Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 1: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 1: much out of their day.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 1: Before I get into today's show, I wanted to do
Speaker 1: a little shout out to another podcast that I have
Speaker 1: recently launched called How to Date.
Speaker 2: So this is a show.
Speaker 1: Where with my closest girlfriend Monique, we speak to lots
Speaker 1: of experts all around the world to work out how
Speaker 1: to master the messy, complex, bizarre world of dating when
Speaker 1: you did not think that you'd be dating again in
Speaker 1: your life. And on this week's show, if you are
Speaker 1: listening to this How I Work episode on Thursday when
Speaker 1: it comes out, we release our interview episodes of How
Speaker 1: to Date on Fridays, and this week we talked to
Speaker 1: Georgie Wolf, who is a professional escort, about.
Speaker 2: Her tips for dating.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't already checked it out, just search
Speaker 1: for How to Date wherever you listen to your podcasts
Speaker 1: now on today's show, Today's show is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It's actually an interview that I did for a podcast
Speaker 1: called Meta with Peter Wells, and Meta is a podcast
Speaker 1: all about podcasts, hence the name Meta. So Peter invited
Speaker 1: me to be on the show to talk all about
Speaker 1: How I Work. So I thought that listeners you would
Speaker 1: enjoy this chat that I had with Peter. I talk
Speaker 1: all about why and how I started How I Work
Speaker 1: over two years ago now, and we geek out on
Speaker 1: lots of productivity tricks and nacs and software and things
Speaker 1: like that. So I hope you enjoy this episode. And
Speaker 1: on that note, let's head to myself and Peter.
Speaker 3: This has Meta, a podcast about podcasts. Today's guest is
Speaker 3: Amantha Imbert, who is the host of the number one
Speaker 3: productivity podcast in the store at the moment, How I Work.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about your show. I would imagine I find
Speaker 3: I am completely struggling myself and have been more this
Speaker 3: year in kind of getting things done and staying on
Speaker 3: top of where I'm supposed to be and also kind
Speaker 3: of work life balance. Do you think that this is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why your show is kind of
Speaker 3: taking off as it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of it's grown since its inception,
Speaker 1: So it's been running now for nearly two and a
Speaker 1: half years, and I think that definitely, with the shift
Speaker 1: to working from home, people have been thrown into this
Speaker 1: environment where they've had to reset their habits and their
Speaker 1: routines and the way they approach their work. So I
Speaker 1: know that the podcast has definitely grown because of that,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's been like steady growth from
Speaker 1: when I launched a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: No, that makes total sense to me, because it's so
Speaker 3: often when I'm doing these interviews, it gets pitched. The
Speaker 3: shows I'm talking about get pitched to me as like
Speaker 3: this overnight success, and then I look back and there's
Speaker 3: a good three or four years of groundwork that has
Speaker 3: gone into that overnight success.
Speaker 1: So not an overnight success, I wish.
Speaker 3: So tell me about the journey then, So, okay, you
Speaker 3: started a couple of years ago. What were the first
Speaker 3: couple of episodes, like do you still cring? Oh? Sorry,
Speaker 3: do you cringe if you listen to them now?
Speaker 2: Or oh speeds so long since I've listened to them.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I don't think I would cringe
Speaker 1: simply because the very first interview I did is still
Speaker 1: one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: So in terms of your question around, well, how did.
Speaker 1: It come about? So I've been wanting to start a
Speaker 1: podcast for years. I've been taught talking about starting a
Speaker 1: podcast for years, and it probably took years for me
Speaker 1: to firstly go, Okay, I just need to do it,
Speaker 1: and secondly, yeah, this is a topic that I could
Speaker 1: get really excited about for a long long time.
Speaker 2: So that kind of all came together.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that proved really good in terms
Speaker 1: of timing is that I was attending my first TED
Speaker 1: conference in Vancouver, so TED Proper if you like, and
Speaker 1: that proved to be a really great way to secure
Speaker 1: some initial guests that were I guess quite high profile
Speaker 1: and probably guessed that I couldn't have got straight off
Speaker 1: the bat had it not been for the fact that
Speaker 1: I was able to meet them in person and have
Speaker 1: a chat to them about the podcast. So the very
Speaker 1: first interview I did was with one of one of
Speaker 1: my academic heroes, Adam Grant, who is an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the host of work Life and a professor at Wharton.
Speaker 2: And so when I look back at my.
Speaker 1: Early interviews, gosh, it's kind of dependent on the guests
Speaker 1: as to whether I cringe or not, because I love
Speaker 1: having Adam on the show.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying you should. I was just wondering.
Speaker 3: I showed episodes are recorded three weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I.
Speaker 1: Think you know, when you're just listening back to your
Speaker 1: voice every week, several times a week, you just become desensitized.
