and-a-half-minute world?

Gloria Mark
So, I practice what I call meta-awareness as an exercise. And this actually comes from mindfulness, which you’ve probably heard of, many of your listeners have heard of. During the pandemic, my university offered a course in mindfulness, and I find it very, very helpful for helping me relax, helping me fall asleep.

But I also realized that when I’m on my devices, I can also use a similar kind of technique. I’ve adapted it for the way we use our devices, which is learning to become aware of the present because that’s what mindfulness is about. It teaches you how to focus on the present.

So many of things we do when we’re on our devices are unconscious. So, I look at my phone and I have an urge to grab it, or I have this unconscious desire to switch to social media, or to switch to news. I’m a news junkie. I read a lot of news. Meta-awareness is probing yourself to become aware of these urges and to recognize them.

And so, I’ve learned to be able to recognize when I have this urge to switch screens, and I can reflect on it, and I can ask myself, “Why do I have this urge to go to social media?” It’s usually because I’m bored or because I’m procrastinating. And once I become aware of this urge, I can make this unconscious action conscious. I can bring it to my conscious attention. I can come up with a plan.

And my plan is usually of the form, “Gloria, spend 30 more minutes on this task and then you can be rewarded and go and check the news.” And so, learning to probe yourself is so valuable, and it’s really a way to gain mastery over your attention, and to be able to be intentional and to make decisions about where you want to be able to focus and for how long.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, then we become aware of the urge and the causes and make a plan. That’s great. Any other key interventions that are great for improving our attention span and abilities?

Gloria Mark
Yeah, another very valuable technique is to practice what’s called forethought. And forethought is imagining how your current actions will affect your future self. And what makes the most sense for me is to imagine how my current actions are going to affect myself later in the day, say, at 7:00 p.m. And if you’re a person who can easily spend 30 minutes to an hour on social media, or surfing the web, first, visualize your end of the day and where you want to be.

And I’m betting you want to feel rewarded and you want to feel peaceful, you want to feel fulfilled. And imagine yourself sitting on the couch, reading your favorite book, watching your favorite show, drinking a glass of wine. And the more concrete that visualization is, the more powerful of a tool it is to get you to stay on track in the present.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, if I may on the forethought. So, the approach there is to visualize ourselves in a future moment wherein we have successfully completed the things that we wanted to attend to. And so, it sounds like this isn’t so much your dramatic final victory, you’re being hoisted, or Gatorades being doused on you, but rather, “Hey, I finished this day and I accomplished the things I wanted to in this day, and I can feel a quiet pride satisfaction, kind of whatever flavor of goodness,” is there for you at the other end of the effort.

Gloria Mark
That’s right. And we shouldn’t undermine this experience at the end of the day because that’s pretty valuable. Having a day where you feel fulfilled and having the luxury of being able to relax at the end of the day, that’s quite powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. And you have another.

Gloria Mark
Yes. So, attention is goal-directed, and that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize. We pay attention according to what our goals are. So, if my goal is I want to finish writing an article, I’m going to be writing that article. That’s where my attention is. If my goal is I want to relieve boredom, then I’m probably going to be playing a game or going on social media. And so, it’s so important to stay aware of what our goals are.

I did research with colleagues at Microsoft Research, and they developed a very simple chatbot that asks people two very simple questions at the beginning of each day. The first question is, “What is your task-goal for the day? What do you want to accomplish today?” The second question was, “How do you want to feel by the end of the day?” So, that’s an emotional goal.

So, at the beginning of each day, people were reminded of their task-goal and their emotional goal. And the result was that people stayed on track more effectively after being asked those questions. But what we also discovered was that these effects don’t last very long. It might last one hour or a few hours. And the reason they don’t last so long is goals slip from our minds. They can slip so easily.

And so, what I’ve learned is that it’s really important to keep reinforcing our goals. So, whatever it takes, if you have to write goals on a Post-it Note and make sure it’s in your field of view, or put it on your phone where you can see that goal. So, don’t let our goals slip from our minds, is the message.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, you mentioned Microsoft and research, so I’ve got to ask you, the attention expert. I had read a study, I think it was done with Microsoft folks, and it said when they were distracted, they shifted their attention from one thing. It took them an average of 24 minutes to return to the thing they were doing. I’d love it if you could share. Is that true or accurate? Is there nuance to it? And is that just the way all of us have to be or can we shorten that?

Gloria Mark
So, first of all, there is something that’s not accurate. The study was not done at Microsoft Research, but the study was my study.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. We’re setting the record straight. Here we are, Gloria.

Gloria Mark
Yes, but you’d be surprised how factoids can change.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it.

Gloria Mark
Yeah. So, this was a study that I did, and this was with a graduate student of mine, Victor Gonzales, and this was done at various tech companies, so financial analysis companies, software companies. And it turns out that if you look at people’s attention spent on a task, not just on a screen, like you can switch screens very rapidly, every 47 seconds from email, to Word doc, to Excel, to Google Search.

But if you look at the level of a task, how long do people spend on any task? And granted, they might be switching their attention within that task. For example, I write papers for a living, and I might have my attention on a Word doc, and then I’m switching to read an article, and then I’m switching to look up something on the web, and I’m switching, switching, switching, but it’s all the same task.

So, we might ask, “Maybe it’s not so bad to be interrupted if your attention stays within the same framework of a single task.” Well, it turns out that if you’re interrupted from any particular task, there’s a pattern that we find in the data. And what happens is that people’s attention is then switched to another task.

They work on that, and then another, and then another. And then they start to work on a fourth task, and then go back and pick up the original interrupted task. That’s a 25 and a half-minute gap on average. People spend, on average, 10 and a half minutes on a task before switching to something else. That’s a big switch, to really switch to a completely different task.

Now, what happens? I was describing, they switch, and switch again, and switch again, and switch again. These are cognitive shifts in our minds. We’re not just shifting doing one single thing for 25 and a half minutes, and then coming back, but our attention keeps getting diverted. And so, let’s go back and think about that tank of mental resources, our limited precious mental resources.

They’re just draining because it requires effort to have to keep reorienting to these new tasks and trying to understand, “Okay, what am I doing now? Where did I leave off?” and so on. So, it’s a lot of effort that’s involved but it’s 25 and a half minutes on average to go back to an interrupted task.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, during those 25 and a half minutes, they’re not just fiddling around on Facebook. They’re doing other tasks in the interim, yet there is a cost of that attention switching. And so, Gloria, can you share with us what is misrepresented when this research is shared in factoid format in popular media?

Gloria Mark
So, a lot of people, first of all, they’re not aware that we’re talking at the level of a task, so they tend to think of, I mean, we’re interrupted all the time. If I’m doing email, I can get interrupted, or I can get interrupted from Facebook, for that matter. But they tend to think that there’s just some single thing that’s going on but in between, and people are coming back to that original task, so there’s a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. When, really, it’s a multi-step journey. Okay. And it sounds like that is what we observe but it certainly doesn’t have to be the norm. If I’m, say, working in a home office, I get a knock on the door from my wife, she says, “Can you take care of the spider or this very heavy thing?” it is entirely possible for me to do the thing, return within two minutes, and return to my task in far less than 25 and a half minutes, but I have utilized some of my attention resource tank in executing those switches.

Gloria Mark
That’s right, yeah. And, of course, if it’s a minor interruption, like taking care of a spider, assuming you’re not afraid of spiders, then you should be able to come right back and pick up your task without too much of an effort.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, as I’m thinking about that scenario, I’ll tell you, this is a quirk of me. I don’t know, I think I’m also easily hypnotized. I remember the stage hypnotist in college picked me out probably for a reason. And sometimes I’ll get really kind of mesmerized in the work I’m doing, and it’s really fun. It’s a groove and a flow, and I’m thinking about, “The implication of this, but what about that? But then what about this?” like several layers of implication, cause and effect.

And, Gloria, do you know if this, in the attention research literature, is this a personality domain that people can vary on? And does it mean anything? Or, is this just some whole another thing I got going on?

Gloria Mark
There are individual differences in people’s ability to be engaged in something. And, yes, some people can be…it’s more easy for them to get deeply absorbed in something than others. There’s actually a test you can do.
So, there is a scale that you can use, it’s called the Tellegen Absorption Scale. And this has been shown to measure traits of absorption. And some people have this uncanny ability to be very deeply absorbed in things. For example, when people read mystery, some people can become so absorbed in reading the mystery that they actually hear the footsteps on the stairs. They can visualize the imagery a lot better than others. So, you might be one of these individuals who scores at the extremes on the Tellegen Absorption Scale.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Gloria, tell us, are there any other key tools, tactics, interventions, things people who want to be awesome at their job should know or do to improve their ability to pay attention?

Gloria Mark
Yeah. So, it’s about how you plan your day. So, most of us, we’ve been brought up with the idea that you create a schedule for your day, and most people will write down the tasks that they have to do, and they’ll assign a time to doing it. That’s the way most of us, it’s how we’ve been brought up. It’s what we do. But I’d like to turn that around and talk about designing your day.

So, rather than scheduling tasks with a time, think back to when I was talking about that people have natural rhythms of attention. There are certain times of the day when people are at their peak focus, and other times when they’re in valleys, their focus is not great. Think about your unique times of peak focus and design your day so that you’d leverage those times to do tasks that are the hardest, that require the most creativity because you will do your best.

