Speaker 1: Today's episode is a little different because instead of interviewing
Speaker 1: a guest, I am answering your questions because lately I
Speaker 1: have been hearing the same frustrations again and again from
Speaker 1: listeners and also in audiences. In the keynotes that I
Speaker 1: am giving, I'm constantly hearing things like why do I
Speaker 1: feel busier than ever that I feel like I'm getting
Speaker 1: this done? Is AI actually helping anyone get massive productivity gains?
Speaker 1: And why does every workplace say they care about well
Speaker 1: being but everyone still seems exhausted. So, as always, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for sending in your questions. I
Speaker 1: absolutely love receiving them, and in this episode I have
Speaker 1: picked a bunch of them that I'm going to tackle,
Speaker 1: so things like why AI is making people feel more
Speaker 1: overwhelmed instead of more productive, and how to stop your
Speaker 1: calendar being hijacked by meetings, and why most to do
Speaker 1: lists don't actually help you prioritize. So, as always, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be sharing some of my personal habits and
Speaker 1: also the things that we do at Inventium that have
Speaker 1: worked for us. So if you've ever finished a week
Speaker 1: feeling busy but wondering what you actually achieved, this episode
Speaker 1: is most definitely for you. Welcome to How I Work,
Speaker 1: a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Okay, the first question
Speaker 1: comes from Colleen, and she has said, I start every
Speaker 1: day with good intentions, but by lunchtime I'm completely derailed
Speaker 1: by teams, messages and meetings. How do you actually stick
Speaker 1: to your priorities? Well, Colleen, I don't think you're alone there.
Speaker 1: I want to address the thing that I reckon. Is
Speaker 1: I reckon it's one of the bigger, maybe the biggest
Speaker 1: barrier to productivity in organizations, and that is meeting overload.
Speaker 1: As I've said many times on this podcast, so little
Speaker 1: thought goes into should we have a meeting about this?
Speaker 1: And little thought goes into how long should this meeting
Speaker 1: actually be? And instead meetings default to thirty or sixty minutes,
Speaker 1: when a lot of those meetings could be a lot shorter,
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes. And even more still, you probably didn't
Speaker 1: need to have a meeting. So what we do would
Speaker 1: inventim And we've been pretty strict on this since we
Speaker 1: started the four day week nearly nearly six years ago.
Speaker 1: Now is that we aim to remove as many meetings
Speaker 1: from our diary as possible, So this is mostly internal meetings. Obviously,
Speaker 1: external meetings with clients, sales meetings, briefing calls, all those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. We still do those, and you know,
Speaker 1: I personally think that those things are best done synchronously
Speaker 1: because often they're about the relationship and about the connection.
Speaker 1: But internal meetings we're really strict on those. So something
Speaker 1: that we default to at Inventium is if we need
Speaker 1: to share information with someone else, and that information might
Speaker 1: be from me a CEO, company updates or project updates,
Speaker 1: given I am across pretty much all of the projects
Speaker 1: at Inventium, So information updates, information sharing, like if like
Speaker 1: comprehensive feedback, Like quite often I'll have a teammate I
Speaker 1: want to get feedback on, say a new program or
Speaker 1: workshop that they've been designing, or you know, perhaps I
Speaker 1: have observed someone run a workshop and you know, and
Speaker 1: we're going to.
Speaker 2: Talk about feedback.
Speaker 1: We always default to a synchronous communication and the tools
Speaker 1: that we use most for this, the main one is LOOM,
Speaker 1: so loom dot com. And if you haven't come across LOOM,
Speaker 1: I know some of you probably have and are using it.
Speaker 1: It's basically software that makes it really easy to record
Speaker 1: your screen, record audio, and record a video. So it's
Speaker 1: great for information sharing because you can share your screen.
Speaker 1: If you want to share words or images, you can
Speaker 1: just share a video of yourself, which is far more
Speaker 1: interesting than in information update in an email.
Speaker 2: And if you want to get a little bit fancier.
Speaker 1: Another piece of software that we use a lot at Inventium,
Speaker 1: more so for information sharing externally is software called Teller.