Speaker 1: So the kind of the cringe worthy factor is I
Speaker 1: think I'm just desensitized.
Speaker 2: To it, is what I was saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think I'm there yet, but that's why
Speaker 3: I'm doing a daily show to really get it out
Speaker 3: of my systo quickly so I can see. Adam Grant
Speaker 3: was one of your first guests. Can you remember any
Speaker 3: of his advice?
Speaker 2: A few that have stuck with me.
Speaker 1: One is the power of batching meetings, so doing meetings
Speaker 1: back to back. So this is something that Adam does
Speaker 1: in his own life. And there was some interesting research
Speaker 1: that showed that if you've got a meeting coming up
Speaker 1: in your diary, like in the next hour or two,
Speaker 1: you'll actually be twenty two percent less productive.
Speaker 2: And I heard that and I'm like, that.
Speaker 1: Totally makes sense because there's not enough time to get
Speaker 1: into flow. You're kind of, you know, fluffing around doing
Speaker 1: little bits and pieces, making sure that you don't miss
Speaker 1: the start time of the next meeting. And so definitely
Speaker 1: batching meetings was something that I have tried to do since.
Speaker 4: Then.
Speaker 1: Something else I got, and I think this was from
Speaker 1: my interview with Adam, although I've heard it a handful
Speaker 1: of times now, is to finish the day on a
Speaker 1: downhill slope. So this is where you finish basically mid tasks.
Speaker 1: So let's just say, you know, we both do writing
Speaker 1: with you know, some of the various hats that we
Speaker 1: both rare, and so rather than say finishing a draft
Speaker 1: of an article, you would actually finish mid sentence or
Speaker 1: mid paragraph, which means that when you start work the
Speaker 1: next day, it's a lot easier to just get into
Speaker 1: the swing of things and not procrastinate because you've got
Speaker 1: an easy start because essentially you've parked on a downhill slope.
Speaker 2: So there are a couple of things that have stuck
Speaker 2: with me that's.
Speaker 3: Really really fascinating, especially like the batch meeting idea, because yeah,
Speaker 3: I absolutely find that in myself, I can spend an
Speaker 3: entire day pondering the question I'm about to ask someone
Speaker 3: like you, Whereas so sometimes I wish I could just,
Speaker 3: you know, wake just before the episode is ready to
Speaker 3: be recorded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if only.
Speaker 3: But what are some of those I mean, the term
Speaker 3: life hack is so overused, But what are some of
Speaker 3: those other kind of tips that have stayed with you
Speaker 3: from some of you guests?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: So I got some really interesting ones from this guy
Speaker 1: called Brian Scootemore, who's the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: one eight hundred Got Junk, amongst other companies. So it's
Speaker 1: about like a half billion dollar set of companies that
Speaker 1: he runs. Something that he does is very much about
Speaker 1: if he's on holiday or on a break, he's on
Speaker 1: a break from work and he's not going to dip
Speaker 1: into his email or social media or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and to actually do that as opposed to being sucked in,
Speaker 1: because we all know how easy it is to be
Speaker 1: sucked in by those technologies and digital distractions.
Speaker 2: He gets his assistant to change his.
Speaker 1: Password for his email and video accounts, so he literally
Speaker 1: cannot get in.
Speaker 2: He can't even break in, and that stuck with me.
Speaker 1: I personally love that something else that I mean, so gosh,
Speaker 1: so many things stick with me. Someone that I was
Speaker 1: so excited to interview was Cal Newport, who is a
Speaker 1: computer science professor at Georgetown and also the author of
Speaker 1: several best selling books, including Deep Work, which has had
Speaker 1: a profound impact on.
Speaker 2: How I work.
Speaker 1: And Cal talked about how he would he has different
Speaker 1: types of deep work that he does. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there's writing work, there's solving computer science problems kind of work,
Speaker 1: as a couple of examples, And he'll have different physical environments.
Speaker 2: That he will associate with that deep work.
Speaker 1: So for example, he in his home study, he got
Speaker 1: this desk custom made that's designed to look like the
Speaker 1: desks that he had when he was a student at university,
Speaker 1: and that's where he does his writing deep work. Whereas
Speaker 1: if he's trying to yeah, if he's trying to work
Speaker 1: through let's say a computer science problem or theorem, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've used the right language there, he
Speaker 1: will walk. So he will go for a waltz of
Speaker 1: around his campus or between his home and his campus.
