How to stop procrastinating is one of the biggest questions we all struggle with on a daily basis. This paragraph has already taken two days to write!
Tasks that seem difficult, unpleasant, or hard to guess the duration of tend to get put on the long finger. There’s probably a physiological aspect to this. Note: I’m not an expert in any of the fields involved here, but in layman’s terms: The function of procrastination is believed to be our minds protecting us from stress, and the cortisol that we know will be released by engaging with stressful tasks. We’re particularly prone to procrastinate when we’re tired or already stressed. But our bodies don’t necessarily realise that we’ve got bills to pay, dammit!
If procrastination is a protective function though, our bodies don’t seem to consider that incomplete tasks take up mental space (though you can reduce this affect by writing things down on a To Do list), whereas getting things done produces a little dopamine hit. So it’s clear that procrastination, while natural, isn’t necessarily doing us many favours if it’s saving us from a little cortisol now, robbing us of dopamine soon, and producing more cortisol in the long run by creating more incomplete tasks.
Probably best to get a handle on it, then. So! Here are some of my adopted techniques to stop procrastinating. People in paid 9-5 employment can benefit from these too, though they apply more to those with flexible working days.
The Pomodoro Technique
This technique takes its name from the Italian word for tomato. This is because its inventor, Francesco Cirillo, had a tomato-shaped kitchen timer on his desk that he used to measure work periods of (usually) 25 minutes.
The idea is to work in 25-minute sprints, then take a 5 minute break (good to move around, use the bathroom, get some water, etc) and resume another period after that. You repeat this up to 4 times for a very productive couple of hours, then you should take a longer break.
I first started using this technique while working in my last job as a games programmer. I’d have been assigned a big feature to complete, that would take hours or days (you never quite know with games programming). I’d break the task down into chunks that should take 25 minutes or less each, and then focus intently on just that sub-feature for 25 minutes. Sometimes a task wouldn’t be complete, but I’d have definitely broken the back of it without getting distracted. When the clock’s ticking, we tend to focus better.
Now, how this helps me to stop procrastinating requires just a little twist in what you think the technique is best used for. It’s great for productivity, yes, but it also carries the strong likelihood that that unpleasant task (say, a VAT return, or employee review) will be off your plate in less than a half hour if you just start now!
That promise has seen me start and finish more programming jobs, tenders, applications, emails, and bookkeeping tasks than any other technique. I’m even running a Pomodoro clock right now. I’ve 9 minutes left. The blog won’t be finished in that time, but in one more the first draft should be done, another and I’ll have edited and added pictures, and one final one will see it posted, shared on social media, and totally finished!
You could get yourself a desk timer, but I just use a simple free App called ‘RemindMe for Windows‘ (which I also use to remind myself to correct my posture at my desk every now and again).
Accountability
As I often mention, this is one of the biggest benefits to hiring a coach. A coach is of more benefit keeping you accountable towards bigger goals and tasks, but accountability can be used in all sorts of ways.
When I used to live-stream game development, I set two times a week (and posted them on my streaming pages and Twitter) that I would be streaming live at that time. I didn’t have a huge audience, but once the info was out there, I’d be a liar not to show up and start working. Whatever else happened in the week, I always had two slots of 90-120 minutes where the game itself, in-engine, got worked on. This kept the ball rolling and not stuck in an email & admin pothole.
Similarly, once an artist and composer joined my team, I felt accountable to them, and any tasks I had that they needed done miraculously got accomplished. Most of us hate to let others down and are much more willing to not deliver on a promise made to ourselves alone.
If you work alone and people aren’t counting on you, posting things publicly, or getting an accountability buddy (accountabilabuddy – I can never let that hilarious contraction go unsaid) or coach can seriously help you to stop procrastinating and finish more tasks.
Urgency – Make Plans
This leads on from the others fairly well, but it’s a little different. Where the Pomodoro technique has you create an artificial time pressure, and accountability has you create (if it doesn’t already exist) artificial social pressure, this has you create real pressure – timed and usually social.
Parkinson’s Law states that a task will expand to fill the time allotted for it, in the same way that a gas will fill any given chamber evenly. I’ve always noticed that if my evening is free, I’ll usually wind up finishing some of the tasks that were allotted for the working day in the evening. If, however, I’ve made plans with someone to go to a show, gig, movie, etc, now I’ve now got a real time constraint on the day, and the social pressure of not wanting to cancel on my friend. If I’ve bought tickets, I’ll have the benefit of financial loss aversion too!
Doing this not only helps you knuckle down and get things done, but it rewards you for doing so and protects your work/life balance, which in turn protects your long term health, productivity, and enthusiasm. It’s a positive feedback loop that’s actually very powerful!
So rather than not make plans because you might have to finish work (you always will, according to Parkinson), say yes to that invite to the pub or games night.
How to Stop Procrastinating – In Conclusion
Using these three techniques (and others) have greatly helped me to stop procrastinating and increase the number of unpleasant jobs that I get done. Doing so has also freed up more time for me to enjoy my life outside of work hours (by basically creating “outside of work hours”).
I hope they’re of use to you as well. You might also enjoy my article “Movement Beats Meditation” (which is about perfectionism, not exercise or spirituality).
Do leave a comment if you have any of your own techniques or success stories, and please share the article if you found it valuable.
Kevin Murphy 0:01 Okay, hello, everyone. Today I’m speaking with Moira Dunne, who’s a productivity and wellness speaker, trainer, and consultant. So thank you for coming on, Moira.
Moira Dunne 0:11 Hi, Kevin, I’m delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation. It’s always lovely to talk productivity with a fellow productivity guru. So I’m enjoying this and looking forward to our chats.
Kevin Murphy 0:22 Hopefully, we can get a bit nerdy about psychology or tools as we go. It’s always fun.
So, Moira, I wanted to ask you, do you have a personal definition of what it means to Be Productive – I know that’s the name of your company – and could you expand on that?
Moira Dunne 0:37 Yes, I suppose there’s loads of ways of describing productivity. But the way I sum it up for people really is, to me, it’s about getting the important things you need to get done, getting those done in the time you have available to do it. So it’s about kind of having a focused purpose and then being able to use your time to get those things done. And it’s not about working long hours and working extra time to get those things done. It’s looking at the time that you want to spend at your work and making sure that you optimise that time, and that you stay focused on the most important things you need to deliver.
Kevin Murphy 1:14 That’s a great definition. I fully agree as well, like, put it into the time it’s got to… that you need it to occupy in order for you to have your work-life balance, not “look at the task list. And oh, my God is 10pm. And they didn’t get that done. And I have to go back and do it”. It’s like, “no plan it from the opposite way around. Work smarter, not harder”.
