Speaker 1: How are you coping with this whole global pandemic thing.
Speaker 1: I'm in Melbourne in Lockdown number six and it is
Speaker 1: pretty tough going. I feel like I'm more reliant on
Speaker 1: my devices than ever before because they're like a window
Speaker 1: to the outside world. But I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: checking ABC News ten times a day isn't very good
Speaker 1: for my mental health. So in today's show, I have
Speaker 1: an alternative to share. My name is doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work, a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. I'm trying something
Speaker 1: different today because Lockdown could be a bit lonely, so
Speaker 1: I thought it might be fun to have a little
Speaker 1: catch up with a fellow productivity nerd, my mate, Lisa Leong.
Speaker 1: Lisa is the host of the top ranking ABC podcast
Speaker 1: This Working Life, and she is just an all around
Speaker 1: awesome person I've known for years. Lisa was keen to
Speaker 1: know more about some new calendar software I've been using
Speaker 1: that has changed my life. But we start by having
Speaker 1: a chat about a ritual that Lisa has been trying lately,
Speaker 1: called a tech Sabbath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was something that did emerge out of COVID
Speaker 2: and when I think it was March last year, we
Speaker 2: noticed that there was a lack of contextual markers when
Speaker 2: we all started working from home. And Colin James, who
Speaker 2: does a lot of work in the communications space, he
Speaker 2: used this term, and I just think it's fantastic to say,
Speaker 2: our contextual markers are the things that we did as
Speaker 2: were commuted to work. For example, it's making a first
Speaker 2: cup of coffee, it's even putting on your work clothes.
Speaker 2: So these are the things that remind us all we're
Speaker 2: in work mode. Now with all of these disappearing. When
Speaker 2: we were working from home, we lost all sense of
Speaker 2: time and work just got over overwhelming. And I definitely
Speaker 2: found myself in that place, and so I started to
Speaker 2: look for routines and rituals that would support me in
Speaker 2: just trying to bring a bit more I guess focus
Speaker 2: in my life and consciousness. And we came across the
Speaker 2: work of Kasper to Kyle, who studied at the Harvard
Speaker 2: Divinity School. He's actually non denominational. He's just really fascinated
Speaker 2: in ancient wisdom in religious practices, and in his book
Speaker 2: he actually focuses on something called the Friday Tech Sabbath,
Speaker 2: so it's a secular ritual, but it does look at
Speaker 2: the beautiful ritual of Shabbat and from sundown Friday until
Speaker 2: sundown Saturday. In the secular version, you're just switching off
Speaker 2: all your devices, so it's mobile phone and laptop predominantly.
Speaker 2: And you know, so I just tried that.
Speaker 1: Like how did it go? What would you remember the
Speaker 1: very first tech Sabbath that you did, and what that felt.
Speaker 2: Like the first time I tried it, I did. I
Speaker 2: was very strict, so I turned off my phone and
Speaker 2: I turned off my laptop and I actually put them away.
Speaker 2: And I noticed that on the Saturday my hand kept
Speaker 2: on twitching trying to reach for my phone. My body
Speaker 2: was sort of like it was so weird. So that
Speaker 2: was the main thing that I noticed. And then I
Speaker 2: did notice when I switched back my phone that I
Speaker 2: had actually felt a little bit more refreshed, so all
Speaker 2: the noise had sort of dissipated. But definitely at the start,
Speaker 2: I was feeling anxious because like nobody could contact me, Amanda.
Speaker 1: I know, and that's what I was going to ask, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, did you make any provisions for let's just
Speaker 1: say there was a family emergency and your phone switched off, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that work? So the practical things that I
Speaker 1: had to do was before I switched off my phone
Speaker 1: on the Friday. You do have to really spend maybe
Speaker 1: an hour preparing things because on the Saturday, if I
Speaker 1: was going out to a cafe, I would just let
Speaker 1: people know who needed to know I'll be at this
Speaker 1: cafe at that time.
Speaker 2: So it's basically going back to a world before your
Speaker 2: mobile phone. So then I got a bit slack, to
Speaker 2: be honest, because I was doing it by myself.
Speaker 3: So the two point zero version of.
Speaker 2: The tex saver As Ritual was enlisting our mutual acquaintance
Speaker 2: and friend, Pinny Lacasso, so we came up with more
Speaker 2: of a ritual.
Speaker 3: So the ritual was literally.