Speaker 1: And I thought that's really interesting thinking about the different
Speaker 1: categories of deep focused work that you have to do
Speaker 1: and then linking that to a particular physical environment. And
Speaker 1: that makes sense psychologically because then you get into that
Speaker 1: flow state more quickly because your associations to that physical
Speaker 1: environment and that kind of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I've found that when this whole pandemic twenty
Speaker 3: twenty thing happened, my desk was about five centimeters from
Speaker 3: the end of my bed, and it was, funnily enough,
Speaker 3: not the most you know, productive work environment that I
Speaker 3: could have. I've been able to thankfully move things around
Speaker 3: now and now I've got a kind of dedicated spot
Speaker 3: just to the desk, and I really try to make
Speaker 3: a point of when I finally get to the end
Speaker 3: of the day of getting up from the desk and
Speaker 3: not touching it again, because you know, I have far
Speaker 3: too many distractions. I'm on Twitter and Slack and everything
Speaker 3: else all the time, and so I find that like
Speaker 3: the only way I can ever relax is if I
Speaker 3: stand up and put the giant computer away and walk
Speaker 3: over to the couch. And yeah, that It's funny how
Speaker 3: how these little so much of of your environment will
Speaker 3: will play into the way you behave. This is terrible.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting here talking to you about productivity and an
Speaker 3: app is yelling at me in the background, and I
Speaker 3: have to find out which ones I can silence it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that is that is such the world we
Speaker 3: live in now. Like, what does your approach say to
Speaker 3: notifications on your phone? Do you do you have any
Speaker 3: notifications on the phone?
Speaker 2: A really more?
Speaker 1: I how I control the notifications is I use do
Speaker 1: not disturb mode. So sometimes I find after work notifications
Speaker 1: can be useful, or when I'm doing shallow work, let's say,
Speaker 1: so work that is non cognitively demanding, I don't mind
Speaker 1: being interrupted by the phone ringing or a text message
Speaker 1: coming through. So more what I will do, and I
Speaker 1: mostly tend to control it from my Apple Watch actually
Speaker 1: is just using do not disturb mode, So I find
Speaker 1: that that is simpler as opposed to manually going through
Speaker 1: and turning off notifications for everything. So there might be
Speaker 1: three or four apps that I do have notifications switched
Speaker 1: on from. But I kind of like having a master control,
Speaker 1: which is what I think about do not disturb mode
Speaker 1: on my Apple Watch as being so typically I mean
Speaker 1: do not disturb mode until I've done a couple of
Speaker 1: deep work sprints, so that might be two lots of
Speaker 1: sixty to ninety minutes sprints in the morning kind of
Speaker 1: like really knocking over the most important stuff that I
Speaker 1: need to get done that day. And then I go
Speaker 1: a little bit easier on myself and I let notifications
Speaker 1: come in if I'm doing something where I won't interrupt,
Speaker 1: like a flow state if I'm being interrupted.
Speaker 3: Did you find the Apple Watch was one of those
Speaker 3: moments though, where you suddenly needed to decide what was
Speaker 3: allowed to beep? I found for me, especially like there's
Speaker 3: one thing about a phone kind of beeping in your
Speaker 3: pocket that you can ignore, but when your wrist is
Speaker 3: actually lighting up, that really shows just how many applications
Speaker 3: out there are begging for our attention at any time.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, yeah, if yeah, I'm very strict on
Speaker 1: what I let into the Apple Watch because otherwise I
Speaker 1: find it just drives me nuts. And I've had an
Speaker 1: Apple Watch for so long, Like I don't even remember
Speaker 1: what it's like to just have your phone and you know,
Speaker 1: either have that on silence or ringing as the way
Speaker 1: that you control what interrupts you.
Speaker 2: Because I've had the watch for so long.
Speaker 1: And like the probably the things that I use most
Speaker 1: frequently on the watch, aside from obviously telling the time,
Speaker 1: is that I use the pedometer to see how many
Speaker 1: steps I've done, so I may listly use it as
Speaker 1: a fitness app, and I also use the timer, and
Speaker 1: I actually use the time of function.
Speaker 2: And I know that I could use the time of
Speaker 2: function on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: But I've, i guess, turned it into a bit of
Speaker 1: a habit where if I've got a task to do,
Speaker 1: and I know that I could get lost in the
Speaker 1: time ask, but I also know that I've got something
Speaker 1: coming up, and let's say thirty minutes or sixty minutes,
Speaker 1: quite often I'll set the timer just so I don't
Speaker 1: lose myself and then be late for the thing that
Speaker 1: I've got coming up. So I find that quite a
Speaker 1: useful hack that I think the watch is really handy for.
Speaker 3: One of the issues I've found when I've chatted to friends,
Speaker 3: We're all in this moment of trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how to get things done in this brand new environment
Speaker 3: at home, and a bunch of my friends have made
Speaker 3: the joke that they spend so much time looking and
Speaker 3: evaluating productivity apps that they just don't have time to
Speaker 3: get things done. So, are there are there one or
Speaker 3: two apps out there that you just absolutely love to death?
Speaker 3: That you could.
Speaker 4: Recommend one hundred percent there are and yes I have
Speaker 4: fallen down that trap myself, but luckily guests on the show,
Speaker 4: I've got no shortage of software our.
