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Sep 22
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1095: Keeping Your Productive Groove through Movement, Thought, and Rest with Dr. Natalie Nixon

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Dr. Natalie Nixon discusses how to develop strategic thinking, prevent burnout, and enhance creativity through her move, rest, and think framework.

You’ll Learn

  1. The inner skills that make us more strategic and effective
  2. The neglected skill that makes us more strategic
  3. How to prime your best ideas in 90 seconds

About Natalie

Dr. Natalie Nixon, creativity strategist and CEO of Figure 8 Thinking, is known as the ‘creativity whisperer to the C-Suite’ and is the world’s leading authority on the WonderRigor™ Theory. She excels at helping leaders catalyze creativity’s ROI for inspired business results. She is the author of the award-winning The Creativity Leap and the forthcoming Move.Think.Rest. 

With a background in cultural anthropology, her career spans global apparel sourcing with The Limited Brands and a 16-year career in academia, where she was the founding director of the Strategic Design MBA at Thomas Jefferson University. She received her BA from Vassar College and her PhD from the University of Westminster in London. She’s a lifelong dancer and a new aficionado of open water swimming.

Resources Mentioned

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Dr. Natalie Nixon Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Natalie, welcome!

Natalie Nixon
Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, I’m excited to hear some of your wisdom from your book, Move, Think, Rest. Can you share with us one of the most surprising, or counterintuitive, or wildly fascinating discoveries you’ve made in investigating this stuff and putting together the book?

Natalie Nixon
I think one of the most interesting learnings I got was to really leaning into this idea of emotional recovery. I think that we spent a lot of time thinking about physical fitness and endurance so that our cognition is nice and sharp.

And we think, obviously, about mental agility and sharpness. It’s really the emotional dimension of ourselves that kept coming up over and over as I was building out this “Move, Think, Rest” framework. And I think that really matters in a time of ubiquitous technology. It’s really interesting to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Emotional recovery, that’s a nice turn of a phrase. Can you share with us, well, one, a definition and, two, maybe just paint a picture of what the opposite of emotional recovery looks like, and then what emotional recovery things one does to emotionally recover?

Natalie Nixon
Emotional recovery is our capacity to feel the feels internally, to be self-aware in terms of where our barometer is emotionally, as well as that emotional intelligence, that outward external ability to identify where people with whom we’re having conversations, people who are leading or managing, where they are emotionally, but we actually are not good at the external identification of that unless we are whole emotionally.

And I learned this turn of phrase through someone named Scott Pelton. I interviewed Scott Pelton, who’s the co-founder of an executive leadership coaching practice called Tignum. And in a time with a lot of economic instability, a lot of uncertainty in the markets, where we’re hearing of downsizing, where managers are having to do layoffs, where people are observing their friends, their colleagues, family members going through these sorts of things, to expect a manager or a leader to show up at work, like, “Nothing to see here. Everything’s great, and I’m feeling great.” That’s not true.

And so, the ability to recover emotionally after one has had to deliver really harsh news, bad news, to a team, to colleagues, is essential actually for your clearer thinking and for your ability to rebound and maintain momentum. And one of the things I’ve been saying for quite a while is that, in the future of work, work will increasingly become inside-out work.

And what I meant by that, and it’s now even more grounded in my learning about emotional recovery, is that the companies that will be able to attract and retain the best talent will be those that are curious about who you are as a person and want to integrate those assets, those capabilities, those abilities into the ways that you are doing your work and your job, instead of shying away from that.

And I’m not, I’m not saying that leaders should have a good cry with their team. That’s not what I’m talking about because there is still this need to feel that the person who is leading has it together. But there’s also this need to trust that leaders get where we are. And we trust that when leaders reveal, in a more vulnerable way, their own uncertainty, when they’re self-reflexive in the types of questions that they’re raising about a strategic decision that has been made.

So, another person I interviewed for Move, Think, Rest is Carla Silver who is the co-founder of a really great nonprofit organization called Leadership + Design. And one of their taglines is “Be more curious than certain.” And when we are curious about how we are feeling, how we are doing, how others are feeling, how we are doing, that actually is the on-ramp to so much discovery. So, the emotional recovery component to work is essential now more than ever.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s an interesting notion. And we might find ourselves emotionally taxed. Or, what would you say? What’s the opposite of being emotionally recovered? Emotionally drained, depleted?

Natalie Nixon
Burnt out.

Pete Mockaitis
Burnt out, yeah. Certainly. And I guess, as I think about that experientially for myself, so I’m thinking about just my young kids at home, in terms of, I mean, sometimes it’s just a delightful, wonderful, happy, joyous, relating communal experience. And other times it’s just brutally exhausting, like, oh, so much whining, so much, you know, “Oh, we got a diaper to handle over here, but, oh, there’s a mess over there,” and sort of all the things in rapid succession.

Natalie Nixon
How old are your children?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so right now, they are seven, six and two.

Natalie Nixon
Wow, full house.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, it feels like, I do, I feel like sort of activated in terms of like the nervous system and my emotions. And I could feel it, it’s like, “Oh, I’m still irritated about what happened 30 minutes ago over there.” And yet I need to be, you know, Mr. Insightful Curious podcast, you know, moments later.

Natalie Nixon
Yeah, I love that you referenced the nervous system just now, because the other part of emotional recovery, the gift that it gives us is a self-awareness. Instead of just pushing through, plowing ahead, if you don’t pause to have a personal check-in about how you are feeling, then you actually are not fully present. And if you’re not fully present, then you actually will not be able to do your job well.

So, it’s a combination of being able to check in with oneself personally, be really honest. It doesn’t mean that you’ll have a solution to be able to go from frustration to jubilation right away, but even acknowledging it is really important in order for us to be able to do our best work, in order to able to start to put things in perspective.

And when you mentioned the nervous system, man, there were so much. There’s so much more research on the neuroscience of how our brains work best that was so fundamental to how I was putting together this “Move, Think, Rest” framework. One of the experts that I really have enjoyed learning from, I’ve listened to her podcast interviews, read her book, is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who’s written a great book called How Emotions Are Made.

And it turns out that emotions are not reactionary thoroughly, they’re actually constructed. And the reason why that matters is a lot of the way we have thought about how to show up publicly, how to show up socially facing in the West and Western cultures is we really take our nod from Descartes, “I think therefore I am,” right?

The ways that you can judge me, evaluate me is by my thinking, which is true. And it turns out, based on Dr. Feldman Barrett’s research, that emotions are actually a bit more predictive than we give them credit for. They’re not just reaction, but they are predictive. So again, that ability to be aware of where our nervous system is at, how we are feeling, is really important.

And another thing I learned about is something called interoception. And the book that I wrote, prior to Move, Think, Rest is a book called The Creativity Leap. And the subtitle of The Creativity Leap is “Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation and Intuition at Work.” And when I wrote that book, that book came out in 2020, I just had this nudge, and through my interviews, I was piecing together my thinking that there are a lot of connections we can draw between intuition and strategic decision-making.

Now, there’s actually a lot more research that connects the dots between the two. And so, there’s something that all of us have, which is called interoception not “introception,” but interoception. Interoception is that self-awareness of how I’m feeling, “I feel sad. I feel excited. I feel tired. I feel hungry. I feel satiated.”

And it turns out the interoception, that awareness which is linked to the nervous system internally, is powered by the vagus nerve, which is the longest cranial nerve in the body. It extends from the brain down through the heart and the lungs, into the gut. It’s a really interesting complex system of nerves. So, when we say things like, “My gut is telling me,” it literally is. We have this superpower highway that helps us with sensemaking, that helps us with pattern recognition.

And I’ll just share one small research study that I learned about, which shows the connection between interoceptive awareness, intuition, and strategic decision-making, was as follows. The experiment was to ask people to sit on a chair with their feet planted on the ground and their hands on their lap, and to tap out on their lap the rhythm of their heartbeat, not by touching the pulse on your wrist, by just being still and beginning to tap out the rhythm of your heartbeat.

Some people found that ridiculously challenging. Other people were like, “Yeah, okay,” then they would just tap out the rhythm of their heartbeat. That’s called interoceptive awareness, and then also interoceptive accuracy. And that same research study was extended to show a link between people who have high interoceptive awareness, powered by the vagus nerve intuition, also have really great strategic decision-making, which was music to my ears.

Because every successful leader has this moment in their origin story where they will say something like, “Something told me not to do the deal,” or, “Something told me to work with her or not him even though her pedigree wasn’t as snuffy.” And that something is intuition.

So, the nervous system, emotional recovery, the ability to intuit and be self-aware is increasingly important in a time of ubiquitous technology.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really interesting and totally makes sense in so far as, when we make strategic decisions, or really any decisions, there is an emotional dimension at work inside of us. And if we’re just blithely oblivious, unaware of that and its impact, we can very well, it makes sense, not have the fullness of the information set to consider and, thus, make suboptimal decisions, like, “Ooh, I did that thing.”

And I think few of us have this self-awareness or humility to admit, it’s like, “Oh, actually I did that because, in the moment of decision, I was really angry about this totally unrelated thing. And that probably wasn’t the move. Oops.”

Natalie Nixon
Yes, that’s right. That’s right. You know, athletes, for example, elite performance of athletes are very aware of their emotions. And a lot of what their coaches do is to recreate the feeling when you hit the ball that way, if you’re a baseball player, or if you’re a tennis player. During the Olympics, I love track, and you’ll see the sprinters, they’ve got their headphones on and they’re doing all this big envisioning work and self-affirming talk.

And they are envisioning that path of running around the track, or whatever, if it’s a shorter sprint. But we take it for granted that, “Okay, yeah, in their work of performance, they have to be attuned to their emotions and to visualize and to recreate.”

And it turns out that is an equally useful tactic as we strategically build leadership, “To remember what it felt like when I made that decision, to work with someone, to partner with someone or to not end up collaborating with this group, or to decide to go ahead and do this product development work.”

One of the other people I interviewed for Move, Think, Rest is Ivy Ross, who is the head of design at Google. Ivy is also the co-author of an incredible book called Your Brain on Art. She co-authored it with Susan Magsamen. And Ivy likes to share this statistic that 95% of our decision-making is happening at the subconscious level. Only 5% is happening at the conscious level.

And she shared that statistic in a meeting where she was challenged about deciding. She was proposing what color of story to be using in a product launch. And some of her colleagues, who were also in the C-suite said, “Well, where’s the data on that?” And she said to them, “The data comes from my awareness of culture. It comes from the signals that I’m getting.”