So, rather than creating these artificial schedules that ignore our attentional capacities, think instead of your personal rhythm and when you function best. And so, if I have, say, to work on a paper, I might plan the times to work on the paper for mid-morning for me, mid-afternoon for me, and then, of course, I have other things to do. I have to write emails, do what I call subordinate work, filling out forms, things like that. I will do those when I have these valleys of attention because it doesn’t require that much effort.

So, design your day, and also design your day with what I call empty space. There is a Japanese expression that’s called “yohaku no bi” which refers to the beauty of empty space. And I came up with this idea from when I was an artist. Because when I was an artist, I learned about the concept of negative space. It’s this space that surrounds a figure, and it’s as important as the figure itself. It’s what makes the figure shine. It’s what makes it vibrant and gives it energy.

And when you design your day, make sure you design empty space into your day, time that you can use for contemplation, meditation, for going for a walk, doing rote activity. And rote activity could be things like knitting. Some person talked about how he loves to just throw a ball against the screen. That serves to relax him and helps him de-stress. There’s a lot of things you can do during that time of empty space.

And think about what helps you the most. What I like to do is I do exercise, and I love to go outside and do exercise during that time. It really helps replenish me. So, yeah, don’t pack your day but give your work a chance to breathe so that you can really come back and do your best.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Gloria, now I’d love to hear about your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote with us?

Gloria Mark
Well, I actually have two favorite quotes, and it’s really hard for me to decide which one I like better, so I’ll share both. The first one is by Louis Pasteur, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” And I love that quote. It’s something that’s just benefited me in my whole life. If you have radar for opportunities, and an opportunity comes along, you can pounce on it and grab it.

The second quote comes from an art teacher of mine, and it’s “To have the courage to fail.” And I love this quote because so much of the time we do things that are safe, and we know that they’ll be successful because they’re safe. We’re not taking risks. But if you can have the courage to take that risk, knowing that it’s likely that you will fail, you have the chance to make a great discovery. So, that’s why I like those.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study?

Gloria Mark
Yeah, there is a study done by French scientists, where they had people do hard tasks over a six-hour period. And most of the times when people go into laboratory studies, they’ll do a task for an hour, and they’ll do a hard task and then they’ll take some measurement of how stressed they are or how many hours they made. This was done over six hours.

And what these researchers found was that as people got more exhausted, they became more easily distracted. And so, they were asked questions periodically, “Would you rather have a monetary reward now or would you rather wait, and then you can get even a higher reward? So, take $10 now, if you wait 30 minutes, we’ll give you $15.”

Over the course of the day doing hard tasks for a six-hour period, people became less and less likely to delay gratification and more likely to just grab that money at the time. So, they lost the ability of self-control. And when you lose the ability of self-control, that’s when we become more distracted.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Gloria Mark
I always go back to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s such a powerful book, and it just shows how, if people have purpose, if people have goals, that can really help us perform best in our lives. And it’s just a very powerful message.

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

Gloria Mark
Well, the idea of probing myself is a tool that I’ve learned to constantly probe myself, to ask myself, “Do I feel exhausted? Is it time for a break? Why do I have an urge to switch my attention?” And it’s become second nature, it’s like a muscle that I’ve developed. And I find it to be a very important tool, and it’s very powerful, and it’s very effective for keeping me on task.

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

Gloria Mark
It’s the idea that we have limited attentional resources, and people don’t realize that. People realize that our attention is infinite, we can do so many things, and not worry about consequences. We do have limited mental attentional resources, and we have to pick and choose what we pay attention to.

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

Gloria Mark
Well, you could go to my website www.GloriaMark.com. Everything that I spoke about today in the episode, you can find in my book. It’s called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. And this describes my 20-plus years of research into studying attention with our devices. You can also find me on Twitter @GloriaMark_PhD and also on LinkedIn.

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

Gloria Mark
Final call to action is to gain agency over your attention. So, be a master of your tools, your computers, phones, tablets. Don’t let your tools be the master over you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Gloria, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and pleasant attention.

Gloria Mark
Thank you so much for having me.

May 22
0

867: How to Stop Being Busy and Start Being Strategic with Richard Medcalf

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Richard Medcalf says: "The most important project is the one that no one else is asking for."

Richard Medcalf reveals how to free up time for the strategic activities that will advance your career.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why productivity won’t solve busy-ness
  2. The crucial question that makes you more strategic
  3. The powerful reframe that slashes busywork

About Richard

Richard Medcalf describes himself as “what you get if you were to put a McKinsey consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor and an entrepreneur into a blender”.

He is the founder of Xquadrant, which helps elite leaders reinvent their ‘success formula’ and multiply their impact. His personal clients include CEOs of billion-dollar corporations, successful serial entrepreneurs, and the founders of tech ‘unicorns’.

Richard has advised the C-Suite for over 25 years. After a Masters at Oxford University, where he came top in his year, he joined a premier strategy consultancy and later became the youngest-ever Partner. He then spent 11 years at tech giant Cisco in an elite team reporting to the CEO.

Richard is bi-national English/French, lives near Paris, and is happily married and the proud father of two. He has an insatiable love for spicy food and the electric guitar.

Resources Mentioned

Richard Medcalf Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Richard, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Richard Medcalf
Pete, it’s a pleasure to be back. Thank you for inviting me on the show again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom and your book Making TIME for Strategy: How to be less busy and more successful. I’d love to hear your take. It’s been three years, and what a three-years it’s been since we last spoke, any particular discoveries that have really struck you in this time?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, actually, one thing that’s really struck me is this whole shift of virtual work, which, obviously, blah, blah, blah, everyone’s talked about time and time again, too much now perhaps, but it has exacerbated the problem that I saw everybody was having before, which is being overloaded and being overwhelmed because the barriers have really gone down for so many people.

They’re at home, they’re at work, or they’re everywhere, and there’s more and more stuff coming, and more and more pressures at any one time. It’s the Zoom call phenomenon. You’re on a call one minute, your baby is crying the next minute, everything else. So, I think people have felt a lot of pressure to deliver a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And so, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, I’d love to hear any novel insights you’ve picked up along the way as you’re researching and assembling this?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, one of the studies that I talk about there, this sense, especially over the last two, three years, there’s just so much coming at us all the time from every direction. I realized this is something which almost every leader and every individual contributor, frankly, is feeling these days because the boundaries aren’t there. I call it the infinity trap because we have an infinity of things, Pete, now.

You want to chat with somebody? You’ve got infinite social media opportunities to go and speak to somebody. You want to consume content? You’ve got an infinite amount of videos, podcasts, books to read, blogs to consume, you name it, movies to stream. You’ve got an infinite number of messages coming into your inbox, tasks from your manager, from your colleagues, from clients, or from anybody who wants to get an email into your inbox or message into your Slack or Microsoft Teams, so, it never stops.

We think we can just kind of plow through it but you can’t beat infinity, and I think that’s what people have been suffering from, and why I see everybody around me is crazy busy these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Infinity trap. Well-said. I think it was Matthew Kelly, in one of his books or talks, said, long and ago and it hit me, he’s like, “You’ll never…” and he’s Australian so he’s got a charming accent, and he’s like, “There’ll never be a moment in your life…” and he’s like, “All right, I’m all caught up now. All the things that are on my list are now off of it. Like, that just will never happen, and it’s good to just see…”

Richard Medcalf
But we say this, though.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, hear it, say it.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, we say this all the time. We don’t say it quite like that. We say, “It’ll be quieter next quarter.” A number of people say that, “Oh, Richard, I’m really crazy busy right now, so busy. Yeah, it’s a bit difficult time but next quarter, I’ve got some time opening up in my diary.” I’m like, “Of course, you’ve got time. It’s 12 weeks away. Of course, it’s not full up yet,” and we just keep telling ourselves that, somehow, it’s just a bit busy right now, and it’s going to get better. And does it ever get better, really?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a really good reality check right there in terms of “Is now really especially busy?” And I guess, I think sometimes that feels true in terms of cyclical industries like, I’m thinking, accountants in the US near April. All right. Fair enough. It really is a particularly crazy busy time. And you know it, and you’ll feel it. But in more of a typical workflow world, it’s sort of just always true that many stakeholders are requesting many things from you, and that’s just every day of the year.

Richard Medcalf
And when you least expect it, you get, even your accountants or your finance team that you’re talking about, they get past the yearend, and then, “Oh, no, there’s an M&A going on. Now there’s an order.” Who knows? So, I agree there’s a cyclical part to business but, actually, when we’re on the down cycle, there’s always other projects that come in. So, yeah, I think we have this.

And I talk about the perfect day. We often say, “It’s not the perfect day right now to get started on whatever. So, you know what, I’ve got more important things I need to get to. I know that but today is not a great day because I’ve got my year end, because I’ve got this project going on, because COVID has just hit, because there’s a macroeconomic shakedown happening somewhere in the world.”

So, we kind of keep waiting often, we say, “Well, I’m really busy right now but I can’t quite sort out that busyness. It’s just happening to me, but give me next week, it will be better, or next month, it will be better, or next quarter, it will be better, and then we’ll get there.” But that’s like me, I’m going on a diet. I struggle to do these things, take on new habits sometimes because I’m waiting for the perfect day, like, “Well, now is not a good day to lose a few pounds because there’s a massive chocolate cake in front of me.”