Moira Dunne 1:34 Yeah, I mean, the work life balance piece is so important. But also just to say that that’s the ideal, and that’s idealistic, and what I’ve just described and what you’ve just described, it’s really hard to do it. So. And that’s why people end up working longer hours or getting pulled off track because other people request different things from them. So, it is the definition, and then I suppose the challenge is to look at how to actually make that happen. And I often say to people, it’s not being super productive all day, every day, it’s having some productive hours in your week, productive chunks of time, and even to achieve that is better than not.
Kevin Murphy 2:14 Yeah I fully agree. The map is not the territory. You can make your ideal plan and see how close you can get, and then the real trick comes with course correcting and noticing when you’re not exactly living or working, the way you want to be, and what tools and techniques can we then apply to get back closer to the plan, which is never really 100% on-plan. There’s no perfect week, but you can get closer.
Well then Moira, I want to ask your advice for a hypothetical worker that I’ll kind of describe: So if you have someone who’s – and this has been me at different times, but it could be anyone at any different stage – who feel that they’re going through their whole days, just kind of reacting and haphazardly trying to balance just busyness versus “I must take a break”, only to arrive at the end of the day, whatever that end of the day time might be for them on that day, might even be different every day. And they’re just feeling totally unsatisfied at the end of the day they’re like “What did I even do? What did I get done?” and they want to kind of course correct, as we mentioned a minute ago, what are the first things you would have them do if they’re a client of yours describing a situation like that?
Moira Dunne 3:24 Yeah, and Kevin, that that is most people nowadays, because the workplaces are so busy and people are generally working in a very reactive, responsive mode, because there’s so much communication constantly arriving. So it’s very hard not to work in that mode. Sometimes I meet people that I train, and they’re kind of hard on themselves, because they’re thinking “I shouldn’t be working in that way”. But I’m saying just look at the environment and the way things are, of course you will. So it actually takes a bit of willpower to change it and to do something different.
The first thing I say to people is to make a plan for their week. And when I talk about a plan, I don’t mean a rigid plan that has every hour of every day mapped out because that’s just not realistic, because you need to be available to respond to the requests and the work that comes to you. But at least you know as you go into each week or even at the end of the previous week, looking ahead to the week that’s coming up to try and take control of that week. I often say “take control your week before it takes control of you”. And at least if you’ve taken some time to look into what’s happening next week, what do I need to get done? Also maybe ask the question, what would make me feel satisfied with my week on Friday, when I look back on how the week went. So try and predict what will make the week a success. And it could be that it’s just one, two, maybe three things that you want to get done in and around all the other busy requests and responsive work that you do. But by identifying those key things at the outset, they give you your priorities. They’re the things that you want to be proactive about. You’re going to try and find some time then in your diary to work on those things.
And you may have to shift that around, you may intend to do it on Wednesday morning, something else crops up, but it’ll be on your mind and then you’ll be more motivated to find time on Thursday or Friday to get it done. So just by starting with that plan gives you clarity in your head. You’re identifying what are the important things for me to achieve this week. And then that helps you then throughout the week… it’s kind of a baseline, and then everything else happens on top of that, but it means that you can keep checking into that throughout the week.
And I often just do something simple like put those three things up on a post it on the board behind me here. And that reminds me throughout the week that oh, yeah, I did intend to get those things done. Because that’s often what happens. Our work life is so busy loads and new things crop up. Sometimes by the middle of the week, we’ve forgotten what we had on our plan at the start of the week. So just by having something visual, something tangible that you’ve set out as your aim or your objective for the week, it helps you stay on track, and it helps you find time to work on those things.
Kevin Murphy 6:02 Certainly having that goal. Yeah, that would be something to keep checking in on. Like, as you said the postit which served for me might be on my monitor, for you it might be on the wall behind, or another way I have it is that I’ve a checklist, a shutdown checklist at the end of the day, to go through everything. And that’s where I check “what was my weekly goal again?”, and I actually did knock that off. So “two left and it’s Thursday. Which one might be more important? Can I get both done in the time remaining?”.
Moira Dunne 6:29 And that’s really important, Kevin kind of reassessment and juggling of the priorities. So even though you said something I was on Monday and say, that’s the most important thing I want to achieve this week, by Wednesday or Thursday, that may have changed, because other things may have cropped up and we have to be flexible. And I think that’s important that the plans are flexible. Because sometimes when I say to people make a plan, they say, well, there’s no point it’s too rigid. I can’t stick to it, you know, it keeps changing. But I say unless you have the plan, then you’re never going to get those things done, there’s a greater chance you’ll get those priority pieces of work done if you’ve planned to do them. And as you say, you may not get them all done, you may get to the back end the week, and you’re looking at the things that are still there on the list. But now you can reassess it based on the other things that have cropped up. And you can say, well, actually, I’ll just pick that one thing, if I get that done by the end of the week, I can maybe move the other things into next week. But it gives you that kind of checkpoint, that baseline that helps to keep you on track.
Kevin Murphy 7:27 Yeah, and I thought this is a good starting point. There’s lots more we can do in terms of scheduling and how one works… but it is, you know… as Ibring it back to my first question to the frantic worker who’s just right now, reacting all the time, this would be a good first place to be. And so for that worker who’ve made their plan, and as you say you need to be adaptable with you know, “okay, that third thing is not getting done” or the new priority, because boss says there’s a new priority…. And if they’re committed to doing, say, 30 days of this new planning like this, so that they can get into the habit, but they’re finding week on week that they’ve only done one thing, and they’re kind of going down that slippery slope of losing faith in this as a… as something that will work for them because they find that they have to be too reactive. You know, what would be the next thing? Would you suggest like carving a protective time daily, maybe in their schedule to work on just the things on that list before things? Or do you have other techniques or advice to support someone implementing this if they’re struggling with this first step?
Moira Dunne 8:30 Yeah, lots of things, Kevin, that first thing you’ve mentioned there carving out time. So I suppose we call it a time blocking, don’t wait, where you you look at your schedule. And I say to people look at the opportunity to get some of that planned time, but a time block where you can put in an hour and say I’m going to work on X, I’m going to work on that priority. And then maybe, you know, you have to look at your week and see the opportunity for that there’s no point in blocking that hour in the middle of a busy Wednesday morning, because you know, you’re probably not going to be able to stick to it. So it’s about looking at your week, strategically identifying the opportunity to do that time that plans time, it could be a lot of people might do a couple of power hours, maybe Tuesday, Thursday, they might start at eight before things get too crazy or maybe earlier depending on what your environment is like. And I’m blocking some time and they’re the times that they get on with their proactive their priority work before the email and the Instant Messenger and all the requests start flying in. For some people, it’s later in the day, they love to get in and do their transactional reactive work first, and then things maybe kind of quieten down later in the day and that’s when they like to block time and say between four and five in the afternoon.