And then she shared, “You know, 95% of the sense-making that we do is at the subconscious level,” because, these are now my words not Ivy’s, we’re sentient beings. We do a lot of sense-making throughout the day. And to not be aware of that, to not acknowledge that, because it’s problematic. And neither Ivy nor I are saying, you know, throw out the quant, we need both, is really the point here.

The quantitative research and data show us patterns. It gives us the bird’s-eye view. We see an aggregation of data at point T90 and not over at point B3. Why is that? If you only make decisions based on quantitative data, you’re only getting part of the picture, because quant doesn’t tell you why people chose to behave in that way.

You’ve got to dive down to the worm’s eye view, through qualitative research, to understand the why. And I would even then take it another further. There’s a tertiary dataset, which we get through our sense-making and sentient intelligence.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I love that picture, that vignette there with going through a color story, presenting to executives who want data. It’s funny because colors and design, in general, is just that totally different part of the human experience in terms of. And so, you could, it’s like, “Okay. Well, hey, we have five color options. We presented them to a panelist of prospective consumers who meet the target demographic, and 71% of them liked the orange. So that’s why we’re doing orange.”

But you can’t just, unless you have a huge budget and timeline, just test everything with data. That’s the way I think about it. It’s, well, first you have to generate some outstanding finalists based on something else internally, creatively, before you can even get to that point because it’s impractical to test, “Hey, we tested 800 different colors. Yeah, it costs $8 million and it took us six years.” But rather than we’ve got someone who really understands the vibes associated with the colors, and the feels, and the associations, and the rich history of color theory, and all that design stuff.

Natalie Nixon
It’s both-and. Part of my background is working in the fashion industry. The fashion industry is excellent at incorporating the value and the role of beauty, aesthetics, and desire in consumer decision-making. And it has to because fashion designers, fashion buyers and merchandisers, the fashion sector knows that as soon as we launch this, it will be knocked off.

So, there’s always this level of urgency and need to discern what’s around the corner, what’s coming up next. And you can’t only get that through the quant. So, there’s a lot of shopping the market. There’s a lot of tapping into what’s called the street and the elite, and really understanding what’s happening among subcultures, and the way trends work.

Trends start as signals. And you get signals, as Ivy Ross says that you get a hit not by staying in your office. You get a hit, you identify signals by being in the world and observing, and being curious, and paying attention to that, I call it, the blurb on the radar screen, where something just catches your attention. You don’t know why, but that was interesting and just kind of following the breadcrumbs. So, it’s a combination of approaches that actually yield us the most innovative and resonating results.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, now this is fun. Talking about breadcrumbs, we’ve gone down some fun paths. Maybe let’s zoom out. The book Move, Think, Rest, what’s the big idea, the big promise of it?

Natalie Nixon
The big idea of Move, Think, Rest is that we will cultivate our best work when we integrate what I call movement hygiene, which is the movement part, back-casting and forecasting, which is the thought part, and intermittent resting throughout our work days so that we can navigate ubiquitous technology, unprecedented burnout, and new rules for remote work.

The whole point of the, what I call the MTR framework, or the “Move, Think, Rest” framework is to build our capacity for creativity, is to build creativity as a strategic competency so that we can consistently and sustainably innovate. If we don’t have means, tools, ways in, to build creativity as a capacity, as individuals, as teams, and as an organization, we will be working in a very myopic way.

We will miss opportunities and we actually will not innovate in a way that’s interesting, that makes it exciting and cool to show up for work, and that actually delivers meaningful value to the clients and customers we serve.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think I’d like some more of that capacity. That sounds good. Could you share with us a story of someone who took on some of these approaches and saw a nifty transformation?

Natalie Nixon
One example would be my interview with Brendan Boyle, who is a toy designer. And I went out to the Stanford d.school where he teaches a course on play. Play is probably the ultimate MTR framework opportunity. And the challenge with play is that play has a horrible PR problem.

Play is dismissed, it’s thought of as an add-on, an addendum to the important things. But consider, and this is one of things that Brendan and I talked about a lot, consider that all the attributes of play, which are being able to actively listen, to being curious, having a great ability to negotiate, to collaborate. These are all of the same traits that we say we want in our leadership, that we say we want to hire for.

So, one way that Brendan has been really successful with the clients he works with to understand that, his definition of play is engagement. I mean, you want engaged employees, right? You don’t want them checked out because that’s a business cost. There’s a significant business cost when we don’t build these capacities through movement, thought, and rest. But play is the ultimate integration of movement and thought and rest.

So, when we are at play, we tend to be a bit more mobile. We have to think very differently. We have to be sometimes reflective, sometimes super imaginative, and the imagination and the curiosity and the dreaming is the forecasting piece I referenced. The reflection, the use of memory is the back-casting piece.

And it’s a rest. It’s a break from the typical cognitive load in our neocortex that we only associate with work. And someone I actually interviewed for The Creativity Leap, but her example was something I was reminded of in writing Move, Think, Rest is Gerry Laybourne, Geraldine Laybourne, who’s the founder of Nickelodeon.

And she would have recess, “No agenda. Step away from the desk and just come hang out for 30 minutes.” And Brendan built on that, and said, “You know, that’s really powerful and really important,” because you could have guard rails. Whenever we have things that sound pretty loosey-goosey or improvisational, remember improvisation has rules.

So, one of the rules could be, “No conversation or chat longer than three minutes so you don’t hog up the VP’s time,” right? But you begin to have just playful conversations about, “Oh, how did you prepare that sauce that you just described that you had for dinner last night?” You get to learn about another dimension of a person. Again, work becoming inside out.

And what’s happening when we are at play is that we are allowing the default mode network in the brain to take over. And the default mode network are those different neurosynapses that happen when we tap out of the world and we, as I like to say, get out of our head and into our body.

That might be through a walk. That might be through what I call, what I do every day, a daydream break. That might be through a rollicking, engaging conversation with an old friend, where you’re not thinking about the work at hand. But what’s happening is that different neurosynapses are at work, which are actually critical for what I call the juicy bits of productivity to happen so that when you then return to the screen, all of a sudden, that conundrum from this morning, some new ideas are shapeshifting into place.

All of a sudden, you have these lightbulb moments that happen when we’re awakening out of a really good sleep, that happens during shower moments. And I can share more about kind of the scientific terms for those too if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. Yeah, we had a sleep doctor, Michael Breus, on the show who described the “just waking up” creative zone as groggy greatness, which I thought was kind of fun. And it’s true, I’ve lived it and felt it terms of I wake up, it’s like, “Oh, of course, just do this.” I was like, “Well, yesterday, it was so hard. What the heck?” So message received.

Natalie Nixon
Yeah, I love groggy greatness.I love that. And the science, I mean, Dr. Breus knows this, but when we’re starting to drift off into sleep, that’s called the hypnagogic state. So, Thomas Edison, for example, started observing that when he would suddenly wake up, just as he was drifting off into sleep, he would have these lightbulb moments. No pun intended, Thomas Edison.

But he started to then, as if he took a nap in the middle of the day, he would intentionally hold a heavy ball or orb in his hand, and as he was drifting off, the orb would fall down, he’d wake up. And something that he was pondering would make sense.

Now what you can start to do is you can plant seed, a question in your mind, before you go to sleep. And a lot of times, the clarity will come as you awake.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and I also think that holding orbs just sounds like a fun, awesome thing to do, speaking of play.

Natalie Nixon
Why not?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like I’m a mighty wizard. That’s it, was it “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” right? That was the nickname, that he’s holding orbs just like a wizard does. Well, so what’s the movement hygiene part of this?

Natalie Nixon
So, we all know we should exercise, but exercise could be a little triggering to people, because when we think about exercise, we think, “Oh, I’ve got to go to a 50 minutes long Pilates class. Ugh,” or, “I’ve got to go for a jog that’s 30 minutes long.” No, movement hygiene is about incorporating movement throughout the day.

And it could be things like incorporating a standing desk. So, right now, for example, I don’t have a standing desk, but I actually need to figure out the brand of this contraption. It’s this cool little contraption I put on top of my desk. It can rise. I can lower it. So, when I want to stand just to stretch my legs, I can.

I’m also on this really cool platform by this company called Fitebo. And it kind of rocks. It forces me to practice my balance and to make sure that I’m not leaning too heavily to one side of my body, which is an example of movement hygiene, making sure that you’re incorporating microbreaks throughout the day so that you stand up, empty the dishwasher.

When we also think about exercise versus movement, there seems to be more pressure about how long it should last, how intensive it should be. I have walks, I work from home. I have walks around my neighborhood that I know some walks are it’s going to take me three minutes.

There’s another walk I have that takes me seven minutes. And there’s one short walk in the woods I can take that takes me 16 minutes long.

So, depending on the amount of time you can budget during the day, there are so many opportunities that you have to incorporate this movement hygiene. And the reason that matters is because, as humans, we are designed to move. The spinal cord is an extension of the brain. It’s an extension of the medulla oblongata.

And if we are sitting, for more than, you know, Dr. John Medina, who’s the author of a series of books called Brain Rules, his research suggests that we shouldn’t be doing one particular task for longer than 30 to 40 minutes. If we’re cramped at the laptop for longer than 40 minutes, for two hours, we are constricting blood flow to the brain and, therefore, restricting oxygen, and, therefore, we’re actually not doing our best thinking, which is not the goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m curious with your research. Did you find any nifty random control trials associated with a modest amount of movement, hygiene, mixing it up, resulting in some cool thinking, creativity, smartness benefits?

Natalie Nixon
I mean, I can’t name a specific example right now, but over and over again, the research shows that when you are incorporating movement, integrate it throughout the day, and not waiting till you go to an exercise class, it affects more exponential creative thinking because you are activating the way the body is designed to work, and you are not treating the brain as a disembodied part of the rest of your body.

When you move, what’s happening? You do deeper breathing, right, which is important for alleviating stress. It reduces cortisol. It boosts serotonin and all the positive hormones that we actually need for these different neurosynapses to take effect in the brain. And one of the things you’re already hearing through, as I’m describing these examples, is that the MTR framework is not a siloed framework.

It’s not, “First you move, then you think, and then you rest.” A lot of the activity that I’m suggesting that we do more is integrative. So, when we move, we’re also taking a break. When we move and take a break, we’re also allowing the default mode network to begin to be activated so that our thinking is fresher and crisper and, dare I say, more innovative.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, tell me, Natalie, any key top takeaways you really want to make sure folks, looking to be awesome at their jobs, grasp when it comes to moving, thinking, resting?

Natalie Nixon
I want them to understand that the end goal here is to build your capacity for creativity. And the ways that I help people think about creativity is that creativity is our ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems. Creativity is not a nice-to-have. It’s not something that only artists are great at. When all of us dedicate and design more time and space to wonder and rigor, then we will be more creative, which means we will actually be more innovative in our work.

