Speaker 1: Today's episode is another my favorite Tip episode where I
Speaker 1: go back to interviews from the past and I dig
Speaker 1: out the thing that was my favorite tip, like the
Speaker 1: thing that I got out of the interview that really
Speaker 1: impacted or resonated with me. Today's extract is from my
Speaker 1: chat with doctor Jason Fox. So this is my second
Speaker 1: time having Jace on the show. I was very keen
Speaker 1: to have him back and check in we think during
Speaker 1: COVID and see how he has adapted to the way
Speaker 1: he approaches work. So if you haven't come across Jace before,
Speaker 1: Jace is someone that I've actually known for about a
Speaker 1: decade now, So like me, he is a scientist at
Speaker 1: heart and has a bias for strategies that are grounded
Speaker 1: in research. Jace travels the world, or at least he
Speaker 1: did pre COVID, helping leaders from companies such as My, Microsoft, Salesforce, McDonald's,
Speaker 1: and Toyota in the area of motivation design. Jace is
Speaker 1: also the best selling author of The Game Changer and
Speaker 1: How to Lead a Quest, and in twenty sixteen was
Speaker 1: awarded Keynote Speaker of the Year. So this extract from
Speaker 1: my chat with Jace was around something he was experimenting
Speaker 1: with at the time, which was looking at a seven
Speaker 1: day rhythm for work and life, which I found absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: So let's head on over to Jace.
Speaker 2: I have allergies to concepts, and so one of the
Speaker 2: concepts that just flares my allergies is this word discipline.
Speaker 2: And whenever someone says discipline, I just like flare up.
Speaker 2: And there's part of me that just like the trickster
Speaker 2: in me or something, he just wants to kind of
Speaker 2: be all fluid and be like, hey, spontaneous or whatever
Speaker 2: it is. And so recently I was doing this interview
Speaker 2: series and information Overload, and the previous person set forth
Speaker 2: the questions for me, and they'd written this article on
Speaker 2: the discipline and I kind of promptly ignored it because
Speaker 2: I had the word discipline in it. I since had
Speaker 2: a look at it. And what this guy is doing
Speaker 2: is he kind of organizes his week on ten day cycles.
Speaker 2: And so how this works in terms of a ritual
Speaker 2: and rhythm is.
Speaker 1: Ten days, ten business days.
Speaker 2: Ten days, just ten days. So what he's trying to
Speaker 2: do is desynchronized from the typical weeks. So he has
Speaker 2: these ten day rhythms, which he calls a decade, because
Speaker 2: previously a decade would refer to ten days, not ten years.
Speaker 2: And he would start with a day of absorbing news
Speaker 2: and like getting a sense of what's going on the world,
Speaker 2: basically living like a normal person, and then he'd kind
Speaker 2: of on that day map out what what what this
Speaker 2: ten day rhythm would be like. And in the ten
Speaker 2: day rhythm, he would have different focuses for each day.
Speaker 2: Can you believe it, I've forgotten his name, William van
Speaker 2: Dervich in an event, so different focuses might be a
Speaker 2: reading day, and that would be every spare moment you
Speaker 2: spend reading. There's a different like a play day, a
Speaker 2: make day, a create day. And I kind of like
Speaker 2: that because I fall into this trap sometimes of being
Speaker 2: very optimistic in the morning about what I can achieve,
Speaker 2: and then getting through to four pm realizing I've only
Speaker 2: done ten percent of my to do list, and I
Speaker 2: curse my optimism, and I say, this is why, you know,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't hope, and you know, embrace despair into the
Speaker 2: night and then reset the cycle in again each day.
Speaker 2: And what happens in the process is a lot of
Speaker 2: really good things that I'd love to be doing, like learning.
Speaker 2: I'm learning the tubbler at the moment, which is an
Speaker 2: Indian hand drum. There's working on the next book. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of bigger projects that don't necessarily fit in
Speaker 2: you know, optimized day to day rhythms. Even if you're
Speaker 2: to schedule time to work on it, it doesn't quite
Speaker 2: fit as a conscious thing that flares up because I
Speaker 2: always almost always seems to be other more important, salient,
Speaker 2: emergent things to kind of tackle. But with this, with
Speaker 2: this focus, it allows you to say, Okay, today's reading day,
Speaker 2: every spare moment, I'm going to try to read, or
Speaker 2: today's a make day, every spare moment I can try
Speaker 2: to make. So what I've done is taken that inspiration.
Speaker 2: But for me, I can't. I can't really fathom desynchronizing
Speaker 2: from a seven day work week because there's just some
Speaker 2: things that happen on Like I know, on Saturdays, I'm
Speaker 2: probably going to be you know, there might be maybe
Speaker 2: a social thing. I don't know. I know that on
Speaker 2: Sundays there's house things to do, like you know, cleaning
Speaker 2: up the house and groceries and things like that. I
Speaker 2: know on Mondays it's kicking on. So I've got this.
