Speaker 1: Last week marked a very special kind of anniversary for
Speaker 1: me being a Melbournian.
Speaker 2: I have now.
Speaker 1: Clocked up over two hundred days in lockdown, and right
Speaker 1: now half of my country, Australia, is in lockdown. And look,
Speaker 1: for most of those two hundred days, I feel like
Speaker 1: I've coped pretty well. I've been grateful for the things
Speaker 1: that I do have, and I've focused on the things
Speaker 1: that are within my control. But last week it really
Speaker 1: felt like a lot. I just didn't feel like myself
Speaker 1: and people close to me were really struggling too, And
Speaker 1: I was just sick of hearing the same old advice
Speaker 1: for how to cope, learn a new skill, create a ritual,
Speaker 1: lower year expectations, and so on and look, they are
Speaker 1: all great pieces of advice, but right now they weren't
Speaker 1: really helping. So I reached out to someone I knew
Speaker 1: would be thinking differently, Dom Price. Dom is the head
Speaker 1: of R and D and the resident work futurist at Lassion,
Speaker 1: and he's a friend of mine and a friend of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Dom and I decided that we would swap
Speaker 1: our best tips. So in preparation for this interview, I
Speaker 1: racked my brain for the things that I had done
Speaker 1: that did make me feel better, but didn't fall into
Speaker 1: being a cook some sourdough cliche. So, if you're struggling
Speaker 1: with lockdown or maybe just everything that's going on in
Speaker 1: the world right now, I hope that you'll be able
Speaker 1: to take at least one thing out of this chat
Speaker 1: to help make things a tiny bit better right now.
Speaker 2: My name is doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work, a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. We're
Speaker 1: recording this at eleven am on a Friday. We're both
Speaker 1: in I'm in Melbourne, You're in Sydney and I haven't
Speaker 1: checked the news since Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 2: Does that blow your mind?
Speaker 3: No, I think it's very healthy.
Speaker 1: Because I found, like I never used to be a
Speaker 1: news checker pre COVID, that during COVID, and particularly since
Speaker 1: Melbourne's been in and out of lockdown for the last
Speaker 1: few weeks slash months, I found myself I reckon checking
Speaker 1: either the AGE or ABC.
Speaker 2: I reckon maybe like ten to fifteen times a day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that is a lot.
Speaker 1: And I sort of got to a point mid this
Speaker 1: week where I was feeling very flat, so I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just I.
Speaker 2: Need to not be checking the news.
Speaker 1: And I figure that if something really important happens, that
Speaker 1: somebody will tell me. And I imagine you would know
Speaker 1: Jake Nap from designs Prints. Yes, he shared with me
Speaker 1: this great tip about a year ago called news duty,
Speaker 1: where he and his wife would basically tag team on
Speaker 1: who was going to be looking at the news on
Speaker 1: any given day.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 1: So I kind of my parents. I feel like they
Speaker 1: do news duty for me every day. I yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that is something that I'm doing, and I
Speaker 1: feel like it's just it's breaking my cycle of having
Speaker 1: the news determine my mood, right, So that's.
Speaker 3: That's the why. Then, So the news was determining your
Speaker 3: mood and you wanted to.
Speaker 2: Break that cycle exactly.
Speaker 3: I like that one. That's a good one, very very
Speaker 3: very practical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, thanks, tell me something you're doing.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I'm actually doing is it's
Speaker 3: more on the kind of work side. But I found
Speaker 3: myself in this kind of cycle of insanity at work
Speaker 3: where things were getting bigger, longer, more, but they didn't
Speaker 3: seem to be a breakpoint, and similar to you, I
Speaker 3: was looking for the breakpoint. One of the things I
Speaker 3: did for myself and then with my team was the
Speaker 3: ritual reset. And it's just been great to kind of go, like,
Speaker 3: we have all these these interventions where we kind of
Speaker 3: think about doing a sprinkling, Right, you think about like
Speaker 3: seasons and you change your wardrobe and you do a sprinkling.
Speaker 3: It's like, what's the spring clean for my life? And
Speaker 3: specifically what's the spring clean for meetings? You know, because
Speaker 3: if you think news kills your mojo, amant the nothing
Speaker 3: kills my vibal mojo, like lack a meeting, And so
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know they're necessary, evil, but how can
Speaker 3: I make them better? So the ritual reset was like,
Speaker 3: how do we, like, if you assume the world's changed,
Speaker 3: because it has, like my working environment is completely different
Speaker 3: than it was, So how do I reset my rituals?
Speaker 3: And so what we said was, let's list all of
Speaker 3: our rituals, which ones do we want to keep but
Speaker 3: tweak right, so they stay that the purpose is the
Speaker 3: ritual still makes sense, but the way we're going to
Speaker 3: do it's different because we might be able to do
Speaker 3: it asynchronous or might be able to do it online,
Speaker 3: or we're going to do it in a different form
Speaker 3: because the world has changed. Which ones do we want
Speaker 3: to keep? And they stay the same, I'll be honest,
Speaker 3: very few fell into that category. And then which ones?
Speaker 3: Which ones do we want to kill? Which ones just
Speaker 3: aren't required, we don't need them anymore? Whatever, And maybe
Speaker 3: we use to space the time and the freedom to
Speaker 3: experiment and try something else. And it has been like
Speaker 3: the most refreshing thing just to go. Meetings don't own
Speaker 3: me anymore, I own them.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's cool.
