Speaker 1: You know that beautiful leather bound journal you bought with
Speaker 1: the best of intentions, the one now gathering dust under
Speaker 1: a pile of books. If you've abandoned more journals than
Speaker 1: you care to admit, you're about to discover why. After
Speaker 1: forty years of failed journaling attempts, Michael Bungay Stania finally
Speaker 1: cracked the code to sustainable reflection with his do Something
Speaker 1: that Matters journal and It's nothing like what you've tried before.
Speaker 1: Michael is the Wall Street Journal best selling author of
Speaker 1: The Coaching Habit, which Rene Brown called a classic with
Speaker 1: over one point five million books sold. Michael was named
Speaker 1: the number one thought leader in coaching by Thinkers fifty
Speaker 1: and his insights have transformed our leader's work worldwide. I
Speaker 1: am thrilled to welcome Michael back to How I Work,
Speaker 1: where he reveals his deceptively simple approach to journaling that
Speaker 1: actually sticks, his Monday morning richel that drives results, and
Speaker 1: the unexpected reflection technique that prevents him from drowning in commitments.
Speaker 1: If you've ever struggled to maintain a reflection practice, this
Speaker 1: conversation might finally end your journal graveyard collection. Welcome to
Speaker 1: How I Work. A show about habits, rituals, and strategies
Speaker 1: for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: Michael is so prolific with his work and is clearly
Speaker 1: in high demand all around the world, so I know
Speaker 1: he would have to be pretty good at saying no
Speaker 1: to work offers in order to avoid overload. So this
Speaker 1: chat starts with Michael sharing his very practical tips on
Speaker 1: how and when to say no.
Speaker 2: I start by saying is just one of those skills
Speaker 2: that a little bit like gratitude, turns out to be
Speaker 2: a silver bullet or as close to a silver bullet
Speaker 2: to happiness as you can get, even though silver bullet's
Speaker 2: a terrible metaphor, so let's call it a warm, gentle
Speaker 2: hug towards happiness. Which is this gift of being able
Speaker 2: to say no. And I mean, I'll tell you I
Speaker 2: am not particularly good at it, and I like unhappy people,
Speaker 2: I like pleasing people. I'm the oldest child, so I've
Speaker 2: got a strong sense of responsibility and show up and
Speaker 2: do the thing. But at the heart of understanding no
Speaker 2: is a commitment to what you're saying yes to, So
Speaker 2: saying no is not just a look I'm just being
Speaker 2: obstinate or selfish. It's I've got an idea of really
Speaker 2: what matters, and my yes is meaningless unless my no
Speaker 2: has some weight. And I'm going to just take a
Speaker 2: rough guess here that there's not a single person listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast or a single person participating in this podcast.
Speaker 2: So that's you and me, Amantha, who's going The problem
Speaker 2: with my life is I just don't have enough stuff
Speaker 2: in it. The problem with my life is it's just
Speaker 2: not crowded enough. Like everybody's got too much on the
Speaker 2: yes's and so every time we make a commitment without
Speaker 2: a no, we're pouring water into a full glass and
Speaker 2: all you're doing is getting the floor wet, and you're
Speaker 2: not really getting committed to the big thing. So I've
Speaker 2: done a few things to try and build my capacity
Speaker 2: for saying no, and a lot of it is structural stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's actually not building my capacity for saying no,
Speaker 2: it's building an infrastructure around me that allows me to
Speaker 2: say no when there's parts of my body screaming to
Speaker 2: say yes. So I'll give you an example. One of
Speaker 2: the things that's really helpful is just to know that, look,
Speaker 2: I don't have to say yes right away. And in fact,
Speaker 2: one of the core things I keep trying to tell
Speaker 2: myself is, Michael, slow down the rush to yes. Every
Speaker 2: yes is precious. Your default should be no. Your default
Speaker 2: shouldn't be yes. You're default should be no. So slow
Speaker 2: down the rush to yes. So just you know, in
Speaker 2: some ways this it's just being a little bit more
Speaker 2: mindful about what are you committing to and how quickly.
Speaker 2: What helps me do that is to have criteria about
Speaker 2: what I'm saying yes to. And you know it's you
Speaker 2: won't have criteria for everything in your life that you're
Speaker 2: saying yes to. But as an example, I get asked
Speaker 2: to come and give keynote speeches on a regular basis,
Speaker 2: and every time I get a little inquiry, one part
Speaker 2: of my fragile male ego gets stroked, and I'm like, see,
Speaker 2: I know I'm getting old. I know I'm over the hill.