Speaker 1: So I think the URL is Teller TV that I'll
Speaker 1: link to all these in the show notes, and Teller
Speaker 1: is just it's a little bit more fancy, it looks
Speaker 1: a little bit more sleek. I personally use Teller for
Speaker 1: a lot of client communication, Like if I'm putting together
Speaker 1: a sales proposal for a client, I will put together
Speaker 1: the written document or proposal, and then I will almost always,
Speaker 1: i'd say ninety five percent of the time put together
Speaker 1: an accompanying TeleVideo or essentially I'm presenting the information that
Speaker 1: I'm sharing. It's to make it a little bit more engaging,
Speaker 1: because no one needs more things to read, and that
Speaker 1: is what we do. So by dramatically reducing meetings, and
Speaker 1: I'm even I'm just going to pop into my calendar
Speaker 1: now and just see how many internal meetings do I have. Look. Really,
Speaker 1: all that looks like this week, and this is pretty typical,
Speaker 1: is that we will have an all staff meeting on
Speaker 1: a Monday, and I will have one on ones with
Speaker 1: all of my team spread across the week, depending on
Speaker 1: what they're doing is looking like and that is pretty
Speaker 1: much it. Everything else is asynchronous. Okay, let's move on
Speaker 1: to the next question. Linda, I feel busy all day,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the week, I haven't moved
Speaker 1: anything important forward. What is going on? Well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like what is happening, Linda, is that your week is
Speaker 1: really really reactive. You are responding to what is coming
Speaker 1: through in your inbox, what coworkers or your manager is
Speaker 1: asking you to do, and you're perhaps not giving yourself
Speaker 1: the time to.
Speaker 2: Proactively step back and think, hmm, what.
Speaker 1: Is actually the best use of my time today or
Speaker 1: this morning, or you know, at any given point during
Speaker 1: the week. So something that I use, and it's something
Speaker 1: that we teach in some of our programs that invent him,
Speaker 1: is what we call the LIPS strategy. So this stands
Speaker 1: for L is for list or l and a little
Speaker 1: i P is for prioritize S is for schedule. So
Speaker 1: how this works is that at the end of every workday,
Speaker 1: you list out what the three most important things that
Speaker 1: I need to get done tomorrow. Then you prioritize those
Speaker 1: three what is the most important through to the least important.
Speaker 1: Then schedule them in your diary, I mean time box them.
Speaker 1: So book an appointment with yourself, a meeting with yourself
Speaker 1: to get the thing done based on how much time
Speaker 1: you think it will take. And it is a very
Speaker 1: very simple strategy, but we have clients get amazing results
Speaker 1: and it just helps them make sure that by the
Speaker 1: end of the week you have actually achieved things that
Speaker 1: align with your goals. Something else I do is I
Speaker 1: a couple of experiments. I guess this is sort of
Speaker 1: new stuff that I've been mucking around with. At the moment,
Speaker 1: I've got a bunch of analogue index cards at my desk,
Speaker 1: and I will sometimes when I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: like I've got many many things that are going on
Speaker 1: in my brain and I'm like, how am I going
Speaker 1: to fit all these in? Is? I will write each
Speaker 1: time gone an index card. I've then got a whiteboard
Speaker 1: in my office that's got a canband board, so I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it now.
Speaker 2: So it's got a.
Speaker 1: To do column, a doing column, a waiting column, like
Speaker 1: if I'm waiting on feedback, for example, and then done.
Speaker 1: And I've also got two rows. I've got it this
Speaker 1: week row, and I've got a future row. And once
Speaker 1: I've written all my tasks and unpacked everything in my
Speaker 1: head onto the index cards, I'll map those index cards
Speaker 1: onto my canband board and I try to in the
Speaker 1: doing column never to have more than three cards in
Speaker 1: the doing column at the one time. So that is
Speaker 1: really working for me, just to get a lot of
Speaker 1: the mental load and stress out of my head. Okay
Speaker 1: from Brennan. Everyone keeps saying AI will save us time,
Speaker 1: but most people I know feel busier.
Speaker 2: What is going wrong?
Speaker 1: That is a great question. I think there are a
Speaker 1: few things that I see going wrong, certainly with the
Speaker 1: people that I speak to and the organizations that I
Speaker 1: that I talk to about this. So one thing where
Speaker 1: I think people get really wrong is, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of organizations at this stage are starting to put
Speaker 1: staff through training or maybe you're an individual, an entrepreneur, freelancer,
Speaker 1: and you know, perhaps you've done a course online. Hopefully
Speaker 1: you've done one of Inventim's courses because they get great results.