Speaker 2: Recommendation, so look my go to but for email.
Speaker 1: In terms of email clients, I love Superhuman. I imagine
Speaker 1: that might be one that you've come across.
Speaker 2: There's a huge waiting list, but it's great.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it taught me through because I've seen I
Speaker 3: saw the waiting list and then I saw a couple
Speaker 3: of stories about it being a little bit I don't know,
Speaker 3: it felt like a bit of a privacy intrusion to
Speaker 3: the people who are emailing you, and so I never
Speaker 3: kind of followed up on that. So why do you
Speaker 3: love Superhuman?
Speaker 1: I love They say that it's the fastest email experience,
Speaker 1: and it is.
Speaker 2: It's super fast.
Speaker 1: I think once you know your way around all the shortcuts,
Speaker 1: I find that I can be really quick with email.
Speaker 1: And it's got all the functionality like reminding me if
Speaker 1: someone hasn't replied, letting me know if someone's actually received
Speaker 1: the email obviously, like having canned responses and things like that,
Speaker 1: and just the interface is really clean.
Speaker 2: So I've never been a fan.
Speaker 1: Of Gmail because there's just too much going on, even
Speaker 1: with the different views and settings that you can do.
Speaker 1: I used to be crazy about Newton until they closed down,
Speaker 1: but then they reopened and I found that Superhuman is
Speaker 1: a really similar user interface to Newton. Sorry if I'm
Speaker 1: just like getting too geek you, I'm just like a
Speaker 1: lot of really there.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that these apps.
Speaker 2: And now what.
Speaker 1: And I also like Superhuman because I can just close
Speaker 1: it down.
Speaker 2: It's not in my browser.
Speaker 1: Obviously I can close down Gmail, but I just like
Speaker 1: the idea of closing down software completely to be out
Speaker 1: of email.
Speaker 2: So I do love Superhuman.
Speaker 1: I recently came across another email client called Tempo, which
Speaker 1: actually helps you batch email.
Speaker 2: So the default setting on Tempo.
Speaker 1: I haven't used it yet because I am quite a
Speaker 1: Superhuman nut. The default setting is that it lets you
Speaker 1: check email twice a day and that's it, which I
Speaker 1: think is a really brave move because email programs are
Speaker 1: trying to get you using it as often as possible.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's part of the model.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of I'm keen to experiment with Tempo,
Speaker 1: maybe if I can remove myself from Superhuman.
Speaker 2: So that's superhuman for calendar.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'll stop you there because I find that really fascinated.
Speaker 3: I've got a made of mine who only checks email
Speaker 3: I think two times a day or one time a day,
Speaker 3: and you know, look, he's worth a lot more than
Speaker 3: I am. And I think that you know, that's a
Speaker 3: status thing. You only get to very good rules about
Speaker 3: email when you're kind of the boss. Like no one
Speaker 3: else gets away with that kind of crap.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I beg to differ certainly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at Inventium, if you email someone on the team,
Speaker 1: chances there's probably a fifty percent chance that if you
Speaker 1: email them in the morning, because we all test our chronotype,
Speaker 1: so most of us are larkish or do our best
Speaker 1: work in the morning, and therefore it means that most
Speaker 1: of us, if we're not delivering work to a client
Speaker 1: or running a work shop or a keynote or something
Speaker 1: like that, we're probably in deep work mode. And so
Speaker 1: therefore we've probably got an out of office auto responder
Speaker 1: on that says, don't expect an email from me because
Speaker 1: I'm doing deep work. Yes, yes, So that's that's our
Speaker 1: team and it's something that we put in well, we
Speaker 1: recommend that clients do it in the training programs that
Speaker 1: we run, and I think a lot of them do
Speaker 1: take our advice.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I reckon it's possible, even if you're not the boss,
Speaker 1: you can steal a bat emails. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people have this false sense of idea of what constitutes
Speaker 1: urgent or what an emergency is like if someone is
Speaker 1: not going to die, I don't think it's an emergency.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And what about Slack? I mean, because do you
Speaker 3: use slack in your.
Speaker 2: Own No, we've tried slack. We don't use slack.
Speaker 1: I know that some people in the team will use
Speaker 1: just the Google chat function because everyone else uses.
Speaker 2: I think I'm the only one that us a superhuman.
Speaker 2: So we tried Slack.
Speaker 1: We didn't find that it really added much to the
Speaker 1: way that we work. Something I heard interestingly. I had
Speaker 1: a guest on the show from GitLab whose name was
Speaker 1: Darren Murf and he's the head of remote at git Lab.
Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite interviews from this year,
Speaker 1: and he talked about that at git lab they use Slack,
Speaker 1: but it's only for social chit chat. So it's almost
Speaker 1: the water cooler of git Lab because they're a remote
Speaker 1: first company, and I thought that's really interesting, just having
Speaker 1: Slack for social interactions. So interestingly, we have a whatts
Speaker 1: App group at Inventium, so we're all on this WhatsApp group,
Speaker 1: which I guess is kind of like a Slack without channels,
Speaker 1: and that's where we post our water cooler chit chat,
Speaker 1: particularly now that we've been working remote since March.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we couldn't get Slacked to stick at Inventium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just feels like, you know, it's one of
Speaker 3: those funny things of like we all we can all
Speaker 3: see that email is and we all get too much
Speaker 3: email and it's too hard to get through the day.
Speaker 3: And I just love that. Silicon Valley's response to that was,
Speaker 3: let's make something that's always on and always yelling at you,
Speaker 3: and people will just naturally assume that you're always in
Speaker 3: front of it and will always respond.
Speaker 1: And I just remembered it would be remiss of me
Speaker 1: not to mention Hey dot com in terms of email,
Speaker 1: because for my personal email, I have now switched over
Speaker 1: to Hay dot com and I was quite excited to
Speaker 1: get the email account amount at Hey dot com and
Speaker 1: feel free to email me there. Although I might block
Speaker 1: you so Hay dot Com. I love it. It's from
Speaker 1: the creators of base camp, and those guys are just amazing.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're a fan as well.
Speaker 1: And it rethinks the workflow of email, which I'm really loving.
Speaker 1: And for the first time ever, my personal email inbox
Speaker 1: is so clean.
Speaker 3: Oh that sounds sounds like a dream. I'm going to
Speaker 3: have to try all of these again. But I'm just
Speaker 3: so worried about investing so much time into these apps
Speaker 3: that are supposed to make me more productive. Like I
Speaker 3: feel like maybe it's just worth trying to be productive
Speaker 3: with the stuff I already know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And look, I think that there's something to that,
Speaker 1: because I like, if I've got a tech entrepreneur on
Speaker 1: the show, I'll always ask for software and hardware recommendations,
Speaker 1: and every now and then I'll come across someone who's like,
Speaker 1: I just don't invest time in that, you know, I
Speaker 1: just do the basics, which I find quite refreshing. But
Speaker 1: I think you just need to find good go to
Speaker 1: people who you trust so that you're not demoing countless
Speaker 1: pieces of software and hardware, but just kind of find
Speaker 1: you trusted people and just go Okay, if they think
Speaker 1: it's good. I reckon, I'll invest the time in changing
Speaker 1: my workflow or changing my habits around this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like, I don't have heaps of software that I recommend,
Speaker 1: but the software that I use I love and I
Speaker 1: double down on and my workflow changes positively as a result.
Speaker 3: Fantastic. Well you have, so we've covered email quite deeply.
Speaker 3: Now can you just give me your favorites to do
Speaker 3: list app and your favorite calendar or the favorite way
Speaker 3: to work a calendar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So my favorite calendar software is Woven, And funnily enough,
Speaker 2: I got.
Speaker 1: The Superhuman and the Woven recommendations from Tim Kendall, who
Speaker 1: is on my show How I Work I want to
Speaker 1: say a year and a half ago something like that.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, he's in the social Dilemma. So he used
Speaker 1: to be the president of Pinterest and then he's now
Speaker 1: CEO of Moment, which is an app that helps you
Speaker 1: have healthier phone habits, and Woven uses artificial intelligence to
Speaker 1: help make scheduling easier. I think the feature that I
Speaker 1: like best in Woven is that you can have templates
Speaker 1: for events that you're commonly scheduling. So, for example, podcast
Speaker 1: interviews is something that I would commonly schedule and there
Speaker 1: are certain things that need to be in the invite,
Speaker 1: and so I've got a template for that, and it
Speaker 1: just makes it a whole lot easier to schedule guests
Speaker 1: rather than fiddling around with things. And sure I could
Speaker 1: use calendar or something like that. And there are a
Speaker 1: few other meetings like that, you know, where there might
Speaker 1: be six or seven people that attend that are outside
Speaker 1: of Inventium, So I don't have a group that I
Speaker 1: could send that to if you like. And yeah, just
Speaker 1: I really like that particular feature of Woven, So I
Speaker 1: do like that. In terms of to do list software,
Speaker 1: I was a wonder List fan until that got bought,
Speaker 1: and so now I use things because I'm a Mac
Speaker 1: user and I like the different levels of kind of projects,
Speaker 1: tasks and sub tasks and checklists. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: just it works for me in terms of how I
Speaker 1: think about these things. And I also use it to
Speaker 1: store lists as well as being a to do list software.
Speaker 1: So for example, you know books that I want to read,
Speaker 1: rather than having say a page in ever note, I
Speaker 1: would have a list in things that's books to read
Speaker 1: or TV shows to check out, or podcasts to check out.