Speaker 2: I know like I'm fading from people's memory. But I
Speaker 2: still got it, Like I'm still like a person out
Speaker 2: there in the world. And what happens is six months later,
Speaker 2: I end up in some god forsaking part of the
Speaker 2: world and the US or Canada or wherever am I
Speaker 2: be going? What am I doing here? Who's responsible for
Speaker 2: me giving this talk? And I'm like, I am, I said, yes,
Speaker 2: this it's my fault. So here's how I work it
Speaker 2: for my speeching and people can figure out their own
Speaker 2: kind of version of this for whatever shows up for them.
Speaker 2: But I have five plus one criteria for my speaking
Speaker 2: and the rule is if they tick two of the boxes,
Speaker 2: I'll have a conversation with them. So the five criteria
Speaker 2: is they will pay my full fee. Now I live
Speaker 2: in Canada and so the speaking fees in the North
Speaker 2: America are ridiculously aret. I've tried to price myself out
Speaker 2: of the market, so most people don't want to pay
Speaker 2: the money because I'm like, my rack rate for a
Speaker 2: speech is fifty thousand dollars, which is believe me, I
Speaker 2: know how stupid that is. And when people go that's
Speaker 2: a ridiculous amount of money, and I'm like, it is,
Speaker 2: you should find somebody else. But so this is me
Speaker 2: kind of building infrastructure to make create kind of resistance
Speaker 2: to people wanting to even ask me in the first place.
Speaker 2: But anyway, my five crade here pay my full fee.
Speaker 2: It's a friend who's asking me. It's a cool organization.
Speaker 2: It's in a cool location, it's more than a thousand
Speaker 2: people in the audience. And if they're like, we've got
Speaker 2: two out of five for you here, then I'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: let me find out more about it. Let me find
Speaker 2: out what's going on. So if I have a friend
Speaker 2: calling up and going, hey, Michael, mate, come and speak
Speaker 2: on the Gold Coast, I'm like, but I've got no money,
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, maybe. Or if it's you know, some
Speaker 2: cool organization, let's say Apple Say, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: come and speak. We can't afford to pay you very much.
Speaker 2: And it's it's in a terrible, terrible part of the country.
Speaker 2: It's in Alaska in the middle of winter. But we're
Speaker 2: going to have two thousand people there. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: well that's two out of five of my criteria. So
Speaker 2: I'll have a conversation with them and I'll see how
Speaker 2: it goes.
Speaker 1: So can I ask, because I love that criteria and
Speaker 1: as someone who does speaking and has to say no
Speaker 1: for various reasons to quite a lot of speaking gigs,
Speaker 1: how do you get to that criteria? What was your process?
Speaker 2: I noticed all the things that made me sad when
Speaker 2: I was giving a talk somewhere where I was like,
Speaker 2: what am I doing? This is a terrible, terrible decision.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't want to be in this place.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be in front of this audience.
Speaker 2: I conned myself that this would be useful in some way.
Speaker 2: And so the plus one criteria is this. I go,
Speaker 2: if this was tomorrow, would I be happy about it?
Speaker 2: And that's a super useful criteria for me, because present
Speaker 2: day Michael sells future day Michael down the river time
Speaker 2: and time again. Future day Michael now looks back at
Speaker 2: past Michael and go, you are an a hole man?
Speaker 2: What do you do sending me to this place? This
Speaker 2: is a nightmare. So I try and bring future Michael
Speaker 2: and present day Michael really close together, and I go,
Speaker 2: if this was tomorrow, will I be up for it?
Speaker 2: And if I'm like, oh, I can just feel in
Speaker 2: my bones and I probably would be less excited than
Speaker 2: I would, then I'd that I'm playing with other criteria,
Speaker 2: which is for this year, I'm going I want to
Speaker 2: do ten in real life speaking gigs this year, so
Speaker 2: I've only got ten to spend. You know what am
Speaker 2: I doing? I'm speaking to a friend of mine. Mike
Speaker 2: mcallowitz the other day. He has a rule that he
Speaker 2: has twenty glasses of wine to spend in a year,
Speaker 2: so he's like, I'm not going to be drinking crappy wine,
Speaker 2: and I'm probably going to be drinking good wine with
Speaker 2: my wife, who's my favorite person in the world. So
Speaker 2: when I'm out with Mike and I'm like, Mike, let's
Speaker 2: have a cocktail, He's like, sorry, Matte, Like, you're a
Speaker 2: good guy, but I'm not spending one of my twenty
Speaker 2: glasses of wine with you because I've got other places
Speaker 2: i want to spend that. And all of this I
Speaker 2: think about understanding the opportunity cost and understanding there's a
Speaker 2: limit to it, and setting these kind of criteria. You're
Speaker 2: gaming yourself in just making it easier to say no.