Speaker 3: I think it was always true. Humans booked the meetings,
Speaker 3: so humans have always owned them, but we just let
Speaker 3: them dominators and that reset I've done with myself, but
Speaker 3: then with my team, And then what we've done is
Speaker 3: is we're genuinely using the free time it's given us,
Speaker 3: either to invest in ourselves, which is crucial, or to go,
Speaker 3: how do we experiment with new stuff? Because you know
Speaker 3: what the world's changed, and I don't know the answer
Speaker 3: there isn't. I mean, you can google best practice type
Speaker 3: of distributed teams and you'll get a hold of and
Speaker 3: BS articles. So don't do that. I do that. Let's
Speaker 3: experiment our way out of it, and that in itself
Speaker 3: has been quite fun.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of a ritual law to that
Speaker 1: you've killed. Maybe in relation to meetings.
Speaker 3: There's a whole swath that got killed. So I so
Speaker 3: status updates, there's so many where we just gather in
Speaker 3: the office and it was just this an archaic ritual
Speaker 3: where we just gathered and in certain days we gathered
Speaker 3: and never want to go through the updates. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: it was sole destroying in the office, but at least
Speaker 3: we had tea coffee, beer in each other. But when
Speaker 3: you're doing that from you, from wherever everyone's doing it
Speaker 3: from now, you're like, wow, this is really sole destroying.
Speaker 3: So we're like, hang on, not only is it sol destroying,
Speaker 3: we're trying to do this synchronously, and we're using people's
Speaker 3: like live time, which should be used for something more
Speaker 3: spontaneous or higher value. So how can we make all
Speaker 3: of our data supdates asynchronous and how can we make
Speaker 3: them consumable all around the world so you don't have
Speaker 3: to physically be in the same place at the same time,
Speaker 3: because I have colleagues literally all over the world.
Speaker 2: So how did you do that? Was what was the solution.
Speaker 3: Well, we actually started doing it first of all, using
Speaker 3: just some of our existing tools, and then realized that
Speaker 3: none of them worked for that purpose. So we built one.
Speaker 3: It's what we do it last year and we're like, ah,
Speaker 3: so it, let's just build one, and a team just
Speaker 3: kind of came together and I'm like, let's solve this problem
Speaker 3: for the whole of it last yon, how do we
Speaker 3: get the network of teams to communicate with each other?
Speaker 3: And we're like, oh, this this sounds like a fun experiment.
Speaker 3: And so what you get is a two hundred and
Speaker 3: forty character limits. So it's like Twitter, and you do
Speaker 3: your update on a Friday, and it kind of all
Speaker 3: gets slaunched together over the weekend, and on Monday morning,
Speaker 3: you get a digest of all the projects you're following,
Speaker 3: and you get the two hundred and forty character update,
Speaker 3: and if you want to dig in and find out more,
Speaker 3: you click through and you can read more. But what
Speaker 3: it means is I now don't have any status meetings,
Speaker 3: which I love.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: What I really enjoy is on that Monday morning, when
Speaker 3: I get that digest, I'm like, Ah, that project's fine,
Speaker 3: that one's fine, that one's fine, I am not going
Speaker 3: to talk to you. I'm going to leave you alone
Speaker 3: to just do your work.
Speaker 2: That is cool.
Speaker 1: Now, is this product available to a Lessian customers or
Speaker 1: just listeners who might not be customers of Alessian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've put it out there as as a beta.
Speaker 3: I think that there is a now for a beta.
Speaker 3: It's pretty raw because we're still playing with it internally,
Speaker 3: but it will make it out there eventually because we're
Speaker 3: seeing more and more people talk about this the network
Speaker 3: of teams effect, and how do this is not about
Speaker 3: project management, is about project communication? How do like a
Speaker 3: month with me and you're working on discrete pieces of work,
Speaker 3: but they're going to connect together. How can we connect
Speaker 3: in a meaningful way so that I know what you're doing,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm doing, but we don't have to
Speaker 3: be in each other's pockets. So you're autonomous and free
Speaker 3: to do your work, but you're connected in the areas
Speaker 3: where you need to. And it's so far it's been
Speaker 3: fascinating experiment.
Speaker 2: That's cool. Now, what's the link if people want to
Speaker 2: go check that out?
Speaker 3: If they're just Google Team Central, that's the working name
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: Right now, Okay, I'm going to share something that I think.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's just a parenting hack for Lockdown,
Speaker 1: we might might have broader application. And you can tell
Speaker 1: me that I've got my daughter fifty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that is exhausting about being
Speaker 1: a parent is that you say no a lot. And
Speaker 1: I feel like at the moment, just everyone says no
Speaker 1: a lot, like the government is saying no to really
Speaker 1: most things. So I recently celebrated my birthday in Lockdown
Speaker 1: again for the second year running. And what I did
Speaker 1: for the last birthday and I repeated it again for this
Speaker 1: birthday is I created with my daughter Frankie, an idea.
Speaker 2: Called the Day of Yes. And so the rules are
Speaker 2: really simple.
Speaker 1: So how it works is that if we ask something
Speaker 1: of each other, the answer has to be yes.