Speaker 1: But you know, perhaps you've watched some LinkedIn learning or
Speaker 1: some YouTube or you know whatever, and most courses focus
Speaker 1: on literacy, like here are the features, here are the
Speaker 1: buttons to press. Here are like some basic ways that
Speaker 1: you can use AI. And that's good, that is super important.
Speaker 1: That is the that is absolutely the first and right step.
Speaker 1: But where a lot of organizations I see falling down
Speaker 1: is that they don't move to the next step, which
Speaker 1: is leaverage. So it's one thing, for example, to know
Speaker 1: how to create a GPT or an agent, but it's
Speaker 1: another to actually go, Okay, how do I unpack the
Speaker 1: different workflows in my day or the different tasks that
Speaker 1: are really repetitive, and how then do I apply what
Speaker 1: I know about AI, because I've got AI literacy to
Speaker 1: actually leave reage AI and help me automate or certainly
Speaker 1: make more efficient this particular workflow.
Speaker 2: That I do every week or every day. So that's
Speaker 2: where I see a really big gap.
Speaker 1: And what I recommend if you can relate to that
Speaker 1: is just start with one use case, a one workflow
Speaker 1: in your life. Like, for example, one workflow that myself
Speaker 1: and Jam, my assistant have is for the show notes
Speaker 1: for a podcast.
Speaker 2: Isn't an interview like.
Speaker 1: What you were listening to now, is that we took
Speaker 1: the time to develop a skill in Claude that is
Speaker 1: trained on how to write great show notes based on
Speaker 1: the transcript of an episode. Will then work with Claude
Speaker 1: to do that. And you know, typically show notes used
Speaker 1: to take maybe ten to fifteen minutes to write, and
Speaker 1: now you know, we can get a really great first
Speaker 1: draft in thirty seconds and it probably takes you know,
Speaker 1: all of three minutes of a human edit going through correcting.
Speaker 2: A few things.
Speaker 1: And you know, and that is a twice weekly task
Speaker 1: that has to happen because how I work obviously comes
Speaker 1: out twice a week. So that's a really small example.
Speaker 1: There are certainly ones that save me a lot more
Speaker 1: time that I do every week or sometimes every day.
Speaker 1: So one other thing, actually, I would say on that
Speaker 1: question Brennan is think about like, you know, because you're
Speaker 1: saying that I will save us time, but everyone feels
Speaker 1: really busy. Is that for the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: certainly the ones that we have surveyed Inventium and that
Speaker 1: we've spoken to, the time saved is just filled with
Speaker 1: more work, doing more work, and what you need to
Speaker 1: be really deliberate about, and certainly if you're a leader
Speaker 1: at an organization, you need to overtly say what are
Speaker 1: your expectations? Like is your expectation that with all the
Speaker 1: time that AI is saving us? Although that is not
Speaker 1: everyone's experience that it is saving people time, but assuming
Speaker 1: it is, where do you want people to channel that
Speaker 1: new time? Because most people channeling it to doing more
Speaker 1: work and that is leading to absolute brain fry, which
Speaker 1: is something that I will be covering in an upcoming episode,
Speaker 1: So that is not great. Ideally, some of that time
Speaker 1: saved should be put towards just having more balance in
Speaker 1: your life, particularly if you are working very long hours,
Speaker 1: you know, more than say a forty hour week, as
Speaker 1: a lot of us do. Some of that time should
Speaker 1: be spent on actually getting time for you to recuperate,
Speaker 1: rejuvenate and rock up next day feeling full of energy. Okay,
Speaker 1: next question is from Tammy. I know well being is important,
Speaker 1: but I always sacrifice it when work gets busy.
Speaker 2: How do you protect your.
Speaker 1: Energy without falling behind. Okay, I love this question, Tammy,
Speaker 1: because for the last year and a half I have
Speaker 1: been immersed in the world of energy and energy management.
Speaker 2: So there's so much that I could say here.