Speaker 2: And when you say no, you create space and capacity
Speaker 2: for the stuff that you really want to say yes to. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're me and Mantha, what that does is to
Speaker 2: create a certain amount of anxiety. Like this month, I
Speaker 2: sat down with my fancy journal and I did a
Speaker 2: kind of what's coming up in the month ahead, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I've got a pretty open month. Like
Speaker 2: it I don't have a single client engagement. I've got
Speaker 2: a few podcasts that I'm recording and a few podcasts
Speaker 2: that I'm the host on and recording, and I've got
Speaker 2: other commitments. But relatively speaking, I've got one small piece
Speaker 2: of travel, which is an award ceremony I'm going to.
Speaker 2: And part of me is like, this is exactly what
Speaker 2: I've been planning. And there's one part of me that
Speaker 2: goes my gorsh this is it. This is the start
Speaker 2: of something terrible. This is the apocalypse happening. See, you're
Speaker 2: sliding even further into irrelevance. So part of it is
Speaker 2: also some deeper work, which is around understanding a deeper
Speaker 2: reason why you might be saying yes, which is to
Speaker 2: feel important, to feel filled up, to feel over committed,
Speaker 2: to feel busy, and knowing that for some of us anyway,
Speaker 2: and for me, there's a degree of work I need
Speaker 2: to be doing to go. I actually got to get
Speaker 2: used to building a life which is less crowded.
Speaker 1: Now, Michael, you mentioned journaling, and I have heard you
Speaker 1: say that you hate journaling. Can you tell me about
Speaker 1: that and what has changed?
Speaker 2: Well, it's more to say that I have failed to
Speaker 2: successfully journal since I was sixteen, so I'm now fifty seven.
Speaker 2: So I've been attempting to journal for as I used
Speaker 2: to try and do it in high school. And when
Speaker 2: I look back there, I'm like, I've got things like
Speaker 2: bus tickets stapared into it. It's such a teenage boys
Speaker 2: journal because there's absolutely no self reflection, there's no sense
Speaker 2: of emotionalness. It's purely a kind of did this did
Speaker 2: that sort of criteria, and not even interesting things. And
Speaker 2: I've tried most of the journaling formats because there is
Speaker 2: something about creating a space where you stop and you
Speaker 2: reflect and you're able to kind of be provoked and
Speaker 2: think about the day. And I found two types of
Speaker 2: journals didn't work for me. One is the kind of
Speaker 2: artist's way just free float and just write whatever comes
Speaker 2: into your head. That's just a bit too loose for me. Equally,
Speaker 2: there's a type of journal which is more of a
Speaker 2: planet thing, which is like, okay, right down the day,
Speaker 2: to write down your seventeen commitments, write down your phone
Speaker 2: callse write down your vision, write down your three values
Speaker 2: right down. First of all, I don't have time for this,
Speaker 2: and secondly, it's too structured. I've got a freedom driver
Speaker 2: that just makes me want to rebel against things like that.
Speaker 2: So I have been looking for a journal that allows
Speaker 2: me to make progress on the stuff I need to
Speaker 2: do day to day. So it makes me present and
Speaker 2: makes me focus for the day ahead, but also provokes
Speaker 2: me to learn and to grow and become a wiser,
Speaker 2: smarter person. So this is what people like me do.
Speaker 2: I created my own journal, so I wort something called
Speaker 2: that do something that matters journal, which is so nicely
Speaker 2: send me up. You're holding it up from the screen,
Speaker 2: and I've got mine in front of me as well,
Speaker 2: and I find this one works for me. It's it's
Speaker 2: three questions in the morning to check in and one
Speaker 2: question in the evening or for the next morning if
Speaker 2: you want to do that. So that's your kind of
Speaker 2: daily movement, making progress, you know the progress principal by
Speaker 2: Teresa and Marble, which is like people find meaning if
Speaker 2: they make small, regular progress and stuff that matters to them.