Speaker 2: Light a candle, dance to a song. We had a
Speaker 2: chant or a mantra which is I am enough, that
Speaker 2: was enough, and it's time to shut off our devices
Speaker 2: and let them sleep, and then we would blow out
Speaker 2: the candle. And it was much more effective doing it
Speaker 2: with someone else, because I think there is something about
Speaker 2: mutual accountability knowing that you're not alone in this, and
Speaker 2: also I do want to cheat because I didn't want
Speaker 2: her to catch me out.
Speaker 1: And now I know that something else that you did
Speaker 1: is you actually got a song commissioned.
Speaker 2: I had come across an amazing singer songwriter called Little
Speaker 2: Green Amy Nelson, and she sort of just creates just beautiful,
Speaker 2: really clean, beautiful songs. And she plays all of the instruments,
Speaker 2: so she has self taught herself seven different instruments. And
Speaker 2: so I contacted her and just said, Amy, here's a concept.
Speaker 2: And I just gave her exactly what I gave to you.
Speaker 2: Just then, this is what it is. And she came
Speaker 2: up with this incredible song, which is now the song
Speaker 2: that we listened to. It dance to when we do
Speaker 2: Friday Tech.
Speaker 1: Seventh amazing, and let's listen to a bit of that song.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Amount is Friday.
Speaker 1: Close your eyes and say goodbye, Tocyer, free your mind.
Speaker 1: It's Friday. Good night too, oh device. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: a tough week, maybe it was good, maybe nothing when
Speaker 1: like you thought it would. But night, it's Friday.
Speaker 2: So I am enough.
Speaker 1: You are enough. We are enough.
Speaker 5: I am enough. You are enough. We are enough.
Speaker 1: I am enough, you are enough, we are enough.
Speaker 5: It's time too West, sweet dreams, beloved laptop night, beloved nimes,
Speaker 5: give you a break as well as my lobes. Stop
Speaker 5: the combland screen, stop the binge washing audio. Thanks for
Speaker 5: the space to frolic in nature, get lost in the street,
Speaker 5: no GPS to take here.
Speaker 4: It's that is such a beautiful song, Lisa.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's.
Speaker 3: Like catchy, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And it just she has so beautifully captured the whole field.
Speaker 2: I think of a Friday tech sabbath. Did you notice
Speaker 2: that I was rappy at the end, like me, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, would you give it a go?
Speaker 1: I would definitely give it a go. Funnily enough, so
Speaker 1: I don't sleep with my mobile phone in my room,
Speaker 1: So my mobile phone sleeps downstairs. I sleep upstairs. And
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, my parents actually said to me,
Speaker 1: because I don't have a landline, that would probably be
Speaker 1: weird to have a landline. But my parents said to me,
Speaker 1: what if we have an emergency in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, how do we contact you? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way of actually contacting me. And so my
Speaker 1: dad had a spare phone and he has now brought
Speaker 1: that over. He bought a sim card for it. And
Speaker 1: so I do have this phone like it's an iPhone
Speaker 1: that sleeps next to me, but literally the only function
Speaker 1: it has because every call is blocked except for calls
Speaker 1: from my mom or my dad's mobile, so it sleeps
Speaker 1: next to me if there's an emergency. So that would
Speaker 1: be the one thing that I would worry about, like
Speaker 1: if there was an emergency with my daughter or with
Speaker 1: my parents, how would people contact me? But that could
Speaker 1: actually be overcome by how I've overcome that. I'm not
Speaker 1: contactable pretty much between the hours of nine pm at
Speaker 1: night and say six or seven am in the morning.
Speaker 3: I call that my burner phone.
Speaker 2: As so I do actually have a really old school
Speaker 2: Nokia and you've just reminded me which I sometimes had
Speaker 2: put my SIM card in if I was like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I probably do need to be contactable, but
Speaker 2: I don't actually want to have a phone that reminds
Speaker 2: me of work. It's just that when I was trying
Speaker 2: to use it, because it is so old school, it's
Speaker 2: really hard to use, the client of gave up on it.
Speaker 2: But I did try that for a little while, and
Speaker 2: I wonder whether that would be you know, as you say,
Speaker 2: a really good option is just a really you know,
Speaker 2: one of those really old phones, so you can't be
Speaker 2: tempted at all.
Speaker 1: A nockier was it like.
Speaker 3: Sixty one or something like ring and everything.
Speaker 2: I sort of felt vaguely cool until I was so
Speaker 2: frustrated that I cor news and anyone.