Speaker 1: And obviously, my new book, The Energy Game is coming
Speaker 1: out in July. July seven is the date, and a
Speaker 1: couple of things I think are really important here. So firstly,
Speaker 1: you can't time manage your way out of exhaustion, like
Speaker 1: if you are exhausted, but you're thinking that like Trello
Speaker 1: boards or you know, Cambin boards like I've described, and
Speaker 1: just good prioritization is gonna help you get more energy
Speaker 1: and you know, manage your way out of chronic depletion.
Speaker 1: Then you are hitting yourself. I have tried that strategy.
Speaker 1: I certainly tried it for most of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: and it failed spectacularly. So you need to manage your
Speaker 1: energy overthinking about managing your time.
Speaker 2: That is the first thing.
Speaker 1: The second thing I would say, it's so much more,
Speaker 1: but I'll just keep it too, is think about your
Speaker 1: energy not just as this big blanket thing like oh
Speaker 1: I'm tired, I've got no energy. Instead, think about it
Speaker 1: in three different buckets because there's three types of ways
Speaker 1: that we can think about the different kinds of energy
Speaker 1: that we have. We've got our physical energy, so what
Speaker 1: are we feeling in our body? We have got our
Speaker 1: cognitive energy or our mental energy, so how sharp are
Speaker 1: we feeling or are we feeling really brain foggy. And
Speaker 1: there's our emotional energy, so are we feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: happy and full of beans and super resilient, or are
Speaker 1: we crying at the drop of a hat, which is
Speaker 1: a sign that your emotional bucket is running very low.
Speaker 1: So once you start to think about your energy in
Speaker 1: these three buckets, and I do recommend tracking each of
Speaker 1: those in the energy game, I refer to them as
Speaker 1: energy accounts. So actually tracking like what does the balance
Speaker 1: feel like in those three energy accounts, you then can
Speaker 1: start to hone in on strategies that are going to
Speaker 1: improve that specific account, like you would use a really
Speaker 1: different strategy to improve your physical energy versus your mental
Speaker 1: energy or your emotional energy.
Speaker 2: So that is all I'll say on that for now.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that helps. We are going to take a short break,
Speaker 1: but don't go away because coming up after the break,
Speaker 1: I have more interesting questions.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to answer. I'm going to be.
Speaker 1: Answering the question of what's the biggest productivity mistake you
Speaker 1: see smart people making and also on the topic of mistakes,
Speaker 1: what's the biggest mistake companies are making when introducing AI.
Speaker 1: We're also going to talk about how to switch off
Speaker 1: after a really stressful work day and how do you
Speaker 1: handle days when your motivation is completely gone? Okay, keeping
Speaker 1: on the theme of energy question from Ruth, my company
Speaker 1: offers a lot of well being initiatives, but people are
Speaker 1: still burnt out. What actually makes a difference, Well, Ruth,
Speaker 1: I would say absolutely seeing energy management trump's time management.
Speaker 1: I mean that is just an absolute truth. I do
Speaker 1: think that what happens with a lot of wellbeing initiatives,
Speaker 1: like if you, I don't know, you've been given a
Speaker 1: subscription to a meditation app or maybe you've got some
Speaker 1: lunchtime yoga, is that often the problem is systemic. You know,
Speaker 1: it might come from leaders that have you know, maybe
Speaker 1: unrealistic expectations of the work that can get done. It
Speaker 1: maybe comes from problematic cultural norms where people, you know,
Speaker 1: dis the laws. In Australia, people still always feel the
Speaker 1: need to respond to messages at all hours. You know,
Speaker 1: a problem that I see some companies making is going, well,
Speaker 1: We're going to have some you know, productivity training, you know,
Speaker 1: which is great, like people will absolutely be able to
Speaker 1: do their work in less time, but also make sure
Speaker 1: that you are addressing those systemic issues of you know,