Speaker 2: And then kind of start of the week, end of
Speaker 2: the week, middle of the week, there are more kind
Speaker 2: of provocative questions to help you stop and lift your
Speaker 2: eyes up off the page and reflect on who you
Speaker 2: are and what's going on. To enable kind of growth.
Speaker 2: So it's not just about the grind, nor is it
Speaker 2: just about the deep self reflection. But it's a kind
Speaker 2: of combination of the two.
Speaker 1: I would love you to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: questions that each shows for the journal.
Speaker 2: I love questions. I love them. I mean, if I'm
Speaker 2: known for anything, it's the coaching. Have a book which
Speaker 2: is like kind of my curated seven best coaching questions,
Speaker 2: and you know earlier versions of that book. I tempted
Speaker 2: one version of that book, which is here in My
Speaker 2: Favorite one hundred and thirty two Questions. It was a
Speaker 2: terrible book. It was so bad. I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is unbearable and unreadable. It's purgent. But
Speaker 2: I do keep my ear to the ground and collect
Speaker 2: great questions. And so the three Morning questions. And I'm
Speaker 2: really happy to give this because you don't I mean,
Speaker 2: I'd like to love you to buy a journal, but
Speaker 2: you don't have to. You can just kind of use
Speaker 2: these questions and buy a blank journal and just use
Speaker 2: them yourself. The first three questions are, first of all,
Speaker 2: what do I notice? And I asked that question, Amantha,
Speaker 2: because I am a heady sort of guy, and I'm
Speaker 2: often kind of a bit into the future and a
Speaker 2: bit distracted, and what do I notice is a way
Speaker 2: for me to try and be present. What's going on
Speaker 2: in my head, what's going on in my heart, what's
Speaker 2: going on in my ass, what am I siteting out
Speaker 2: of the window in front of me, what am I feeling?
Speaker 2: It's a kind of a call to be present to
Speaker 2: the inner and the outer way that's there right in
Speaker 2: front of me. The second question is what do I want? Now?
Speaker 2: Deep cut fans will know that what do I want
Speaker 2: is one of the questions from the coaching habit, And
Speaker 2: actually I've always when I've been teaching the coaching habit,
Speaker 2: I've always said, this is the hardest question. It is
Speaker 2: a hard question. But I heard somebody say, if you
Speaker 2: just ask yourself what do I want? Day in and
Speaker 2: day out, it just starts forcing a deep clarity about
Speaker 2: what you're missing, what you're sad about, what you're longing for,
Speaker 2: what's not working, what's calling you. And when we're talking
Speaker 2: about what you want to say yes to, if it
Speaker 2: stems from this deep awareness of what do I want,
Speaker 2: that then makes the how to say no, for instance,
Speaker 2: a little easier. And then The third question for the
Speaker 2: start of the day is what's the one thing today?
Speaker 2: And this question works for me because, again getting back
Speaker 2: to our previous conversation, I love to be over committed.
Speaker 2: I love a to do list that stretches to the
Speaker 2: near horizon and is all read because I'm like eight
Speaker 2: and a half years behind in my to do list,
Speaker 2: and so I'm like, I'm going to remember what's the
Speaker 2: most important thing today to do so that I don't go, look,
Speaker 2: I was busy today and I did ninety eight things.
Speaker 2: I can say I did the thing today that moved
Speaker 2: the project forward that matters most to me, to make
Speaker 2: sure that that worked because I made that choice. So
Speaker 2: it's a reminder of focus on the important stuff. I
Speaker 2: read recently, I think probably Oliver Berkman said you should
Speaker 2: consider your to do list more like a menu than
Speaker 2: a obligation. And I'm like, oh, that's so good, because
Speaker 2: I create a what's that jacket that ties you up?
Speaker 2: You know jacket, a straight jacket. My to do list
Speaker 2: can be a straight jacket, and what's the one thing
Speaker 2: today can be a bit of a release from that.
Speaker 2: And then the final question, which I tend to answer
Speaker 2: the next morning, but some people answer at the end
Speaker 2: of the day comes from Austin Kleon who introduced it
Speaker 2: to me, and it's what's the best thing that happened today?
Speaker 2: And it's a gratitude question really in disguise, because it
Speaker 2: forces you to go, well, what am I remembering and
Speaker 2: celebrating and happy about from the day? And it's not
Speaker 2: what did you do or what did you crush? Or
Speaker 2: what boxes did you tick? Not every day is about productivity.