Speaker 2: Like that's the rules. That's it.
Speaker 1: And what this means is you basically have a day
Speaker 1: without any friction because when you say yes to everything,
Speaker 1: it's really really easy to have a really lovely day.
Speaker 1: And you know, as a parent, my fear was, is
Speaker 1: Frankie just going to turn into a couch potato or
Speaker 1: a TV zombie and literally not remove herself from the couch,
Speaker 1: and actually she didn't.
Speaker 2: So my screen time rules are quite strict in my house.
Speaker 1: So no screen, let's you know, virtual school aside, no
Speaker 1: screen or TV. Let's say happens before for a clock,
Speaker 1: and that is just a blanket rule. And so therefore
Speaker 1: Frankie loves TV time.
Speaker 2: And interestingly she was she she kind of she.
Speaker 1: She watched more TV than normal, but she was able
Speaker 1: to self regulate and she did spend the whole day
Speaker 1: watching TV, which I also found like quite interesting.
Speaker 3: Well also give giving you a background and sort of
Speaker 3: field of education and research. Essentially that the yes game
Speaker 3: is involving a huge amount of trust and the no
Speaker 3: game requires no trust, a very different engagement model.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so true, so true. Tell me what else
Speaker 2: is working for you?
Speaker 3: So little fun hat that me and my me and
Speaker 3: my girlfriend are doing. So as context, we've been dating
Speaker 3: for about a year. Rebecca moved in kind of March
Speaker 3: April time, and so we had a couple of months
Speaker 3: of like semi normal life. I'd still not able to
Speaker 3: leave the state of the country or do anything much,
Speaker 3: but we could still go out to bars, cafes, restaurants, whatever,
Speaker 3: and then lockdown here and I was like we were
Speaker 3: meant to be going for three weeks in and we
Speaker 3: gutted about not being able to travel. There's a whole
Speaker 3: of stuff that just kind of it was about to
Speaker 3: get us down, and I'm like, no, no, I know
Speaker 3: a lot is out of our control, but let's find
Speaker 3: out the things we can do. So once a week
Speaker 3: we have treat Day. And it's not like going out
Speaker 3: for dinner treat day. It's like stupid geeky treat day.
Speaker 3: So a couple of some days ago, I set up
Speaker 3: a picnic on the balcony. We moved all the plants
Speaker 3: around so it looked like we're in in a vineyard.
Speaker 3: And I found out that the person who would have
Speaker 3: been playing at the vineyard we would have gone to
Speaker 3: found their Spotify playlist. Put that on. I got some
Speaker 3: Western Australian wines from the bottle shop and we sat
Speaker 3: and we had a picnic on a Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: We did Christmas in July. The other week I did
Speaker 3: pigs in blankets and a big roast turkey and we
Speaker 3: had put the Christmas tree up and said Christmas songs
Speaker 3: all day. It was ridiculous. You know. Last week we
Speaker 3: had poshed dinner, so I put my three piece suit on.
Speaker 3: She got all dressed up and did her hair right,
Speaker 3: and we made sort of fancy food and pretended we're
Speaker 3: in a fine dining restaurant, right, And it's all but
Speaker 3: it's like a little bit creativity and it's what can
Speaker 3: you do with what you've got in the house. But
Speaker 3: it's just a break from this mundane Like it seems
Speaker 3: like you're musing. It seems to feel down in this
Speaker 3: mundane and I'm like, we can. We can sit and
Speaker 3: wallow and faster if we want, which we can do
Speaker 3: six days a week, and then one day week, let's
Speaker 3: just do something completely stupid and random and fun. Right.
Speaker 3: So we've now got a backlog of like once a
Speaker 3: week treats that we're going to try, and they sort
Speaker 3: of vary from the crazy to the stupid, but the
Speaker 3: common thread throughout them all is they're going to be fun. Right.
Speaker 3: It's going to be cheesy, but it's going to be fun.
Speaker 3: And it's just a nice little treat just to sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, keep your mind going and keep your mojo going.
Speaker 2: I love that, you know what that reminds me of.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the book by the Heath Brothers,
Speaker 1: The Power of Moments. Did you ever read that book, John,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's some good lockdown reading for you,
Speaker 1: The Power of Moments. And they talk about this idea
Speaker 1: that we think that these memorable moments because like I'm
Speaker 1: listening to what you're describing, and I've also seen pictorial
Speaker 1: evidence on your Instagram as you can, and it's like
Speaker 1: they sound like really memorable moments. And how great is
Speaker 1: that that we can actually create these memorable moments in lockdown?
Speaker 1: And what the book talks about is it thinks about
Speaker 1: this idea we assume that these moments that stick in
Speaker 1: our memory in a good way just kind of they
Speaker 1: sort of it's random, like we can't control these amazing moments.