Speaker 1: Now, something that I'm excited about is new software that
Speaker 1: I've been using to manage my to do list and
Speaker 1: calendar workflow.
Speaker 3: Oh I love your hacks, so describe this one.
Speaker 1: Okay, See this software is called Motion, but just to
Speaker 1: make it super confusing, there's actually two software solutions for
Speaker 1: calendars called Motion. So the one that I am talking
Speaker 1: about is motion dot io. That is the website and
Speaker 1: I will link to that in the show notes. And
Speaker 1: I actually I got recommended to it by John Zuratsky,
Speaker 1: who was a guest on the show quite a while ago,
Speaker 1: and he's quite well known for co writing Sprint, which
Speaker 1: is the book about Google ventures design Sprint process with
Speaker 1: Jack Napp, and also with Jack Napp wrote the book
Speaker 1: Make Time, which is a brilliant book around productivity and
Speaker 1: tax and things like that. So John said that something
Speaker 1: he's been using he's been playing around with your calendar software,
Speaker 1: and so that's how I got into Motion and what
Speaker 1: I love like So prior to Motion, my workflow is
Speaker 1: I would use things as my to do list software,
Speaker 1: and I would have a list for deep work tasks
Speaker 1: that I need to get done, so things that typically
Speaker 1: going to require at least an hour of my time
Speaker 1: and deep concentration, and then a shallow work list things
Speaker 1: that are quick and easy and simple to do or
Speaker 1: don't require a lot of brain power. And then what
Speaker 1: I would have to do is I would, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm planning my week, and I time box my diary,
Speaker 1: so I essentially set meetings with myself to complete deep
Speaker 1: work tasks, and then I also have reminders for like
Speaker 1: quick things that I need to do within Google Calendar,
Speaker 1: I'd sort of be, you know, checking my to do
Speaker 1: list every now and then and then time boxing and
Speaker 1: then I'd have my reminders. But some reminders would sort
Speaker 1: of carry on over for several days before I got
Speaker 1: to them, and it was all like a bit messy
Speaker 1: and imperfect. And what I love about Motion, and I've
Speaker 1: never seen this before in calendar software, is that it
Speaker 1: combines both of those software, if you like, into the one.
Speaker 1: So on the left hand side of my screen that
Speaker 1: is my task list, and so I can create new
Speaker 1: tasks within my calendar software, I can allocate how much
Speaker 1: time I think they will take me, and then I
Speaker 1: can drag and drop those tasks into my calendar, which
Speaker 1: takes up the rest of the screen. So the majority
Speaker 1: of the screen is my calendar, like the view that
Speaker 1: you would see on Google Calendar, but there's a column
Speaker 1: down the left hand side that is my task list,
Speaker 1: and so it will drag and I'll drag and drop
Speaker 1: those into my days, so I can timebox effectively. And
Speaker 1: then what I also love because with timeboxing, the time passes,
Speaker 1: you finish your task and it's like okay, good, done that,
Speaker 1: onto the next but you don't get that beautiful dopamine
Speaker 1: hit of ticking something off the list if you timebox
Speaker 1: in the traditional way. But with motion there's a little box,
Speaker 1: a little white box that you tick when you've done
Speaker 1: the task, and then it does like a little animation,
Speaker 1: and then it's marked off as done and it becomes
Speaker 1: kind of grayed out. And then the other thing that
Speaker 1: I really love is that if I'm ahead of schedule,
Speaker 1: if I've basically overestimated how much time my task will take.
Speaker 1: I can look sort of to further in the day
Speaker 1: and go, oh, I think I might try to tackle
Speaker 1: this thing, but I'd plan for the afternoon and then
Speaker 1: I tick it off and then it moves itself to
Speaker 1: the morning once it's done, and then I've got some
Speaker 1: free time. So it is gold. It has completely changed
Speaker 1: my workflow around how I manage my calendar.
Speaker 2: So in terms of the task list, I think it's
Speaker 2: really important to understand how big are the task that
Speaker 2: you're putting in your task list on the left hand side,
Speaker 2: and what would you define as being a task?
Speaker 1: So it is all sorts of things. So it might
Speaker 1: be like, for example, today, I've got a two hour
Speaker 1: task that I've time blocked for when we stop talking Lisa,
Speaker 1: and that is I have a keynote coming up that
Speaker 1: I feel like I need about two hours to kind
Speaker 1: of iterate a current keynote to turn into this final
Speaker 1: keynote that I'm delivering in about a week's time. So
Speaker 1: that's a two hour time block. But then I'll also
Speaker 1: have quick five minute tasks like I had to make
Speaker 1: a couple of phone calls today for example.