Speaker 2: Some days, I like the best thing about today was
Speaker 2: gazing out my window and noticing that spring is just
Speaker 2: whispering and arrival here in Toronto because we've been digging
Speaker 2: out snow for months now or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: And for me, as somebody who is perpetually charging into
Speaker 2: the future and not that good at kind of being
Speaker 2: delighted about the present, it keeps bringing me back to
Speaker 2: the present and being grateful and kind of actually, as
Speaker 2: I get into my journals building up a record of
Speaker 2: all the good things in my.
Speaker 1: Life, I was going to ask, do you look back
Speaker 1: on your journal? Is that part of your ritual as well?
Speaker 2: It's not so much, that's just not part of what
Speaker 2: nourishes me. And looking back, I've too many things calling
Speaker 2: me forward in the future that make it that meant
Speaker 2: that hard. But even just this recognition of in this moment,
Speaker 2: this was what was good about the day. And it's
Speaker 2: true that occasionally I'll look slightly back in the journal
Speaker 2: if I'm kind of like this morning, for instance, it's Monday,
Speaker 2: the third of March here in Canada. I spent like
Speaker 2: an hour reflecting on what I'm thinking about the month ahead,
Speaker 2: and in part that was looking back over February and going,
Speaker 2: what do I notice from February? What happened? What am
Speaker 2: I celebrating. So there's a little bit of that look
Speaker 2: back that happens there, but it's not a kind of
Speaker 2: regular thing. Some people love to kind of like dig
Speaker 2: deep into their journals and flick through them, and that's
Speaker 2: not for me.
Speaker 1: What it reminds me of is so my partner is
Speaker 1: a very consistent You've probably seen that one sentence a
Speaker 1: day journal where you write a few sentences over five
Speaker 1: years and then every year is a different row. If
Speaker 1: you like, I love that.
Speaker 2: It's so clever. It's such a clever construction.
Speaker 1: It is, isn't it. So I got us both one
Speaker 1: about nearly two years ago, now I have written about
Speaker 1: fifteen entries. He has written several hundred, and what's truly great.
Speaker 1: He's a very generous journaler in that he'll often talk
Speaker 1: about what's happened in both our days. He'll be like,
Speaker 1: I did this, and here are the key beats to
Speaker 1: the day, and then A did blah blah blah. That
Speaker 1: it was funny. We were looking back on it last night,
Speaker 1: and I was in such a low point for work,
Speaker 1: and I remember just viscerally how that felt, just with
Speaker 1: even one or two sentences he read out, and there
Speaker 1: was something quite joyous in going, wow, I've done a
Speaker 1: one eighty. I feel completely different. And so I understand
Speaker 1: and like that. Some people don't like looking back, but
Speaker 1: I personally found that so useful, just for that sense
Speaker 1: of progress over the year.
Speaker 2: That's so good. I can absolutely see how that would
Speaker 2: be great, because I think it's true that we tend
Speaker 2: to homogenize our past, kind of blend it all into going,
Speaker 2: oh no, it was all seven out of ten, And
Speaker 2: in fact, there's ups and downs, and you'll forget those
Speaker 2: unless you have an opportunity to reflect like that.
Speaker 1: That's so true. It's like some of the details that
Speaker 1: were written there, even about Frankie, my daughter. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that day just would have disappeared from my mind. How
Speaker 1: do we not captured that one sentence that summed up
Speaker 1: that day beautifully?
Speaker 2: Clearly? The journal to buy here is the one LA
Speaker 2: Day five year journal. But if you're also like a
Speaker 2: second journal in your life, you can consider. But I
Speaker 2: mean I know that because when I was writing this journal,
Speaker 2: I just bought all sorts of journals to coming on
Speaker 2: what do I like and what do people doing? And
Speaker 2: I think that is one of the really good ones.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Michael soon, and when we return,
Speaker 1: he'll be sharing his Monday morning journaling ritual, why he
Speaker 1: rejects the popular word of the year approach for something
Speaker 1: far more effective, and the monthly reflection practice that keeps
Speaker 1: his work and life aligned while preventing burnout. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for more tips to improve the way you work
Speaker 1: can live, I write a short weekly newsletter that contains
Speaker 1: tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha
Speaker 1: dot com. I really like how you talk about weekly
Speaker 1: and monthly rituals for journaling. And I might add that
Speaker 1: one sentence a day one does not include that, so
Speaker 1: definitely don't get that one. But I would like to
Speaker 1: talk about what you do at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: week and what you do at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: month that is different. So let's start with a weekly focus.