Speaker 1: So I'll have my to do list for deep and
Speaker 1: shallow work tasks and a few kind of project lists,
Speaker 1: and then I'll have list lists of things that I'm
Speaker 1: going to do one day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I found that's the only way I kind of
Speaker 3: get things done these days, is the second thought pops
Speaker 3: into my head. I have to put it in whatever
Speaker 3: to do list app I'm using, or I know that
Speaker 3: like three weeks from now, I'll remember that, you know,
Speaker 3: it'll pop back into my head of like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: what you were supposed to have done. And it just
Speaker 3: really feels like this is one of the biggest struggles
Speaker 3: that we all have these days. Yeah, trying to capture
Speaker 3: the task that you need to do so that you
Speaker 3: can find the time to actually plan for them.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 1: I just think you just need to remove stuff from
Speaker 1: your head wherever possible. Not yours personally, but just people
Speaker 1: in general need to get stuff out of their head
Speaker 1: and onto paper or digital paper.
Speaker 3: And so you're working from home, how have you found
Speaker 3: what are some things you've done to enable that kind
Speaker 3: of clean break at the end of the day to
Speaker 3: really separate work in life.
Speaker 2: I would say I have not done that successfully.
Speaker 1: I do have a clean start to the day, so
Speaker 1: I've got a pretty good morning rhythm, which does it
Speaker 1: varies a little bit depending on whether my daughter's with me.
Speaker 1: So I've got my six and a half year old daughter,
Speaker 1: Frankie with me half the time, so mornings are quite different.
Speaker 2: When she's with me versus not. But typically morning.
Speaker 1: Start we exercise of some kind and then when I
Speaker 1: don't have Frankie, I will pretty soon get into work
Speaker 1: sort of fairly early. If I've got Frankie, then there's
Speaker 1: school related routines that go with that. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, yeah, look, there are things that
Speaker 1: I've tried that if I stuck to them religiously, they
Speaker 1: would be really good. So something that we teach a
Speaker 1: lot of our clients, and I know some of the
Speaker 1: teams still do this at Inventium is we call it
Speaker 1: like a shutting down your day ritual, where an ideal
Speaker 1: way to finish the work day, and this is based
Speaker 1: on research that we've done where it significantly increases productivity
Speaker 1: and well being is simply write two sentences. So the
Speaker 1: first sentence is today I made progress on dot dot dot,
Speaker 1: and you think about like you essentially reflect on what
Speaker 1: are the things where you made meaningful progress?
Speaker 2: And why this is effective.
Speaker 1: Firstly, we often don't stop and reflect, but we also
Speaker 1: know from research from Harvard professor Theresa A. Marble A
Speaker 1: is that making progress on things that matter is the
Speaker 1: single biggest contributor to us feeling engaged and motivated at work.
Speaker 1: So stands to reason that if every day we can
Speaker 1: think about what did I make meaningful progress on, We're
Speaker 1: going to feel a whole lot more excited about our work.
Speaker 1: Then the second thing that we recommend people do, and
Speaker 1: that when I'm having a good day I will do
Speaker 1: this is I will finish the sentence out Tomorrow will
Speaker 1: be a great day if if I do X, Y
Speaker 1: or Z. So typically what I will always do is
Speaker 1: I will time box my day the day before so
Speaker 1: I'll have a plan for the following day. And by
Speaker 1: time boxing, I mean essentially making meetings with myself around
Speaker 1: what are the key tasks or projects that I want
Speaker 1: to work on and what do I want to accomplish
Speaker 1: and approximately how long do I think that will take
Speaker 1: me so I've got a clear idea of what's.
Speaker 2: Coming the next day.
Speaker 1: The evening before I will sometimes not switch off very well,
Speaker 1: and look, one of the things that I feel makes
Speaker 1: it a little bit murky is well a couple of things. Firstly,
Speaker 1: I love my work, and so work doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 2: So for example, if I'm.
Speaker 1: Editing a podcast episode at seven o'clock at night, many
Speaker 1: would argue that his work.
Speaker 2: For me, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So I'm just as happy doing that as I am
Speaker 1: reading a book.
Speaker 2: Or binge watching something on Netflix.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the other thing that's further complicated things if
Speaker 1: I talk about switching off and having boundaries is that
Speaker 1: I recently launched a second podcast called how to Date,
Speaker 1: and that's a show where myself and my closest girlfriend
Speaker 1: talk about we talk to different experts about how to
Speaker 1: get better at dating when you didn't think you'd be
Speaker 1: dating again having been out of my marriage for about
Speaker 1: a year. And that was created as a non work project.