Speaker 1: often what is the case is workload issues, and of
Speaker 1: course AI complicates things more because we are simply expected
Speaker 1: to do more work when we use AI. Okay, next
Speaker 1: question is from Alana. How to high performers stop themselves
Speaker 1: from over committing is a very good question. That is
Speaker 1: also something I've thought about a lot when writing The
Speaker 1: Energy Game. Again, there's many different tools that I could
Speaker 1: give you here, I will say one that I find
Speaker 1: particularly useful for decision making because ultimately, you know, everything
Speaker 1: that you commit to is a decision. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I call it takeaway seven. I can't remember where I
Speaker 1: first heard it, but it's very very useful. Where if
Speaker 1: you are being asked to commit to a new project,
Speaker 1: or do you want to be involved in this thing,
Speaker 1: or do you want to I don't know, donate your
Speaker 1: time to you know, this committee or whatever the case is,
Speaker 1: rate that decision in terms of how excited you're feeling
Speaker 1: about that decision out of ten, Like, is this opportunity
Speaker 1: a nine out of ten? Is it a six out
Speaker 1: of ten? Is it an eight out of ten? And
Speaker 1: take away seven involves taking away the option of seven
Speaker 1: as an answer, because often you know, like seven is
Speaker 1: just kind of a lukewarm yes, if something is a
Speaker 1: seven out of ten, you're like, yeah, I think so maybe,
Speaker 1: But certainly, like in net promoter score research, seven is passive,
Speaker 1: So you should not be committing to things that are
Speaker 1: only a seven out of ten. So what I want
Speaker 1: you to do the next time you've got a decision
Speaker 1: to make, like this is take away seven as an option, right,
Speaker 1: because if something's an eight out of ten, that's sounding
Speaker 1: pretty positive, it's something is a six out of ten
Speaker 1: that is sounding not that good. I'm certainly not going
Speaker 1: to be committing to opportunities that are a six out
Speaker 1: of ten. And if you take away seven out of
Speaker 1: ten as an option, it forces you into going yeah,
Speaker 1: nah or yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good opportunity.
Speaker 1: So try taking away seven. Okay from Anita, what's the
Speaker 1: biggest productivity mistake you see smart people making? And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: this is the I A would say the biggest productivity
Speaker 1: mistake I see most people making is just constant context switching.
Speaker 1: And this is worse with AI because when you're asking
Speaker 1: AI to do a task, it is taking time to think,
Speaker 1: particularly if you've got one of the thinking models that
Speaker 1: you're using, it takes more time than the models that
Speaker 1: are not thinking things through in as much detail. So
Speaker 1: what typically happens, and what I observe people doing is
Speaker 1: that they will they will old tab to another screen
Speaker 1: or another tab in their browser. And like, the context
Speaker 1: switching has just gotten a whole lot worse, like it
Speaker 1: used to be bad, where we'll you know, maybe be
Speaker 1: working on writing a report and then we'll feel a
Speaker 1: bit stuck, and then we'll go into our inbox and
Speaker 1: then we'll remember, hang on, I've got this reporter right,
Speaker 1: and then we'll go back to the report. But now
Speaker 1: we're also, you know, we've got AI in the picture
Speaker 1: and we're asking AI to do the thing, but it's
Speaker 1: not doing it instantly. So I'm like, ah, might just
Speaker 1: maybe I'll open up another tab with chat chapute and
Speaker 1: ask it something else. While I'm waiting for the first
Speaker 1: response to do its thing or you know or copilot
Speaker 1: depending on what you're using.
Speaker 2: And this is.
Speaker 1: Messing with your brain massively. Certainly, we know from research
Speaker 1: into multitasking versus monotasking, when we multitask or context switch
Speaker 1: our way through a day, things take about forty percent
Speaker 1: longer to do. So that is absolutely the biggest mistake
Speaker 1: I see people making.
Speaker 2: And you know, I also think that people don't.