Speaker 1: And indeed, it even says weekly focus in your journal,
Speaker 1: tell me what you do differently at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the week.
Speaker 2: I've tried to build in cycles into the journal, so
Speaker 2: different rhythms that kind of ebb and flow through it.
Speaker 2: So you've got your daily like Monday through Friday. Basically
Speaker 2: you've got these four questions that you used to check
Speaker 2: in with at the start of each week. There's a
Speaker 2: little section for you, like your weekly focus, and it's
Speaker 2: just useful to look out ahead and go, well, what's
Speaker 2: their week ahead look like, and what's beckoning and what's
Speaker 2: calling me and what I need to know about that.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that I invite people to do
Speaker 2: is at the start of the week to go deep
Speaker 2: on a question. So for instance, I, you know, I
Speaker 2: was writing my journal this morning and it's like the
Speaker 2: go deep question, and there's sixteen weeks in the journal,
Speaker 2: so there's sixteen different questions to provoke you around this,
Speaker 2: and the question I answered is what are you loyal to?
Speaker 2: So this is what keeps you there even when the
Speaker 2: sensible thing is to leave. Loyalty can be what's required.
Speaker 2: Loyalty can also mean sticking around too long. What's your
Speaker 2: deep commitment? So you know, here's what I wrote email boo,
Speaker 2: because I'm like, I am trying with my assistant to
Speaker 2: extract me from email, and I'm finding it very hard
Speaker 2: to let go of that. Been too busy and overwhelmed,
Speaker 2: and I'm committed to avoiding the hard things. So this
Speaker 2: is like, obviously I've been I was fueled up on
Speaker 2: an espresso, so I was trying to go deep on myself,
Speaker 2: which is like, where is my loyalty? Which is part
Speaker 2: of how I show up in the world. I'm a
Speaker 2: good loyal person. I'm paying a price for that, and
Speaker 2: I could have, you know, depending on the day, I
Speaker 2: could have gone somewhere else entirely, which is like, I've
Speaker 2: got a loyalty to my fifteen closest friend because I'm
Speaker 2: the one who will ring them up and chat with
Speaker 2: them and have those conversations. But for me to this morning,
Speaker 2: it was really helpful, just to go I've got a
Speaker 2: deep commitment to avoiding some stuff or sticking with stuff
Speaker 2: that feels too comfortable for me. That's a helpful thing.
Speaker 2: And every sort of every week there's a kind of
Speaker 2: new question to provoke you to go a little deep
Speaker 2: and kind of shake you up a little bit. And
Speaker 2: then the journal is also designed on a six week cycle,
Speaker 2: which is something I stole from kind of lean production.
Speaker 2: And the guys at thirty seven Signal they're the ones
Speaker 2: who wrote Rework.
Speaker 1: It's called Yeah, it doesn't have to be crazy at
Speaker 1: work or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's it. Yeah, And they have a podcast called rework
Speaker 2: as well, and so they run a sas technology company.
Speaker 2: But they've always been quite contrarian around how they work.
Speaker 2: They're like, probably most of the common sense at work
Speaker 2: is terrible, so what do we think is actually good?
Speaker 2: And the way that they produced work is they do
Speaker 2: a six week sprint and then a week or two
Speaker 2: to reset and recalibrate and figure out what's next, and
Speaker 2: then they go, right, here's what I'm working on for
Speaker 2: the next six weeks, and they work that and we've
Speaker 2: used that cycle in a membership group. We have which
Speaker 2: is people working on their big projects. We have six
Speaker 2: chapters a year, six weeks and breaks in between, so
Speaker 2: the journal reflects that, which is like, figure out what
Speaker 2: your six week goal is, what your big thing is
Speaker 2: for the six weeks, and then go for that and
Speaker 2: commit to that. So you're continually creating these layers of
Speaker 2: context for your daily check in. You've got your weekly context,
Speaker 2: you got your six week context, which helps you stay
Speaker 2: focused on what's the point of all of this? What
Speaker 2: am I actually working towards?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to talk about your monthly ritual
Speaker 1: because you mentioned sitting down at the beginning of March
Speaker 1: and thinking about things or reflecting on things. What do
Speaker 1: you do each month?
Speaker 2: Well, I do a few things. I try and remind
Speaker 2: myself the rules I'm playing by, you know, things like
Speaker 2: you're doing this for the joy of the work, and
Speaker 2: you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
Speaker 2: You know how, at the start of the year, the
Speaker 2: bloom has gone completely off New Year's resolutions, Like everybody goes,
Speaker 2: that's uncol Now, don't make a new this resolution, You're dead.