“Now is not a good day because it’s the weekend,” “Now is not a good day because I’m in a restaurant,” “Now is not a good day because it’s your birthday,” or it’s my birthday, or the weather is nice, or whatever. We keep creating excuses sometimes for not dealing with some of the issues in our life, and it’s a myth. It’s a mirage that we put up. So, when it comes to this subject of busyness, I think we often put off dealing with it because we’re so busy we haven’t got the bandwidth.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s just true. And it’s really kind of potentially vicious cycle there in terms of to do wise prioritization, for me at least, it feels like, emotionally, I need some, I guess I’d call it space, in terms of my brain. Like, there’s the mental-emotional state of being besieged by lots of stuff, it’s kind of like a stress, a narrowing, a tightening vibe. And then there’s the opposite, which is like, “Oh, hey, we’re on a retreat, and we’ve got wide open views and whiteboards or something.”

It’s like, “Ahh, here I can dream and think big, and zero in on what really matters.” And it’s tricky because when you need it most is when you have too much stuff to do, and yet that’s when it’s hardest to execute that kind of thinking.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think that’s right. I talk about war time and peace time. We often think, “Yeah, I’ll do all that stuff in peace time when I haven’t got all this stuff,” just as you said, “when I’m on a desert island and I can just kick back and muse.” The reality is most of our lives is lived in that high stress, high pressure busy environment and we have to make it work there. I think that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, first of all, how are we defining strategy or strategic time here?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, strategy doesn’t have to be corporate strategy, so this is something that we can apply at any level in the organization. We might be the CEO, and I worked with some of the most incredible CEOs on the planet, and it does apply for them doing corporate strategy, but it also applies to the individual contributor and anywhere in between.

And the reason is I’m talking about this strategic, “So, what’s going to move the needle for you?” Let me give you an example. Most of our days, we spend basically doing the same old thing, we do the same thing every week, or every month, or every time we get a new client or a new project.

And so, we get caught into the operational, keeping the lights on, turning the machine. And the strategic is going to be what breaks you out of that pattern, build a new capability, creates a new relationship, basically changes the game for you so that things become easier in the future.

I like to say that this idea of strategic time, it’s actually your number one KPI for your future success. It’s your key performance indicator. If you want to know how successful you will be in the next three years, or one year, three years, five years, then you need to look at how much time you’re investing in your future success, and that has to be looked at week on week, “This week, how much time did I spend, did I invest in making the future better? Or, did I just use all my time on all the day-to-day stuff?” I think that’s the big shift that we need to focus on.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much, investing to make the future better or make things easier. And this brings me back to one of my all-time favorite books that we had one of the authors on the show, Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing, that magical question, “What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?”

And so, here though, you’re really making me think of, I don’t know, compound interests, finance, planting acorns, getting huge trees kinds of things. So, another way to conceptualize it, so that’s really cool.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, that’s right. I like to say, imagine that you’re a business, and, basically, you’re making zero profit, you’re bumbling along month by month, and you’re spending everything that you make, and you don’t have any money left, any margin, to invest in the future. Well, that business is a very precarious business. It can’t really respond to shocks. It’s not really going to get much better because it can’t invest in growth. Growth takes capital.

And so, a business that has no profit isn’t going to be a very successful business. It’s going to keep going very incrementally. Now, compare it with a business that can generate enough extra margin that it can invest in its future, build out new factories, do marketing, do customer acquisition, create new technology platforms, whatever you want. That business is going to go places.

And it’s like, individually, we’re that business. Often, we have no spare margin of time in a week, so how can we invest making the future better? We can’t. Which is why, in the book, I say, you’ve got to start small but you’ve got to start to find a little bit of time that you can reinvest in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you share with us a particularly inspiring story of a professional who found themselves enmeshed in any number of infinity traps, too busy, and then made some changes, invested, put some time into strategy and saw some cool results?

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll give you an example, actually, from my own career, at the very start of my career. I started my career as an analyst in a strategy consulting company, and we were working long hours, like, building basically Excel financial models for our clients, and this is how we got successful, which was bill all sorts of hours to clients, made the company money, and deliver some good piece of analysis.

What I realized after a few months, “You know what, every time we get a new client, we build one of these models, and they’re always different but they’re always kind of similar, and yet we’re building them from scratch each time. They take a long time, there’s lots of potential errors or bugs.”

Pete Mockaitis
I made those errors before, Richard. Flashbacks for review.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, this thing can happen. It also takes a lot of time building out a model from scratch.

So, what I realized is I needed to actually invest in building myself a framework, a template that allowed me to build these models quicker than before. So, when my colleagues were doing all their billed hours, I took some time off customer billing to work late at night sometimes on building my own template. My colleagues thought I was geeking out, that I was just have lost the plot, “Richard, what are you doing? That’s not how you’re going to be successful in our company. You’ve got to bill to clients.” Well, fast-forward two weeks, I’d built a model which would suddenly allow me to do in a morning what they were taking a week to do.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Richard Medcalf
And it was more beautiful, it was less error-prone, it had all the charts built in, it’s more flexible, we could do analyses and scenarios, all the rest of it at the fracture of the time. With that time that I’d freed up, I was then able to invest it in project management, learning how to do business development, sell projects, generally use this time on the next level of activity because I’d already got the base level nailed and systematized.

Now, it wasn’t just because of this, but I ended up becoming the youngest ever partner in that strategy consulting company. I had a great trajectory because I’d figured out, “This is stuff which I shouldn’t be spending my whole life doing. It’s not going to get me to the next level. No one ever gets made partner because they’re spending all their time building the basic Excel models.” And so, it’s that kind of shift, I invested a bit of time, a couple of weeks, and then it freed me up forever after then.

I had another client I was working with on one of my programs recently in finance. He was a finance manager, kind of mid-level, and when he came to me, he said, “I’m just overloaded. I can’t do anything. I’m completely overwhelmed.” And then when we started to get into it and we looked at his time, we found 30% of his time was doing all the finance processes every month – payroll, and sales commissions, and these things, and it was incredibly complicated in his business.

He’d become successful because he had nailed those, he’d mastered it, he’d actually figured out the whole mess, and was able to process it and do it all well. So, he’d become successful because of that but it was now holding him back. So, I said to him, “You’re not going to be made CFO because of your ability to do the monthly payroll.” And he realized this was a gamechanger for him, and he had to shift, otherwise, he was going to get stuck.

So, 30% of his time, where that’s, I think, almost two days a week, a day and a half a week was being stuck on all this stuff. So, we figured out a plan, he didn’t think it was going to be possible to start with, he didn’t think his had what it took, everything else. But within about two months, two or three months, he was able to go to his manager, and say, “Hey, what else shall I take on? I’ve a bit of a spare end here. I’ve got some time.” And he took on extra responsibility in the commercial part of the organization. He got this promotion.

He couldn’t believe at how much he managed to free himself up. It’s because he thought it was just a question of a few tactics that he had to sort, but it wasn’t just a question of tactics. He had to address his mindset, he had to address his influence with his team. These are the deeper-level issues that keep us held back.

So, after we think we can’t do anything else, because we’d looked at the productivity, we’ve applied our Gmail filters, we’ve got a good to-do list, and we think we’re doing all we can, but there’s a whole level of other things that we need to be working on if we’re going to actually free ourselves up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. Thank you. And I would like to see this miracle model template, as the former consultant dork in me would just like to see what that looks like in practice. So, that’s cool. Well, yeah, let’s hear about some of these deeper mindset belief stuff before we get into some tactics associated with shortcut keys or email filters. What’s going on internally that we should really address?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, when you’re really busy, you haven’t got much time, by definition, so you have to work on the number one limiting factor holding you back right now. And that’s really how I structured the book, because the first part of the book actually talks about “What do you actually want to put your time on?” Most people, they don’t actually know what they want to do if they had a free hour, or a free morning, or a free week. They’re not really clear.

And so, when faced with a vague, ambiguous idea of being more strategic versus concrete, specific, and rewarding actions like getting an email off your list, or taking some low-level easy activity done, we’re going to gravitate to the latter. So, the first thing is to really get clear on what is your strategic agenda, what are the questions you want to be asking yourself, the projects you want to do if only you had time.

So, once we figure out what we want to actually focus on, then we have to figure out what’s stopping us from focusing on them, and naturally we tend to go to tactics. We tend to say, “I need to get a better workflow,” and there’s a lot there that we should do but we can never beat infinity with increased productivity. We can’t. It doesn’t work. As I said, infinity is the realm of the gods, and productivity is a mortal’s weapon, a sort. You can’t defeat it, and so we need a different strategy.

And so, actually, in the book, I focus on these four areas, and I was very impressed with myself, I must say, when I realized that they spelt the work TIME. So, there you go, four easy strategies to focus on. The first is tactics, and so there are things we need to focus on there. And perhaps some leaders do it very well, other people, you know what, they do need to kind of get a bit sharpen up on how they deal with meetings, how they deal with incoming tasks, how they deal with incoming messages, what their workflows are.

And, also, whatever you are, if you are over-busy, you do need a tactical plan to extract yourself from all of this in a very short space of time. It’s, like, if your business is losing money, you can’t wait too long. You have to make big changes now so that you become profitable and you can start to grow again. So, the first is tactic.

The second is influence, because if you want to go on a diet, the people that are going to stop you tend to be your family by waving the chocolate cake under your nose, or offering you the alcohol, or whatever it is you’re trying to stop, because the people around us have a certain stake in how we operate. So, at home, if you want to eat differently, well, your family, well, their share their meals with you so it affects them, or they feel guilty if you’re not eating something that they want to eat, if you’re not opening the bottle of wine if they want to a drink or whatever it is.