Speaker 1: Do enough to really design their work environment to avoid
Speaker 1: having to use willpower to stay focused. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a really easy hack to try today is don't have
Speaker 1: your mobile phone within arm's reach, which I know sounds
Speaker 1: crazy because for the majority of most days our phone
Speaker 1: is within arm's reach. But if it is not, just
Speaker 1: it's a physical barrier in the way for you checking
Speaker 1: your phone or being distracted by your phone. So that's
Speaker 1: just one little hack to try it today. Okay, what
Speaker 1: do you do to switch off your brain after a
Speaker 1: stressful work day? That comes from Robin? Okay, so one
Speaker 1: thing I found that works really well for me. So
Speaker 1: at Inventum are a remote first organization, which means we
Speaker 1: do not we do not have an office, although we
Speaker 1: are a member of the Commons, which is a wonderful
Speaker 1: coworking space, or that they've got many spaces, which I
Speaker 1: highly recommend. But we all work from home and it
Speaker 1: can be really hard to have boundaries and stop work
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. So the thing that
Speaker 1: I found works best for me very very simple. I
Speaker 1: leave my laptop in my home office. And yes, I'm
Speaker 1: like fortunate enough to have a separate room that is
Speaker 1: my office and recording studio where I'm sitting right now,
Speaker 1: but if I leave my laptop there, I find that
Speaker 1: it's so much easier to switch my brain off. So
Speaker 1: I don't know what the equivalent is for you. And
Speaker 1: you know, look, if you're like most people, you do
Speaker 1: spend some days working from home. But I do find
Speaker 1: just having that physical distance and leaving my work device,
Speaker 1: which is my laptop, in a room that is separate
Speaker 1: from where I'm going to relax, that is by far
Speaker 1: the best hack that I've found. I also think that
Speaker 1: having planned activities in the evening is also great, because
Speaker 1: a lot of us, at the end of the workday,
Speaker 1: the instinct is just to collapse after you know, eating dinner.
Speaker 2: Maybe you know we're a parent and we're.
Speaker 1: Putting kids to bed and all that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: and then just like you, just collapse in front of Netflix.
Speaker 1: That is pretty common, but I find a little hack
Speaker 1: around that. It is very simple. It's just planning activities.
Speaker 1: If I have got something planned in the diary, I
Speaker 1: am far more likely to switch my brain off in
Speaker 1: a you know, more fulfilling way than just collapsing in
Speaker 1: front of the couch. Or it might even just be
Speaker 1: an intention, like you know, my husband and I might
Speaker 1: set the intention that, Okay, after dinner tonight, we're actually
Speaker 1: going to play a board game instead of just you know,
Speaker 1: watching TV. So intentions and planned activities very very helpful,
Speaker 1: highly recommend. Okay, two more questions, firstly from Marissa, how
Speaker 1: do you handle days when your motivation is completely gone?
Speaker 1: That is a great question. I've certainly had many of
Speaker 1: those days. And some research that I find very very helpful.
Speaker 1: Here is research into the impact of taking a whole pass.
Speaker 2: So a hall pass is like a get out of
Speaker 2: jail free card.
Speaker 1: I feel like it maybe gets used mostly in relation
Speaker 1: to people in marriages being able to take a whole
Speaker 1: pass when they want to have a night of freedom,
Speaker 1: but it's really useful when it comes to new habits.
Speaker 1: So when you you know, say with work, you're trying
Speaker 1: to have like really productive days every single day, they
Speaker 1: can sometimes be unrealistic. And then if you don't have
Speaker 1: a productive day or your motivations low, you can just
Speaker 1: beat yourself up and just feel really crap. Hall past
Speaker 1: research suggests that if you deliberately give yourself one or
Speaker 1: two Hall passes a week to just go, you know, today,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to be working at my best,
Speaker 1: and that's totally fine.
Speaker 2: It The research suggests that.
Speaker 1: We will come back far more motivated and far more
Speaker 1: likely to do the thing that we're trying to do
Speaker 1: and in this case, have a you know, productive, motivated
Speaker 1: day far more likely than if we.
Speaker 2: Don't use that strategy.
Speaker 1: Where where that research was born from was into habits
Speaker 1: into health and well being. So one of the studies,
Speaker 1: and I talk about this study in my last book,
Speaker 1: The Health Habit, where they had a group of people
Speaker 1: that had a daily walking goal, so a certain number
Speaker 1: of steps per day, and everyone was split into two groups.
Speaker 1: One group they just had to hit their step count
Speaker 1: every day, which was a little bit more challenging than
Speaker 1: what they were currently doing, was about twenty percent more
Speaker 1: and the second group were given this whole past strategy
Speaker 1: where they said, look, two days out of every week
Speaker 1: for this month, it's totally fine if you don't hit
Speaker 1: your goal. What they found is that the whole pass
Speaker 1: group actually hit their step count goal more regularly, and
Speaker 1: when they didn't hit it. On days that they didn't
Speaker 1: hit it, they were far more likely to hit it
Speaker 1: the following day because they weren't feeding themselves up, they
Speaker 1: weren't feeling bad. So I do love the whole past
Speaker 1: strategy when you're trying to do something every single day. Okay,
Speaker 1: final question today is from Ian what is the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake companies are making when introducing AI.