Speaker 1: But the book actually talks about, well you can, like
Speaker 1: you can construct and manufacture memorable moments. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's what you're doing with treat Day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's also just it's a regular jole or
Speaker 3: nudge for us just to go accept that there are constraints,
Speaker 3: accept that those correct constraints are suboptimal. We'd love to
Speaker 3: be traveling to the UK visit family. There's lots of
Speaker 3: stuff we're willing to do, and you can spend all
Speaker 3: your time looking at what you can't do and just
Speaker 3: getting upset, and I'm like, but there's one thing we
Speaker 3: can do right. We're in control of this bit of
Speaker 3: our destiny, so let's do them most with it. And no,
Speaker 3: it's not ideal. I'd rather be Western Australia in the
Speaker 3: actual vineyard. But the next best thing is I'll go
Speaker 3: to the bottlestop, have a corner, I'll get a few
Speaker 3: bottles of bottles of the West Australian mine, and we'll
Speaker 3: recreate the right And actually, sometimes those constraints almost make
Speaker 3: it more fun, like it's more silly, and it just
Speaker 3: reminds you, like if you don't have a laugh every
Speaker 3: day or you find the thing to laugh about, you
Speaker 3: start to question what the point is. And I think
Speaker 3: we owe that to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Now that kind of reminds me of something that I
Speaker 1: tried doing this week. So I guess that I've got
Speaker 1: coming up on the podcast in a few weeks time
Speaker 1: is Josh Pittterman. And I'm not sure if you come
Speaker 1: across him dom. I'm not sure if you're a musical
Speaker 1: theater and that like me, But he's playing Phantom in
Speaker 1: Fantom of the Opera. Obviously he's not doing that right now.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is no theater.
Speaker 3: No, so we have tickets for that, but they're not
Speaker 3: not much use anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, he is invalid until further notice. So
Speaker 1: Josh will be playing Phantom at some stage. And he's
Speaker 1: played Phantom on the West End, and he's an amazing performer.
Speaker 1: And I mean, like I often often kind of go, look,
Speaker 1: you know, it's tough for everyone one, but my gosh,
Speaker 1: it is tough for certain groups of people, and.
Speaker 2: I think the performers is, you know, one of those groups.
Speaker 1: And so I was asking him just about what are
Speaker 1: the rituals that he has, and something he's got quite
Speaker 1: a few, actually, but one that stuck with me is
Speaker 1: that every day he tries to do three acts of service.
Speaker 1: So these are essentially like you know, acts where he's
Speaker 1: serving someone else in a positive way. It might be
Speaker 1: a small thing, like it might be I'm going to
Speaker 1: smile at someone that I don't know on the street,
Speaker 1: or I'm going to do this particular thing for my partner.
Speaker 2: And as simple as that sounds.
Speaker 1: I heard that tip and it just and I thought
Speaker 1: I'm going to try that today because I felt like
Speaker 1: i'd been really sort of insular and just in my
Speaker 1: own head and just in a bit of a funk
Speaker 1: for the last few days.
Speaker 2: And I found that it was such a great way.
Speaker 1: Like I ended up doing a few small acts of
Speaker 1: service that were very small, Like, you know, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine has been struggling, and I feel like I
Speaker 1: haven't been there for them enough, and I just I
Speaker 1: left them an audio message on their phone just saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of you and I'd love to do something
Speaker 1: to help, and please let me know what that is.
Speaker 2: And I realized I hadn't really asked that. And what
Speaker 2: I found is that.
Speaker 1: Doing the active service it took me out of myself,
Speaker 1: and it took me out of my own head, and
Speaker 1: it made me focus on something else that was not myself.
Speaker 1: And as simple as that sounds, I found that just
Speaker 1: really powerful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's huge, juste. It kind of reminds me slightly.
Speaker 3: We had a situation with again in work. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of people are kind of coaching, mentoring, working with
Speaker 3: some of our leaders who, despite great intent, were really
Speaker 3: struggling through all stages of the pandemic, were struggling to
Speaker 3: connect with their people. And what we've bolled it down
Speaker 3: to was we had a whole lod of people that
Speaker 3: had the desire to show empathy, they just didn't really
Speaker 3: know how they understood the construct and empathy. That read
Speaker 3: an article or book whatever and sort of intelligently that
Speaker 3: understood it. The actual practice of how do you demonstrate empathy?
Speaker 3: That's that's what they were struggling with. And what we
Speaker 3: found was that the default was this, and you've heard
Speaker 3: the phrager, we're all in the same boat, this realization
Speaker 3: that we might all be in the same storm, but
Speaker 3: we're in very different boats. We're experiencing we're experiencing this
Speaker 3: in a very different, almost unique way. And so we
Speaker 3: built a very simple exercise. It was it was so
Speaker 3: liberating for a lot of our people to go, here's
Speaker 3: an exercise you can do with your people just to understand,
Speaker 3: like base level, how do you gain an understanding of
Speaker 3: the situation each individual that you're working with is going through.
Speaker 3: And in typical that lasting fashion, we made it like
Speaker 3: a scoring system. But just having that conversation opened up
Speaker 3: so much simplicity to going, oh, like none of us
Speaker 3: can see the chaos behind the camera. And so what
Speaker 3: we do is we fill in the blanks with our
Speaker 3: own assumptions. And when we do that, it's really dangerous
Speaker 3: because our ow assumptions are normally based off our experience
Speaker 3: and our world. And so we just said, like in
Speaker 3: the next whatever, next two three weeks, whenever we're having
Speaker 3: a meeting, team, meeting, whatever, just come our X amount
Speaker 3: of time and have the conversation. What is each person's experience.
Speaker 3: Let them share their experience of working from home, which
Speaker 3: was a combination of their work from home set up,
Speaker 3: there care responsibilities, Have they got a home office, what
Speaker 3: kind of set up have they got, how distracted are they?
