Speaker 1: Today, I'm pulling back the curtain on my own productivity
Speaker 1: systems and answering your burning questions about work habits, psychology,
Speaker 1: and the tools that actually make a difference. Have you
Speaker 1: ever wondered what my ideal workday really looks like? Or
Speaker 1: maybe you're curious about which popular productivity advice I think
Speaker 1: is complete rubbish, Or maybe you're dying to know the
Speaker 1: one habit that's transformed my energy levels well, from my
Speaker 1: perhaps controversial approach to email management to the surprising environmental
Speaker 1: hacks that changed my behavior, I am sharing the strategies
Speaker 1: that have genuinely moved the needle in my own life
Speaker 1: and work. So whether you're struggling with focus on off
Speaker 1: days or looking for a planning process that actually works,
Speaker 1: this episode will definitely have something for you. 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: Thank you for joining me today. In this Ask Me
Speaker 1: Anything episode, I am going to go through a bit
Speaker 1: of a backlog of listener questions that I've got, and remember,
Speaker 1: if you want me to answer something in one of
Speaker 1: these ask Me Anything epps, then there is a little
Speaker 1: link to my email in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into the first question, which I had different.
Speaker 1: Versions of this from quite a few listeners, and the
Speaker 1: question is what does your ideal workday look like from
Speaker 1: start to finish.
Speaker 2: Well, at the moment.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit different because I am on a
Speaker 1: deadline for my fifth book, and when I am book writing,
Speaker 1: everything changes. So what that looks like right now is
Speaker 1: typically between the hours of seven to nine AM or
Speaker 1: eight to ten as generally those first two golden hours
Speaker 1: of the morning, because that's when I do my best work.
Speaker 1: I am writing my book, So I am in my
Speaker 1: home office and I am glued to the screen, and
Speaker 1: I am in research mode and writing mode. I'm generally
Speaker 1: doing both concurrently. I'm doing some research and then I'm
Speaker 1: consolidating that and then I'm writing up what I find.
Speaker 2: And right now.
Speaker 1: I have a very strict daily deadline, which is something
Speaker 1: I found works for me when I'm working on a manuscript.
Speaker 2: I write one thousand words a day.
Speaker 1: That is not negotiable, although I do give myself one
Speaker 1: day or one thousand words worth of hall passes, and
Speaker 1: I find that's really useful because the quicker I can
Speaker 1: get down.
Speaker 2: I guess a first.
Speaker 1: Draft is what it is because I have already ironed
Speaker 1: out the structure.
Speaker 2: Then that just.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel on top of things. It makes
Speaker 1: me feel confident that I'm going to hit the deadline,
Speaker 1: and I love having a lot of time to edit
Speaker 1: and play around.
Speaker 2: So that's first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: Then I get to my actual full time job, which
Speaker 1: is running Inventium, my behavior change consultancy, and I will
Speaker 1: typically then do a couple of hours of deep work
Speaker 1: for Inventium, which might be working on a new product
Speaker 1: or at the moment, working on the strategy for the
Speaker 1: new financial year, or a whole host of other things.
Speaker 1: And then I typically have meetings in the afternoons. So
Speaker 1: my assistant GEM knows that I like my meetings batched
Speaker 1: and I don't like to do meetings before about eleven AM.
Speaker 1: So that is typically what my workday looks like. I
Speaker 1: would generally clock off at about five of ish at
Speaker 1: the moment, because I'm writing a book, it does make
Speaker 1: for a long day, but I know that this is
Speaker 1: temporary in terms of having this manuscript deadline, and it
Speaker 1: matters to me. Producing a great book really matters to me,
Speaker 1: and so I'm very happy to spend that time writing. Okay,
Speaker 1: the next question comes from prayer, and that is what's
Speaker 1: the most effective productivity technique you've ever used and still use?
Speaker 2: Okay, that would have to be time boxing.