And so, movement, thought, and rest is one on-ramp to building up more wonder and more rigor into your day and into your life and into your work. Because wonder and rigor, which is kind of the umbrella category of my portfolio of work, movement helps you to be more wondrous. There’s so much that you can discover if you just go on a short walk.

If you take a daydream break, right, that is a wondrous time of your day for 90 seconds. When you decide, when you commit to rest, that’s a type of rigor, right? When you commit to be more imaginative and audacious in your thinking, that’s also a type of rigor. But also, it lends itself to greater critical thinking.

So, the movement, thought, rest framework is really an opportunity to build creativity as a capacity, which matters because people have been dying a slow death at work. They’ve just been kind of shut up in a copy-paste way. And so, I want people to shift the ways they’ve been thinking about productivity.

We have an either/or way of thinking about productivity. Either you’re at work or you’re not. And what I’m offering is a both-and model rooted in cultivation. So, I am provocatively saying we need to put productivity to bed. It doesn’t really serve us anymore. It’s rooted in the first industrial revolution where we only measure what we see. It’s based on speed, efficiency, output.

The cultivation model, which was really the MO during agrarian economies prior to the first industrial revolution, we have an opportunity to engage in cultivation 2.0, which is a both-and model. We value the solo practitioner and the collective. We value quick spurts of growth and slow. And we value, yes, we should measure what we see, but we also acknowledge that there’s a lot happening in the invisible dormant realm.

We need to sleep on it when we need things to percolate and marinate. So, the both-and cultivation model and understanding that all this work helps you to build your creative capacity.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you mentioned 90 seconds, was that 90 seconds for daydreaming?

Natalie Nixon
Yes, I will stand by it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s all it takes

Natalie Nixon
That’s all it takes. Sometimes I can afford a five-minute daydream break. But your prompt can be just watching clouds drift down across the sky or watching ants crawl on the pavement. If you work in a high rise, stand by a window and just kind of zone out and watch all the little people and cars down below, and then go back to the work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was going to ask, since you mentioned a number and time, so moving, thinking, resting, I imagine it’d be kind of easy to fall into a groove or rut of doing too much or too little of either of them. Do you have any rough guidelines for what’s the right rough proportions of moving, thinking, resting to really light up this creative capacity.

Natalie Nixon
The first place I start as I’ve been doing more workshops and talks about this, is for people to check in and identify, “Of the three, which is the one that’s most challenging for you?” And so, if you are deficient in movement, that’s where you should be starting. If you’re deficient on rest, which is different than sleep, right, but if you’re deficient on rest, that’s where you should be starting.

So, this is not a cookie-cutter model. It’s not a sequential formulaic model. It is very much a model that requires you to be self-aware about, “What’s missing in my work habits? And what are the new habits that I want to start to develop and start there?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And with that 90 seconds of daydreaming, do you, likewise, have any short prescriptions on the moving side?

Natalie Nixon
Yeah, I think walking is the easiest and best place to start, but I also, when I wrote this book, when I wrote The Creativity Leap, I wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. So, I interviewed, for example, Tyler Turner, who’s a paraplegic.

I wanted to talk about what does motor mean for people who are living with physical disabilities, people who may live in socioeconomic environments where they can’t just go out for a little jog at 6:00 p.m. because it’s actually kind of stupid. It’s not very safe. They don’t have access to parks and nature. So, what does that look like to them?

And so, one of researchers, whose research I learned about, is Dr. Yancey, who sadly died at age 50 of breast cancer, but her work, and her mission in her work, was to really catalyze movement in urban environments. She piloted a lot of programs, kind of micro movements that you could do in a small apartment, do it in the middle of a busy day, at UCLA and at UC Berkeley.

So, stretching, taking a dance break, maybe that’s not part of the culture of your team, but you can certainly do those sorts of dance breaks for yourself privately, if it doesn’t make sense for your team. If you can’t go for a walk outside, can you go up and down the stairs?

And, again, the author of the Brain Rules books, he talks about how the times that we are kind of static and doing more of that important work of the frontal neocortex shouldn’t be longer than 30, 40 minutes. And then peppering it with anywhere from five- to 15-minute breaks will really do the trick.

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

Natalie Nixon
I think a lot about “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.” I think that’s a really important one for me to not overthink. And I also love the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Natalie Nixon
I’m reading right now Abraham Vergese’s The Covenant of Water. Do you know his work?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Natalie Nixon
I remember it’s pronounced Verghese, it’s V-E-R-G-H-E-S-E. He’s a true polymath, he’s a super accomplished surgeon, a medical school professor at Stanford. And he decided to kind of take a sabbatical and got accepted into the Iowa Writing program, and has multiple bestselling books of fiction. The first of his book that I read was Cutting for Stone. I’m also a big fan of J. California Cooper, her book In Search of Satisfaction.

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

Natalie Nixon
Right now, I use Otter a lot. I love a good dictation app. I love being able to just download my thoughts verbally. So, Otter is one of my favorite tools for work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Natalie Nixon
Stretching. I try to stretch 15 minutes every morning just to remain limber.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people really dig and quote back to you often?

Natalie Nixon
“Wonder is found in the midst of rigor. And rigor cannot be sustained without wonder.”

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

Natalie Nixon
Figure8Thinking.com. That’s F-I-G-U-R-E, the number eight, Thinking.

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

Natalie Nixon
Have some self-compassion. Tap into what makes you uniquely human and maybe start by reading my book, Move, Think, Rest.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Natalie, thank you.

Aug 18
0

1085: How to Find More Fun at Work Every Day with Bree Groff

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Bree Groff shares the simple but effective strategies for finding more fun at work.

You’ll Learn

  1. The mind shift that helps us find more fun at work
  2. The 5-minute team practice that drastically improves engagement
  3. How to find joy during even the roughest work days

About Bree

Bree Groff is a workplace culture expert and author of Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously). She has spent her career guiding executives at companies including Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, Calvin Klein, and Hilton through periods of complex change. She is a Senior Advisor to the global consultancy SYPartners, previously served as the CEO of NOBL Collective, and holds an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University. Bree lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Resources Mentioned

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Jeff DeGraff Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Bree, welcome!

Bree Groff
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book, Today Was Fun: A Book About Work. Could you share with us any particularly surprising or extra counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about work and fun while putting this all together?

Bree Groff
I mean, the first, maybe most obvious is when I say work and fun, people are like, “So happy hour?” Like, a lot of times it, like, does not compute, “Wait, work cannot actually be fun. You must be talking about off sites, happy hours.” Or they think, “Oh, you’re going to tell me that fun is a driver of productivity and business performance in the bottom line.” That is true, but also not my point.

My point is that we should be valuing our days at work more highly, simply because they come from our finite bank of days that we get on this planet. And it is not only possible to have fun within the work itself, like when I’m actually creating or making something of value, but to do that is, actually, honors our brief time here, honors our lives in a way that I think we don’t often.

We often wish our way through the week, “Ugh, when can it be Friday?” So, I’m trying to correct that, swing the pendulum back a little bit, such that employee engagement and our own days at the office are seen as valuable just for themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And so, you say it should be fun and we’re trying to correct. Can you give us a sense of what percentage of folks experience regular fun during the course of work versus find this to be a foreign concept when you speak with them or you’ve done the research, like, “Oh, you mean the ping pong table or the happy hour?” Like, “No, I don’t mean those things.”


Bree Groff
Yeah. I mean, the data is staggering on things like burnout, overworking. I’ll try and cite it correctly, but I believe it was 89% of employees have felt a sense of dread within the last month at work, 49% have felt a sense of dread within the last week. And like dread, that is such a big word. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m not having the most fun of my life.” It’s, “I’m actually dreading something.”

So, there’s a lot of headroom for us to go from what’s currently the state of affairs at work, which is something often work is something that we show up to that we get through. We almost show up assuming it’s not going to be fun and that’s not the point of work. So why even try to make it so? But I think it is. I think if we are going to be spending, they say one third of our lives or five sevenths of every week at the office or at the virtual office, well, that’s worthy of us figuring out how to have a better time doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love it you could drop even more stats on us, I’m shameless here, because I guess I imagine that both things are true for me in the sense that, “Yeah, you know, I have fun at work and also there are elements that I dread.” And I think that is probably the case for nearly even the most dreamy of dream job havers in their lives. So, I guess I really want to know, like, how many folks experience, you know, near zero fun in the course of doing their work? Do we know that?

Bree Groff
Who experiences near zero fun? I mean, I imagine it’s kind of sizable. Anybody who’s looking for a new job is not maybe near zero, but is sort of approaching that asymptote of there’s very little to get from here anymore. I will say, though, like I’m not of the opinion that every day and all work needs to be fun. That’s just unrealistic, and it holds us to such a high standard.

Chapter one of the book is titled “Most Work, Most Days Should Be Fun.” And if we get most, I think, yeah, you’re killing it. Right? You’re doing a really good job.

Pete Mockaitis
And do we have a sense, very roughly, and maybe even just your gut sense of chatting with folks, if there’s not a perfect survey tool that’s assessed this, like, how many folks find themselves in that boat?

Bree Groff
Of most days most work is fun? My gut sense, and then I’ll try and whip you up some research, my gut sense would be 50% most work, most days is fun. Again, that’s off the cuff.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think, Bree, folks will likely push back on you, in terms of, “Well, you don’t know about my job. This is as dull as it gets.” So, could you perhaps share with us a story of someone who was not having so much fun at work and then made some adjustments and, behold, the very same job they were in became more fun?

Bree Groff
Yeah, I’ll give you a sitcom, “The Office,” right? Like, you’ve seen it, they’re selling paper during the advent of the internet. Like, the business is crashing. It’s probably the dullest possible job you can imagine. I love how the show was framed because it’s not at all saying that work is fun because it’s meaningful or purposeful. It’s to show that work can still be fun even when you have no purpose, no meaning, when your job is to sell reams of paper.

And the reason it was fun, the reason why people love watching it is because the humans in the office, the entry level employees, they made it so. They made their own fun. So, when I think about, like, “How can we as individuals make our days more fun?” there’s so many things that we can do at the local level.

So, for example, when I’m leading consulting teams, it’s me and, on average, maybe seven, eight people on a team for a client, we are our own little ecosystem. So, whoever out there is listening, is, “Oh, my job is terrible,” the question is, “Do you have a few people around you in your local team, or even like one work bestie, where you can make your own fun despite the elements of what’s happening out there?”

So, this could look like anything from, “Hey, we’re going to wear our animal print socks on Fridays.” It’s such a stupid example, but it’s a stupid example because, one, nobody at work probably cares about what socks you’re wearing. And, two, it’s a little bit of an act of mischief and subversion in a way. Like, how can you make your own fun there?