And so, in the work situation, it’s the same. We have all these stakeholders and no matter what our plan is for being more strategic, we have to face the reality that all around us, we have our boss, our peers in the organization, perhaps our team, who require and expect things from us and have a certain way of relating to us, so we need to better influence and renegotiate their expectations. We need to say, “You know what, you’ve been getting this from me but, actually, it’s not my highest use of my time. To have a bigger impact in the organization, I need to do something differently, so let’s talk about that and figure out a way forward.” So, influence is a big issue.

And then there’s mindset, which is what we believe and think. I can give you a story about mindset, but perhaps one from the framework first. Mindset is clearly important because, often, we just don’t believe we can, or we believe we’re optimum in some ways. Mindset is basically so important because what we believe is necessarily possible or desirable is what governs our behavior. So, if we think that what we’re doing is basically necessarily, basically the only thing we’ve got, the only choice we have, and it’s also kind of desirable in some way, we won’t actually change our behavior.

And then the final part is environment, because if we have a team, then we owe it to ourselves not just to work ourselves but to free our team up so that if we want to delegate, they can actually receive our delegation, or if they’re getting pulled left to right by busy work in the organization that they get to free themselves up and work on their high-value activities. So, environment is all about shaping a culture across the broader organization and being a force of change in the wider business.

So, you have these four areas – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment – and the point I made before is really important. You have to focus on the right one to start with, otherwise you just get frustrated because nothing is changing. If you’ve got the wrong mindset, then all your tactics aren’t going to really make a big difference because you can be locked into the wrong way of working. Or, we haven’t got enough influence, then you might have the best plan possible but you fail to implement the plan because you get pushback from people around you.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you talk about the number one limiting factor, it seems like that rule applies here as well in terms of, “Okay, is it the tactics, the influence, or the mindset, or the environment, that is the number one limiting factor at the moment?” and then you can dig in.

Richard Medcalf
You’re right, really figuring out what the number one limiting factor is really important. So, I’ve actually built a little assessment, I’ll probably link to it later on as we think about it. But what we actually have is about 20 questions, you give a sense of your score on the journey, and you actually can then choose, you’ll actually find out, which score you have into these four areas, and then you can go, “Oh, look, it’s actually mindset. I need to start on mindset.”

And so, the book is actually written to be nonlinear. Now, if you want t o jump straight into mindset, go there if that’s what’s going to be more important. Or, it’s actually, you’ve got the tactics sorted out but influence is holding you back, then perhaps open the book at that chapter and jump in there. So, I think I felt it’s really important because I don’t want to give people another big book to read when they’re very busy. I wanted people to be able to jump in and get pretty quick results.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess this sort of feels like mindset, and it kind of feels like tactics, but I’m thinking of a scenario in which, sure, we’re overwhelmed by requests and firefighting and all of that, and yet, at the same time, I think, often, speaking at least for myself, there’s a thing going on where it’s like maybe it’s kind of energy levels are maybe on the mid to low side, motivation levels or focus levels also on the lower side. It’s like, “You know, I could do that thing but I kind of don’t want to, and there’s something else that’s more interesting at the moment,” even though that thing may well be the most strategically valuable. So, how do you think about this challenge here?

Because I think, in a way, most of us, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we could probably say, “All right, with a little bit of hustle, or staying a little later, or pushing back wisely and diplomatically on a couple of things, we could find that hour to do the thing that’s high, that’s leveraged.” But then it’s hard to actually do it, it’s like, “Ooh, I found an hour, I just want to sleep or relax.”

Maybe this is me talking with three young kids at home. So, how do we think about that vibe in the world of mindset, motivation, energy, focus, just the ability to summon our personal power to go forth and crush it?

Richard Medcalf
Well, probably, if you leave it to the end of your day, it’s probably not going to be a good point because you’re going to go, “Oh, I’m tired.” So, I think you do need to know when you’re energized and make your success early. So, if you figure out what’s that high-leveraged activity, get it in your diary before all the operational tactics come, all the operational issues come.

If you can say, “I’m just going to not even be on the radar, not even be on communications activities for the first hour of my day,” imagine what you could do if you did an hour a day, that’d be five hours a week, on this activity that’s going to move the needle. So, I think respecting energy, I think that’s one place because then, actually, the things which fall off the, “Ahh, I need to go home now,” or, “I’m too tired,” they’ll happen later on in the day, and, hopefully, those will then be the lower-value activities that you end up pushing back or procrastinating on.

But I think, Pete, to your point, the first thing I would ask in that situation isn’t so much when in the day you’re doing it, though I think it is important for the reasons I mentioned, it’s more, “Are you really sold on the value of doing it? Are you really sold on the value?” because the first sale is always to our self. One of the things I say in the book is the most important project is the one that no one else is asking for.

No one asked me to build that financial model in my consulting company. Nobody was asking that finance manager I mentioned to actually delegate the payroll activities and the sales commissions activities. He was doing them fine, but that was his pathway to more impact as it was mine. And so, if we’re going to do that, we really have to sell ourselves because no one is going to make us do it. That’s almost the definition of the strategic, is no one is asking us to do it. We are taking the initiative.

So, we really have to go, “Is this really important? And what’s the picture of success? If I don’t do this, what’s my trajectory going to be like? If do do this, what becomes possible?” We need to really understand the stakes. And if it doesn’t inspire us, it probably is the wrong project in some ways.

So, I always start by inspiring ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that notion, the most important project is the one no one is asking for, that’s heavy. It seems often true. I guess, occasionally, the most important project might be something someone happens to be asking for. That’s my intuition. You can challenge me on that, Richard, if you like. But for the most part, yeah, that really seems to track.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I’m sure there are examples you could come up with, of course, but I think, often, it’s we’re being asked for one thing but, often, what we need to think about is, “How am I getting better at getting better? How am I getting more of this in the future? Or, how am I going to do this without burning out, or whatever?” So, there’s normally something that isn’t being asked in the direct request to us very often.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And so then, when it comes to mindset, any other kind of critical beliefs that you think we need to face head on and readjust?

Richard Medcalf
Well, there’s so many, there’s a bunch of them, and I talk about different ones in the book. It’s personal. Some of us, the people-pleasers, if we’re people-pleasers, we find it hard to say no, but, actually, that’s because we got a tunnel vision. We’re just looking at the person in front of us and what they’re looking for, and we don’t realize that every time we say yes to them, we’re saying no to somebody else.

If I have an idea of serving stakeholders and not pleasing people, pleasing people means I’m just going to say whatever makes you feel good in the moment, or helps the person opposite. So, I think stakeholders means thinking about the bigger picture, “What’s the highest contribution that I can bring?” I’m a big fan of this, contribution rather than fear, rather than anything else, really. If we figure out how we maximize our contribution, make an impact, I think everything else flows from that.

But when we get stuck into perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsiveness, sometimes people get over-responsive, they feel they need to be responding to anything that comes their way, but I’d like to say, “Well, you’re an important person, and if I was reaching out to some other important person, like the president or the CEO, well, I wouldn’t even expect them to drop everything and respond within seconds.” In fact, you’d be worried if they did that. You wouldn’t respect them more; you’d respect them less. And so, why do we think that people will respect us more if we respond immediately to everything?

Actually, we should be focused. Strategic leaders working on big projects, making big things happen, they’re not just waiting around for people to be sending us messages. Now, again, this requires influence. Even with your boss, you can change this but you have to perhaps go, and say, “Look, I’m working on some big projects that we’ve agreed are key for our success. To do that, I need some focused time. And to do that, I need to ask your permission to not reply to all your messages that you’re sending me on Slack on a Monday morning between 9:00 and 11:00. Is that okay?”

And either they’ll say, “Yeah, fine. I’m glad you’re really focusing. That’s great,” or they’ll say, “No, no, no, I can’t live without you.” If they say that, then you might say, “Okay. Well, what else could work so that I can differentiate the urgent from the not quite so urgent?” because you perhaps agreed, like, “Pick up the phone and call me on a Monday morning if you need me, and I’ll leave you on my VIP list. But if you send me a message, I’ll get back to you at 11:00 o’clock.”

So, you can start to create agreements with the people around you in order to address these things. But, for me, the focus is always on contribution. If you put contribution first, then that provides a lens through which to evaluate all the different activities we’re doing. So, mindset, it does really, yeah, some of us we’re addicted to the thrill of action and doing things, some us are people-pleasers, perfectionist, all these different things. But I think we need to really be honest with ourselves about what are the stories that we’re telling ourselves.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients got pledges from the C-suite of his company, very big role, and we’re working together on some transformational projects that he wanted to roll out. I was helping him onboard, really, onto the C-suite and be a more strategic transformational leader. A few weeks into our engagement, he said, “Richard, you’ve been coaching me for a while now, and this has been great. I’ve got a problem. I’m stuck in my email too much.”

And I said, “Well, okay, how do you want me to help?” “Richard, just give me some tips.” And I said, “Well, you’re paying me too much money as a coach to give you some tips but you can Google those. But tell me what you really need?” And so, he decided to talk, and I said, “Okay, so why are you feeling the need to deal with all these emails coming in your way and so quickly and they’re taking so much of your time?” And he says, “Well, I want to be trustworthy, reliable, and a team player.”