Speaker 1: So if you're a regular listener of how I work,
Speaker 1: you probably know what that is. But in case you don't,
Speaker 1: time boxing is essentially booking a meeting with yourself in
Speaker 1: the diary to do the thing. So my diary is
Speaker 1: covered in meetings with myself that say DW stands for
Speaker 1: deep work Colin, and.
Speaker 2: Then whatever the task is is.
Speaker 1: I really like time boxing because it firstly reduces the
Speaker 1: need for me to make decisions about what am I
Speaker 1: doing next, and also it stops me procrastinating because if
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing, if I've got nothing
Speaker 1: time boxed in my morning, I find that my focus
Speaker 1: can be lacking.
Speaker 2: So the other thing.
Speaker 1: That I find very helpful with time boxing is that
Speaker 1: I often overestimate how long things will take, which is
Speaker 1: slightly uncommon. A lot of people underestimate how long things
Speaker 1: will take. I like to overestimate, and I do that
Speaker 1: deliberately because then when I finish something early I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a little win and that I'm actually running
Speaker 1: my day a.
Speaker 2: Little bit early on time now.
Speaker 1: I do also want to mention chronotypes again. If you're
Speaker 1: a long time listener, you will know that chronotypes are
Speaker 1: about the different ebbs and flows in our energy over
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour period. There are three different types
Speaker 1: of chronotypes. Larks who are mourning people, middlebirds who are.
Speaker 2: In the middle, and ours who come to life at night.
Speaker 1: I am most definitely a lark, which is why you
Speaker 1: might go, why are you writing your book at seven
Speaker 1: a m.
Speaker 2: That is early for me.
Speaker 1: I am at my prime in those hours, and I'm
Speaker 1: not very useful at work that requires deep thinking and
Speaker 1: focus after lunch.
Speaker 2: Okay, what productivity.
Speaker 1: Advice do you think is completely overrated?
Speaker 2: And this comes from James. Thank you, James. All right,
Speaker 2: I think that the most.
Speaker 1: Overrated productivity advice is stay out of your inbox all
Speaker 1: day except check it two or three times a day.
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear that advice a lot from people
Speaker 1: that recognize that a lot of time spent in your
Speaker 1: inbox is probably time wasted. And the average person I
Speaker 1: read this spends two and a half to three hours
Speaker 1: doing email every day, and when you combine that with
Speaker 1: another statistic, I heard that the average knowledge worker spends
Speaker 1: about twenty one point five hours in meetings per week,
Speaker 1: you kind of left with about five hours to do
Speaker 1: your actual job, which is why a lot of us
Speaker 1: are completely burnt out and working at night or on weekends.
Speaker 1: So I actually think this with this advice of to
Speaker 1: stay out of your inbox, why I don't like it
Speaker 1: because I think it's just so unrealistic.
Speaker 2: I look at a lot of our.
Speaker 1: Clients at Inventium who are tipillian knowledge workers, a lot
Speaker 1: of mid to senior level managers, and part of their
Speaker 1: job involves being contactable and being fairly responsive, and I
Speaker 1: think that realistic advice. And I heard this from Laura
Speaker 1: may Martin, who is Google's executive productivity advisor. What she
Speaker 1: recommends is try to with your inbox. Fine, keep it
Speaker 1: open for most of the day, but try to find
Speaker 1: at least two, maybe even.
Speaker 2: Three one hour periods where.
Speaker 1: You keep it closed when you're doing your deep work.
Speaker 1: And I love that advice because I think that is
Speaker 1: so much more realistic.
Speaker 2: I personally use it myself.
Speaker 1: My inbox software, my email software which is superhuman, which
Speaker 1: I Love stays closed for most of the morning, really
Speaker 1: until I've done my deep work, and then it's open
Speaker 1: intimately for the rest of the day. The next question
Speaker 1: comes from Sonya and she has asked, how do you
Speaker 1: deal with distractions and stay focused when you're having an
Speaker 1: off day? Well, Sonya, I've tried a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different things.