Speaker 3: And what their social network and their work network was like.
Speaker 3: So we found that like newer a Lassians just haven't
Speaker 3: got the same networks that and I'm super privileged. I've
Speaker 3: got eight years, I've got networks that they haven't got.
Speaker 3: But I've got to meet these people. So what your
Speaker 3: network was like? And then the nature of your role.
Speaker 3: Is your role one that can be done in isolationally
Speaker 3: you quite independent, or is your role one that's relying
Speaker 3: on a whold of people, in which case you're probably
Speaker 3: experiencing hell, right, now right, because you're doing the same job,
Speaker 3: but it's infinitely harder. And just getting that understanding from
Speaker 3: our teammates was this great superpower, going, ah, well, now
Speaker 3: I know that's the situation. I'm actually I'm better informed
Speaker 3: on how I can help you. It's no longer just
Speaker 3: an intent to help. I can actually help because I
Speaker 3: understand your situation. And that's been a massive shift for
Speaker 3: us from this this almost like desire and intent to
Speaker 3: help but not knowing how I'm feeling super blocked and
Speaker 3: therefore guessing and getting it wrong, to going we don't
Speaker 3: have to guess. All you have to do is ask, right,
Speaker 3: just as you've explained, you'd have to guess and turn
Speaker 3: up with a bowl full of food and they're like,
Speaker 3: I don't need food, I need a hug. Or I
Speaker 3: don't need a hug, I need a chat. And you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I just guessed, right, versus don't guess, just ask and listen,
Speaker 3: and suddenly we can start to tailor our solutions to
Speaker 3: help people in a genuine fashion.
Speaker 1: Are there are a list of specific questions that you
Speaker 1: work through to get to that point of understanding or empathy.
Speaker 1: How does it how does it like actually work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's basically three questions, three headers, and each
Speaker 3: of them are a two by two, and you just
Speaker 3: plot yourself on the two by two, right, So the
Speaker 3: first two by two is your work from home situation,
Speaker 3: So it's your care responsibilities on one axis and your
Speaker 3: work from home set up on the other right. So
Speaker 3: you know, for me, I have no care responsibilities and
Speaker 3: I have a dedicated space right where I get to work,
Speaker 3: So I'm the easy quadrant right on the work from
Speaker 3: home thing. Right. My colleague Eugene, who you won't manly
Speaker 3: mentioning this, both him and his wife work full time
Speaker 3: and they've got two kids and the homeschooling right, and
Speaker 3: they've not got a spare room, so he's in the
Speaker 3: complete opposite quadrant to me. The thing is, when I'm
Speaker 3: on a zoom call with Eugene, I can't see that
Speaker 3: because Eugene is really cleanly right, he positions himself whereby
Speaker 3: he looks like it's just me and him. But what
Speaker 3: I can't see is the utter chaos going on around
Speaker 3: he's juggling. So when we have that chat, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: how can we better work together? Because you've been distracted
Speaker 3: by fifty things. Every time we talk, I want to
Speaker 3: think you're not concentrating where you are. So we actually
Speaker 3: had a very purposeful conversation, how do we work better
Speaker 3: together so that you can be present and effective? And
Speaker 3: what do those times look like? And then how do
Speaker 3: we structure this work? And so what we quickly realized
Speaker 3: was there was probably three or four hours worth of
Speaker 3: work a day that he needed to be online for.
Speaker 3: We wanted to work synchronously as a team, but the
Speaker 3: rest could be done a synchronous See like cool, you
Speaker 3: can do that whenever you want. So suddenly the construct
Speaker 3: of nine to five has gone away, and so with
Speaker 3: different care options and responsibilities, him and his partner now
Speaker 3: managed to juggle it where they can both menifully country
Speaker 3: to work, they can homeschool, and they don't want to
Speaker 3: kill each other. Right, And so you're like, oh, I
Speaker 3: would never have been able to guess at that without
Speaker 3: asking those questions. So that hole set up your social
Speaker 3: network and then the nature of your role. We've actually
Speaker 3: published it. It's called The Work Life Impact Play, So
Speaker 3: it's published online.
Speaker 2: Excellent. I'm going to link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll be back in a moment with more tips
Speaker 1: including doms design your weak strategy and also how I've
Speaker 1: started nudging myself towards better behaviors.
Speaker 2: And if you're not connected with me on the socials,
Speaker 2: I'd love you to reach out.
Speaker 1: I am on LinkedIn, just search my name Amantha INMBA,
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter Atamantha and on Instagram at Amantha I.
Speaker 2: So do reach out and say hi.
Speaker 1: I share a lot of content on those different channels
Speaker 1: and it'd be great to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Something else that I have been doing.
Speaker 1: So I think I'm in the fairly easy quadrant in
Speaker 1: terms of what you've described there, because I do have
Speaker 1: a separate room that's my study, and I do have
Speaker 1: help with homeschooling. But what I find is that when
Speaker 1: I leave my study and I go to the kitchen
Speaker 1: to take a break or make lunch or whatever I'm doing,
Speaker 1: what I found that I was getting into the habit
Speaker 1: of is, you know, my iPad or my phone would
Speaker 1: be with me during the break and I would hop
Speaker 1: onto a news website.