I said, “Well, that makes sense, so I can’t help you.” “What do you mean you can’t help me?” “Well, you just said you want to be reliable, a team player, and you want to be trustworthy. If I tell you not to do your emails so often and not answer them all, then you’re going to be unreliable, not trustworthy, not a team player, right? That’s your value, that’s your mindset, I can’t help you.”

He said, “Well, we’re stuck then?” I said, “Well, just answer me this. If your CEO was in the room, what would he be asking you for?” “Oh, he wants those transformational projects.” “If your investors were in the room, what would they be saying?” “Oh, yeah, they’d be the one that brought in my benefits. It’s going to be big.” “What about if the team were in the room?” “Oh, the employees, they’re so desperate for more modern workforce experience.” “Okay, and what about customers?” “Well, our customers won’t really know. It’s an internal transformation but it will free up the team to spend more time with customers. That’s the whole objective, so I guess the customers will be for that as well.”

So, I said, “Okay, so what you’re telling me is if you’ve been paid the big bucks as a C-level executive to roll out these transformational projects, and everyone wants you to do those, so I’m going to predict to you that you’re going to be untrustworthy, unreliable, and not a team player when you’re in your inbox doing the emails.” And in that moment, he got it, he had the aha moment, his mindset shifted, “Oh, yeah, I’ve a different role here. Being trustworthy and reliable is about me doing the big stuff and not all this little stuff.”

And so, when you get a mindset shift, it’s like that, then your possibilities open up. You see what’s desirable, necessary, impossible has just changed for him in that moment. He didn’t need a tip on how to filter his emails, more of the important thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. That’s good. And I think that’s super helpful when you get deep down into the core values of a thing and see, well, really, which pattern of activity best serves those. And it could conceivably be possible that, in the certain seasons of the work life cycle, yeah, those emails are going to be critical to ensuring these transformational projects unfold.

I found out, it’s like, “Hey, we’re launching a thing, there’s a lot of people with a lot of questions. Oops, something broke and we got to get it fixed really quick.” And in so doing, that is what enables this transformational project to happen. But most days, I find that the emails are mostly not all that transformational, in my experience.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so it’s back to “What you’re trying to achieve? Do you really know what this breakthrough success is going to look like, or what’s this breakthrough project?” And we know that it’s quite easy to maintain things in an incremental fashion and get a bit better, and a bit better, and a bit better, to live a week in, week out, and culture in and culture out. There’s always new stuff that’s going on. There are always things to address.

So, for me, as I help people, I really help people in two areas. One is from going from being an operational leader to being a strategic leader, which I find happens at the kind of mid to senior levels of an organization where people want to make that shift. And then, actually, with some of my top clients, they want to move from being more of a strategic leader to being an impact-centric leader, which is actually having a systemic impact beyond the company.

But if we look at these shifts, then I think it does start with an understanding that we have to play a different game as a leader. So, when you’re really good at operations, it’s putting many people are, then they know that they’re in a safe pair of hands, that they’re an expert, that they are reliable, that they basically don’t mess it up. That’s why they got where they are.

And, actually, when we become strategic, we have to start focusing on building the new, building new capabilities, forging relationships wider across the organization where we don’t have direct control. And that starts to become a bit more risky for people because it’s like, “Oh, this is a new game I’m playing. I might not be able to win it the same way.” And so, that’s like a big shift for people, and the mindset shift they have to really go, “Okay, to be strategic, I’m going to have to be a different sort of leader,” and that’s a big shift for people.

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

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll just say that if people are interested in this topic, the place I would start is by understanding which of the four pillars you need to focus on first – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment. To do this the best way would be to go to my website, you can take the test there, it’s about 20 questions, and it will give you a score in those four areas. And the best way to get there is to go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, and that will give you all the resources for this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Cool. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. What inspires me is this quote, “You don’t get what you want. You get who you are.” It reminds me that work is always on ourselves, who we are being in any moment and not what are we doing.

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

Richard Medcalf
I think my favorite piece of research is the one that Marshall Goldsmith did many years ago where he asked, I think it was 80,000 professionals where they rank themselves in terms of competency. And, basically, it was like 90% of professionals rated themselves in the top 50%, and 50% of professionals rated themselves in the top 10% in terms of competency levels and performance levels. So, we have to realize that we have a huge capacity for self-delusion and to think we’re doing better than we are, which, for me, is always a great reminder to try and get data points in how we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, recently, one of the books I’ve really enjoyed, actually, is a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It tells a story of a Madison Square place in New York and how they went above and beyond normal restaurant levels of service, becoming going from basically a three-star mediocre restaurant to the number one restaurant in the world by obsessing on customer experience, by doing absolutely crazy things, very unique one-off based on individual guests coming in.

They’d Google their guests before they arrive. They would listen in. They’d try to find things that would surprise and delight. It’s something which I try to integrate into my business. It’s an ongoing journey but I find that’s very inspiring, a very inspiring story.

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

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I run pretty much most of my business these days on ClickUp, which I have found to have taken out a lot of the complexity and chaos in my business, so I must admit that’s a tool which I use all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Richard Medcalf
I guess my favorite habit is probably meditation at this point. I’ve struggled with that for years on and off. I’ve found just getting the Headspace app and just doing 10 to 15 minutes a day at the start of my day has really helped me become calmer and more focused as I head into each day.

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

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Well, I actually have a little snail on my desk, a little pewter snail because my favorite quote is “You got to slow down to speed up,” or as the racing car world would say, “You got to go slow to go smooth, and smooth to go fast.” And what that means for me is when we slow down our thinking to think about what’s really important in this moment, then we put our focus on more important things than when we’re rushing along just to get through our to-do list.

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

Richard Medcalf
So, find me on LinkedIn. I try to write a daily post there, a value-added post around impact leadership and being strategic. My website is XQuadrant.com, and, as I said, if you go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, you’ll find a link to the book “Making TIME for Strategy” and all the details of that, you’ll find a link to the assessment I mentioned before as one of the few other goodies there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Richard, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck and time for strategy.

Richard Medcalf
Thanks, Pete.

Apr 20
0

858: Managing Small Stresses Before They Create Big Problems with Rob Cross

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Rob Cross says: "That’s really the insidious nature of the microstresses. They all seem small… but it takes a toll physiologically… in pretty powerful ways."

Rob Cross explains the dangers of microstress and provides practical solutions to build your resilience.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why microstress is a much larger problem than we think
  2. Three types of microstress to watch out for
  3. Three solutions for when someone’s causing microstress

About Rob

Rob Cross is the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and the cofounder and director of the Connected Commons, a consortium of more than 150 leading organizations. He has studied the underlying networks of relationships within effective organizations and the collaborative practices of high performers for more than twenty years. Working with over 300 organizations and reaching thousands of leaders from the front line to the C-suite, he has identified specific ways to cultivate vibrant, effective networks at all levels of an organization and any career stage. He is the author of Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-Being and coauthor of THE MICROSTRESS EFFECT: How Little Things Pile Up and Become Big Problems—and What to do about it with Karen Dillon.

Resources Mentioned

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Rob Cross Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Rob, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Rob Cross
Thank you so much for having me here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to talk about your book The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems–and What to Do about It. So juicy. But before we dive into that, this is corny, I’d like to dive into your scuba enthusiasm. What’s the story here?

Rob Cross
That was well played, young man.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re certified. How does that happen?

Rob Cross
I did get certified, and I’m a huge believer and a practitioner of some of the stuff we write about, and kind of adding dimensionality to your life in different ways. And so, I did that this past winter with my daughter, and then she’s kind of off and pursuing med school right now, and so it’s going to be one of the things that we use to kind of keep connected, to do short diving trips here and there. But it’s actually pretty easy, and it does bring you into a completely different realm of people, realm of experiences in life, and has been completely worthwhile, completely love it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. So, do you see dazzlingly colored fish, like on the documentaries? That’s what I imagine when I hear scuba, like, “Wow!”

Rob Cross
It’s completely like that. So, their last certification dive they take you, you’re able to go down to 60 feet with the certification I have, and I may advance that a little bit. We’ll see. But that’s when you get down there, and you’re, “Okay, this is real. If stuff runs out and I can’t get to my daughter’s regulator in time, you’re in trouble one way or the other.”

But you look around, it’s a peaceful sense of serenity like you’ve never had. She touched my shoulder at one point and pointed, and there was a five-foot nurse shark drifting 10, 15 feet away, and it’s just kind of a crazy experience overall to be able to see. What you’re talking about are the really small colorful fish but just also the serenity and kind of sense of being really removed, if you will, in different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And so, you’ve also probably have a lot of cold-water goodness going on as well. Does that happen?

Rob Cross
Yeah, definitely. It depends on where you go. So, you’re actually looking for the warm water but, yeah, definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now I’m pumped to hear about your book The Microstress Effect. First of all, tell us what is the microstress effect?

Rob Cross
So, it is a book focused on small moments of stress. And what got me interested in this was I did a book called Beyond Collaboration Overload about two years ago, and that was very focused on how just all the ways that we interact with other people in our lives today, professionally and personally, but, principally, in the workplace, it’s overwhelming us because of all the modalities and the different instances of having to be on 24/7.

And so, as I got into that work, what became apparent to me is that people are drowning, and that stress is being created, burnout is at an all-time high in most places, and it’s not really the workload that’s gone up that much. Really, what’s gone up over the course of about 10 to 15 years has been the collaborative footprint around the work. We’ve de-layered, we’ve moved to agile-based work structures, one-firm cultures, all these initiatives organizationally that have created greater context and needs for collaboration.