Speaker 2: I would say. When I first discovered deep work.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen or whatever I
Speaker 1: first read cal Newport's book, I used a combination of
Speaker 1: Oh no, actually, I think I solely relied on Freedom
Speaker 1: dot two, which is website and application blocking software, which
Speaker 1: is great because if you don't want to rely on
Speaker 1: your willpower, and ideally we want to design systems where
Speaker 1: we're not relying on our willpower because it does get depleted.
Speaker 1: Freedom is a really good way to go. You basically
Speaker 1: program it to block you from the apps and software
Speaker 1: that you find most distracting, you know, which might be
Speaker 1: Outlook or Slack or ABC News or whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be, and you pick the hours. And I found
Speaker 1: that using that was really great at just having me
Speaker 1: focus on the thing which was often hard or dull,
Speaker 1: or you know, producing negative emotions.
Speaker 2: It just kept me on track.
Speaker 1: I've since tried using Forest, which is an app on
Speaker 1: your phone where you set the time of how long
Speaker 1: you want to focus, and it will grow a digital tree,
Speaker 1: and if you check your phone during that time, the
Speaker 1: tree dies, which is strangely motivating. But probably the other
Speaker 1: thing that I do is that generally my mobile phone
Speaker 1: is not within arm's reach.
Speaker 2: I got that tip from Adam.
Speaker 1: Alter, and I think the further away I am from
Speaker 1: my phone for the most amount of hours in the
Speaker 1: day is a really good thing in terms of staying focused.
Speaker 1: Because if my phone is in a different room and
Speaker 1: I think, oh, I might just check my phone for something.
Speaker 2: Generally I can't be bothered.
Speaker 1: And the thought will pass and I'll just get on
Speaker 1: with things without being distracted. Now, there are definitely days,
Speaker 1: because I am human, where I am really really distractable
Speaker 1: and really unfocused. I find what helps there is a
Speaker 1: state change, So I'll typically just go for a walk
Speaker 1: around the block almost do a mental reset, because typically
Speaker 1: if I'm succumbing to distractions, it probably means my energy
Speaker 1: or my motivation is a little bit low. So I
Speaker 1: try to reenergize and then get back to things. Okay,
Speaker 1: next question is from Amy, what does your weekly planning
Speaker 1: process look like? Well, I don't so much have a
Speaker 1: weekly planning process, although I do time box, but that
Speaker 1: is typically a daily planning process. I have this year
Speaker 1: started to do a monthly planning process, which I think
Speaker 1: I should have done long ago, but I find it's
Speaker 1: really helpful. I've got my annual goals as a company
Speaker 1: and as an individual. I've typically got things that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get done over the next three to six
Speaker 1: months for inventingum and what I find keeps me on
Speaker 1: track and also helps me know what is the most
Speaker 1: important thing I could be doing this week or this day.
Speaker 1: Is at the start of the month, I list and
Speaker 1: I do this very basically. I was doing this in
Speaker 1: Apple Notes and I've recently started doing it in notion. Instead.
Speaker 1: Is I list out what are the big goals or
Speaker 1: the big chunks of deep work essentially that I want
Speaker 1: to achieve, what.
Speaker 2: Are the big things that will shift the dial?