For some people they might be more tired at that stage but other people find they get on a roll later in the day when they have all the other distractions cleared out of the way. Other things you can do is look at Friday’s often in an opportunity because email volumes sometimes later on Friday, a lot of people may be working shorter weeks now. So again, you know, look at Friday, block in some time Friday morning or Friday afternoon and say I’m going to work on that project then or that priority piece of work. So everybody will have a different opportunity within their week. But it’s starting to get to know your week getting to know the rhythms of it, when it’s peak when it’s quieter. And being smart, then about the time that you try and block in for your own work.
So that’s one thing, the time blocking. The other thing I suppose is, it’s probably a bigger discussion, but it’s around the responsiveness. So we’re working in busy, responsive environments, but we need to maybe start pushing back on that a little bit and saying, you know, “does, everything needs to be responded to straight away?” there will be genuinely urgent things, but then there’ll be other things that maybe could wait half an hour, an hour, a few hours, if you get back to someone by lunchtime or the end of the day. Is that, okay? So that if you switch to kind of working in that mode, it means that you’re not responding to everything straight away. And I suppose it’s starting to look at your work and identifying the high priority, the important work, the really urgent things you have to respond to. And for me, they would be things where you’re in the middle of a workflow and somebody emails you they need a response, if you don’t get back to them, then you’re going to slow down everybody else’s work. So, they’re the really origin things. That’s just one example. But then there’ll be other things that, you know, I’ve started asking people, when do you need it? I actually did it earlier today. Kevin, would you believe that somebody texted me looking for information, I was thinking that’s gonna take me an hour or two to dig that out. And I thought I just asked them, I said, When do you need us? And they said, Friday, and today’s only Monday. And I was actually thinking I’ll have to either do that later or tomorrow morning. And, because they put no timeframe on it, I immediately assumed it was it was straight away that they wanted it. And it’s interesting, you know, because they didn’t have that expectation. So now I’m like, fantastic. So I can plan it in for Thursday, or whatever, to have it ready for Friday. But I think because our work environment is becoming so urgent, and instance because email is so instant, we’ve kind of developed that way of working, where we assume everybody wants everything straight away. And sometimes they don’t. So just simply asking that question can actually be a real eye opener.
Kevin Murphy 12:25 I just want to add that when you mentioned the time blocking, as an anecdotal evidence of what you were saying and the confidence that comes with moving the needle on that, that you know, Eisenhower matrix, the most important but not really urgent thing and getting your big plans done, just by having like an hour a day or something. The confidence that comes with that is fantastic. And it really gets the ball rolling in a good way. And I was struggling to finish my master’s thesis from late last year, until January, February of this year, and thinking can I do it after the main work day. And it was a few hundred words a day or just nothing because I’m tired. But once I blocked up each morning, 90 minutes, I did 1000 words a day average and finished it in two weeks.
Moira Dunne 13:11 Yeah, so really good example. Yeah.
Kevin Murphy 13:14 it definitely has a lot of power. So what Moira said I’m just fully supporting there.
Moira Dunne 13:19 And also, and it has a lot of power, it also releases a lot of stress. Because if you feel you’re making a start on a longer term piece of work or a longer term project or something that isn’t due for a few weeks time, it means you’ll stop worrying about it just because you’ve started it. And it could be that you’re just chipping away the way you describe there. So getting a couple things done each week on it. But it also means that someone comes and asks you, you know, how are we fixed with our project? Or how are things going, you know, you’re kind of on top of it. And it also gives you opportunity to realise maybe you need input from someone else. So you have time to do that you’ve you’ve time to give them to respond as well. So you’re not doing everything at the last minute. And of course, the other thing about it is that the chances of you doing a much higher quality job is much greater because you’re not doing it under pressure. So it’s a win win.
Kevin Murphy 14:12 Absolutely, so get time blocking in place!
Moira Dunne 14:14 Yeah, it takes it takes getting into the habit of doing it though. And it can be a shift if you’re currently working in a very responsive, reactive way. So it can take time to get used to it. That’s the challenge.
Kevin Murphy 14:29 Sure, yes, give it the time. But you know, trust that the results will be there.
So yeah Moira, that was some great advice on the last one we were talking about time block planning and about interruptions and responsiveness to email and instant messenges. Both of those things are big topics with the author Cal Newport who I’m sure you’re familiar with, I can see a book behind you there. So he wrote Deep Work; a lot of people know him for that book, and more recently came out with A World Without Email. I’m not sure have you read it yet, but what do you feel about the role of email and instant messaging in our workplaces when it comes to productivity?
Moira Dunne 15:07 Well, I suppose you can look at it in two different ways. I mean, email, and instant messaging are such fantastically productive tools. And, you know, it just, it’s transformed our lives. And also the fact that we can do our email now on devices, etc, you know, you can be standing in the queue waiting for your coffee in the morning, and you can get through two or three emails, it’s unbelievably productive. The challenge is to control your email rather than have your email control you. And that is really a challenge because the volumes of email and messaging and everything to do with teams and all our online collaborative tools, now all of them really bring notifications and messaging. But the challenge is to deal with the volume.
And, of course, everything, any tool that we use, the notifications for message arrival, the notifications are by default all switched on. So every new piece of technology that you incorporate into your work life, while it helps you be productive, it also brings notifications, and alerts, and of course, that brings distraction, and linking in with Cal Newport his whole idea of deep work, I mean, I love that expression, that idea of, you know, getting into a concentrated state where you can do really deep, valuable work. His whole message, I suppose, is that if you have lots of distractions throughout the day, you’ll never really get into that deep thinking mode. So a lot of his discussion is around how to reduce those distractions. And that’s really important.
So it is important to be aware of the impact of those distractions on your ability to focus and to get that deep thinking work done. You have to balance it with though the fact that, you know, for some people, it’s really impossible to switch off those notifications to not be responsive to their email. I’ve worked with some people who get 120 emails a day, I work with people in roles that their job is to be reactive. So say someone who’s a PA to a CEO of an organisation, she has to respond instantly to every message that she gets, well, nearly every message. So while the thinking is great and Cal’s book and it can be really good to read books by people like Cal Newport, I think he’s a university lecturer, correct me if I’m wrong, Kevin… Yeah, in America, so that it is fantastic people like him have time to think about these topics and do the research and come up with good strategies. And then we can kind of learn from that and modify them. But my feeling when I read Deep Work was that it quite, it’s great and it all makes sense, if you’re in an environment where you’re a university lecturer, it’s probably not very stressful, you’re probably the master of your own destiny. So it might be easier to do some of the things that he suggests. And sometimes I feel that if people pick up a book like that, then they then feel under pressure to do it themselves. And then if they can’t, or as you said earlier, if you try something and then you can’t stick to it, you know, then that’s really demotivating. And there’s a lot of busy stressful work environments where it just wouldn’t be possible to be maybe tuning out of email for blocks of time throughout the day, because people would be so stressed if they weren’t responding to their email. But also, you know, there’d be an expectation and it wouldn’t be acceptable that they weren’t responding.