Speaker 1: But you could argue that I'm doing work when I'm
Speaker 1: doing that. So I find it really hard to answer
Speaker 1: how do I set boundaries, because really I've got no idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that rings so true. Everyone I know in
Speaker 3: a creative role finds there is no work life balance
Speaker 3: like there are work life blurs that happen, but not
Speaker 3: not balance in any kind of clean way. One of
Speaker 3: the things you just send there that I really loved
Speaker 3: because it was the positivity of the language used is
Speaker 3: it will be a great day if because I think
Speaker 3: so much of how people plan their day, plan their
Speaker 3: schedule is based on guilt, you know, like I need
Speaker 3: to get this done, I've got this, I've got this
Speaker 3: deadline looming over me, and if I don't get this done,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to be a wreck. Where it's you've
Speaker 3: totally flipped that around and said no, no, no, of course
Speaker 3: you have a due. But if you do that, that's incredible.
Speaker 3: I don't know. There was something about that is really lovely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. It reminds me.
Speaker 1: I recently had Toria Pit on the show and which
Speaker 1: is an episode I'm releasing in a couple of days actually,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about self talk on the interview
Speaker 1: and she said something I'd also heard this from Dan
Speaker 1: Pink as well, and it just reminded me in terms
Speaker 1: of what you say about most people, like think about
Speaker 1: your scheduling things out of guilt, and the self talk
Speaker 1: is oh I have to do that, or even with
Speaker 1: something like exercise. H I have to exercise, or I
Speaker 1: have to go to the gym, or maybe not the
Speaker 1: gym because you'll probably die of COVID.
Speaker 2: But you know, I have to do home gym workout.
Speaker 1: And rather than saying I have to, just simply changing
Speaker 1: that to I get to I get to exercise, I
Speaker 1: get to interview such and such for my podcast, I
Speaker 1: get to finish writing this article.
Speaker 2: And it completely changes your mindset.
Speaker 1: And I just think it's such a such a cool hack,
Speaker 1: and for me, it was really brought to life because
Speaker 1: I do use it. I try to work out five
Speaker 1: mornings a week in my home gym, and there are
Speaker 1: some warnings where I'm like, I really can't be bothered,
Speaker 1: but I remembered this tip and I'm like, I get
Speaker 1: to exercise, I get to exercise, and sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: mildly change things to me. But then I got an
Speaker 1: injury and I was kind of not at full capacity
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks, and you know, the physio
Speaker 1: felt like my home away from home. And then once
Speaker 1: I was injury free, it really sunk it. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get to exercise, my neck is better. So I
Speaker 1: think that that can be a useful way to flip
Speaker 1: things and get rid of that guild.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, it's funny. I never thought I would miss
Speaker 3: swimming pools as much as I am right now in Melbourne.
Speaker 3: I just cannot wait to take my daughter to swimming
Speaker 3: lessons again. It's going to be the greatest down in
Speaker 3: the world. One of the thing I've heard from people
Speaker 3: in your field of expertise, a common issue is that
Speaker 3: people don't People always underestimate the time it takes them
Speaker 3: to do tasks, and that's why they end up feeling
Speaker 3: so guilty that, oh I didn't I only got through
Speaker 3: this much today. When if they actually took the time
Speaker 3: to record how long it takes to do a task,
Speaker 3: that will they see very quickly that they've actually been
Speaker 3: pretty productive that day.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is. It is common, the whole planning fallacy,
Speaker 1: and I think the more now. Remember I heard this
Speaker 1: tip from cal Newport, who I mentioned earlier, and he says,
Speaker 1: the more we get into the habit of time boxing,
Speaker 1: so actually essentially scheduling meetings with ourselves to do the
Speaker 1: work and particularly the deep work that we need to do,
Speaker 1: the better we get at estimating how long something will
Speaker 1: take us. So certainly with practice you get better at it.
Speaker 1: But then Darren Murph, who I also mentioned before, talked
Speaker 1: about his philosophy around not being one hundred percent scheduled,
Speaker 1: because if you're one hundred percent scheduled, nothing can go wrong.
Speaker 1: If it does, there's stress, there's no room for spontaneity,
Speaker 1: there's no room for creativity. So how Darren thinks about
Speaker 1: his diary is that he'll never be one hundred percent scheduled.
Speaker 1: And that was definitely a recent tip that stuck with
Speaker 1: me and has really changed how I think about my
Speaker 1: diary because previously I would, even if it was just
Speaker 1: timeboxing meetings with myself as opposed to actual meetings involving
Speaker 1: other people, I would be one hundred percent booked in
Speaker 1: terms of how I would plan out my day. But
Speaker 1: now I always make sure that I've got an hour
Speaker 1: or two that is completely unscheduled, and it completely changes things.
Speaker 1: It makes days so much less stressful, and it means
Speaker 1: that if I do want to spend a bit more
Speaker 1: time on a task, or if something is taking longer
Speaker 1: than I'm anticipated, I'm not feeling stressed or anxious about it.