Speaker 1: And in Apple Notes, I was pinning that note to
Speaker 1: the top, so I you know, it was something that
Speaker 1: I would look at, gosh, probably every day or two
Speaker 1: just to reorient me and make me go, Okay, what
Speaker 1: is the thing that I should be doing today? And
Speaker 1: it is so simple, but I found it is so
Speaker 1: effective in keeping me on track with what needs to happen. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are just going to take a short break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'm going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the habit that has had the biggest impact on my
Speaker 1: energy and wellbeing, and also some tools that I am
Speaker 1: currently quite obsessed with. The next question comes from anonymous
Speaker 1: someone that has not left their name, and they have asked,
Speaker 1: what habit has had the biggest impact on your energy
Speaker 1: and well being. Ah, it's a good question, and I
Speaker 1: would say it's all my habits around sleep. And in
Speaker 1: the coming weeks, I'm actually going to record a more
Speaker 1: in depth episode about sleep because I get asked about
Speaker 1: sleep so often. I think that whenever I'm giving a
Speaker 1: keynote on habit change and there's a wellbeing theme around it,
Speaker 1: I will always get questions on sleep. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to do a much bigger episode on that in the
Speaker 1: near future. But what I will say is that I
Speaker 1: take sleep very seriously, and I think that the habit
Speaker 1: that has had the biggest impact on me is that
Speaker 1: I go to bed at about the same time every night,
Speaker 1: and I wake up at about the same time every
Speaker 1: every morning, within about a half hour window. So I'm
Speaker 1: someone who leaves events unfashionably early. I'm always the first
Speaker 1: to leave. I hate being out after nine o'clock. Really,
Speaker 1: the only time that happens is if I am at
Speaker 1: a show, like at the theater, and there is no
Speaker 1: choice but to stay till later because obviously I want
Speaker 1: to watch the end of the show.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I am hardcore about that.
Speaker 1: And that has just had the biggest impact on everything,
Speaker 1: particularly my energy, and without energy, I feel like we
Speaker 1: are useless to everyone.
Speaker 2: Now. The next question is from Amelia.
Speaker 1: What is a behavior change strategy that works surprisingly well
Speaker 1: but most people overlook. Okay, I would say hacking your environment,
Speaker 1: like redesigning your physical and digital environment so that it
Speaker 1: supports the behavior that you're trying to do more of.
Speaker 2: So, for example, at.
Speaker 1: Inventium, we have been doing a lot of Genai training
Speaker 1: with our clients and.
Speaker 2: All sorts of people.
Speaker 1: To be honest, and it's really easy to come to
Speaker 1: a training program on Genai and get really excited about
Speaker 1: the possibilities, but your digital environment is not set up
Speaker 1: to have using Genai as the default. So let's take
Speaker 1: let's take doing search as an example. We talk about
Speaker 1: using tools like Perplexity instead of Google when you are
Speaker 1: searching for information for various reasons, and most people are
Speaker 1: their default browser window, certainly for people that are using
Speaker 1: Chrome as their browser, the default tab or the default
Speaker 1: homepage if you like, is going to be Google. Of
Speaker 1: course it is because it's Chrome. And if that's your
Speaker 1: default that's the first screen that you see when you're
Speaker 1: opening your browser window, then of course you're going to
Speaker 1: default to using Google for search. But instead what we
Speaker 1: recommend is going, well, if you want to really double
Speaker 1: down on Jenai and start to be using it every
Speaker 1: day and look ideally every hour, then change that home screen,
Speaker 1: change it to Perplexity, which actually in Chrome you can't do.
Speaker 1: You need to create it as a shortcut, but in
Speaker 1: other browsers it's a little bit easier to do.
Speaker 2: So that's just one example. But change your.
Speaker 1: Environment, and particularly your digital environment to support the behavior
Speaker 1: that you're trying to do more of. Now, fine, old
Speaker 1: question that we've got for today, and I will remind
Speaker 1: you if you have got questions that you would like
Speaker 1: me to answer that might be about my own practices.
Speaker 2: It might be about your workplace. Maybe.
Speaker 1: In the past, I've received all sorts of all sorts
Speaker 1: of questions about troublesome workplaces and managers and coworkers and
Speaker 1: what to do, and I can tackle all of those.
Speaker 1: Please drop me a note. My email is in the
Speaker 1: show notes. I'm very accessible, or drop me a DM
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn, where I am also very accessible, So please
Speaker 1: do that. I love, love, love getting listener questions, and
Speaker 1: even better, send it to me as a voice memo
Speaker 1: so I can play it.
Speaker 2: People always email me these things, but I would love
Speaker 2: voice memo questions and I will play that on the show.