Or, let’s say you have to do expense reports or fill out some sort of soul-sucking spreadsheet. Well, you could do that under your fluorescent lighting hunched over your desk. Or, if you work in an office building where you can take a walk and sit on a bench outside. If you’re working from home, and you can go to a coffee shop and do it there.

There are always ways to get the same work done, but dressed in a little bit more fun. So, at best, we think of work like steak, like it’s juicy, it’s delicious. The work itself is interesting and captivating. But if it’s just not, if your work is broccoli, then your job is to get some cheese and smother it on. And, in the very least, find some camaraderie with the other people who are also suffering alongside you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, I think “The Office” is a fine example because you can see all sorts of good times had in the midst of very boring circumstances. So, could you share some stories of real people who maybe did not have the luxury of a Jim Halpert with all those hilarious pranks and fun-making activities in the mix and how they found some creative ways to upgrade their experience of fun at work?

Bree Groff
So, there was one client that I was working with. The remit was employee experience and sort of like the process of this function. There were about 150 people in the function, and one person in particular, as we’re doing these interviews, was telling me like she was out, she was not having any fun. She was ready to leave.

We proposed many structural changes, process changes, sort of to try and like lighten up the workload and do all these things. But the one thing that made more difference than, and then anything else, for this one woman in particular, we started introducing the concept of a check-in, which is, at the top of a team meeting, you could do it at a standup or, you know, once a week, you simply start the meeting by saying, “How is everybody on a scale of one to five? Put it on your fingers. Three, two, one, everyone puts up their fingers, it’s a four, it’s a two, it’s a one.”

And then you go around the room in 30 seconds, everyone says how they are at work or in life. So, it could sound like, “Oh, I’m a four. We got a new puppy, which is amazing, but the puppy kept me up all night, so I’m kind of tired.” “I’m a two. I’m actually super nervous about this meeting we have later this week. I don’t know if we’re ready for it, so excited to talk about that in the meeting today.” Or, “I’m a five. It’s my birthday tomorrow.” And then everyone says, “Happy birthday.”

It’s a very simple practice. It takes maybe less than five minutes to do within a team. And once we started introducing this practice, so now I’d say most days she was doing this with her team, she was able to share, one, she was a new mom, so she was able to share, like, “Oh, God, this is really hard. I didn’t sleep much last night. And I’m really excited about this event that we’re putting on tomorrow.”

She was able to open her humanity to her team. So, she felt seen in a way that she wasn’t seen before. Nothing actually really changed about the work in that period of time. We were still working on more structural changes, but just the simple fact that she could go into work and she knew that somebody was going to say, “How are you?” and listen, like that was enough.

And so, we will often do, like, a pre-post survey of belonging and engagement and all those things, and the numbers were incredible, just like even when we pulsed on that one intervention. And then, just anecdotally, like her ability to say, like, “Oh, my God, I finally feel like I can be part of this team and not hide my exhaustion.”

Because there’s so much about work that tells us we need to be buttoned up and professional and sort of have like one sort of presentable persona to the business. But just being able to say, “How are you?” and then have someone say that to her made all the difference. So often, when I’m working with clients, it’s the first thing, the first thing I’ll do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Thank you. Yes. I remember when I was working at the Bridgespan Group, we did that practice of check-in, And it was so interesting because, you know, part of me was annoyed at first in terms of like, “Come on. Come on. We’ve a lot to cover, you know. I’m excited to get into it. And really like we’ve got, you know, 50 minutes scheduled for this meeting. How many minutes are we going to do with check-in?”

And it really fluctuated. Like, sometimes it was maybe a good third of the meeting was the check-in. I guess we didn’t have clear rules, but what was interesting is, in a way, that fluidity was kind of helpful. It’s like, “Oh, actually, that’s what was most needed. Go figure. It was not so much what was on the agenda proper, but spending some more time on this stuff.”

And what’s funny to this day, I mean, mercy, this was 16 years ago, but, like, I feel more, like, I don’t know, warmth, affection, interest, friendliness, and remembering of these people than I do like most other team settings. And it was interesting because there wasn’t that much to it. So, I came around to be a fan of the check-in, and it’s interesting.

And people can sort of choose just how vulnerable they are, how much they want to disclose with regard to their check-in. And I don’t think we ever were like derailed, even if it’s like hardcore, you know. I don’t remember what the most dramatic example was, but if someone were to say, “Oh, I’m distraught because my son has a…we thought he kicked his drug problem, but now he’s using cocaine again, and we’re really worried about his safety.”

Like, I’m just trying to imagine like what’s among the most intense things you might say in a check-in. So, one, folks tended not to share that, unless they felt comfortable enough in the team dynamic over time. And, two, when they did share bigger things, it didn’t tend to derail, you know, or take a long, long time. Folks just say, “Oh, that’s so hard. I’m so sorry. Please, let me know if I can support you.”

And it’s a little awkward to transition to the next person, “And I got a puppy.” But, you know, we get over it. In a way, it’s nice because, you know, these things are in the room, even if we’re not saying them, and just not acknowledging them does not make them disappear. Like, we are carrying the emotional whatever of that stuff into it.

And, in a way, it’s actually super helpful because it, like, demystifies stuff. Like, in ambiguous circumstances, I think we humans have a knack for just inventing stories as to what’s going on. Like, “Oh, she thinks my ideas are really dumb.” Like, “No, she’s super stressed about these life circumstances. That explains the low energy, the low mood, the short tip, any number of things.”

And it’s like, “Oh, well, I feel bad for them, but it’s a relief for me.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s just sort of what’s going on there.” And then it opens up opportunities for people to follow up, it’s like, “Oh, you know, hey, we got a new puppy last year, and we found this amazing YouTube channel, which was game-changing in terms of training or whatever.” And then, like, all these new opportunities for connection appear. So, I’m going on and on, Bree.

Bree Groff
I love it, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But just to say, yeah, I think check-ins, at first, I was skeptical, but I became a believer that they do a lot of good, and you’ve got hard numbers on the back end there.

Bree Groff
Yeah, so, totally. And they do feel awkward at first. I won’t lie. Even after doing them for years, I’ll sometimes be like, “Oh, team, wait, can we do a check-in before we jump in?” And I have like a little spike of like, “Oh, is it okay?” And it’s always worth it. Because I remind teams that the goal is not to have an efficient team. The goal is to have an effective team. And in order to trust people, you have to know them. In order to like people, you have to know them.

So, yeah, the research behind this is also really good, in addition to like our own experiences of like, “That felt nice.” But it promotes psychological safety, because if you risk saying something, even 2% vulnerable at the start of a meeting and you’re met with support, now you’re more likely to share whatever you need to share, you know, your business idea, whatever it is, later in the meeting.

It’s great for cognitive offloading. So, there’s research that says if you write or say whatever is running through the back of your mind, you can then focus better on the next task at hand. It’s sort of like shutting down all the tabs on your computer. So, instead of just ruminating on like, “Oh, how’s the puppy? How’s the puppy? So, I got a new puppy. I hope they’re not destroying the apartment right now. Great. I’ve said it.”

Priming contributions. So, once you’ve spoken once in a meeting, now it’s more comfortable to speak again, as opposed to, we’ve all been in those meetings where one person doesn’t speak the whole time, or maybe that’s you, and you’re like, “Oh, God, am I going to jump in now? Is this the one thing I’m going to say the whole meeting?”

And then thwarting any sort of miscommunications, as you said. So, if one person’s camera is off, and you’re like, “What a jerk!” but they’re like, “Oh, I’m a two. I threw my back out. So, I’m going to be camera off this meeting,” now there’s empathy where there used to be resentment. So, so many good reasons to do the check-in, to fight through that initial like awkwardness, and, “Oh, is this going to take a few minutes?”

Because every team that I’ve done this with, which I’ve been doing this now for over a decade, like I know things about their lives and who they are that made me feel, just as you said, like warm and affectionate to them. I’ve had teams, even as they disbanded, continue to check in years later simply because we, like, essentially bore witness to each other’s lives in that time, to the degree the person wanted to share. So big fan is the bottom line.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s awesome. So, there’s one intervention, simple, powerful. I guess maybe one quick little footnote is like you mentioned the affirming, and maybe it goes without saying, but just to be explicit.

Bree Groff
“Don’t be a jerk.”

Pete Mockaitis 
During the course of a check-in, yeah, you would be affirming as opposed to, “A puppy. Why would you do that to yourself? You’ve already got three young kids. Are you insane?” Like, “Okay, that’s not how to respond to a check-in. Rather, you would…well, you tell me, someone shares a thing and then someone else is about to go, how does that transition or handoff work in practice?

Bree Groff
Yeah, if someone shares a thing, the rule is don’t be a jerk. Although, if you really like each other and know each other, and you know the person would laugh being like, “What the hell were you thinking? You got three kids,” you know, that’s cute. But, in practice, the way that it would functionally work, so I would usually start it off, or like a project manager could start it off, I’ll say, “How’s everybody?” Three, two, one. We put our fingers up in the air.

I’ll nominate someone to start. So, I’ll say, “All right, Pete, kick us off.” You would do your 30 seconds and then you would pass it to someone else. Like, “Okay, Bree, you go,” and then you just go around the room. It just avoids the whole, like, “Who wants to go next?”

And also, if you start at the top of the meeting, you end up getting into the meeting stuff around the same time as if you had just like chit chatted and done the whole, like, “Let’s wait for a few more people to join,” which is my corporate pet peeve.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And so then, when someone shares, we mentioned acknowledgement or affirmation previously, they just stop and the next person goes, there’s no like, I don’t know, commenting or responding?

Bree Groff
Oh, yeah. I mean, maybe a little. So, like, “Oh, you got a new puppy. Like, oh, it’s so cute. Love it.” Something like that. If you’re on Zoom or remote, a lot of times people will just put things in chat to respond so that there’s a little bit of reciprocation, but, yeah, I mean, just no terrible back and forth, like, “Oh, I really threw out my back.” Someone would be like, “Oh, I’ll DM you my chiropractor later.” Something like that.

But I’ve had leaders ask me, like, “Well, what do I do with this information? Do I need to follow up if someone’s not doing?” I’m like, “No. The beauty of the practice is, like, this is literally saying, ‘How are you?’ and listening. Like, it’s so fundamentally human. So that’s all you have to do.” But, yeah, like a few, like, “Mm-hmm” kind of thing, that’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, lovely. All right. So, the check-in right there is simple, powerful, fun-building. What is another one or two of your top practices you recommend?