And, simultaneously, we’ve enabled that with all sorts of instantaneous collaborative tools, but it’s created a context where people are overwhelmed. And as I went to these interviews and could see how stressed people were, what I was finding is it wasn’t the big things that was killing us. It was the small moments of stress that people were experiencing that they’re hitting us at a velocity and frequency that our brains just aren’t wired to deal with.

And that was what, over time, was causing people problems in kind of invisible ways. So, it got us very interested both in “What does that microstress look like? How do more successful people deal with it?” and strategies for kind of thriving today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I’m intrigued from a science perspective, any particularly surprising, fascinating discoveries you’ve made here? Like, is it a big deal, microstresses, or is it, like, “Well, they add up to being just a smidge more in total”?

Rob Cross
Right. I think that’s a really great question, and I love the way you asked it because I think too many people go, “Oh, it’s just one more thing, and then successful people, we’re supposed to deal with that. Just one more thing.” But the problem is our body doesn’t distinguish between big stress and small stress. Our brains do. Our brains can go into flight or fight response and kind of trigger different ways of working with big stress when we experience it.

But the small stress, you sense misalignment with a colleague and you wonder how you’re going to solve it. Or, you see somebody on your team that needs to be coached for the third time and you’re wondering, “How am I going to do that and keep their engagement?” Or, you got a text from a child, and you can’t tell if they’re grumbling for 15 seconds and over it, but you worry about it for three hours.

Rob Cross
So, we know it’s real because we see the body reacting differently. We know, for example, that the same meal processed within two hours of being under this form of social stress can result in, actually, an additional 104 calories, which doesn’t sound like much but you accumulate that over the year, and that can be as much as 11 pounds.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Rob, when you’re saying we burn an extra 104 calories because we’re hyped up or we burn 104 fewer calories?

Rob Cross
No, the reverse, we add it, yeah. And we actually process the food differently in, actually, a negative way. We know that the blood pressure is a problem. One of the neuroscientists we interviewed was describing it as kind of an analogy of having kids jumping on your bed, microstresses being the kids. You got one or two kids jumping on your bed and everything is fine, but you keep adding and adding and adding, and, eventually, the bedframe kind of cracks.

And that’s a little bit of the effect that we see neurologically with this. And I cannot tell you the number of times, going through these interviews, where these are all really successful people, top companies, really successful people. First 10 minutes, it was all rainbows and lollipops, everything is great. And then you get down to kind of minute 30, minute 45, and all the cracks are starting to creep in, and you start to get a real sense of how people are struggling.

And I think the thing that troubled me most with all these conventionally successful people was how many of them described going three, five, eight years in their lives just persisting, thinking you have to fight through only to wake up one day, and go, “What have I done? I’m not who I wanted to be. I’m not where I want to be. How did this affect me in such a way?” And I think that’s really the insidious nature of the microstresses.

They all seem small. You’re just kind of getting over one more thing each day but it takes a toll physiologically and, also, kind of from a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives in pretty powerful ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, Rob, you gave us a couple examples of microstresses, but just to make sure we’re all on the same page, can you give us a few more so we can really say, “Oh, those. Okay, I know what you’re saying”?

Rob Cross
Yeah. So, we have a set of them that are really what we call drains to capacity, and they’re interactions that decrease our ability to get done what we have to get done. And so, they create stress as a product of us having to work harder and ignore our family or other things that we want to do with our lives, or they create stress, beverage of underdelivering.

But as an example, one is what I’ve come to call small misses, small performance misses from team members or colleagues. And so, what’s happened in a lot of places is most people are on five, six, seven team efforts. They may only be assigned to one but they’re usually tasked with five, six, seven other collaborative efforts that they have to be a part of and contribute to, given the way work is happening today.

And what we know happens is if you happen to own one, and everybody shows up to your one, let’s say you have four other people on that team, and they show up at 95% done, so they’re almost there, and everybody has reasons, they misunderstood, “My boss pulled me in a different direction,” “My child got sick,” that sounds like small misses, and most people just gloss over it, but that 5% times four people means 20% to you, and you’re stuck with this decision of, “Do I work through the night and push a little bit harder to get it done, or do I underdeliver?” Most people choose to work through and just get it done.

And then what they’ve done is they’ve taught people that, “Okay, 95% is good enough here, and maybe 90% the next time.” And not because people are nefarious, I really want to underscore that. The problem right now is that people are so overwhelmed in all the interviews we did across both these books, that they’re making decisions on which balls to drop nine times out of ten and not how to excel in different ways. So, that’s an example that we see.

Another one very common are when authority figures shift expectations very erratically or consistently. And that would take the form of changing what they were asking you to do, changing the performance expectations of what they had, or just emotionally being a very different person from point A to point B, and that create stress on you, individually, but then it also manifests in the second order when you have to go protect your team, or you have to go and find other people to help because the direction has shifted and you’re stuck doing things you committed to colleagues before in a prior direction, plus you’ve got to figure out new people you need to work with in different ways.

So, there’s 14 of those but that, hopefully, gives you a couple of them to get a sense of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’m thinking about home life as well. What are some microstresses there?

Rob Cross
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So, one of my favorite examples is my daughter, Rachel, is somebody who’s a high-level junior tennis player. We travel the country together, and she would, as a product of having a father that knew nothing about the game at all except just trying to help her, she got very used to relying on me and to kind of talk about things that were bothering her.

And what that did, we have a super strong relationship, but what that created over time was a tendency where if anything was going wrong, she would let me know about it, just text me very quickly. And, usually, it was exactly what I was referring to earlier, a ten-second text that she wouldn’t even be thinking about. She’s just telling her dad, and yet I would worry about it for three or four hours, until one day we kind of discovered it.

And so, it’s an interesting thing with our home life, with our friends. Here is a little being that is simultaneously the greatest source of purpose for me in life, humor, all sorts of great wonderful things, yet also is a source of microstress in terms of second-hand stress that gets created and passed on. And what we did in that case is just say, “Well, don’t tell me if it’s not important to you, and I’ll avoid my four hours of anxiety.”

We’re laughing about it, of course, and she knows I’m there if anything is serious, but that’s really the trick of this, especially the people we’re closest to. They tend to be both our primary sources of joy and purpose and life satisfaction, and simultaneously our primary sources of different elements of microstress. And the trick is, “Can you adapt the interaction?” Not dump the relationship, but can you see it in the interaction and make small shifts like I’m describing with Rachel? And we have tons of those opportunities when we start looking for them that have a material impact on our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
And you say second-hand stress, is this a common notion, it’s like we pick up almost like a contagion what’s going on from other people?

Rob Cross
Right. Very much so. Yeah, that was definitely one of the microstresses we deal most prevalently. And it can take the form of an aggressive tone on a Zoom call, how people are sitting, just dejected posture, convey us a tremendous amount. It can be just typical stress that’s processing through us and we take it to somebody else.

So, one of the most common things we would hear is people would get upset about something at work, and we go home and talk to our significant other about it. And because they don’t know the whole story and ways that maybe we caused part of the problem, they just take our side in it and they’re providing empathy, they think, but they further spin us up and kind of create a second layer of stress, if you will, that it feeds back on us if we’re not really thinking carefully about how we’re turning to others, if you will.

So, again, there’s a whole kind of suite of those ways that the initial moment of stress is one instance, and then it tends to also go forward in different ways if we’re not careful about it, in what we call second-order stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share with us the physiological symptoms to help distinguish between just nothing, like not a big deal at all, versus microstress, versus a traditional stress fight-or-flight response? Like, is it that my heartrate bumps up 20 beats per minute on a fight or flight? Or, how do I think about that?

Rob Cross
Yeah, I think you feel that rise in blood pressure, the rise in flushing in the face, the anxiety you feel in the moment. I would say that a microstress, if I were trying to make it in layman’s terms, is more of a, “Oh, my gosh, another irritation in my day, and it’s another thing that’s just going to sit in the back of my mind. It’s not insurmountable, I’m not panicked, but it’s another thing that I’m processing and I’m holding on to.” That’s the things that we tend to really try to get people to focus on.

So, when I’m working with this, and we create a table that has these 14 microstresses down one side and then the sources of them – a boss, colleagues, loved ones, team members – across the top, and I’m asking people to go through and really identify “Where are two, three, or four of these that are systemic enough in your life that you should do something about it, that you can change the nature of the interaction, you can create more time between those interactions, you can shift things in a way that has some material impact for you?”

That’s how I’m trying to hone people in on where to take action and what matters. And, universally, people look at that, and they say, “Well, can I put 10 checkboxes?” and I’m like, “No, because if it’s everything, it’s nothing.” You want to hone in on “What are the three, four areas that, if I can take concerted action against, will have a big impact for me?”

And I would really underscore for people listening here the worthwhile nature of doing that. We have a kneejerk reaction to look for the positives in things, to say, “I need to go do more fun things,” or, “I need to meditate and do gratitude journaling and things like that to get through the stress.” What if you could remove it?

And what we know, from all of social psychology, generally, is that the negative interactions have three to five times the impact of the positive. So, what if we actually focus on “How do we shape those interactions to take that out of our context?” By not doing that, we actually end up leaving the higher-leverage stuff on the table versus actually kind of going after it and trying to structure the context that we’ve let accrue around us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you mentioned one microstress category, drains your capacity to get things done. Could you tell us about those that also deplete your emotional reserves and that challenge your identity? And maybe give us a story that brings them all together.