Speaker 2: But everyone's like, I've got a word of the year. Well,
Speaker 2: I've got to I've actually got to be in my
Speaker 2: bonnet about a word of the year, because I think
Speaker 2: a single word is typically a bit too simplistic, a
Speaker 2: bit too vague, a bit too jazz handy. It's like
Speaker 2: when you go and see corporate values and they're like,
Speaker 2: here are five very banal things as corporate values, and
Speaker 2: you know what's the point of that? Honestly, some words
Speaker 2: of the year strike me like that as well. So
Speaker 2: my thing is to get two words for the year,
Speaker 2: because two is more than twice as good because when
Speaker 2: you have two words, they're in relationship with each other,
Speaker 2: and ideally your two words want to be in tension
Speaker 2: with each other, so there's a kind of push pull
Speaker 2: around that. So my two words for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: One is artisanal, meaning I want to create beautiful stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, the stuff that like an artist makes where
Speaker 2: you're like's there's a magic to them, and there's a
Speaker 2: there's a uniqueness and a specialness to that thing. So
Speaker 2: I want artisanal. And then the second word is ballsy,
Speaker 2: meaning I want to be brave and I want to
Speaker 2: be loud, and I want to be courageous and I
Speaker 2: want to go for it and I want to be ambitious,
Speaker 2: and I really like how those two words don't fit
Speaker 2: that neatly together. So I'm reminding myself of some of
Speaker 2: my key things and my principles around that, and then
Speaker 2: I'm reminding myself of what my key projects are, because
Speaker 2: one of the things I've learned is once I lose context,
Speaker 2: once I lose the big picture, my life deteriorates into
Speaker 2: emails and to do's, and so I keep needing to
Speaker 2: find reasons to pull myself out and surface. And hence
Speaker 2: the weekly and the monthly and the six weekly kind
Speaker 2: of cycles because they keep forcing me to hold a
Speaker 2: wider perspective, going what is going on here and what
Speaker 2: does matter to me? And what are the things I'm
Speaker 2: trying to nurture, so you know, for this year, I
Speaker 2: go look. One of my projects is Change Signal, which
Speaker 2: is a podcast news letter about change management in organizations,
Speaker 2: and the key driver for that is a beautiful podcast,
Speaker 2: a newsletter, and growing the audience for both of those things.
Speaker 2: That's one of my kind of core projects. And then
Speaker 2: another one of my projects is basically today, Amantha Mark's
Speaker 2: the ninth birthday of the Coaching Habit. It came out
Speaker 2: on the twenty ninth of February twenty sixteenth, which means
Speaker 2: in a year's time almost exactly, it'll be the tenth
Speaker 2: birthday of The Coaching Habit and we're going to put
Speaker 2: out a special edition. It's a hardback. I'm'm going to
Speaker 2: write a new chapter. We're going to do some other
Speaker 2: cool things as part of that. So part of it
Speaker 2: is around Coaching Habit ten. How do I set myself
Speaker 2: up for a really successful, fun year in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six championing this book, which has been a kind of
Speaker 2: life changing book for me. And then one of my
Speaker 2: projects is to be in the best shape of my life.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, so what does that actually mean?
Speaker 2: And so there's a bunch of things around exercise and
Speaker 2: and I have old man's knees, so trying to get
Speaker 2: my knees to work, you know, and kind of other
Speaker 2: kind of boring stuff around that. And my fourth project
Speaker 2: of four is learn to love Toronto, because I've lived
Speaker 2: here for twenty years and I've kind of fallen out
Speaker 2: of love a little bit with the place. So I
Speaker 2: need to get back into love with this place where
Speaker 2: I live. And so part of it is me going
Speaker 2: on are my key projects? And how does my month
Speaker 2: look in terms of where I'm committed to these projects
Speaker 2: or not? And what's in my calendar which isn't about
Speaker 2: those four projects? And what shall I be thinking about
Speaker 2: or doing about that?
Speaker 1: I love that?
Speaker 2: How long?
Speaker 1: Like, practically speaking, do you sit down and think about
Speaker 1: these things every month?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Is it just a quick half an hour? Is it
Speaker 1: a day? What does that look like?