Bree Groff
Sure. Another one that falls in that camp is the user manual, which is a document you would keep for your team or maybe your direct reports or a couple of people around you. That’s just a series of questions about who you are and how you work.

So, functionally, each person would have their own page, and the questions would read something like, “Who are the humans and animals who are important to you? How can you be misunderstood? How can someone help if you’re stressed or stuck? What’s important to you on a team? What other responsibilities or joys do you have outside of work? What are you trying to get better at, at work?”

So, it’s just all these sorts of questions called a user manual, is my cheeky way. It’s, like, if you get a blender, you’re like, “What are all these buttons do?” Well, it’s like, “Well, you just go look at the manual. There’s like some quick start guide.” So, this is just the human version of that. Because how often do we work with people? Maybe for years, and then you’re like, “Oh, you have a brother?” It’s like, “Yeah.”

But we just, like, never sort of have the opportunity to, or think to, or maybe we’re nervous to share about those things. Also, like, we learn so much in working together through trial and error, but it doesn’t have to be that way. So, for example, like, if I’m stressed, I want someone to talk it out with me. I’m a very verbal processor.

But other people want to be left alone, like, “Do not go near me when I’m stressed out. Give me a hot second. It’s going to…” But, like, why should we guess who’s who or like try and get it right and then mess it up? So, there’s a question, “How can others help when you’re stressed or stuck?” And you can say, “Oh, just give me an hour or two and I’ll figure it out,” or, “Ask me how you can help.”

So, it’s a really simple document. Actually, I have a template on my website. If people want to go, it’s BreeGroff.com/usermanuals. You can download it and create one for your team. And it’s just another way to sort of like lubricate our social interactions such that we’re having more fun with the people we’re working with and we’re more supportive of them as well. We’re more seen and when we’re seen, we’re also better liked.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. I also want to hear your comments. In your book, you mentioned a couple of the super tiny little things we can do to, like, give many treats to ourself or to enhance a very basic experience of drinking coffee or tea. Can you speak to these concepts?

Bree Groff
Sure. Yeah, so there’s something that I call thin-slicing your joy. If you are looking ahead at your calendar for the day, and you’re like, “Oh, God, this is going to be painful. Back-to-back meetings, I have to get this thing out, and my inbox is a mess.” Well, if you look at the whole day, sure, it might look hard and dreadful, but we don’t have to look at a whole day.

So, then thin-slicing looks like, “Well, is there one hour, is there one meeting where I know I’m going to have fun? That’s maybe a brainstorm meeting or there’s some people in there that I like.” Or maybe you’re like, “Nope, Bree, every hour looks rough.” And I say, “Okay, great. Thin-slice even further. Are there a few minutes throughout your day where you can squeeze a little extra joy from what you’re already doing?” So, things that take no time.

Smelling is a great one. So, if you’re going to go get yourself a cup of coffee, maybe you stash some cinnamon in the office or in your kitchen and put a little bit on your coffee or your latte, and then just take three seconds and, like, breathe it in. Sensation kind of things are really good for getting us out of our heads, out of sort of like ruminations and anxieties and your head spinning about work.

Another small thing, sometimes the best way to have more fun at work is to help someone else have more fun at work. So, you can send something I call a love bubble, which is just like a two-line text. It could be a text, a DM, an email to a colleague, to say like, “Hey, you totally rocked it in that meeting. I don’t know how you got everybody on the same page. It was so cool.” It’s just like a little note of “You’re awesome. Appreciation. Thank you. So cool that you did that.”

The trick is, like, don’t overthink it, don’t like craft the email. This is not like formal feedback. This is like, “I have a nice thought. I share a nice thought.” Because so often, I think we do have nice thoughts about our colleagues, like, “Oh, they’re so good at that,” we just keep them to ourselves. So, if you can spend 30 seconds shooting off a little love bubble, now you’ve made that person’s day and you sort of kickstarted this positive feedback loop. Now maybe they’ll think of doing the same.

Other, like, little silly things, like micro acts of mischief I really like because they get your adrenaline going a little bit almost office style. Once in a while, you could put Comic Sans in your presentation and see, like, who you can make twitch because it’s like such a terrible typeface. You could rearrange the office furniture. Maybe you play yourself some music. I will say, though, all of these things are, they’re like realistic hacks.

Like, “I’m not having a great time at work. I can’t quit my job and/or maybe I’m just having a bad day. Like, how do I find more joy?” And that’s fine. Like, sometimes we just need to get through things. But I will also say it’s also important to acknowledge, like, “Oh, am I just hacking it through my day every day?” In which case, then it’s a bigger conversation with yourself about, like, “Is there a different role that’s better for me out there?”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny, I’m thinking about the TV series “Severance” right now with their really lame, like sort of parties are fun acknowledgments, “And you get to select a style of music and an instrument. We’re having a melon party, and this melon party is not going to start itself.” And what’s funny is, I think that that’s kind of the joke, it’s like, “Oh, these are kind of lame incentives, but these people are like, in some ways almost like children, and so, they can appreciate them.”

But yet, I think there’s also great wisdom in there in terms of like, “We are kind of like children in terms of little things really can be quite delightful.” And I think, often, my sense is, sometimes the more that they violate norms or are weird, in some ways, the more delightful. I mean, I’m sure there’s exceptions, but like the silly socks, for example.

Like, I have, for instance, when I had to get through some stuff, and it was all kind of lame, I would say, “I’m going to celebrate aggressively even though I have very limited resources.” Like, it’s just me. I am in sort of a small office space here but, “I’m going to get a shot glass full of cold water and pour it over my head and pretend it’s like the Gatorade being dumped on the coach, you know, after the victory.”

It’s like, “Well, I had a victory,” and cold water just makes you go, “Ooh,” a little bit. So, I mean, it is so little and so silly, and yet, I guess our inner children, if you will, can find some delight and some fun in it such that it meaningfully transforms the experience of that day.

Bree Groff
Yeah, I mean, the trick here is just amuse yourself. Like, because it’ll look different for everybody. Like, some people are sitting and will be like, “I like my socks just the way I like my…” It’s like, “Great. Don’t do the sock thing.” That’s a very low-bar example. But I guess what I most hope is that people feel the confidence in the value of their days.

And when you feel like you deserve to have a good day, you’re in a position then to try and make that true, to amuse yourself. Because I think so many people will show up to work thinking, “This day is not even mine. I’ve sold it to some employer. I’m not expecting to have fun. I’m here to provide the shareholder value and get my paycheck.” And I get that that sometimes feels like a more honest assessment of work. And yet, I feel like, in that situation, we’ve given up too fast. We’ve settled.

Instead, I think it’s worthy to hold the belief that, like, “Today, whatever day it is, April 12th, this year, I get one shot at this day. This day is not coming back again. This is a day of my life, not just a day that I’ve sold to an employer. So then how do I want to take ownership of enjoying it?” And then it’s just a question of like, “What do you like? I don’t know. What amuses you? What do you find fun?” I think the Gatorade, like the little shot glass of Gatorade is hilarious.

It’s so good because it’s playful. I think there is something in that sort of childish sentiment. Because children realize that there’s value in play just because there’s value in play, not the corporate version of that, that there’s value in play because it drives innovation. No, it’s just simply fun. And now you’ve had that moment of joy and you’ve banked it and it’s yours in life.

I also think it’s important to amuse ourselves because it creates a culture where we give permission to other people to also amuse themselves. And so, sometimes this is sort of like accoutrement around the work, you know, like the socks or the Gatorade example, but also, I think it’s important to amuse ourselves in the work. So, even like when I’m doing client projects and we’re scoping work, I’ll often ask myself the question, like, “How do I want to shape the work or define the work that’s most fun?”

Because I could deliver like an 80-page client deck or like a PowerPoint deck to the client. I would probably do the job. Or, we could design this like two-day immersive offsite experience that’s way more fun to build and way more impactful. So, I think it even goes just beyond the day to day, but, like, “What’s the fun work we want to do and do we have enough belief in the fact that we deserve to be having good days to like risk looking a little silly or childish?” And I think it’s worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Bree, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Bree Groff
I said a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, we’ll do it. That’s fine. Can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Bree Groff
Yeah, I mean, on this topic, I love the Annie Dillard quote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

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

Bree Groff
Yeah, I’ve always loved the Marty Seligman, he’s a UPenn researcher in positive psychology, the learned helplessness studies. He did this study probably decades ago now, where he would put dogs in this room, would shock their feet, I guess, low shocks that dogs were okay.

In one setup, the dogs weren’t able to escape the shocks. In another setup, they were, they were able to walk off the place where they were getting the shocks. They took those two sets of dogs and put them in yet another trial with shocks. But now, both sets of dogs were able to escape. The dogs that could escape the first time were like, “Yeah, I’m getting out of here,” and they did.

The dogs that could not escape the first time just sat down and whimpered, even though they could escape. They just decided, they had learned, essentially, had learned helplessness, “There’s nothing I can do here. I’ve just got to take it.”

And I loved that study for what it teaches us also about, like, happiness and joy in the workplace. Because I think a lot of us over time, I know I have, at times, have learned, “There’s no fun to be had here. There’s nothing I can do to change it. I’m just going to lay down and whimper and collect my paycheck.” When, in fact, there is so much that we can do.

And in fact, what sort of broke the trance for those dogs who had learned, “I can’t escape this,” was the researchers picking them up and walking their paws off of the shock area to actually teach them, like, “Oh, no, you don’t have to accept this.” So, in some ways I’m hoping to do that for the corporate world as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. And a favorite book?

Bree Groff
Yeah. So, basically, all of Agatha Christie’s novels because they’re my version of being totally unproductive. In a world that teaches me that I need to be optimizing all the time, reading for pleasure feels delightful and subversive. And so, my favorite reading for pleasure is cozy mysteries, and I love all of hers.

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

Bree Groff
Yeah, I really love Trello.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Bree Groff
Yeah. So, I love – would you call this a habit? – I love making a Moka pot in the morning. I really love the few minutes that takes me to make it. The minute I stare, I say, I’m just like staring at it, waiting for it to boil. It’s a good sort of sorbet palette cleanser for the start of my day and makes delicious coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a Bree original quote that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Bree Groff
“When you overwork, you underlive.”

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

Bree Groff
Yeah, come hang out at my website. So, it’s BreeGroff.com, B-R-E-E-G-R-O-F-F.com. And from there, you can order the book, you can subscribe to my Substack, you can find me on social media, but it’s a good first place to come say, “Hey.”