Speaker 2: I've got this thing, a seven day rhythm that I
Speaker 2: love to play with, and I'm trying to link this
Speaker 2: to the lunar cycle. So we've got the full moon
Speaker 2: every twenty eight days or roughly, and so that's for wakes,
Speaker 2: so seven So hear me. You guys can't see this
Speaker 2: as you're listening, but Ama gives good back channeling of
Speaker 2: with the face expressions and something. So, as I say,
Speaker 2: in a cycle, it's great to see your reaction. So
Speaker 2: so here's here's what it looks like. As you know,
Speaker 2: I choose one word each year to serve as as
Speaker 2: a fuzzy contextual beacon and to kind of do a
Speaker 2: lot of heavy lifting amidst complexity. And my word this
Speaker 2: year is barred. A bard is a entertainer, a trabadour,
Speaker 2: and I was trying to go bring more enchantments. Originally
Speaker 2: it was about doing more gatherings, but COVID nineteen is
Speaker 2: put a stop to dash that except for online mode.
Speaker 2: But so here's what it looks like. I have different
Speaker 2: modes that I cycle through. So on Mondays and on Saturdays,
Speaker 2: I'm in Barred mode, and this is where I'm outward looking.
Speaker 2: I'm more social On Mondays, I kind of do a
Speaker 2: lot of online social stuff like that is the one
Speaker 2: day that I do social media. I don't really like
Speaker 2: social media, but if I'm going to be paying attention,
Speaker 2: I'm finding I'm actually finding that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: sense to be found from some folks on Twitter in
Speaker 2: terms of a sense making thing. I'm finding it's useful
Speaker 2: to dip in there, but I don't want to be
Speaker 2: subsumed or drowned in it, so I try to curtail
Speaker 2: it to the day. It's also Mondays out a day
Speaker 2: I get on top of emails, I interact with folks
Speaker 2: as socializing in Internet sense. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm in
Speaker 2: wizard mode, and that is where I embrace the disposition
Speaker 2: of someone who's prioritizing intellectual pursuits. And so this is
Speaker 2: like deep work, but it's allowing myself to stay in
Speaker 2: deep work beyond the deep work session, well not really beyond.
Speaker 2: I'll do the deep work, but then I might have
Speaker 2: queued up some I need to read some nonfiction things,
Speaker 2: or I need to kind of do some more highlighting there.
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of I'm staying in the zone as
Speaker 2: much as possible. What it also means is if people
Speaker 2: are trying to schedule social things or going out to
Speaker 2: dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday, Third Days or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: I'm probably more likely to summon the lofty, arrogant hermit
Speaker 2: like wizard mode and decline Fridays and Sundays my druid
Speaker 2: days and a driviid. And this is, for want of
Speaker 2: a better term, Drew is someone who's very connected to nature,
Speaker 2: very in tune into the rhythms and flows, and it's
Speaker 2: probably more likely to emphasize maintenance activities instead of making
Speaker 2: or socializing. So on Fridays, I'll make sure I get
Speaker 2: some extended time in nature Kim, and I might go
Speaker 2: for a hike or something. I'll also I would also,
Speaker 2: you know, tie up blue sands and just do good restorative,
Speaker 2: rejuvenative activities. And on Sunday that's kind of like a
Speaker 2: home day, like where I'm just consciously at home, reading,
Speaker 2: pottering away in the garden, cooking and doing things like that.
Speaker 2: And I'm finding that, in addition to all the savvy
Speaker 2: stuff when it comes to productivity and deep work, having
Speaker 2: these thematic overlays to the week allows me to embrace
Speaker 2: different dispositions. That means that when it comes to you know,
Speaker 2: super deep work, yeah, Tuesdays on Thursday is going to happen.
Speaker 2: When it comes to socializing, I can kind of say,
Speaker 2: oh sorry, I can't do it today, but how about
Speaker 2: we catch up on Saturday, or how about on Monday
Speaker 2: and so on and so and then there's there's two
Speaker 2: other elements coming back to the moon. On a new moon,
Speaker 2: which is where it's the darkest moon, I go into
Speaker 2: trickster mode, and that is a tricks to mythologically, is
Speaker 2: someone who inverts paradigms and kind of plays with tries
Speaker 2: to enter a meta rational or transrational perspective to ask
Speaker 2: the questions are these things working? You know what's working?
Speaker 2: What needs to be tweaked? How can we tweak err
Speaker 2: in destiny? In fatim I don't believe in destiny and fate,
Speaker 2: by the way. But and then full moon, I embrace
Speaker 2: the lunatic element of things. That's where lunatic come from.
Speaker 2: And that's where I go full mode, and that's where
Speaker 2: I have permission to what anyone who's read Julia Cameron's
Speaker 2: The Artist's Way would would know. As artist states, that's
Speaker 2: where I just I simply play I do. I do
Speaker 2: whatever comes to my mind, and so in this way,
Speaker 2: I have a kind of version of the discipline that
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like I'm being disciplined. It feels like I'm
Speaker 2: being playful. I'm role playing each day of the week
Speaker 2: as an overlay to ensure that I'm seeing and tending
Speaker 2: to all the elements of life.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you want to
Speaker 1: listen to the full episode, I link to that in
Speaker 1: the show notes, so you might want to check that out.
Speaker 2: And if you.
Speaker 1: Are enjoying how I work, I would be so deeply
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Speaker 1: be a star rating or a few words, and by
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Speaker 1: it also brings a huge smile to my face. So
Speaker 1: thank you to the hundreds of people that have left reviews.
Speaker 1: It is so deeply appreciate.
Speaker 2: She hated.
Speaker 1: So that is it for today's show, and I will
Speaker 1: see you next time.