So I try and take the concepts in a book like cows and, and then give people a practical version of it, that they can then tweak to their environment. So it is I suppose around with email, looking at ways to manage that volume, somebody gets 120 emails a day like that would be your entire day, you would not really be able to get anything else done. And of course, email is how we do our job as well. So we have to spend a significant amount of time in it. One of the things is to try and distinguish between the important emails and then the ones that are lower priority that you actually can leave and respond to at a later point or even just leave them there until you need them. And, you know, I find things like the follow up flag is fantastic. So when I’m checking my email, I always used to follow up flag for things that are going to take longer.
Kevin Murphy 18:53 That’s Outlook specifically, isn’t it?
Moira Dunne 19:27 Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, but there’s Star in Gmail… And then what I do is I sort my Inbox by those follow up flags, and then when I come back to do an email time block for an hour or two to process my email, then I have my inbox sorted by the ones I need to follow up on. So for me with email, what I advise people to do is think of your interaction with those are you checking your email, are you processing your email? I’m very often we do the two together and then we kind of don’t do either property. So I kind of try and have numerous checks throughout the day, as many as I need to stay in touch. But when I check, I just do very quick responses, things that take up to two minutes. But anything that’s going to take longer than that, unless it’s very urgent, if it’s not very urgent, I’ll flag it for follow up. And then I’ll have email blocks throughout the day where, say, for an hour, I do all my processing. So go straight in and do all the ones flagged for follow up, clear them down. And then you know, if people have a high volume, they can do numerous time blocks throughout the day to do that processing, then check it as frequently as you need to to be responsive, you know, so, but it means that in between those times, you may have the potential to close out of it and do other things. So it’s, I think it’s looking at your interaction so that it’s not just constantly interacting with email, because then email is driving your day. And it’s impossible to get that protected time to get other things done, like the deep work that Cal mentioned.
Kevin Murphy 20:58 I want to ask you a question and let you referee the answer. Cal Newport tends to not like using the Pomodoro Technique. And for me, that’s the the top… after getting enough sleep, that’s the top productivity technique I find for any clients and any of the clients who’ve written testimonials in the end, they’ve mentioned that was a fantastic way to start me working. Which as well… if you don’t know, that involves working towards 25 Minute timers. Mostly it’s 25 minutes, you can adjust but sort of getting a half an hour of uninterrupted work – notifications off. And I find for most of my clients, one or two have said no, I have to be constantly on like the PA that you mentioned. But that ignoring email for half an hour is acceptable to them. Yes, if there’s something on Slack, I will get back to it in a few minutes. No one’s gonna yell at me for being maximum 30 minutes unresponsive. I find that’s a really good tool. Now for Cal Newport, as you said, he’s less busy, can set his own university hours… not that he’s less busy, he does a lot, but his job is less reactive… that he favours just training yourself to work for 90 minutes straight without using a 30 minute timer. He thinks 30 is too short. And it’s not deep enough. I think it really depends on the type of your work. But could you strike a balance between that or say… yeah, what does that bring up for you?
Moira Dunne 22:32 I think with both of those techniques, it’s giving people an understanding of the techniques, they can think through and go, “Well, what’s going to be the best time frame for me?” you know, because I personally would probably find 25 minutes too short. Although, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of being away from your email, it probably is long enough for people because anything longer if they don’t check, they’re going to probably feel stressed. But I guess it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just trying to get through things not be interrupted, but it’s fairly transactional work, probably the 25 minutes is fine. If you’re trying to write a report or develop a proposal or work on something much more creative, you may need a longer period of time. So that’s probably what he’s alluding to with the 90 minutes.
But I suppose if you look at it from the perspective of your interaction with email, as you said, How long can I be away from us without checking it, and so 25 minutes, and then a five minute check is probably a good thing to aim for. And then you can go and do the same thing again for the next half an hour. So that’s a good way to break down your your time. And then of course, the Pomodoro encourages taking breaks as well doesn’t it, which is really important. But it’s hard, it can be hard to manage that as well, like five minutes can be quite short for people to take a break. So then a point drift into 10 minutes. 15 minutes.
Kevin Murphy 24:01 Ialways call it five ish.
Moira Dunne 24:04 Yeah, it’s hard to be too rigid with it. I know a lot of students use that don’t they for studying?… the Pomodoro Technique as well.
Kevin Murphy 24:13 The best students do. Yep. As you say, if you’re coming at it from people who are like, I have to have email on then say, “Well, can you try 25 with it off?”, and then you’re allowed check it for five. It’s even built into this. But you have to remind that a very important part of it is to get that rest and get out of the chair and physically get your energy back is kind of key in the Pomodoro as well. It’s not meant to be a five minute email check. But it is a perfect time to just quickly check. “Nothing there. Good. Sanity restored. Let me get a glass of water. Come back”. And yeah, it’s very good in that way. Everything I think needs to be adapted to what people are doing.
Moira Dunne 24:48 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Murphy 24:49 There’s good on both sides. And as Cal says, getting to 90 minutes, that’s great if you’re trying to write a book or get really deep into a programming problem or something like this. Yeah, for sure. Adopting.
Well Moira, today’s Monday, the 29th of November, coming into the Christmas period, and even like looking at the end of our years, and what are we going to start next year with new year’s resolutions, I’m certainly starting to think of a few for myself. So even already, maybe I should start them sooner. So no need to wait till January. But on that topic, what advice would you be giving to people who are thinking of what resolutions to come up with. And whether they’re looking at this video, just a few days before New Year’s or even the first days of January, when they’re planning the resolutions that they’re going to do? What sorts of goals should they be setting? Can be very broad, but also how specific or what techniques or ways of planning their their week and their month would help them achieve whatever goals they do set?