Speaker 2: As I was saying, you know, just like.
Speaker 1: Many people have this news addiction, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of aware of this and aware that it
Speaker 1: was just the easy thing to do, because my iPad
Speaker 1: was sitting on the bench where I take a break
Speaker 1: or eat food, and I would just do that during breaks.
Speaker 1: And I remembered something that Matt Mullenwack, who's the co
Speaker 1: founder of WordPress and Automatic and builds the software about
Speaker 1: a third of the Internet's websites are built on, he
Speaker 1: talked about how something he did in his life, and
Speaker 1: this was an interview I had with him quite a
Speaker 1: few years ago now, is that he would just make
Speaker 1: small changes in his physical environment to nudge himself towards
Speaker 1: better behaviors. So, for example, on his bedside table, if
Speaker 1: he had the kindle sitting on top of the phone,
Speaker 1: he was more likely to read a book, but if
Speaker 1: he had his phone sitting on top of his kindle,
Speaker 1: he was more likely to scroll on his phone. And
Speaker 1: so what I started to do is I started to
Speaker 1: pack my iPad into a draw, not take my phone
Speaker 1: with me for a break, and instead I would have
Speaker 1: like either you know, some paper articles or a book
Speaker 1: that I was reading on the bench. So basically making
Speaker 1: it really easy to do something that would provide a
Speaker 1: more enriching.
Speaker 2: Break and making it just slightly.
Speaker 1: More difficult to do something that would not be a
Speaker 1: particularly enriching break, and I found that that that has
Speaker 1: been a really great way of building better habits that
Speaker 1: are better for my mental health without actually relying on
Speaker 1: will power.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's an interesting content, right, I mean, the concept's
Speaker 3: been around for years around you purposely add friction to
Speaker 3: certain areas to detract yourself, and you remove friction from
Speaker 3: positive areas to encourage yourself. Right back in the day,
Speaker 3: Google were famous for it when they instituted their three
Speaker 3: interview only rule and they said, if you want to
Speaker 3: add a fourth interview for a candidate, you have to
Speaker 3: get approval from the VP of Talent. And it was like, well,
Speaker 3: that seems like a lot of friction, Like yeah, because
Speaker 3: we don't want you to do the fourth interview, like
Speaker 3: you shouldn't need it, like get it done in three.
Speaker 3: And so they purposely added friction to the process. Right,
Speaker 3: So there's lots of examples of that. I've been similar.
Speaker 3: But I think the problem I have with that is
Speaker 3: I have this amazing power of rushzation where every time
Speaker 3: I do anything remotely good, I congratulate myself, and whenever
Speaker 3: I do anything bad, I choose to ignore it. One
Speaker 3: of the things I've had to do to kind of
Speaker 3: in a very similar vein but a little bit more,
Speaker 3: a little bit more meta, was design your week. So
Speaker 3: one of the things I realized a while ago was
Speaker 3: I was like, my weeks are happening to me, and
Speaker 3: whilst I look back at them and go, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: all right or not too bad, or i'd use generic phrases,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I feel like I need to take a
Speaker 3: little bit more ownership with my week, similar to you,
Speaker 3: you want to add in more positive things, remove the negatives.
Speaker 3: And so design your week was my way of saying,
Speaker 3: I can't just be opportunistic. I need to plan for happiness.
Speaker 3: And so what I do on a Friday afternoon is
Speaker 3: I reflect on the week that's gone, and you know
Speaker 3: whether it worked in terms of a portfolio. Did I
Speaker 3: do the right amount of stuff for this week? Did
Speaker 3: I plant some seeds this week that I're going to
Speaker 3: germinate and give me good value in the year's time.
Speaker 3: Did I nurture some existing seed, Like what did my
Speaker 3: mix of work look like? And then how did I
Speaker 3: mix my synchronous with asynchronous time? And how much did
Speaker 3: I invest in me? And so I asked myself first
Speaker 3: questions of a fred afternoon looking back at the week
Speaker 3: that's gone. Then I designed the week ahead, and so
Speaker 3: what that means is I prioritize certain things. So one
Speaker 3: of the first things I lock in now in my
Speaker 3: week ahead is my walks, my daily walk. So I
Speaker 3: go for a walk a couple of days a week
Speaker 3: with my girlfriend. I've got mates around the area who
Speaker 3: were in my five kilometer radius, and we go for walks,
Speaker 3: and I lock those in, right, And it's not apologetic.
Speaker 3: I'm like going to lock those in because that synchronous
Speaker 3: time that walk only works if that person is free,
Speaker 3: and I'm free, So we're going to do that then,
Speaker 3: and then I lock it on the stuffe. You got dentist, doctors,
Speaker 3: you might have dropped off kids, pick up kids. You
Speaker 3: look all that stuff in. Then you go, right, what's
Speaker 3: my synchronous work time? And how do I agree that?