Speaker 2: Ian.
Speaker 1: There's so many, but here are a handful. So firstly,
Speaker 1: giving people the software without the training like that to
Speaker 1: me is just mental. You just encounter so many problems
Speaker 1: when you give people Copilot without telling them, Hey, this
Speaker 1: is how to get the most out of it, this
Speaker 1: is how it applies to your role, this is how
Speaker 1: you can think about your workflows and integrating AI into
Speaker 1: it to save you a whole lot of time and
Speaker 1: also augment your thinking. So that is a massive, massive problem.
Speaker 1: When I think about the amount of money that people
Speaker 1: are spending on licenses. Alternatively, I also see a lot
Speaker 1: of very substandard training happening. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: cheap and free training in AI, and I know that
Speaker 1: this is ineffective because so often our phone rings an
Speaker 1: inventium or our email inbox bings with organizations that have
Speaker 1: gone for the cheap or free option, and it's either
Speaker 1: turned people off the AI or it just they've actually
Speaker 1: seen no productivity gains, so invest in training people. And certainly,
Speaker 1: perhaps I'm biased, but Inventium dot ai is a good
Speaker 1: place to start. Another mistake, which I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: is just stopping at literacy like it's one thing to go.
Speaker 1: Here's how the AI works, Here's what AI is. Here
Speaker 1: are some base sequays to use it to rewrite your emails.
Speaker 1: Literacy is important, but you need to continue onto part two,
Speaker 1: which is leaverage. How do you actually leaveage that knowledge
Speaker 1: about how AI works into the specific workflows that you
Speaker 1: do every day or every week. Super super important. Again,
Speaker 1: drop me a line if you need help with this.
Speaker 1: And final mistake that I see companies and specifically leaders
Speaker 1: making is not communicating what are people expected to do
Speaker 1: with the time they are saving, which is really important
Speaker 1: because what people will either think and either things are
Speaker 1: problematic is that, well, we just need to do it.
Speaker 1: We just need to fill that time with more work
Speaker 1: and more intense work because the AI is doing the
Speaker 1: more menial or repetitive or monotonous work, or they think
Speaker 1: that that time will be filled by them losing their job.
Speaker 1: So leaders need to proactively communicate what should you be
Speaker 1: doing with the time you are saving? And yes, some
Speaker 1: of that will be around productivity, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it should be, you know, put into innovation and how
Speaker 1: can we get better and where are new opportunities we
Speaker 1: you know, we could move into as a company, or
Speaker 1: that you know I could do to improve my part
Speaker 1: of the business. It should be learning, learning, new skills,
Speaker 1: learning and development, you know, it should be you know,
Speaker 1: certainly put into well, how do I think about actually
Speaker 1: redesigning my job now that AI is helping you know,
Speaker 1: potentially with a small to large amount of it. And finally,
Speaker 1: how can I use that time to actually live a
Speaker 1: balanced life and not be at work a crazy amount
Speaker 1: of hours every week? So that brings us to the
Speaker 1: end of this ask Me Anything episode. I hope that
Speaker 1: you have gained one or two or maybe more useful
Speaker 1: little techniques or ideas that you can put into practice
Speaker 1: today or maybe take back to your workplace. As always,
Speaker 1: dropped me a note with any questions that you have
Speaker 1: for the next Ask Me Anything episode. I tend to
Speaker 1: record them about once a quarter. And there is also
Speaker 1: a link if you want to be super awesome and
Speaker 1: create an audio question where, which is really simple. You
Speaker 1: just pop on the site that is in the show
Speaker 1: notes and you can record a question for me. That
Speaker 1: is it for today and I will see you next time.
Speaker 1: If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow
Speaker 1: on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 2: How I Work was recorded.
Speaker 1: On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
Speaker 1: the Cool and Nation. A big thank you to Martin
Speaker 1: Nimber for doing the sound mix.