Moira Dunne 25:53 Yeah, resolutions, Kevin, it’s an interesting topic, because everybody sets them every year, people are very keen and motivated at the start of the year to set the resolutions. But actually, when you stop and look at it and think about it, you know, why do we put all that pressure on ourselves beginning in January, and then we probably don’t really set resolutions later on in the year. I remember reading an article a few years ago, where someone said, “take one thing each month” so plan out the year and make a different resolution each month. So rather than making a list of 10 things to do in January, to actually spaced them out and maybe have a theme for each month, there’s something that you’re aiming to change or do and month, by month by month. So everything is condensed into the start of the year.
Because actually, if you look at the stats around resolutions that are set, and how many are actually implemented and achieved, the stats are alarmingly poor. So I think that’s partly because of the time of year. So while we have the enthusiasm in January because we feel it’s a fresh start, it’s actually probably one of the most challenging times of the year to give something up or to try something new that’s challenging, you know, we’ve just come out of the Christmas period, it’s dark evenings, the weather is poor. So you think of all those things, and we’re trying to just get our heads back into work, it can actually be really challenging, which is why so many of them fail. So having said all that, if you do set some resolutions, first of all, I would say just set one, or maybe two, and for January, so you know, don’t bite off too much and, take that first resolution. The key thing to implementing something and actually making it happen is to make a plan around it.
Because what’s the expression; a resolution without a plan is just a wish. So it’s just something notional in your head. And we know from even setting objectives in the business environment, if we take a high level objective, unless it’s actually broken down and drilled down into a plan of the work that actually needs to be done. And turned into a list of actions that work never gets achieved. So it’s kind of the same with resolution. So say, if we take an example, like, “I want to get fit in 2022”. So you know, that’s fine. That’s a really good resolution. So you might have that in your list. But if you actually get into January getting into the first week, or two or three, that resolution is not tangible enough for you actually to do anything about it’s like I must get fish. Well, I’ll leave it the next week, because it’s all a bit too vague. Whereas if you actually take that resolution, say, Okay, what does that actually mean? Which particular aspect of fitness? Am I looking at? Is it swimming isn’t running, etc. So even in your head, you might know, yeah, I’m going to start running, but then kind of drill down into what what do I actually need to do to make that happen, I might need to get new running shoes, I might need to join a running club, maybe I’ll download a running app, I’ll look for some race dates in the middle of the year and maybe work backwards and make a training plan. So now you’re into a list of very tangible actions. And it’s much easier to pick one of those things off every day or every week throughout January. So that you’re starting to actually move towards something very productive. So taking it from that high level down into a plan, which is really just a brainstorm of the actions that you need to take, that can really help you get started and help you maybe map out when you’re going to do those things. And then the other thing with resolutions that I would encourage people to do is ask yourself, “what will stop me doing this? What will pull my plans off track?”. Maybe it’s something you tried to do last year, and you didn’t stick to it. So kind of reflect on that and say, “Well, what were the barriers? What got in the way?” And maybe it’s I was trying to run in the mornings and I just didn’t have the motivation, you know, getting up early in the morning. So it just never happened. So then reflect on that and say, “right, well, I’m going to do something different this time”. So try and give yourself the best chance of success by considering what could get in the way of that, what the barriers could be, and what you can do to avoid that, so you have a better chance of achieving that resolution.
Kevin Murphy 30:11 Yeah, make it easy as possible as well. So to take Atomic Habits that James Clear book, he has a few steps, but one of them being make it easy. Or if you’re trying to give up a habit, make it hard. Like, yes, don’t have alcohol in the house if you’re giving up alcohol, make that hard. Or, conversely make it easy to give it up. Are you giving up smoking and “I only smoke when I’m drinking or in a social situation”, well, maybe you need to not go to the pub for January. And yeah, make it easy. Don’t put yourself in the environment.
Moira I had to ask; the Productivity Wall it’s there behind you. I noticed there’s nothing on it. This is a post-2pm call this has been so you had everything done in the morning, or what’s the story with that?
Moira Dunne 30:51 Yeah everything is done. Off the wall. It’s used really for planning things but I would often put up, as I mentioned earlier, some post it notes with the key priorities for the week. Or it could be just reminders as things crop up. Or I often use it to plan something out like we talked about resolutions, breaking down the high level resolution, break it down, I’d often use the stickies. So it is more of a brainstorm wall than one that has the plan there all the time. So tends to change a lot. I love having a space where I can stick things off because it helps with the visual. And I’ve even used this with people now online, you know, because even if we’re discussing something, we can take the stickies and put them up behind. So the visual tends to spark creativity, I think.
Kevin Murphy 31:39 I suppose your clients, if the client sees the same post it on the wall behind you next week, they’re keeping you accountable to it.
Moira Dunne 31:46 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, accountability is key as well.
Kevin Murphy 31:49 Exactly. Well, Moira, it’s been a really, really good discussion. There’s a tonne of tools and techniques. And even for myself, I’ve picked up a lot and been motivated to, to get myself back on track with some of your techniques for for January in the New Year’s resolutions. So where can people learn more from you, and I understand you the course coming up? Not released yet, but it won’t be too long after these videos are up…
Moira Dunne 32:14 So my website is BeProductive.ie. And that’s a good space for lots of productivity resources, and inspiration and motivation and tips. And there’s a resource section in it with lots of templates that people can download that can help them to plan out their week, to set priorities. We’ve got also got some planners there around goal setting and resolutions, which could be useful in the new year. There’s as a blog section as well. So there’s blogs on a lot of the topics we discussed today. So if people want more detail, particularly around email and how to manage the interaction with email… So you can connect in there. Also, you can follow me on the social media channels, so I’d be pretty active on Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Facebook and Instagram to a lesser extent, but we’re there and have a presence. So connect in there and you can keep up to date on what we’re doing. And then as you mentioned, Kevin in the new year, we’re just finalising a self paced, masterclass, that is a course that people can do online, they can sign up for it. It has six modules within it. And lots of tools and technology and templates to help people kind of change their productivity approach. So it’s entitled “How to Turn busy into productive”, so gives people lots of different tips on how to move from that busy working mode into a more productive modes. As I say the six modules, but it also has the option of a coaching session with me at the end of the masterclass. So while the learning is self paced, then you can have that one to one coaching session at the end, which gives people a chance to make their own individual plans going forward. So that will be coming on stream on the website early next year.
Kevin Murphy 34:08 Sounds awesome. Check out BeProductive.ie for more on that. And I know you have a newsletter there as well. So I’m sure you’ll fill people in who are subscribed to that.
Moira Dunne 34:17 Exactly. Yeah.
Kevin Murphy 34:18 It’s been great talking to you Moira. So thanks very much and looking forward to our next discussion whenever it is.
Moira Dunne 34:24 Great. Thanks, Kevin. I really enjoyed it and best of luck with your video series.