Speaker 2: I have seventeen days. I spend the first seventeen days
Speaker 2: of every month just planning the No, I'm kidding. I
Speaker 2: spent an hour doing that this morning, because this is
Speaker 2: what I did this morning around that, and so I
Speaker 2: went to yoga, did a yoga class, went to my
Speaker 2: favorite coffee shop, and just spent an hour sitting and reflecting.
Speaker 2: I had my phone with me, so I was kind
Speaker 2: of looking at calendar, looking forward, looking back. I had
Speaker 2: my journal with me, So I don't spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time. I don't write a lot. I'm a fairly
Speaker 2: quick processor around some of that stuff. But an hour
Speaker 2: is enough for me to feel grounded about, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I know what I'm doing and I know why I'm
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: The final thing I wanted to ask, is you like
Speaker 1: to coincide with the launch of your journal. You put
Speaker 1: out an e book that was fifty two brilliant Questions,
Speaker 1: and I love that as a lot of questions. I
Speaker 1: would love to know one or two or three that
Speaker 1: are like your absolute favorites that you find yourself coming
Speaker 1: back to a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was such a fun exercise because I was like,
Speaker 2: I was just writing to people who I know in
Speaker 2: the coaching world and kind of be ongoing what is
Speaker 2: your best question? Why do you like it so much?
Speaker 2: And it had a real mix. Some of them are
Speaker 2: familiar ones the people have heard before, you know, things
Speaker 2: like if I had no fear, what would I do?
Speaker 2: And that can be really liberating, although I prefer a
Speaker 2: site version of that, which is, if I didn't care
Speaker 2: about the consequences, would I still do this anyway? Because
Speaker 2: I don't know how to get over fear. Like fear
Speaker 2: is just part of you know, it's part of our
Speaker 2: nervous system. So having no fear, I feel like it
Speaker 2: feels like you're lobotomized. Yeah, no fear. But if you're
Speaker 2: like I don't care about the consequences, what does that
Speaker 2: look like? Can be really powerful. One of the questions
Speaker 2: is what does it mean to be fully committed to this?
Speaker 2: And for me that's particularly powerful. But you know, I
Speaker 2: think perhaps the one that is the one that I
Speaker 2: really love is from a guy called Frankie Thoroughgood. And
Speaker 2: Frankie was this young guy in his thirties, but he
Speaker 2: had this kind of early wisdom to him. He's a
Speaker 2: seeker and he's a questioner, and he's just accumulated a
Speaker 2: kind of a grace and a presence to him which
Speaker 2: I really admire. And his was the final question in
Speaker 2: the book, and it was who do you love and
Speaker 2: who loves you? And you know, before we hit record, Amantha,
Speaker 2: you're saying last year is difficult for work, but it's
Speaker 2: fantastic on a personal level because you're getting married and
Speaker 2: you've found your person, and it is amazing what that
Speaker 2: means when you find your person, when you feel loved.
Speaker 2: You know, this year, I get to celebrate thirty years
Speaker 2: married with my wife, which is impossible because I'm still young,
Speaker 2: God damn it. But I'm like, I'm just very lucky
Speaker 2: to have somebody who I love and who loves me.
Speaker 2: And as I sometimes say about marriage, a good marriage
Speaker 2: is when you both feel that you're getting the better deal.
Speaker 2: And I definitely feel like I'm getting the better deal.
Speaker 2: So I really think we can talk about productivity and
Speaker 2: efficiency and all of this and self growth, but if
Speaker 2: you can kind of crack your heart open and love
Speaker 2: somebody and be loved, those are both learned skills. By
Speaker 2: the way, those are things you can work on to
Speaker 2: get better at. That feels like a really good question, Michael.
Speaker 1: It is always such a joy to chat to you
Speaker 1: on microphone or off microphone. Thank you so much. You're
Speaker 1: always such a generous and helpful sharer. So I thank you,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you'll be back for twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: to talk about the coaching habit. I hope.
Speaker 2: I hope so too, but that would be lovely. But
Speaker 2: thank you. Whether you set me up, you make me
Speaker 2: sound better than I actually am. So thank you for
Speaker 2: such a lovely conversation.
Speaker 1: I hope you love this chat with Michael as much
Speaker 1: as I did, and I highly recommend his do Something
Speaker 1: that Matters journal. If you want to check this out
Speaker 1: or find out anything else about Michael, I will provide
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes. If you like today's show,
Speaker 1: make sure you get follow on your podcast app to
Speaker 1: be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
Speaker 1: recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people out
Speaker 1: of the cool And Nation