Speaker 2: And then are you putting together your task list the
Speaker 2: night before or a week in advance, or.
Speaker 1: No, it's ongoing. So whenever a task comes into my mind,
Speaker 1: I put it on the task list, and then when
Speaker 1: I'm at my computer, my desktop, I then allocate time
Speaker 1: to it. So essentially I'm running task list zero, kind
Speaker 1: of like inbox zero where you've cleaned out your inbox,
Speaker 1: but it's taskless zero because every task that you have
Speaker 1: now has time allocated to it in the diary, which
Speaker 1: I think is very very powerful, Like psychologically, that feels
Speaker 1: really good.
Speaker 2: And then my final question is because I've also been
Speaker 2: timeboxing for quite a while and I find it really helpful.
Speaker 2: But sometimes I look at my diary and I'm quite
Speaker 2: frightened because every it looks like everything is accountable. I
Speaker 2: mean it looks like wall to wall meetings, even though
Speaker 2: I know it's not. How do you feel about looking
Speaker 2: at a calendar which you know, pretty much at first
Speaker 2: glance looks very full.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't do that, so I don't fill up
Speaker 1: my calendar. I don't book myself at one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: So I got that tip actually from Darren Murph, who
Speaker 1: is the head of remote at git Lab, who I
Speaker 1: had on how I work quite a while ago now,
Speaker 1: and one of his big things was he never books
Speaker 1: himself at one hundred percent because it doesn't allow for
Speaker 1: things going wrong, emergency is happening, things running over time.
Speaker 1: And also I heard this echoed from Nicky Sparshot, who
Speaker 1: heads up Unilever for Australia and New Zealand, and she
Speaker 1: tries to put ninety minutes of buffer time in her
Speaker 1: diary every day. So for me, I generally have some
Speaker 1: buffer time. I'll always block out lunch so I will
Speaker 1: have a lunch break. But you know, look that's also
Speaker 1: contingency if something goes wrong and I need to actually
Speaker 1: do a bit of work there. But also I tend
Speaker 1: not to book anything after about three point thirty or
Speaker 1: four o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: So that's actually blank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just blank.
Speaker 3: So near aile.
Speaker 2: Who both of us who have spoken to and who
Speaker 2: is you know, sort of has his own approach to
Speaker 2: time boxing. So he accounts for all time and that
Speaker 2: includes downtime. So in his calendar it'll say, say, from
Speaker 2: three point thirty do nothing time. But even so that
Speaker 2: is blocked out. And so what I was playing around
Speaker 2: with is like I'll put in some health things first,
Speaker 2: so it might be my morning routine or my lunch
Speaker 2: break or but it is all accounted for, so I
Speaker 2: think I am playing around with or if I put
Speaker 2: that in my diary, I know it's definitely accounted for.
Speaker 2: But unless it's a different color, it can sometimes look
Speaker 2: scarier than it is in reality.
Speaker 1: I'd say definitely. I think color coding diary like it's
Speaker 1: just a good hack, so visually it's not overwhelming.
Speaker 2: But I like maybe going blank, although people can then
Speaker 2: like put in invites, whereas if I block it out,
Speaker 2: then at least you know, I've got a little note
Speaker 2: that sort of says, actually that's blocked out for you know,
Speaker 2: afternoon sleep.
Speaker 1: I just I just block it out and write do
Speaker 1: not book in capital letters in a really aggressive kind
Speaker 1: of So, Lisa, it has been great chatting with you.
Speaker 1: We have to do this again sometime. I love chatting
Speaker 1: to fellow productivity nerds.
Speaker 2: I know it's so great, And good luck with the
Speaker 2: motion trial and I'll report back as we go on
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: I hope the Today's Show gave you some useful tips
Speaker 1: that you might want to try out. And if you
Speaker 1: are not connected with me on the socials. I'd love
Speaker 1: you to do that because I post quite a bit
Speaker 1: of content through my various social media channels. So search
Speaker 1: me for me on LinkedIn search amount to inmba. I
Speaker 1: think I'm the only amount the inba on there, and
Speaker 1: I'm also on Twitter at Amantha and on Instagram at
Speaker 1: amantha I. How I Work is produced by Inventingum with
Speaker 1: production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to
Speaker 1: Matt Nimba who does the audio mix and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound fantastic. See you next time.