Rob Cross
Yeah. So, the deplete emotional reserves, I mean that’s what it sounds like. It’s the interactions that hit us and kind of hit us emotionally. The most common one is what most people are used to thinking about, are conflictual conversations. And some people are wired to love those, but many people aren’t and they worry about potential interactions. Before the interaction, they’re stressed out during the interaction, and then they will go and replay it in their mind five times afterwards, maybe even talk to other people and drag them through the mud as well.

And so, that’s a more conventional one that we know. You can do an awful lot about it if you just address it early and address it with evidence in certain ways versus letting it accumulate up. Another one that’s a little bit less obvious is just the stress we feel for having to take care of others and worrying about them, whether that be people on your team, an aging parent, a child, a friend that’s in trouble.

One of the fascinating things about microstresses is they have a greater impact on us because they’re coming at us through relationships. It’s not just bad news on social media. It’s the fact that this is coming to me through somebody I dislike, and that’s going to magnify of it, or it’s somebody I love and that’s going to magnify the effect of it. And, in fact, we find that the people we love and care about are just as big contributors as the conventionally toxic people that we would associate with more conventional forms of stress.

And the last one you asked about was the challenges to identity, and that’s oftentimes just small pushes or interactions that are kind of slowly pushing us away from being the people we set out to be. And so, it can happen, as an example, with performance expectations that don’t line up with your own values, whether it’s being overselling in situations, or with all the physicians and nurses we talked to that was not getting enough time for patient care.

They kind of went into that industry, that business with an eye to taking care of people, and yet as systems have evolved, they have less and less ability to do that at the level that they feel good about. So, those are the three challenges: drains to capacity, and challenges emotionally, and then challenges to value orientations. And you can get a sense that they become progressively a little bit more subtle but a little bit more impactful over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, what do we do about them?

Rob Cross
So, what do you do? So, for me, it’s a three-pronged idea as a starting point. One is, how do you isolate out three, four, five that are hitting you systemic enough you can do something about? And that’s what I’ve already just spoken to a little bit. Second pass through it, for me, is how do you stop causing it? When we have people go through this table, it always catches people off guard when I say, “Okay, which ones are you causing unnecessarily in your life?”

And the reality is we don’t want to create stress, yet what I see, if I’m polling on large webinars with these ideas or other things, I have a couple thousand people, and I’ll say, “What are the stresses you’re experiencing?” And then I shift gears, and say, “What are the stresses you’re causing?” And almost every case, the profiles are very similar. So, the stress we experience, we tend to pass on to others, and so you want to stop that, just from an identity standpoint. You don’t want to be somebody that creates stress.

But the other reason you want to stop doing it is, I’m very convinced that the stress we create in one form, oftentimes boomerangs back on us in a different form. And so, we push a child a little further than we should, and they become belligerent or morose. Or, you lean on a favorite employee because they’ve always come through for you. Lean on them one step too hard and they start to burn out and disengage and it creates more work for you in another way. So, it’s a subtle but a really important thing to think about where you’re unnecessarily causing it.

And then the third pass for me is “Where do you need to rise above some of it?” And so, most people have had experiences in their life when they’re grumbling about how bad everything is, other people driving you crazy, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then something truly traumatic happens. You get a significant health scare, somebody you know passes away, whatever it is. But you look back and all this stuff that mattered so mightily, ten seconds go, and realized none of it mattered at that moment.

And what I’m really convinced of is the top people in our interviews, and we call them the ten percenters because it was about in one in ten that were really just living differently, that’s kind of how they go through life without the trauma. They tend to rise above a lot of the minutiae in different ways. And one of the most powerful ways they’ve done that is by being an authentic part of at least two and usually three groups outside of their profession.

So, the stories that always ended up poorly were the people that just let go of everything outside of work and direct family, and the ones that generally trended far more positively were people that maintained that dimensionality in their lives, and not just activities but putting that activity in a group of people with different perspectives and values that help to shape perspectives that you’re taking into your life.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re talking, like, rotary, chess club, church, like three groups outside of work. What kinds of groups are you talking about?

Rob Cross
Yeah, it could be those forms, it could be other forms. One of my favorite interviews, actually, literally, my first interview in this body of work, we were very focused early on, on “What are the ways relationships affect physical health, growth in and out of work, purpose and resilience in our lives?” And so, I just asked this woman, a really lovely British accent, I won’t try to emulate here, but I said, “Just tell me about a time in your life when you were becoming more physically healthy, whatever that means to you? not what you were doing, but what was the role of the connections around you?”

And so, she kind of chuckled and said, “Well, Rob, I was somebody that dodged gym every chance I could in high school. Wanted nothing to do with physical activity.” And she said, “That worked for me up until about my late 30s, and, all of a sudden, my doctor gave me a stern warning and said ‘You need to do something about this.’”

And so, her reaction was she started walking around a park outside of her flat in London. And then because she was going at the same time every day, bumped into a couple of people that were walking that same route, and they fell in together and started talking, and then they would walk longer routes, they did a charity walk, and then a charity run. You can kind of get where I’m going to where I was interviewing her ten years later, and she was planning vacations where she’d do a marathon with her husband first before going on vacation.

And this was the person that dodged gym in high school. And so, what she said is, “The identity of being a runner with that group, and the accountability, them expecting me to show up, enabled me to push back on things in ways that I hadn’t been doing for most of my life. Just on the margin, I was pushing back on things that were creating stress.”

But the real thing that she said mattered was that, “This was a diverse group of people that I never would’ve spent time with. They weren’t life science executives. It was the mailman, an IT person, people coming at life very differently.” And she said, “They saw me at my worst, I saw them at their worst,” and it was the perspectives that they brought and the friendships and the different vantage points into her life that just created a different perspective overall.

So, it’s that kind of thing, and it can come from any of the walks of life. You just mentioned music, religion, poetry, art, book clubs but it is always important to me that it is put in some form of group. It’s not typically running by yourself. That may be part of what you do but it’s typically putting that activity in a group and the diversity of perspectives that come into that with you that seems to be the real thing that matters.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, within the group, and maybe this is not knowable, but there’s good research showing that friendships, good social support, is a big buffer to stress. And so, it seems like that’s one element but you’re highlighting something beyond that, is a diversity of experience that kind of helps you get grounded, and say, “That doesn’t really matter.” Is that fair to say?

Rob Cross
Right, yeah. And I think, like you’re saying, there’s just emerging evidence from the Harvard studies, from the work done in the book Together that shows that people with quality relationships, they lived 2.14 years longer, they’re less susceptible to colds, like, we could spend an hour on all the benefits of having a couple of close relationships in your life. They can be friends, they can be intimates. But what’s interesting to us, as we look at this, is that’s not the only way we get resilience.

So, again, a great example of that was a neurosurgeon that was in our interviews, and he was stressed out. World-renowned in what he did but he’d allowed life to evolve and to just his profession, and was a highly consuming profession and family, and he had no kind of dimensionality built in. And on a whim, he said, “I’m going to go play guitar.” He used to play guitar in high school, and he went into a music shop and got a guitar.

And as he was walking out, he saw a flier for a group looking for a guitar player in a band. And there was something like, “What we lack in quality, we make up for in volume,” I think on the flier. And he, on a whim, went and tried out with them and got into the band, and he called me like two months after that, and he said, “This has been one of the best experiences of my life because I’m hanging out with 20-year-olds and I’m doing something completely different. I’m hearing different stories, different ways of living your life, different things around what matters in their worlds, and it’s just given me a totally different slant on life.”

Now, the key to it for me is that those were not his best friends, those weren’t the two, three, four, five intimates that we can sustain in our lives. And so, I think what we’re seeing is you find resilience through certain kinds of interactions that you build into your network but not all of it has to come from your intimates – your wife, your husband, your partner, and your parents. In fact, the way that most people have lost close relationships is actually, I believe, too much pressure on those categories of people to absorb all the interactions around us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, okay, so we heard a running group, we heard a band. What are some other groups that are rocking for folks?

Rob Cross
People derive this dimensionality from so many places, but I’ll give you some broad categories. It was almost always one that was physical for the people that were doing particularly well, and, in particular groups that required you to show up. It wasn’t optional, so, like tennis, or basketball, or other things like that where there was an accountability, and the group didn’t go on if you weren’t there. It just kind of kept up that consistency of returning embedded in.

There was often ones that I’ll say are more aesthetic, and that could be spiritual commitments that people are making but it could revolve around music, poetry, book clubs, museum outings, foodie, dinner groups, all sorts of things that were more about an artistic or spiritual side of life. And then, oftentimes, it was purely social that one of the strategies, if you’ve fallen out of these groups and you don’t have them, and that’s the most people through COVID, one strategy is you do what I mentioned with the neuroscientist, you reach back to a hobby, and use that to slingshot forward.

Another equally effective strategy is to reach back to ties that have gone dormant – college friends, friends soon after you graduated from college – and use some activity to reignite that group – hiking, dinners, whatever it may be. So, there’s a lot of strategies like that that people would use but I think the things I would see is they would tend…the people that were doing particularly well had dimensionality built out in terms of a physical realm, a spiritual or aesthetic realm, a social and an intellectual realm that they were pursuing.