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

Bree Groff
My goal for you for today is to send a love bubble. Find one colleague or contact. You’re going to shoot them a two line note that says something like, “Oh, that design you did was so good. The plan you wrote up was awesome. Like, thank you so much for doing this thing. It really helped me.” And then make somebody else’s day. We’ll create a pay-it-forward kind of vibe for each other.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Bree, thank you.

Bree Groff
Thank you. That was fun.

May 08
0

1056: Winning the Mental Game of Leadership with Sébastien Page

By | Podcasts | No Comments

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

You’ll Learn

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

About Sébastien

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

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

Resources Mentioned

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Sébastien Page Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sébastien, welcome!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sébastien Page
I like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Shout out, Phil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

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

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

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

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

Sébastien Page
PsychologyofLeadership.net or LinkedIn.

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

Sébastien Page
Set big goals.

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

Sébastien Page
Thank you. Likewise.

May 05
0

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

By | Podcasts | No Comments

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

You’ll Learn

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

About Dave

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

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Dave Crenshaw Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome back!

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

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

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

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

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, that’s fantastic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
It’s a terrible feeling. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Crenshaw
It systemizes it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

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

Are you familiar with the name Ed Greenwood?

Pete Mockaitis
I think so.

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Go on.

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

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

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

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

Dave Crenshaw

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

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

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dave, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
Thank you, Pete.

Nov 14
0

1011: How to Defeat Overwhelm and Get SO MUCH Done in 15 Minutes with Sam Bennett

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Sam Bennett shows you how to transform the way you work through the magic of the 15 minute method.

You’ll Learn

  1. The impressive amount you can get done in 15 minutes
  2. How to deal with the overwhelm 
  3. Why it’s worth “doing it grumpy”

About Sam 

Sam Bennett is the author of Get It Done, Start Right Where You Are, and most recently, The 15-Minute Method: The Surprisingly Simple Art of Getting It Done. A writer, speaker, actor, and creativity/productivity specialist, she is the founder of TheRealSamBennett.com, a company committed to helping overwhelmed creatives and frustrated overachievers get unstuck.

Sam is also a popular course instructor on LinkedIn Learning with over a million class participants worldwide. She lives in Connecticut, and you will find her online at www.TheRealSamBennett.com and 15MinuteMethod.com.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Sam Bennett Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sam, welcome.

Sam Bennett
Thank you so much, Pete. Thanks for having me. Hi, everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to be chatting. We’re talking about The 15-Minute Method: The Surprisingly Simple Art of Getting It Done. And could you tell us a particularly surprising or fascinating discovery you’ve made while researching this stuff? You’ve been in the game for a while and you’ve settled in on 15 minutes.

Sam Bennett
I have. I have, yes. So, let’s talk about how you can change your life in 15 minutes a day. Because, here’s the thing, people are always going to be like, “Sam, is it really possible to change your life in 15 minutes a day?” I’m like, “You already are. You’re already living your life in 15-minute increments. You may not be describing it that way, but, you know, that’s how time works, as far as we know.”

And the thing that I’ve noticed, over and over again, is how much a person can get done in 15 minutes. Everyone is always shocked, “Oh, my God, I got so much done.” And how much you can get done in 15 minutes every day, for a week, for a month, for a year, for six years, for 60 years, and it sort of makes logical sense, like, “Oh, yes, if I practiced my ukulele every day for 15 minutes, you know, in not very long of a time, I would be a better ukulele player.” Or, “If I did my prayer and meditation practice every day for 15 minutes.”

Every medical and health professional in the world will tell you, if you move your body in any way, shape, or form every day for 15 minutes, you’re good, you know. And even things that people think like, “Oh, you know, I want to write a book. I can’t do that in 15 minutes.” Well, if you sit down and write every day for 15 minutes, you can get out about 250 words. And so, in about 200 days, that’s 50,000 words, that’s a book. So where were you 200 days ago, and would you like a book right now?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, understood. Could you share with us any particularly inspiring tales of folks who have taken this particular prescription and just really ran with it and seen cool things?

Sam Bennett
So many. I got an email from a guy who was, funny, he said he got the book on Audible, and he said he’s from Philadelphia so he’s a natural-born hater, and he got a certain amount of ways through the book and decided, “Oh, no, this isn’t for me. This isn’t for me,” and he turned it off. But then something kind of kept tapping him on the shoulder and so he went back to it and he started to listen again.

And by the time he wrote me, he said he had listened three full times all the way through, and he had started doing some 15-minute tasks that were sort of changing things for him. But the biggest change is that he was able to quit his job that he has been trying to quit for nine years.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. So, what are the tasks that enable one to quit a job much more rapidly than, I guess, his default approach? And how do you put those into 15-minute increments? That’s intriguing.

Sam Bennett
I think a lot of it has to do with keeping your promises to yourself. We build esteem and respect with other people by keeping our promises to them. We build self-esteem and self-respect by keeping our promises to ourselves, but sometimes we get caught in the loop of not keeping our promises, “Oh, I’m definitely going to go to the gym today. I’m definitely going to give them my two weeks’ notice. I’m definitely going to tell my spouse this isn’t working,” and then we don’t, because it’s scary or it’s hard or it’s not the right time or whatever.

I don’t have any judgment here about how fast things are or are not supposed to happen. I think we’re not always in charge of that. But I think, for him, there was something about spending every single day, 15 minutes a day, on something that mattered to him, right? So, this is one way to approach the 15-minute method, is pick something that lights you up, that brings you joy, that you’ve always been naturally interested in, that you’ve always good at, maybe something you’d love to do as a kid or you used to do, you know, before the kids, and reincorporate that into your life.

Because even though, yeah, you may not join the Bolshoi Ballet anytime soon, 15 minutes of ballet can make you feel like a ballerina again, and that can carry over into your life, right? So, I think that was a lot of it, and learning that he could trust himself to be an entrepreneur, to take the reins of his own life. Because, okay, here’s the thing, it was a family business. So, the person he was trying to quit was his dad, which, you know, makes it a little loaded.

And he said, yeah, he said he had felt just so much calmer and clearer about his life because he was making the steady incremental progress. And they were negotiating their summer vacations, and the guy said, “Yeah, oh, and after August 15th, I won’t be back.” And his dad said, “Okay.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right then.

Sam Bennett
Like, total non-deal. It was so exciting. I was really pleased for him. But sometimes it’s a lot more, a lot less dramatic. I had a client who had moved to North Carolina to take care of her ailing mother. Her mother eventually died, and now she’s living in this house with all of her mother’s stuff. Again, giant, overwhelming, like, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t do this in 15 minutes a day.” It’s like, “Well, but you got to start somewhere.”

So, she starts with her mother’s office, and she starts sorting her mom’s papers for 15 minutes a day. Okay, great. Making some progress there. And then she figures out that her mother’s record player is in there and all her old albums, and music was something they really shared a love for. So, she started putting on albums and playing an album. So, that’s like 22 minutes is like half a side of an album. Children, albums are how we used to listen to music.

And then she found a box of her mom’s old stationery, you know, that beautiful, heavy cotton linen stationery that they just don’t even make anymore. So, she started writing notes to people because she’d moved away to North Carolina. And then she had all these notes, and so then she had to walk to the mailbox every day, and she started to get to know the neighbors and the dogs and the mail carriers.

And, like, all of a sudden, this little 15-minute task of “I need to clear out my mom’s office” starts turning into “Oh, I’m rekindling my love of music. Oh, and I’m reconnecting with my friends. Oh, and I’m connecting for the first time with this new neighborhood.” Like, you start to follow the sparkly breadcrumbs and it’s amazing where it leads.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, I’m curious, why 15 minutes?

Sam Bennett
Because that’s about as much time as anybody’s got. I mean, you read the article, it’s like, “You should spend five hours a week in the gym.” I’m like, “Really? What five hours would that be? Could you please point that out to me, those five hours, because I don’t see it?” But 15 minutes, pretty much everybody’s got 15 minutes. I don’t care how busy or overcooked you are. You’ve got 15 minutes. And that whole feeling of like, “Oh, no, my work needs me, my kids need me.” Not for 15 minutes, they don’t, and, in fact, it’s kind of a good exercise for all of you to have to let people leave you alone for 15 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose if I were to get all nerdy and optimize-y about it, I might say, “Well, why 15 and not 12 or 18?”

Sam Bennett
Well, and that’s the whole thing, right? Make your own adventure, right? If 15 minutes doesn’t work for you, but 12 does, fantastic! Do 12. If 15 doesn’t work for you, but 7 does, great! Do 7. If 15 doesn’t work for you, but an hour and a half does, terrific! I don’t care. I’m not your mom. But the idea is to start doing something, to be taking baby steps every day.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Okay, so there’s no precise super neuroscience magic behind the 15 number. But I would, if I may, give you a little more of an extra credit on it. I think that 15 is, approximately 15, has some magic to it, in that it’s big enough to actually achieve a thing and go, “Okay, cool. I bought a thing. I found a thing that solves this problem I’ve been dealing with for years by clicking around Amazon, reading their reviews, looking at four options, and now I bought the thing, and so, okay, done.”

Sam Bennett
Done. Off the list.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s long enough to do something meaningful, but it’s short enough to not spark resistance, like, “An hour? Oh, I already don’t want to do that. This is going to be miserable.”

Sam Bennett
Exactly. Exactly. And so, I offer a thing for sale on my website called The Daily Practicum, and every weekday for 15 minutes at 12 noon Eastern, we hop on the Zoom, wave hello, start the timer for 15 minutes, 15 minutes later, it goes off. And everybody looks back up at me, they turn their cameras back on, with, I swear, this post-orgasmic glow about them. They’re like, “Oh, my gosh! I did it! I did it! I made that phone call! I’ve been putting off that phone call for six weeks and I made that phone call!” Amazing.

“Oh my gosh! I sent an email to my friend. She just lost her husband and I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted to say something, so I just did it. I just wrote it, and I sent it, and now it’s done.” Or, “I sat out in the garden with the sun on my face for 15 minutes.” Everybody’s always astonished at how much they can accomplish, how great it feels to accomplish something, something tangible, something that’s meaningful to you, to be taking those baby steps toward a bigger project.

And the little secret with The Daily Practicum, especially for our neuro-spicy friends and our extrovert friends, being in a group, knowing that there’s other people also working at that same time, we call it parallel play or body doubling, is really helpful. It’s sort of a form of positive peer pressure. It works. It just works.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Well, we had Taylor Jacobson, who founded Focusmate, on the show, and that is a tool that likewise helps you say, “Okay, now I’m meeting a person and we’re doing a thing even though you’re remote.” That accountability magic is powerful. Well, how many people show up at noon for this thing?

