Speaker 1: At Lassian's, Dom Price is just like anyone else. Some
Speaker 1: days he just doesn't want to get out of bed.
Speaker 1: The difference is he stays in bed. After years of
Speaker 1: working at breakneck speed as head of research and development
Speaker 1: and also at Lassian's resident work futurist, Dom's learning to
Speaker 1: listen to the signals his body sends him and it's working. Wonders,
Speaker 1: but what about when it's something beyond a bad day.
Speaker 1: What about when he's feeling truly burnt out. Dom's theory
Speaker 1: is that part of what causes burnout is information obesity,
Speaker 1: and one of the best ways to overcome it is
Speaker 1: with action. Dom believes the world can be a duocracy,
Speaker 1: and that means picking one thing to do right now
Speaker 1: and seeing how it goes. My name is doctor Amanthea Imber.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. On
Speaker 1: today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an
Speaker 1: interview from the past and I pick up my favorite
Speaker 1: tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with
Speaker 1: Dom Price and I asked him what does he do
Speaker 1: when he doesn't have the energy to bring himself to
Speaker 1: work or have a conversation like the one that we
Speaker 1: were recording for this podcast.
Speaker 2: Stay in Bed, Stay in Bed. I do I do
Speaker 2: a month because I think one of the things I've learned,
Speaker 2: and you know a bit about my story with with
Speaker 2: like personal health and mental health and stuff, is I've learned,
Speaker 2: like probably a bit late in life. I'm forty four now,
Speaker 2: to listen, listen to those signals, Like there's times I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's not going to work today. A couple of Thursdays
Speaker 2: ago is the two year anniversary of my sister passing.
Speaker 2: My girlfriend both took the day off. We went to
Speaker 2: Freshwater Beach in Sydney, watched the sunrise, strolled around, grabbed
Speaker 2: some breakfast, meeped around, We voted early. There's a whold
Speaker 2: of stuff we got done. But we had a day
Speaker 2: for just me and her. Right An Our new tradition
Speaker 2: is we get we call it fucked up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: She puts a nice dress on, I put a nice
Speaker 2: outf on and we go to a different nice restaurant
Speaker 2: in Sydney for a late lunch and I'm like we
Speaker 2: always joke like will this be our lifestyle instead of
Speaker 2: it being one day a year. Is there going to
Speaker 2: be a time when this is normal, when we're sipping
Speaker 2: a chardonnay and not caring about the world at two
Speaker 2: pm and watching the sun? And I might probably not,
Speaker 2: not in the near future. But it's to listen, right,
Speaker 2: to listen to my body. And then the other thing
Speaker 2: is I got some great advice from a mental years ago.
Speaker 2: I need some help on some stuff. And I arrived
Speaker 2: at the conversation and I did. I thought it was
Speaker 2: a very English thing. Apparently it's just a very human thing.
Speaker 2: Where I arrived and I just winged and then after
Speaker 2: five minutes she was like, right, that's your five minutes
Speaker 2: of winging up. This is a session where we fix,
Speaker 2: not winge. So how do you want to spend the
Speaker 2: next fifty five minutes? And I was like oh, And
Speaker 2: I was like and she's like, well, the first five
Speaker 2: minutes was cathartic. Now you've got it off your chest,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do about it? And I
Speaker 2: was like, I thought I was here just a wine
Speaker 2: for an hour and maybe you do agree with me,
Speaker 2: and I just feel better. And she's like, no, Like,
Speaker 2: if this is a real mental relationship. We're going to
Speaker 2: help you fix it. And by the way, she's like,
Speaker 2: I've not got the answer. I'm just here to ask questions.
Speaker 2: You've got the answer. And so it was very confronting
Speaker 2: at the time, and I was like, Ah, I probably
Speaker 2: have got the answer, but whilst I'm in that five
Speaker 2: minute pity party, I'm definitely not going to find the answer.
Speaker 2: And so how do we do the time switch? Right?
Speaker 2: So I always, even when I use that now and
Speaker 2: I'm coaching on mentoring others, I'm like, you've had your
Speaker 2: five minutes of winge and sulk. What are we going
Speaker 2: to do about it right from now on? And so
Speaker 2: I have a word etched at the back of my head,
Speaker 2: which is deocracy. I'm a massive fact if I ever
Speaker 2: bothered to write a book, if I was as smart
Speaker 2: as you, I'd write a book. But I'm not. It
Speaker 2: would be called deuocracy, which is how do we move
Speaker 2: from this? I have this belief that as a society
Speaker 2: we suffer with knowledge obesity, and I think it's what
Speaker 2: causes some of the burnout. We gather all these debtor
Speaker 2: and insights, we don't do anything with it. Right, I'm
Speaker 2: constantly reading about what it takes to get fit. But
Speaker 2: at no point if I got on a treadmill, right,
Speaker 2: I've not gone for a walk. So I'm like, I've
Speaker 2: got knowledge, obeast it. I know what I need to do.