Speaker 1: Okay, final question that I'm tackling today comes from George,
Speaker 1: and that is.
Speaker 2: What books, tools, or gadgets are you currently obsessed with?
Speaker 1: Well, the best book that I've read recently was Reset
Speaker 1: by Dan Heath. I love the Heath Brothers. I love
Speaker 1: all their books. Reset was fantastic. It was all about
Speaker 1: how to create change. It was the book that my
Speaker 1: book club did a couple of months back, and it
Speaker 1: was so good.
Speaker 2: I know everyone in the book club also loved it.
Speaker 2: In terms of software, two things I will give a
Speaker 2: shout out to.
Speaker 1: First is Snipped, which is the app that I use
Speaker 1: to listen to podcasts. I no longer use Spotify or
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts or Google podcasts back when that existed, as
Speaker 1: I have mucked around with in the past, I listened
Speaker 1: to all my podcasts on snip. It is amazing. The
Speaker 1: problem for me that it solves is that quite often
Speaker 1: when I'm listening to a work related or educational pod
Speaker 1: is that I'll hear something, but.
Speaker 2: I'll be on the run.
Speaker 1: My typical podcast time is when I'm exercising, so doing
Speaker 1: weights or out for a run, and it's an inconvenient
Speaker 1: time to write something down that. With Snipped, there's a
Speaker 1: little button that you can hit that it says something
Speaker 1: like creator snip and it records the previous minute or
Speaker 1: so that was sort of identifies with AI. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you were probably trying to snip that, and then it
Speaker 1: sends you that in an email.
Speaker 2: It is so good. It does a really good.
Speaker 1: AI summaries of episodes as well, so you can think
Speaker 1: about do I really want to invest an hour of
Speaker 1: my life listening to this?
Speaker 2: I just love it so much.
Speaker 1: It is so good, and it's also quite helpful when
Speaker 1: you discover a new podcast. You can also sort by
Speaker 1: how many snips it has or how many people have
Speaker 1: snipped things in it.
Speaker 2: It's one of those two things.
Speaker 1: And that's also really good because presumably the more times
Speaker 1: a show or an episode has been snipped, then probably
Speaker 1: the more gems there are.
Speaker 2: Is just some logic that I have applied that.
Speaker 1: Typically only works with the really popular shows, because a
Speaker 1: lot of shows do not have any snips.
Speaker 2: So there is that. Okay.
Speaker 1: One other tool that I will give a shout out to,
Speaker 1: which I'm absolutely loving, is called whisper flow.
Speaker 2: And what this is so, I mean, computers.
Speaker 1: Have had dictation features for a while now, but they
Speaker 1: just haven't been very good, so I haven't used them.
Speaker 1: But I recently discovered whisper flow and it is amazing
Speaker 1: at dictation. So you basically download the software. You set
Speaker 1: it to have like a one button shortcut. So on
Speaker 1: my Mac, it's the function key that if I hold
Speaker 1: that down, it just starts recording what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: I can be in any program, I can be in
Speaker 1: my email, I.
Speaker 2: Can be on like a notes page, I can be in.
Speaker 1: A word document and I just hit the function button
Speaker 1: and I talk and it will write what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But it also does automatic formatting and I have found
Speaker 1: that it is very, very accurate. So those are my
Speaker 1: two favorite tools right now, Snipped and whisper Flow.
Speaker 2: I will put a link to both of those in
Speaker 2: the show notes. Highly recommend them both. Check them out.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have got to the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for all those listeners that sent
Speaker 1: in questions. They were super awesome questions, which is why
Speaker 1: I chose them to have on this episode. And if
Speaker 1: you have got questions you would like me to cover,
Speaker 1: please send them through to me via email or on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow
Speaker 1: on your podcast app to be alerted where new episodes drop.
Speaker 1: How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
Speaker 1: the Warrangery people, part of the Coulan Nation. A big
Speaker 1: thank you to Martin Nimmer for doing the sound mix.