Speaker 3: What's my contract with my colleagues? You know, it's no
Speaker 3: point me being on nine till twelve if they're on
Speaker 3: one till four, right, So what's our synchronous time? And
Speaker 3: what's the purposeful things you want to do in that
Speaker 3: synchronous time? That's the highest value stuff for us to
Speaker 3: do together, and then how do I slop my asynchronous
Speaker 3: time around that. So, for example, first thing this morning,
Speaker 3: me and my girlfriend went for a walk. I've got
Speaker 3: a morning's worth of work. From about one o'clock, we're
Speaker 3: going to sit on the balcony and read. So I've
Speaker 3: got a book that I'm in the middle of. She's
Speaker 3: got a book she's in the middle love. And the
Speaker 3: reason we're doing that is she's in full time study
Speaker 3: right now and she's got a lecture between four pm
Speaker 3: that probably finishes about eight pm. So I'll work four
Speaker 3: to eight, right, But I'm not going to work nine
Speaker 3: till twelve and fort late and everything in between, because
Speaker 3: then I've just stretched the day. So what I've done
Speaker 3: is I've broken down the day almost into modular components,
Speaker 3: and I mix and match them. Because i know Friday afternoon,
Speaker 3: the team I'm working with is actually online in the US,
Speaker 3: They're not going to be online Friday afterning, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter that I'm reading, right, And it feels a
Speaker 3: bit weird the first time you do it, because I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm getting paid and I'm reading a really good John
Speaker 3: Rishard novel. Right, but I'm not because I'm going to
Speaker 3: work later. Right, So it's balancing the books and using
Speaker 3: your body's energy and your balance and your you know,
Speaker 3: I know you do a lot of work on chronotypes
Speaker 3: and stuff. It's like workout a scale that works for you.
Speaker 3: But for so many knowledge workers, and I know this
Speaker 3: is a privilege for knowledge workers. It doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be nine to five Monday to Friday. Right. You can
Speaker 3: start to play around at the margins and that design
Speaker 3: your week on purpose helps me get a little bit
Speaker 3: more balanced. And then what I probably might do is
Speaker 3: adding your idea of how do I reduce the friction
Speaker 3: on the positive parts of that and maybe add a
Speaker 3: bit of friction to the negative parts.
Speaker 1: That sounds so good, gosh, that is inspiring me to
Speaker 1: read a book in the middle of the day.
Speaker 2: I still feel like I have guilt if I do that.
Speaker 3: With the guilt. The funny thing about the guilt, right,
Speaker 3: because you're an exceptionally smart person around you're a doctor, right,
Speaker 3: is the guilt is just a self feeling. The weird
Speaker 3: thing is when I sit there and the first few
Speaker 3: times I did that, I did feel the guilt. But
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, one's missing me. There's no one knocking
Speaker 3: on my door saying where's the thing. I've made sure
Speaker 3: I've delivered the things I need at the time I
Speaker 3: need to deliver them, and I'm still doing forty plus
Speaker 3: hours a week. I'm still delivering the outcomes I need
Speaker 3: to do. All I've done is tweak the time, and
Speaker 3: I feel better for it and effective. So what is
Speaker 3: it I'm actually feeling guilty about, Like because I didn't
Speaker 3: feel guilty on Saturday. I don't think it. Lastian felt
Speaker 3: guilty on Saturday when I was working and they weren't
Speaker 3: paying me.
Speaker 2: I don't think they did. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in your approach to social media because I
Speaker 1: found for me, I'm not normally a big social media person,
Speaker 1: but I've recently got back on Instagram after a several
Speaker 1: year hiatus, and I had my reasons for getting back on.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just I felt tempted, but I found that.
Speaker 1: It's so easy, Like I remember now why I quit Instagram,
Speaker 1: because it's so easy to get into an Instagram black
Speaker 1: hole and basically, you know, like really the only things
Speaker 1: that have been shared by people aside from funny memes,
Speaker 1: which is great. Like people are either angry, sad, or
Speaker 1: they're smug, and none of those things are very helpful
Speaker 1: except for you Dom. You share wonderful images of your cooking,
Speaker 1: which makes me hungry. But so what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do now is you know that you're on the phone,
Speaker 1: you can lock yourself out of social media.
Speaker 2: But something I do.
Speaker 1: I've got an Apple Watch, and probably the feature I
Speaker 1: use most on the watch other than checking the time
Speaker 1: is the timer. So I will now set a five
Speaker 1: minute timer if I open up the Instagram app, and
Speaker 1: it just jolts me out of that black hole, and
Speaker 1: then it's a conscious decision.
Speaker 2: After five minutes to go, I'm going to keep scrolling because.
Speaker 1: This is like being playing a positive role in my
Speaker 1: mental health, and if it's not, then I'm sort of
Speaker 1: jolted out enough to go, No, actually, I'm going to
Speaker 1: stop that and I'm going to go back to reading
Speaker 1: a book or you know, something a bit more productive now, Tom,
Speaker 1: is there is there anything else that you have been
Speaker 1: trying that has had an impact on you during lockdown?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's there's probably a million other There's there's
Speaker 3: one other, And this isn't a shameless plug, but it'll
Speaker 3: seem like it. Yeah, you know, my in my TED
Speaker 3: talk I talk about the balance of happiness, right and
Speaker 3: I think that it's become more profound for me in
Speaker 3: the last year or so that I do believe we
Speaker 3: own our happiness despite other constraints, right in, regardless of
Speaker 3: the constraints around us. But I have a concern that
Speaker 3: we've we've massively over indexed. And I've shared this with
Speaker 3: you before, is that the work part of us, that
Speaker 3: the bit that gains productivity or profit, I think we've
Speaker 3: over indexed on and I believe we've under indexed on
Speaker 3: the other massively important parts of our life around people,
Speaker 3: which is our kind of family and society and the
Speaker 3: connections whether were they physical or virtual, connections we have
Speaker 3: with with family and community, around us with the planet,
Speaker 3: So around how we think about our carbon footprint and
Speaker 3: how we live our life, you know, given the resources
Speaker 3: we've got around us, and how we don't abuse them
Speaker 3: and build a sustainable way of living life. And then purpose,
Speaker 3: like just not the simple questions. It sounds like a
Speaker 3: very simple question, but like why do I do what
Speaker 3: I do? And what's the long term impact on what
Speaker 3: I have and for me, you know, it's a constant reminder.