Listary is a fantastic and free tool for quickly finding any file or folder on your Windows computer.
Watch the video or read the transcription below.
Hey, today I want to share with you a free piece of online software that has saved me a lot of time and could save you a lot of time too if you’re using Windows.
So if you’ve ever tried to search for something on Windows, maybe something you’ve downloaded recently and it didn’t go into the Downloads folder you expected, or you’re looking for a folder itself, which is deep within a sub folder on some hidden drive somewhere, you know that it can be very difficult to find these things on Windows sometimes. For example, I have a folder called ‘Video Editing’ and if I use the Windows key to bring up the search bar and I start typing “video editing”, I’m not going to find that folder. Windows doesn’t really do it.
So there’s this great download called Listary at Listary.com, and you would download that and set it up. Then you can choose a keyboard shortcut to bring it up. So for example, I’ve got Alt + A configured to bring up the search bar [which is] very slim, a very easy search bar. If I type “video editing” in there. You can see it’s got all these video editor folders… tonnes of results already and it’s super super quick!
Video Editing is the folder I mentioned that I want to get. And so there’s my Loom, my OBS, my video editing…
If I downloaded something recently, similarly, and I didn’t find it in my downloads folder, that might be because I’ve accidentally saved it into the last place I saved something else like an audio file on a video that I need to edit and I’ve downloaded some sound effects that might be in a totally different folder and the recent PDF that I just downloaded might have gone into that folder, because I forgot to change where it was downloading to.
So for example, if I wanted to find my “Super-Productive” guide (which you can download from my website or check the description below) I have it in a few places on this computer… shared on Dropbox… so I can right click on the results and go directly to the folder instead of opening just the file. And now I know exactly where it is. I could cut it out of here, bring it somewhere else, copy it…
So, Listary has been extremely helpful to me in getting around the computer, finding files that I’ve lost. So you can go to Listary.com and download the free version. It’s free for personal use, not for business use, or you can get Listary Pro which is also extremely cheap and you get lifetime access. It’s not a subscription. So it’s fantastic value and a great tool. I highly recommend it!
Contact details for Jennifer Van Uffelen on Linktree.
Audio Transcript
pt 1/3
Kevin:
Hello, everyone. So I’m speaking today with Jennifer Van Uffelen, from Belgium, and who’s living in County Wexford, Ireland.
Jennifer is a qualified life and workplace coach and NLP practitioner, adding neuro wellness and mindfulness elements into her practice. She founded JVU Coaching to enable people to connect to themselves, organise their thoughts, and find clarity and focus. With a real passion for self development and growth. She wants to provide people with the tools to fulfil their full potential in life.
At the moment, she’s pursuing a Diploma in Leadership and Health & Wellbeing. Jennifer and I met on LinkedIn and we’ve been chatting back and forth and found that we had a number of mutual topics that were suitable enough to stick on a LinkedIn or YouTube video. So we’re going to just record a conversation today and see what comes out of this that might be helpful for you. So, Jennifer, hello!
Jennifer:
Hi, thanks, Kevin, for having me as well. And yes, we have been chatting for a while. So I’m sure we’ll have something productive to come up with.
Oh, actually, this is extra special because Jennifer’s also the first video interview I have on this new channel. I have one audio interview already. But this is the first of hopefully, monthly video interviews. So let’s see how it goes.
So, first question for Jennifer; we were talking about how you work with your clients on the topic of productivity, which is where we crossover a lot. When it comes to your clients becoming more productive, and achieving the tasks and the goals that you’ve set out with them, what are the main things that keep coming up again and again, that you tend to work on with clients. Is it procrastination, routines… what really stands out?
Yeah, I think actually, procrastination is a big one, because people kind of have this feeling that “I should be doing this, I should be doing that”. So the job gets really big in their heads, which is kind of blocking them from taking action. So I think a lot of what I work on is to get them to check in with themselves and see where are actually the priorities. So making a list of what are the things that need to be done, checking in when is a good time to work on them as well, and then working on the mindset around it.
So if there’s a lot of “shoulds”, and a high inner critic coming up, you know, a lot of inner voices of “I’m not doing well enough, I’m not working hard enough”, it’s kind of stopping action altogether. So it’s really connecting to possibly having some mindfulness techniques on connecting to their own breath, checking in with their body, kind of calming down.
So if there’s high levels of stress, starting to recognise that as well, stepping away from that, and coming back to the task when they’re feeling fresh and recharged to actually tackle it. So I think a lot of the procrastination is often related to that thought process. So thinking a lot about what needs to be done, but not really taking action. So it’s about breaking it up into smaller action steps. And then starting with step one, so starting with a smaller step forwards, which gives that sense of achievement, you know, which gives a good feeling, you start to see the progress as well in what you need to do.
So that kind of motivates some forward movement, going to step two, and really breaking it up so that you can keep making progress, and you don’t let it pile up into a really big job that you don’t start until you have all the tools ready to do the big job all at once. Because then often, it gets procrastinated. And it’s this job that’s like hanging over you like a big cloud where it’s usually not really that big, it can, you know, look much bigger then in their own heads.
And I think apart from that, what’s really important is to find a routine that works. So when you’re finding, for example, in the morning when you need to start work, let’s say you don’t really take time for breakfast, you know, you kind of want to rush into starting your work, finding out what is it that you actually need maybe apart from, you know, your work set up to be productive for work. Maybe you need to implement some exercise, maybe going for a walk in the morning. Maybe you need to have a good breakfast so that you’re not actually sitting there being hungry.
So that’s what mindfulness can help with as well is just to become more aware of your bodily cues so that you can fill those needs when you need to, and you actually have your full energy ready to do your work in a productive way as well when you’re doing the tasks and you’re not being distracted by other things that you haven’t really met so you know, figuring out, do you work best when you do exercise the morning, do you want to do exercise after work to switch off from work? Do you need to go for a walk to have a break in your free time?
So it’s really finding out what are the things that work best for you and sticking to that so knowing what works and then actually do those things, rather than avoiding them and sitting at your desk, procrastinating and not really taking any action. Just hoping that the work will happen on its own, because you thought about it so much….
pt 2/3
Kevin:
So Jennifer, we spoke a second ago about how you would help your clients figure out the best working structure for themselves for their energy for their focus. And then before we recorded this call, we were chatting a bit about an example, where people should check in with themselves on that, kind of realising what their best structure would be, and what might occur when, you know, a superior manager comes to you and says, “I want you to do it this way at this time”, or maybe they’re getting back to the office, and they’re getting their productive schedules that they’ve found themselves in the last year are getting moved around a bit. So I wanted to ask you, what sort of boundaries could you set? Or what sort of control could you come back with when someone’s asking you to do something in a way that that actually doesn’t suit your better energy, your better work or the better routines, you’ve found for yourself? In the last year?