Sam Bennett
You know, it depends. There were some people who were there every single day. There were some people who were sometimes there and sometimes not. There were some people who are never there, but they keep the subscription going because it’s worth it to have it on their calendar every day because just they can’t do it at that time, but the fact that it’s on their calendar makes them remember to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And it sounds like one theme there is something that we’ve, historically, avoided, resisted, put off, ignored, deferred. There seems to be some magic there in particular. Like, there are some extra goodies that you receive in terms of reward or benefit internally, psychologically, when that’s the case.

Sam Bennett
Definitely. Definitely. And I really, again, in the same way that I’m not particularly attached to 15 minutes, specifically, I’m not at all attached to what you spend it doing. And some people come to me and say, like, “I have no idea, Sam. I don’t even know where I would start. I don’t even know what I would spend my 15 minutes on.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, great. Maybe you spend your first 15 minutes making a list of 15-minutes-es, what might interest you, what’s sort of tapping on your shoulder, what seems kind of fun.”

You could also spend 15 minutes staring at a blank piece of paper, because 15 minutes of enforced boredom never hurt a person. And when was the last time you looked at a piece of paper for 15 minutes without reaching for your phone?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, you’re giving a lot of cool ideas here. In fact, in your book, you got a chapter with 52 suggestions. I’m curious, are there a couple within that listing that a lot of people have grabbed, and said, “Wow, this is so transformational, Sam. Thank you”?

Sam Bennett
I think the things that I see the biggest “wow” on is taking a walk every day for 15 minutes, even just, you know, once around the building. Connecting with people, taking 15 minutes to look up an old colleague or an old school friend or somebody you haven’t talked to in a while, and just pinging them in whatever way you like to ping people. I mean like, “Hey, you know, I just thought about you and how great you are and I’d love to catch up.”

Because, you know, Pete, relationships are everything. The quality of your relationships is the quality of your life. And those little just catching-up phone calls can lead to amazing things. So, I think those are probably the two biggest wows. But I also like, yeah, anything that you just feel like is too big, that you’ve just been putting off because it’s too overwhelming. The minute you start thinking about it, you get completely overcooked.

And this happens with highly creative people, right? We get an idea and, all of a sudden, we see it in full color, sequels, theme parks, international grassroots movement, you know, it’s all there, and then we immediately go, “Oh, my gosh, how could I even…where do I even start with that idea?” So, I’ve been giving the example of if you have to clean out your garage, which obviously everybody’s going to go like, “Sam, I can’t do that in 15 minutes, I need like two weekends.”

Okay, first of all, again, where are those two weekends? And if you did have two weekends, I seriously doubt you’d want to spend them cleaning out the garage. But let’s say the garage has really been weighing on you. It’s upsetting. It’s causing some stress family, like, “Let’s take care of the garage.” So, I would say, for the first 15 minutes, just make yourself a mug of something.

I’ve got my little Art Before Housework mug here, and just go out and, like, contemplate the garage. Be with the garage. See what the garage has to say to you. Don’t do anything. Just take it in. And it may be that around minute 11, you go, “Wait a minute, those seven boxes belong to my brother Jeffrey. Jeffrey, come get your boxes!” And now you’ve cleaned out a whole corner of the garage and you don’t have to do anything.

And maybe the next day, you go out again with a mug of something and look in one of those Rubbermaid tubs, and you go, “Oh, that’s got holiday stuff in it.” You make a little sign with your Sharpie that says “Holiday” and put it towards the back because you only need that stuff once a year. And maybe the third day, you take that broken bicycle and you roll it out to the sidewalk with a sign that says “Free broken bicycle.” And in this way and fashion, a person could, in fact, clean out their entire garage in 15 minutes a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like it. And it’s funny, as I visualize it, I’m thinking, “Uh, Sam, you forgot the step dust out the cobwebs so it doesn’t feel gross walking around there.”

Sam Bennett
That would be another excellent 15-minute task, but cobwebs are hard to get rid of. You could get pretty far with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, totally, you could. I got to fix cobweb duster, too. It feels good.

Sam Bennett
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s actually more effective than just, whatever, a paper towel. So, yeah, there’s little extra bonus tips sprinkled throughout it here, Sam.

Sam Bennett
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
And, contemplate, I love it. That’s a valid, useful thing to do because it’ll spark all sorts of ideas and potential strategy, and maybe saves you from getting in too deep in a silly way when you can just call someone else and have them do part of it for you.

Sam Bennett
Also a valid strategy. That’s another great way to spend 15 minutes. Call the nice people who will come and do it for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so I’d love it if you could zoom out a little bit in terms of, psychologically, what’s going on here. You’ve got some interesting insights in terms of, you say overwhelm is an inside problem and not an outside problem. Not so much like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s too much stuff!” but something inside of us. Explain.

Sam Bennett
Yeah, it’s an inside job. We feel like it’s happening because, “Oh, my gosh, everything’s coming at me with such an equal level of intensity, and I don’t know where to start and I don’t know where to begin, and I just feel overcooked.” But that’s not actually true because, when we look at people who work in chronically overwhelming circumstances, the person who is working the front desk at the emergency room, first responders.

I did a television interview on a news channel with a woman who said, “Oh, like when we’re covering breaking news, or when something tragic has happened and we’re reporting right in the moment.” I’m like, “Right. Those are circumstances that many people would find overwhelming, but you are not overwhelmed. You are doing your job, right?” The reporter is not overwhelmed. The person at the ER is not overwhelmed. The first responder is not overwhelmed. They’re running into a burning building, but they are not overwhelmed.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, Sam, that’s actually eye-opening right there. Like, is that really true? Have we talked to the people? I’ve got a buddy who’s firefighter. I should ask him.

Sam Bennett
You should ask him. I’m sure there are sometimes things that are freaking, but it’s their job. They’re trained for it. I spent most of my adult life working as an actor, and especially as an improviser. I was with the Second City in Chicago and played with a lot of those alumni out in LA. And even just getting up on stage with no script and no agenda and four chairs would, to many people, be overwhelming. We’re going to improvise for two hours off of one suggestion or make a play up as we go along. But that wasn’t overwhelming to me, that was my job. It was fun. It’s fun for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. It’s funny, now that you mention it, as I’m reflecting on times that I or loved ones have been in the emergency room, the folks around me seemed so chill and calm and, like, they’re taking their time, it almost annoyed me, like, “Can’t you see this is very serious and urgent?”

Sam Bennett
That’s right. I also think about the people who work in hospitality or the people at the airlines. Every single time I go to an airport, you’re in line for the security check, and there’s always people who are like, “I mean, we’ve got to catch a plane.” I’m like, “Kitten, everyone in this building has to catch a plane. That’s why we’re here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so noted. So, then, indeed, there are folks who are in a situation we might find overwhelming who, yet, don’t feel overwhelmed. What is their secret? Or how can we get some of that inside of us?

Sam Bennett
So, I think some of it is just that, like I said, they’re doing the thing. They’re dealing with what’s right in front of them, they’re trained, they’re prepared. Also, I think they’re engaged. They’re engaged in what they’re doing. When you’re overwhelmed, you’re sort of outside of things and thinking about things as a whole.

And sometimes, I think, we say we’re overwhelmed when we’re actually underwhelmed. Like, I’ve done that where I’ve written out a to-do list, and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’m exhausted before I even start. Like, I don’t want to do any of this.” That’s not overwhelm, that’s underwhelm. That’s, like, “This is a lot of stuff that really should be delegated out to somebody else. Or, does it even need to be done at all, really?”

And so, this is part of the reason why I want people spending 15 minutes a day on the stuff that lights them up, that engages them. And I know I can hear the people, I can hear you all out there, saying like, “Yes, but, Sam, that would be selfish. That would be selfish of me to spend 15 minutes on my own thing.” And I want to say, again, you’ve got it backwards because what’s actually selfish, what’s actually an imposition on us, is when you are walking around exhausted and stressed out and with no sense of humor, and the rest of us have to deal with you like that. That is selfish.

You show up rested, prayed, meditated, walked, creatively fulfilled, whatever it is, we love that version of you. You’re calmer. You’re less reactive. You’re a better listener. Like, please, please claim that 15 minutes for yourself, and do the thing that you know keeps you a little bit lit up inside. And, Pete, I have a revolution I want to start.

All right. Stay with me, everybody. I have had every job in the world. I’ve delivered flowers, I was a barista, I was a whitewater river guide, I produced radio shows. Like, you name it, I did it. But I’ve never had a job in corporate America. So, I always have this feeling of like, “What are they doing in there? I don’t understand.”

But I keep reading the statistic that 77% of employees are disengaged. Seventy-seven percent? That’s a lot. I mean, if somebody took away 77% of your money, you would notice. If you lost 77% of your friends, you would be bummed, right? And it seems to me that this must be a very expensive problem for businesses to have three-quarters of their people walking around not giving a flying hooey about what’s going on.

So, here’s my thought, here’s my revolution. I want businesses to start saying, “Okay, everybody, we recognize that you are human beings, and we want to give you 15 minutes a day just for you. So, every day between 9:00 and 9:15, or between 4:15 and 4:30, that’s your time. You don’t check your email. Don’t make your dentist appointments. You spend that time on something that matters to you. If it has to do with work, fine, but it doesn’t have to. Please do you.”

And, certainly, businesses have tried this kind of thing before. But here’s what I think will work. So, now, we go into our meeting, we have this habit of 15 minutes a day where everybody does their little thing, and I can sort of imagine the water cooler talk of like, “What did you do?” “Oh, I wrote crappy poetry.” “I love crappy poetry. I was writing crappy poetry last month. It’s cool.”

But we go into the meeting and, I say, “Oh, hi, I’m Sam from Events. And today, I spent my 15 minutes working on a needlepoint project for my godchild that I started when she was born, and now she’s about to graduate from high school, so I’m really excited to get it done.” Now, there are studies that show that if you let people say something about themselves as people at the beginning of a meeting, they will be more innovative and more productive in the meeting because you have reminded them of the fullness of themselves.

They’re not just Sam from Events and Pete from Sales. They’re like, “Oh, I’m Sam from Events and I do needlepoint, and that was taught to me by my grandmother and, and, and.” So, now I’m bringing more of me to the table. And then, down the table, there’s Debbie, “I’ve never liked Debbie. We don’t get along.” But then Debbie says, “Oh, yeah, I’m Debbie from Accounts, and I spent my 15 minutes today doing cross-stitch.” “Doing what? Well, now, we’re needlework buddies. We can talk embroidery floss. And no wonder she gets on my nerves because she’s a counted cross-stitch person. No wonder she’s in accounts, like that’s detail work.”