Speaker 3: Even though I've talked about this a lot, it's a
Speaker 3: constant remind I've still not built the muscle, which is
Speaker 3: why I always go back to it, which is am
Speaker 3: I balanced? And if I'm not balanced? What actions can
Speaker 3: I take to true up my balance? And I think
Speaker 3: for me in the last year or so, the amount
Speaker 3: of BS articles about you know, while you're in lockdown,
Speaker 3: you should be learning new skills. And if you don't
Speaker 3: go out of lockdown with a new blah blah, I
Speaker 3: might have a bit more empathy for the experience people
Speaker 3: are having. And maybe people just want to be balanced.
Speaker 3: Maybe doing a little bit less and I know you've
Speaker 3: done like the four day week experiment stuff. Maybe spending
Speaker 3: a little bit less time, doubling down on work, doing enough,
Speaker 3: but actually spending more time with your family and community
Speaker 3: and society, or more time on the planet and leaving
Speaker 3: a legacy or your impact right, your purpose. Maybe that
Speaker 3: will give us more happiness. And I just think we
Speaker 3: owe it to ourselves. You know. I like to talk
Speaker 3: to about the phrase I treat yourself kindly, and people
Speaker 3: get that, but I don't think they know how it is.
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, if you want to treat yourself kindly,
Speaker 3: give yourself a score on these four things, productivity, people, planet,
Speaker 3: and purpose. And then where you're struggling, pick an action
Speaker 3: to improve it. I can and just give it a
Speaker 3: red hot go. And I think when we realize we've
Speaker 3: all got the same twenty four hours in a day,
Speaker 3: We've not all got the same constraints, but we've all
Speaker 3: got the same twenty four hours in a day, I
Speaker 3: think it's beholding on us to find the things that
Speaker 3: we can do, not get overly carried away with the
Speaker 3: things that we can't. And so that's just I use
Speaker 3: that as a constant anchor, a positive anchor to go
Speaker 3: where am I at and what can I do to
Speaker 3: strike more balance? And there's a lot of that that
Speaker 3: is out of my control, but there's also a fair
Speaker 3: bit that's within my control.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to link to your ted talk, which is
Speaker 1: brilliant in the show notes, I recommend that everyone watched that.
Speaker 2: Now for listeners that.
Speaker 1: Want to connect with you in some way dom after
Speaker 1: hearing your absolute gems, what's the best way for people
Speaker 1: to do that?
Speaker 3: I mean, anyway a lot of the assets that we
Speaker 3: create through. Lastly, in any hacks or experiments, we doing
Speaker 3: a Lassian or on our team playbook, which you can
Speaker 3: look at. I've got my own website now don price
Speaker 3: dot me where you can get a lot of my content,
Speaker 3: or on LinkedIn, all the normal stuff. Actually, for any
Speaker 3: of those things, I always think there's a weird barrier
Speaker 3: to people reaching out. I assume that barrier is not there.
Speaker 3: I reply to bitually every or certainly most decent LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: When you're trying to sell me something, I tend not
Speaker 3: to reply, but most genuine LinkedIn connections, I like to
Speaker 3: have a conversation if people have got questions or queries
Speaker 3: or want to challenge me onso or even share their
Speaker 3: own ideas. I think I think we've got way more
Speaker 3: to give to the community if we stop trying to
Speaker 3: sell to each other. So any of those any of those.
Speaker 2: Forums, fantastic dom. I've loved this chat.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we could catch up during lockdown,
Speaker 1: and I'm.
Speaker 2: Just I'm really excited to share this.
Speaker 1: Hey, So I hope that this episode was useful, and
Speaker 1: I hope that you're walking away from it with at
Speaker 1: least one thing that you can try that will hopefully
Speaker 1: lift your mood or make life suck a little bit
Speaker 1: less right now.
Speaker 2: And if you are not.
Speaker 1: A subscriber or follower of How I Work, hit subscribe
Speaker 1: or follow and you will be alerted whenever new episodes drop.
Speaker 1: And I've got a very starting chat that I'm releasing
Speaker 1: next week with Ronnie Kahn, who is the founder and
Speaker 1: CEO of oz Harvest, and we will be talking about
Speaker 1: where she gets her best ideas from and also what
Speaker 1: to do with all the food in your fridge that
Speaker 1: is about to go off. How I Work is produced
Speaker 1: by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios. And
Speaker 1: thank you to Mattin Nimba who does the audio mix
Speaker 1: for every episode and makes everything sound better than it
Speaker 1: would have otherwise. See you next time.