Speaker 1: I can simply just go a bit longer, and I
Speaker 1: can kind of like moving Tetris blocks around in my diary,
Speaker 1: just kind of move things down in my electronic diary.
Speaker 1: So I find those things useful when I think about, Yes,
Speaker 1: the guilt that can come from being overscheduled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think if you've got I've met a
Speaker 3: couple of people in my life who have the full
Speaker 3: you know, seven am to nine pm, every moment, every
Speaker 3: minute planned out. But they're people who have Like the
Speaker 3: one I really remembered was the VC of a university
Speaker 3: that I used to work for, and they needed that
Speaker 3: because they were constantly everywhere. But they had three people
Speaker 3: who looked after their calendar. If you've only got one
Speaker 3: person looking after your calendar, you're right, you don't have
Speaker 3: that ability to just make changes on the fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I mean, look, there is a counter argument to that,
Speaker 1: which I also think is a good one. And I
Speaker 1: remember this comes from near El who read the book
Speaker 1: Indistractable and before that wrote the book Cooked, both very
Speaker 1: popular in tech circles and outside of tech circle.
Speaker 2: And in Indistractable he.
Speaker 1: Talks about the benefits of literally scheduling what you are
Speaker 1: doing from the minute you wake up to the minute
Speaker 1: you go to bed, with the theory being how can
Speaker 1: you be distracted from something if you weren't consciously doing
Speaker 1: something in the first place.
Speaker 2: And I kind of think.
Speaker 1: The opposite argument is really interesting to make as well,
Speaker 1: and just being really conscious and deliberate as to how
Speaker 1: you are spending your time, so I can see it
Speaker 1: both ways.
Speaker 2: Personally, I'm more of.
Speaker 1: The not scheduling, not being scheduled out one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the time.
Speaker 2: I'm finding that really works for me.
Speaker 3: And so you said that people can actually book you,
Speaker 3: to book your company to come and walk their teams
Speaker 3: through some of these some of these are improvements and goals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So we've got a couple of programs.
Speaker 1: We've got a program for individuals and groups of individuals
Speaker 1: working within organizations, and we've had I think like several
Speaker 1: thousand people go through it now where we put them
Speaker 1: through a five week course. It's all delivered virtually, of course,
Speaker 1: and we get huge improvements in productivity.
Speaker 2: So we typically get sort.
Speaker 1: Of a twenty to twenty five percent improvement in productivity
Speaker 1: over a five week period. But what's really interesting, I
Speaker 1: reckon is that we also measure things like job satisfaction
Speaker 1: and engagement and just how good people are feeling. And
Speaker 1: we typically get improvements of between sort of twenty five
Speaker 1: to thirty percent improvement in how satisfied people are with
Speaker 1: their job. But the thing is, we're not changing anything
Speaker 1: about their job. We're simply changing how are they approach
Speaker 1: tasks day to day, And simply through changing the way
Speaker 1: you work, you can have a huge impact on how.
Speaker 2: Much enjoyment you get from your work.
Speaker 1: And I think that that was a really surprising finding
Speaker 1: for me, and it's something that we've replicated time and
Speaker 1: time again, but I just think it's it's it's really
Speaker 1: worth really rethinking how you approach your work, you know,
Speaker 1: particularly during the work from home era, where often we
Speaker 1: just kind of fall into patterns and sometimes they're good
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're, you know, not that good.
Speaker 3: That makes total sense. I mean that no one wants
Speaker 3: to be bored at their job, but no one wants
Speaker 3: to feel constantly overwhelmed either, And I feel that so
Speaker 3: many of the people I've known over my career have
Speaker 3: kind of oscillated between those two ends of the spectrum,
Speaker 3: and it's just not a healthy way to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, definitely one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for your time. And where can
Speaker 3: people find your work?
Speaker 1: Well, they can search for how I Work wherever they
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. They can also search for how to
Speaker 1: date if you are single and looking for advice on
Speaker 1: that front. And in terms of the work that I do,
Speaker 1: you can simply search for inventim, which is invent with
Speaker 1: an ium on the end, and you can even type
Speaker 1: in dot com door and you will find my company's site.
Speaker 2: That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episodes, you might want to check
Speaker 1: out metter me Eta, which you can search for wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker 2: And if you are enjoying How I Work, why not.
Speaker 1: Leave a review in Apple Podcasts or whever you listen
Speaker 1: to this too. You can simply leave a star rating,
Speaker 1: or maybe you can write some lovely words. I read
Speaker 1: every single review that comes through, and thank you to
Speaker 1: the hundreds of people that have left reviews. You are
Speaker 1: all completely awesome in my books. So that is it
Speaker 1: for today's show, and I'll see you next time.