Pete Mockaitis
And that is often a means by which we support the perspective that all this stuff is not that big of a deal. So, how would you articulate that, that concept, like the clarity?

Rob Cross
I view it as rising above. Yeah, you kind of rise above. It puts in perspective. And I do not, at all, want to make this sound like rose-colored glasses but that it helps you start to get a different sense of why we’re living. There are so much, so many messages come at us that feed a very narrow model of what good looks like, what success looks like.

And we, as a society, have never had more ability to shape what we do and who we do it with than today, but we give it up a tremendous amount. And what we’re seeing is that, adding that dimensionality and preserving it, is one of the things it does is it just helps keep in perspective what’s significant, what’s important, what isn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any other key findings among these ten percenters?

Rob Cross
Two things that pop to mind immediately. One is they were really good at tapping into others for resilience. So, we’re conditioned to think about resilience as something that we own, we have grit or fortitude or internal toughness. But if you asked hundreds of people about how they made it through difficult stretches and focus not on what they did but on how they leaned into others in that situation, whether it was “I didn’t get the promotion” up to “My spouse died of pancreatic cancer,” you find that we tend to get seven benefits from others in tough times.

You get empathy, for sure. You get perspective that this isn’t maybe as big a deal as you think. You get a path forward from people maybe that had been there and can say, “Here’s the way to proceed.” You get laughter from friends, and that turns out to be really important. And so, what we were seeing is that people that would weather difficult stretches better typically had those connections in their lives, have gone through in their life in a way that built those relationships, and, importantly, they know how to use them for them.

So, some people, it’s really laughter that they need to reset. Others it’s empathy, and then a path forward. And so, that was a big distinguisher, the degree to which we’re conditioned to think resilience is something we have, and yet it’s really in the interactions and the quality of the connections that we have around us as well.

The second thing for me is that the happiest people in the work, they were not all pursuing magnificent things for happiness. Like, they weren’t hiking Everest, or writing concertos, or sailing the ocean. Really, what it boiled down to is that they tended to live the small moments more richly in connection with others.

And so, as an example of that, again, one of my favorite interviews was a Silicon Valley executive, kind of mid-40s, a woman, type A, hard charger, wildly successful by anybody’s definition, and she had been a runner in college, and she said, “Rob, when I came out of college, I continued to run. And what happened to me is if every year I didn’t get a personal best on what I was running with, whether it was 10K or marathons, that was a bad year for running. And you know that’s a losing strategy. Eventually, life is going to catch up to you.”

And she said she woke up one day and realized that that was somebody else’s idea of fun, that was society’s definition of why you run for those times. And, really, what she wanted to be doing was running with her daughter, her daughter’s best friend, and a parent in the neighborhood. And so, they started running, and it actually evolved into this community group, and she got a great sense of purpose out of being more closely connected with her daughter, and more closely connected with that community.

So, what she was doing, and what I’m always trying to emphasize to people, is she wasn’t saying, “I need to go find another job to have purpose,” or, “I need to feed the world’s hungry.” She was saying, “How do I take what I already am doing and pivot it just slightly in ways that will pull me into interactions, into relationships that’ll make a more meaningful life for me.”

And that’s what we saw over and over again. The people that were really doing well, it wasn’t the big things. It was that they lived the small moments better and more authentically with other people around them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’d also like to touch on this notion of engaging the people that are causing the microstress. Some people say, “You can’t change other people, Rob.” But tell me, if I’m seeing, okay, there’s a particular person who’s doing a thing a lot that’s a recurring sense of microstress, what are my options?

Rob Cross
Yeah, I think there’s a couple. And everybody will have examples of people in their lives that they can’t shape. And, again, I would also urge thinking about the positive connections too. And what I described with my daughter is an example. How do you find those opportunities to shift interactions that you may not even be thinking about? Like, I wasn’t thinking about those ever as microstresses when she was ladling stress on me. I just thought, “Oh, I’m the provider. I’m a good parent. I’m a good dad. Whatever it may be, and this is what I need to do.”

So, you are probably drifting towards, “Here’s the person that’s driving me nuts,” and that’s a form of microstress, too. But what I want to emphasize is we live in a sea of this stuff, and there’s opportunities all over the place. Now, when it is the conventional person that’s driving you crazy, of course, the lead is always to reset the connection.

And the more effective strategies are always saying, “Let me start with me. What am I doing that’s kind of leading you into this behavior, whatever it may be that’s driving you crazy?” and then try to move from that to what could they do, or what could they shift that would have a positive impact on you. Always providing evidence of the impact of the behavior and the tactics that they’ve been taking.

That’s one approach, where you have the opportunity to actually shift the behavior. And there’s a ton of great stories of people that actually developed the courage and went into the situation and found it was much more cathartic than they had feared. A second is to find ways to increase the timespan between the interactions. Third is to embed those interactions with other people.

So, if it’s one person that’s driving you crazy, bring them to lunch with three others, and not kind of have the interaction in isolation. So, there’s a whole set of progressive, I guess, actions you can take depending on how entrenched it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I’d like to shift gears into stuff you can do by yourself in terms of what about, you mentioned, exercise, breathing exercises, affirmations, meditation, visualization. Are there some stuff we can do that’s super effective to alleviate microstress that’s 100% in our control?

Rob Cross
Yeah, very much. And meditation is one, like super proven effect, and mindfulness practices in general. It doesn’t have to be massive. It can be small time commitments that people are making to meditation and breathing exercise. And there’s also some really neat breathing exercises through the day that can have impact as well that has been proven to be super effective.

Gratitude journaling is one of the most prominent and effective shown up over and over again to have perspective to help us keep our minds set on the positive. As a professor, a lot of times, I’ll be in an audience where there’s executives or undergrads, and I’ll have the individuals in the room, just as an experiment, I’ll say, “Tell me all the things that are stressing you out.” And it’ll be 18 things, very quickly that’ll come out of their mouths and I’ll get them on a flipchart or chalkboard or whatever.

And then I’ll switch gears and I’ll say, “Okay, now tell me the things you’re grateful for in the moment.” And it starts a little slower but what, comically, almost always comes out is an almost identical list of things. Somebody complains about having tuition they have to pay for, well, they’ve got a kid that’s successful and starting to thrive. And somebody complains about a mortgage, well, they’ve got a house that they’re safe in, as an example.

And so, gratitude journaling can help us from our drift to the negative and our tendency to do that to kind of see things on a more positive light. And I’ll give you one more thing that does go back to connections. This is a great experiment that a colleague suggested, and my co-author and I did it here. If you’re trying to rejuvenate connections that have gone dormant, people you haven’t talked to in a while, they’re proposing a challenge and say, “Just make seven-, eight-minute calls. Take one week. Write people, say you just want to catch up for eight minutes.”

And they’ll laugh at you, they’ll say, “Eight minutes? What are you talking about?” But it’s just a small-enough time block that nobody says no, nobody says it’s too busy, or “We have to wait four months to find it.” And that can be a really neat way to kind of rejuvenate connections that you want to be back in touch with and have a pretty positive impact as well.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Okay. And you said breathing throughout the day, I’m intrigued. Is there a particular timing or way of breathing? How does it go?

Rob Cross
Cadence for me. So, it’s a four by four by four by four. So, four seconds on the in-breath, four seconds hold, four seconds exhale, four seconds hold. And it’s just one technique of a bunch to just kind of calm and bring presence in a little bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
And you mentioned it doesn’t have to be long stretches of time. Like, how many minutes of this breathing or this meditation stuff is enough to make a significant impact?

Rob Cross
That’s a great question, and that’s going to drift beyond a lot of my expertise in terms of knowing the specific time intervals. I hear people routinely starting with 10 minutes, and then some people can take it much, much, much further than that. But it isn’t hours of time, let me say it that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Rob, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rob Cross
I don’t think so. I think we’re good.

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

Rob Cross
So, I think probably, and this will sound a little bit corny, but it’s, “Ask not what you can receive, but what you can give.” I’m not getting it exactly right but I think that, to me, it’s a mindset that I have as I go forward in the work that I’ve been doing for some time. And I think it pays off in pretty significant ways.

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

Rob Cross
Favorite experiment for me is a whole body of work that’s kind of showing the effect of the relationships in our lives. So, my own work showed that having these energizing interactions is typically four times the predictor of a high performer as other things that we see happening in the relationships. And then, of course, the negative in my work is about two times as much. So, for me, that body of work is always really emphasizing the importance of managing the negative interactions, whether they be things we’re experiencing or things we’re causing in different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Rob Cross
Favorite book right now would be Together, and that was the study that was done around loneliness and the epidemic that it’s hitting in society today.

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

Rob Cross
Favorite tool. I would have to say my iPhone. Constantly in connection with different people that way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Rob Cross
Favorite habit is exercise with other people. So, I’m a heavy cyclist and I love tennis as a vehicle, not just be physically be out there but be with other people.

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

Rob Cross
Would look at my website RobCross.org, and there’s also the Connected Commons, the consortia that I’ve cofounded and direct research for as different ways to see us, a bunch of the research there.

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

Rob Cross
I would say lean into the small moments, really pay attention to the small moments and leverage those, whether that be adapting the negative or leaning into the positive in a different way. That’s what we have way more control over than we tend to give ourselves credit for in today’s workforce.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rob, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of good times and even less microstress.

Rob Cross
All right. Thank you so much for having me here.