And do you know what we call that? Engagement. People being engaged with each other personally, and people will do way more for each other than they’re going to do for any job.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. That sounds lovely. I mean, if you say some organizations have done this, can you share some of these cases?

Sam Bennett
Google, quite famously, had a thing where you could devote, I think, a fifth of your time. I think one day a week you could spend on a project sort of your choosing. I think the idea was that it was sort of help humanity or help Google or help, you know, it wasn’t so much on enriching yourself as it is enriching the world. There’s been a couple of other places that have tried.

But I think just treating people like grown-ups and just acknowledging, like, “We get it, you’re people with a life, and we want you to have a full and rich life, and we’re going to just give you 15 minutes a day to do something about that,” it seems to me to be very inexpensive way to say we care about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like it a lot. I like to imagine that in terms of, “Yes, folks are talking about it and you…” especially if it’s sort of the same time across the whole organization for everybody, then we all know. Because some organizations, for example, they will have the week between Christmas and New Year’s is just off for absolutely everybody, or right around the 4th of July.

And people just rave about this because it’s like, “It’s not just my vacation. I know everybody’s gone. Nobody’s expecting anything from anyone and/or sending anything to anyone. If they do, they know they’re the ones who are not to expect anything.” So, I think that’s pretty cool. So, likewise, if you had that daily 15 minutes, that’s just kind of fun to imagine.

Sam Bennett
Well, exactly. Maybe if some people wanted to get together and do like 15 minutes of chair yoga every morning, or they wanted to take a little walk around the building or something, you could do things in groups. I mean, there’s all kinds of, people come up with amazing things that they can do. Get together a little rock and roll band, you know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you say this 15-minute approach defeats perfectionism. How does that work in practice?

Sam Bennett
So, perfectionism is a big word that sort of covers a multitude of destructive behaviors. So, I think one of the things with perfectionism is sort of breaking it apart a little bit, because it is made up of a lot of little parts, and to say, “Okay, which of these is really functional for me?” because there are some just faulty beliefs in there.

And sometimes I’ll hear from people, like, “Well, I just feel like if it can’t be perfect, why would I even bother to do it at all?” I’m like, “Okay, that’s an interesting perspective. Where did you learn that perspective? And is that really what you want to be teaching your children, if it can’t be perfect the first try, you shouldn’t do it at all? I doubt that’s what you want to model for your children. I think you probably want to teach your children to, like, “No, try it. Stick with it. See where it goes.” Right?

So, be a good parent to yourself now, and let that voice that says, “You better live up to this standard, young lady, or nothing good is going to happen for you.” There’s also just the overthinking. Some of us get a little addicted to planning out every last little thing inside of our minds but then never actually taking action.

I had a friend who, when he was a kid, he used to buy all the science books and he would study all the experiments until he really understood all of them but he never actually did any of them. He just worked it out inside of his head, and he was like, “Okay, good, I’m done.” So, that’s a worthwhile intellectual exercise, but would you like to bring something into the world? Like, would you like to try it?

I think it also works for kind of what you were saying before, “It’s only 15 minutes, and you’re going to do it again tomorrow anyway, and the next day. So, how perfect is it going to be in 15 minutes? And you’re going to have plenty of time to perfect it later, so it just sort of hopscotches right over all that pressure.”

And I think it also gives ideas a chance to flourish. I think a lot of times people psych themselves out initially by going, “Well, I have an idea, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I’m still thinking about whether or not it’s a good idea.” And I work with all kinds of people. Academy award winners, Emmy award winners, award-winning writers, famous people, not famous people, and I’m here to tell you, there’s no such thing as a good idea. There’s only ideas, and some of the ones that you think are terrible turn out to be fantastic. And some of the ones you think are fantastic turn out to be completely dull.

Like, you don’t know until you bring it to life, or start to take the steps to bring it to life. So, to get out of that pondering mode, and out of that inner judgment mode, of like, “Oh, it’s got to be good. It’s got to be a good idea.” No, it just has to be an idea. Like, just start, and then see where it takes you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now you have a number of fun phrases, and what you’ve just described reminds me of one of them. Can you unpack a couple of them for us? One is the alchemy of effort, and the second is grumpy magic.

Sam Bennett
So, the alchemy of effort is something I noticed as an artist, but I see it in real life, too. Not that art isn’t real life. But there’s a magical thing that happens when you have a little idea and you take some steps towards it, and then maybe you share it with the world. It sort of changes the minute it hits the air. And then you work on it and it changes, and then maybe someone sees it and it’s changed again because they’ve seen it and they’ve had a reaction to it. And now they are changed and it is changed and then you are changed by that feedback.

And we get this little sort of Mobius strip, this little infinity loop of you putting out energy and effort and ideas and other people responding to that, and that shaping and gaining momentum and influencing you and influencing the world. Like, it’s really exciting and fun, and it’s the joy of the creative process, it’s that communion, that sense of like, “Ooh, I did something and people got it. They heard me. They felt seen. They enjoyed it. They laughed. They sang along,” whatever it is.

Or they loved the equation. They loved the app. I mean, creativity is not just art. Everyone is creative. And I just think that that little cycle is so magical. And every time you stop yourself from sharing your gifts with the world, you’re stopping that alchemical magic from happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the grumpy magic?

Sam Bennett
Grumpy magic is a little process that I put into the book. It’s a little thing that I teach but, really, what it is, is just a reminder to everyone that, you know, I work in personal development now, and no shade to my personal development brothers and sisters, but there can be a certain amount of oppressive optimism, and what we might refer to as “toxic positivity.”

And I just want to say, you can create magic in your life being very grumpy, and very tired, and very pessimistic, and not that interested. I notice that grumpy people have happy marriages. I notice that pessimistic people often make lots of money. It is not a prerequisite for you to be 100% spiritually aligned in order to get what you want. So, don’t wait to feel good. Do it grumpy.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it feels like there’s some merch there, Sam, if you don’t already have it.

Sam Bennett
Do it grumpy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I think that’s really good, and it’s nice and short, too, because “Do it grumpy,” it’s kind of hard for me to think about remember big, long things or complicated things. It’s like, “Ah, there’s this thing, but I don’t feel like doing it.” And so, I sort was able to have that conversation with myself, it’s like, “Okay. Well, in 15 minutes later, or 30 minutes later, you might still not feel like doing it, but then it’ll be behind you and that’s kind of cool. You’ll feel better having it behind you than you will stewing in the fact that you don’t want to do it for this period of time, even if you try to distract yourself with other more fun things.”

Sam Bennett
One hundred percent. One hundred percent. And don’t underestimate the positive effects of smugness. Like, when you do something hard or something you don’t want to do, but then you do it anyway, it’s a little bit like when you go to the gym in the morning and you just spend all day being like, “That’s right. Hair toss. Hair toss. I’m awesome. How are you?” You know?

Like, that feeling of a little bit of inner pride of like, “Yeah! I did that. I told myself I was going to do it, and I did it. I didn’t feel like it, but I did it.” Like, that’s good. That spills over into your life and has a really positive ripple effect. So, all that like, “Don’t be too proud of yourself. Don’t be too big for your britches.” No! Buy bigger britches, for sure. Be proud.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, Sam, any other top do’s, don’ts, things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Sam Bennett
I just want everyone to remember that y’all are doing great. You’re doing great. People love you. You’re making a difference at work and in your community and in your family, and it’s okay to take the pressure off the gas pedal, maybe. And some of you are driving with your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time, sort of not really letting yourself succeed as much as you might want to, and I just want to say you’re doing amazing. And maybe just 15 minutes a day can help tweak you up to the next adventure.

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

Sam Bennett
My favorite quote is, “The cure for anything is salt water, sweat, tears, or the sea.” It’s from the Danish author Isak Dinesen.

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

Sam Bennett
I remember cutting out an article from a piece of paper, probably from a newspaper, probably 30 years ago, that was done by a wealth management company. And they found that, across the board, at all levels of wealth, two-thirds of the people felt like they would be better off if they just had twice as much. So, even the millionaires were like, “Uh, I’m not sure. I think if, really, if I had twice what I have right now, then I would be okay.”

And that little bit of information made me realize, “Oh, it’s not about the number. Feeling okay, feeling secure in your life, feeling like you have a good nest egg is not about what that actual dollar amount is. It’s a decision to feel okay.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And a favorite book?

Sam Bennett
You know, what’s bubbling up for me is the Little House on the Prairie books. I must have read those a thousand times as a girl, and I still think about them a remarkable amount. I think there’s something about that homesteader spirit that I kind of like.

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

Sam Bennett
Levenger Legal Pads.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, with the little discs?

Sam Bennett
Oh, no, I don’t do the disc ones. I do these here, I’ll show you one of them. They’re nice heavy pieces of paper and they’ve got room at the top to put a date and a subject title, and then there’s a little space along the side so you can make annotated notes. I can put little action items on the side. I do everything. I’m an analog girl, Pete. I like legal pads.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, doesn’t Levenger have a little magic to make it easy to take an individual sheet from that and to put it in elsewhere and organize and stuff?

Sam Bennett
They do. They have a system called Circa that is like that, those little things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Sam Bennett
My favorite habit is probably my 15 minutes a day. I do mine before I even roll over in bed. I do a little sort of breathing prayer meditation practice thing that I sort of have made up over the years. And, like I said, I do it before my eyes are even open. I think that liminal time right there between waking and sleeping is a really valuable time, a very fertile time, especially for highly sensitive people, highly creative people, busy people.

So, to stretch out that moment for myself and connect with my feeling of the divine, and my own body, and my own breath, it really makes a difference for me in my day. And when I don’t do it, I really notice it. And if I don’t do it for a couple days or a couple weeks, things really go off the rails. So, I don’t know how many more times I need to prove that to myself before I just do it every day. I’m pretty consistent, but even so, it’s not every day. But that’s the beauty of 15 minutes a day. Like, you didn’t do it today, you’ll do it tomorrow. It’s okay.

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

Sam Bennett
Yeah, one that I hear a lot is “Get a C.” Stop trying to get an A+ in everything. Just get a C. C is the grade that you get for showing up and doing the work. Not doing the work better than everybody else, not being in the front row with your hand raised, just show up, do the work, show up, do the work, show up, do the work, show up, do the work.

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

Sam Bennett
You can find me at TheRealSamBennett.com, and you can hop onto my email list there, which is where I kind of do everything is via email, but I am also on the socials. I am also on all the socials as The Real Sam Bennett. 

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

Sam Bennett
Yes. Start doing your 15 minutes, and then write me and tell me all about it, and we’ll be pen pals and best friends because I want to hear about your projects.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sam, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many delightful 15-minute increments.

Sam Bennett
Thank you so much, Pete. Thanks for having me. What a treat.