Jennifer:
So with clients, it’s really important for them to check in with their days, and if there’s frustration in certain parts of their role is to figure out, you know, what is making it difficult in that moment, and is it something in their daily structure that they could change? Or is it something that they could implement in their day? So let’s say if it’s straight after lunch, is there something that they could do on their lunch break, to give themselves a break away, to switch off from work, and to get back to their their work re-energised? Is it certain coffee breaks, that actually tend to be a distraction, you know, is the caffeine not really sitting well, so it’s making them really anxious when they’re having to sit down and write a report. So it’s very simple things and it sounds really straightforward but it’s often things people don’t really think about to connect to themselves and check in with themselves to see, “how does this actually work for me”, if it’s something that comes up every day or every week, can I change that around, and can I build a structure around that to really be productive in this type of task that I’m doing? What do I need to be successful in that?
Kevin:
There’re two things I’d love to expand on there. So when you said, checking in with yourself to find that, what does checking in with yourself mean, practically? Is that a simple turn of phrase where you’re like, think about it? Or do you mean, take Saturday morning sometime and really look at how you worked last week? So like, what does “checking in with yourself” Sort of mean to you and your clients?
Jennifer:
That’s a good question, actually, Kevin, and I think it kind of depends on what you’re looking at. I suppose from a mindfulness perspective, a really good way to check in with yourelf is to observe yourself. So one of the really important parts of checking in with yourself is also not to judge yourself. Because when you check in you might think “oh I haven’t done this, I haven’t done that”, that “I should be doing this” so it’s really not judging yourself on where you are or how you are performing but observing yourself and becoming more aware so that you can implement changes to improve that. So that’s a really important critical part; to leave that inner critic aside, so park that and really bring up your inner observer…
Kevin:
… to ask you; does that mean journaling? Does that mean meditating after the work day every day or taking a monthly review? What might it look like in a real practical sense for people watching?
Jennifer:
Yeah, good to make it practical as well. And I was just gonna say, you could write that down, if that’s what you prefer, I think for me, journaling can be really powerful! And there’s actually a lot of research done on the difference in when you’re thinking or when you’re talking, or when you’re typing out stuff, or when you’re writing. So it’s really that connection to your pen on paper and writing down your thoughts or your observations, it can be really, you know, help you to move and process the words that you’re putting down.
And I think one of the things that came up for me lately is that you can think many thoughts at the same time, but you can only really write down one word at a time so it makes it more specific and it helps you to organise your thoughts as well.
So in Mindfulness, what you could do is:
1) Write down, what are your thoughts? And without really judging what’s coming up, and you can free flow write, as well, and just write down any thoughts that are in there. What’s on top of mind?
2) Then write down your emotions. So what is it that you’re feeling? You know, what resonates with you in that moment? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling excited? What’s your emotional state?
3) And then also write down what are your physical sensations? So what is your body telling you, trying to really break them up and split them up. So observe them separately, and over time, it could help you to maybe find links in between and see is there something that’s affecting each other. When you’re writing down that you’re really anxious, and you’re writing down that you’re really hungry, you know, maybe it’s a sign, you should have some lunch in your day. And that’s just a really simple example. But it’s really becoming aware of yourself and what works and what you could change in your day to make your day more productive and more successful.
pt 3/3
Kevin:
…the second was back to those those workplace boundaries and dealing with your managers and knowing your own best practices. So in a practical sense, if I was your manager, and I said, “Okay, Jennifer, I think we’re going to be better productive as a team if we all check in. We’re gonna have like a one hour check in every morning from 9 to 10am and that’ll set us up well, because I’ve heard of this thing called Scrum and, I think, one hour is better than 15 minutes, actually, so we’re going to do it that way”. And now you’re thinking, “actually, personally, I find I work very well, from 9 to 10, or 9 to 11, when I’m just focused on my own stuff that I need to get done. And I feel more productive, because it’s done before we get into all our meetings and distractions and differing priorities and new priorities.” and you know you work better that way, how would you push back against me who’s basically just said, “I think we’re going to do this.” and in in my position of authority, do you just have to say, “Oh, yes, sir.” or how do you come back against me on that, knowing for yourself that it’s a bad idea?
Jennifer:
Yeah. And I think one important thing to keep in mind is to obviously, when it considers a team and a manager, is to look at, what’s best for for the entire team. So obviously, you can’t accommodate one person in how they work best if that would go against the whole team. So I could answer the question for me personally, but what would be helpful maybe, is also to look at how would I help people in general with that conversation? And what I would say is to check in again, with themselves, so when the request comes, to have a look at what’s the request? What’s required?
So it’s a 9 to 10am meeting every day to check in. What’s the purpose of that meeting? What will be agreed? What is needed to be successful in the day for the whole team. So really looking at the outcomes of that meeting, and then the outcomes of the the team in general, and then the outcomes of the clients work specifically as well, and really evaluate that situation. I would say, have a tactic for how you will approach that conversation. In many situations people might be unsatisfied with a decision of a manager, but it wouldn’t be helpful to be giving out about a situation, it would be helpful to come up with a solution.
So have a solution in your head as well to step to your manager and say, “Look, I actually feel that that whole team would be more productive in this certain way”. So let’s review; what are the tasks that need to be done, and is there a meeting required first thing in the morning to align certain actions for the day? What’s the purpose of that meeting? What is coming out of that? And then what do people need in order to actually do the work they need to do throughout their day? Is that time in the morning necessary to do certain calls or to get specific work done, and would this person be much more productive in that time to do that work by themselves? It will only be in the manager’s benefit to know about that.
So when the manager is setting up that meeting, they’re thinking of what would benefit the team in general, to get all the work done. So if that’s not going to be the case where this meeting is happening, it’s not really in the manager’s benefit! So it’s really just looking at what will be the outcome of saying yes to this request, or no, and if you are planning on saying no, what is the suggestion that you’ll make? Maybe you will find that “actually, this time, for me, it’s really important to get all my work done. Usually, by 11 o’clock, I have all the main parts for the day done and then I review new projects that I need to work on in the afternoon. Would there be an opportunity to review the timing of that meeting, to maybe a time in the afternoon to check in?”.