Speaker 2: I need to eat less chocolate and I need to
Speaker 2: walk more like it's not hard, but for some reason
Speaker 2: we just block it out. And so I'm like, instead
Speaker 2: of knowledge, obeest tea, let's turn it into a deocracy.
Speaker 2: And so all I do is I look for the
Speaker 2: one thing I can do, one thing. So my if
Speaker 2: you flip that that my one of my trigger phrases
Speaker 2: right now is best practice. Right It drives me insane
Speaker 2: because it doesn't exist. And so my marketing brethrens that
Speaker 2: at LASTI and hate me because every time that I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as best how do you know
Speaker 2: it's best? And they're like, well, it's a common known phrase. No,
Speaker 2: it don't use it. It doesn't make any sense. It's patronizing,
Speaker 2: it's condescending, and it's ignorant. So let's instead go for better,
Speaker 2: and let's look at incrementally, what's the one thing I
Speaker 2: can do right now in this time horizon. It could
Speaker 2: be today, could be this hour could be this week.
Speaker 2: The one thing I can do to make something better
Speaker 2: by intent doesn't mean it will be better. My intent
Speaker 2: is to make it better. And then my job is
Speaker 2: did it make it better? Yes? Or no? If it did,
Speaker 2: do more of it. If it didn't, what can I
Speaker 2: do differently? And so basically, instead of thinking about life
Speaker 2: as input, process output, this linear thing, I think about
Speaker 2: life as a loop. And my job is to make
Speaker 2: that loop tight and to have many loops. That's my
Speaker 2: job as a human. Right. If I have these giant,
Speaker 2: long loops, I'm not learning quick. And if my learning
Speaker 2: velocity is too slow, and by the time I find
Speaker 2: something out, I'm annoyed because it's taken too long. So
Speaker 2: lots of small learning loops. And so when I sign
Speaker 2: up for that, I'm like, cool. If I'm signing up
Speaker 2: for a small learning loop, what's the one thing I
Speaker 2: can do to get around the loop? What's the one
Speaker 2: thing I can try? Right? And that way, instead of
Speaker 2: looking at all the things in your way that are frustrations,
Speaker 2: you find the one thing you can do and suddenly
Speaker 2: you're building momentum forward. I still look in the rear
Speaker 2: view mirror, because that's where I get a lot of
Speaker 2: my lessons learned. I'm just not sort of nostalgic wondering
Speaker 2: about the good old days, because today's the good old days.
Speaker 2: We are creating the good old days today. And as
Speaker 2: soon as we wake up to that, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: instead of wallowing about what it used to be, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I joined it lastly in a Mantha when it's five
Speaker 2: hundred people, it's so friendly and family orienty, and you're like,
Speaker 2: I get that, we've all got history, we've all got
Speaker 2: a story, but it won't be a five hundred personal
Speaker 2: organization again. So wake up to the reality that it's
Speaker 2: now this ass What can we do to still make
Speaker 2: it fun and family oriented, a nimble and all the things, John,
Speaker 2: Because you own that, right, there's not this weird system
Speaker 2: that decides that for you, right YouTube. You make that
Speaker 2: choice every single day. And so for me, that deocracy
Speaker 2: mindset really helps me get through those those slow days,
Speaker 2: those hard times when I'm like it's all broken, it's
Speaker 2: not going to work, is waste of time. I'm like, actually,
Speaker 2: you know what, stop, what's the one thing. There's always
Speaker 2: one thing we can do, And then you do it
Speaker 2: and you're like, ah, suddenly the shoulders come up a
Speaker 2: little bit, and then you do one more thing. You're like, ah,
Speaker 2: now I've got a little bit of mojo. Right then
Speaker 2: you do the third thing. You're like, now, now the
Speaker 2: ViBe's going. Now I can feel it. It all started
Speaker 2: with one thing.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed these excerpt from my chat with Dom,
Speaker 1: you might want to go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: full episode, which you can find a link to in
Speaker 1: the show notes. If you're looking for more tips to
Speaker 1: improve the way that you work, I write a short
Speaker 1: fortnightly newsletter. There contains three cool things that I've discovered
Speaker 1: that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets
Speaker 1: that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how
Speaker 1: I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of
Speaker 1: your day with me by listening to How I Work.
Speaker 1: If you're keen for more tips on how to work better,
Speaker 1: connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy
Speaker 1: to find. Just search for Amanthaimba. How I Work was
Speaker 1: recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part
Speaker 1: of the Cool and Nation. I am so grateful for
Speaker 1: being able to work and live on this beautiful land,
Speaker 1: and I want to pay my respects to elders, past,
Speaker 1: present and emerging. How I work is produced by Inventium
Speaker 1: with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you
Speaker 1: to Martin Nimba who did the audio mix and makes
Speaker 1: everything sound better than it would have otherwise