So it’s really about being really clear on how you work well, how the team works well together, what the team needs to communicate in a meeting and what everyone needs to do their work. Because if the whole team is relying on you spreading out the work in the morning, nothing much is going to happen if you don’t have a meeting. So finding the things that maybe are able to be communicated by email, is it something that you could put together as a plan of action for at the end of the day and send that out so people have it first thing in the morning. So it would be a situation to look at on a case by case basis but always focus on the outcome. What would be in the benefit of the team, and of the manager as well? And communicate yourself that way and set a boundary that way, in a way that’s beneficial to the manager as well so that they see that you’re coming at it with a full heart with ambition and with the will to have your work done. Not just because you’re not interested in doing this meeting.
Kevin:
And any good manager, they’re not looking to be ‘obeyed’, they’re looking for the best results. So, being able to voice your feedback on it, not as a refusal, but as a suggestion, or “actually, from my point of view, we might be better off doing it last thing in the day for half an hour, would probably be enough. What do you think and here are my reasons.” And if the decision is still “no, it’s got to be 9 to 10.” then just be a team player and that’s what it’s got to be because maybe the team or all over the world, and it’s 9 to 10 for you but for most of the team, that might actually be the last thing in the day and it’s just got to be suffered, and… well “suffered” might be the wrong word, but it’s just got to be done, essentially, and hurts you a little more than it hurt someone else’s productivity. but you’re the smaller part of the team in this case, so it’s the best overall decision – let’s go.
Jennifer:
Yeah, really about working together as well and not seeing it as someone that is telling you what to do but someone that is enabling you to do your best work so that they are successful as well, because that’s the main purpose of a manager anyway.
Kevin:
Great reframe actually. They’re not cracking the whip, they’ve a different objective, like, that’s the other side of that coin. Well, Jen, it’s been great talking to you this morning. I’ll put contact details for you down in the description of the video but if you’d like to say them aloud for anyone here, who should get in contact with you and how will they do it?
Jennifer:
Yeah, thanks so much, Kevin, for having me. It was a lovely conversation. I think we can keep just exchanging ideas and yeah, it’s some food for thought as well. So people can find me on my Link Tree, if you just look for my name, Jennifer Van Uffelen, you can find me on Instagram, on Facebook, I’m most active on LinkedIn, or you could email me on Jennifer@jvucoaching.com. And really, for anyone that has maybe troubles with their inner critic, that lose their productivity during their day because they’re being distracted, and people that want to implement change in their lives and that want to connect to themselves better so that they can just have a more fulfilling life and connect to others in return as well.
Kevin:
So, just about everybody, that sounds like. So everyone should get in touch with Jennifer…
Jennifer:
Everyone!
Kevin:
…and sure maybe we’ll do this again sometime. But it’s been great having these videos done with you and – have a good one!
Loom screen capture software is a very fast and simple way to communicate effectively and asynchronously for remote teams, and to regain some of the “human-ness” that we miss from working in the office.
Loom screen capture software is a very fast and simple way to communicate effectively and asynchronously for remote teams, and to regain some of the “human-ness” that we miss from working in the office.
Watch the video or read the transcription below.
Hi! Today I’m going to talk about how to use Loom for more productive communication between remote teams.
There are 4 reasons that I find Loom great for remote workers.
The first is that it’s asynchronous, so you can record a video and post a link to your teammates or your clients for them to check out later in their own time, and they can get back to you with any questions.
The second reason is that Loom’s clear video format allows you to quickly explain things that might take a lot longer and with a lot more back and forth through emails or through Slack messages. Instead, you can just quickly show what you’re pointing to, like something that’s wrong on a web page or a new section of a report, without having to try to explain that by typing the words through an email.
The next reason that I find it great for remote teams is that you get back some of what is lost by not being in the office. And that you can see and hear your co-workers or your clients and they don’t just become another text interface. You get more personality out of the video than you would just by back and forth and emails. I really enjoy receiving Loom videos. I don’t really care what they’re about, I just like to see what the person I’m working with is doing; what they’re what they’re up to that day – whether it looks like it’s cloudy outside, etc. It’s just an added bit of human interaction that we’ve been missing.
And the fourth reason I like it is that it’s just fast and simple to use. You can very quickly set up the video and share your full screen or share part of your screen with your own image, optionally. You can change the size of your own webcam display, and be showing the rest of your screen off…
So, to get started, you want to go to Loom.com/download and get either the Chrome extension if you use the Chrome browser, or download the desktop app. It’s worth noting that Loom is completely free but with a five minute time limit on your recordings (which I find is kind of a good thing actually, because it makes you be more concise and get the message across without rambling). You can pay for the business tier to remove that time limit, of course. The free version is also limited to your 100 most recent videos. So you can make 100 recordings, which is fine for most people, but if you want to retain older recordings (if you have them as part of your documentation, for example) you’re going to have to either pay to save those, or you can download those videos and save them somewhere else like YouTube or internal servers.
[Recommend watching the video for the following section]
So now, if you’re using the chrome version, you’ll click the plugin icon. You’ll now have a box that looks like this, where you can select what you’re going to record the tab or the full screen, whether you’re going to have the webcam in the corner, or just use the screen or screen and the camera only, which microphone and camera you’re going to use and a few Advanced Options, then you start recording and it warns you about the five minute limit.
I’m going to record the entire scree. It might ask you for permission to use the microphone or the camera first time but and then you’re going.
So now I’m recording a five minute video. Once you finish recording this, you can cancel obviously, or pause the video, but once you finished recording, it’ll automatically close the recording and take you to the relevant page for that video. If you were happy with what you did, you can immediately copy that video link and put it into chat or an email and give it to somebody. You can also trim the video if you want to remove some of the start or the end (or the middle). It’s a very basic editor. You can also change the name of the video, or add a description if you like.
So, it’s that simple. Obviously, video processing and stuff needs to happen, but that’s not happening on your own computer. That’s a very expensive process and it’s just happening on the servers. It’s done very quickly. As soon as you stop recording, you basically have a link you can share immediately, which is much faster than recording it on your own hard drive, then editing it and re-uploading it to YouTube or somewhere else.
So that’s the last reason I really like Loom – how simple it actually is to use and to share.
I hope that was useful. I do recommend checking out Loom or its alternatives for asynchronous communication between remote teams. I’ve found it really great working with clients and my own teammates recently, and I fully recommend it!
The software that you use for productivity are not as important as the systems that you use. See the video or read the transcription below.
Full Transcription Below
Recently a client asked me “what’s some good software to make me more productive at work?”. And to that, I had to say, “it depends”.
What are you trying to do? What problems are you having? Because software is only a tool. It’s the systems that are more important. It’s how you put that software together; how it fits into your day and into your workflow [that’s important].
The system is the way you do things. It’s your habits. It’s the processes. It’s the way you communicate with your clients, your customers, and your team. It’s how you manage your work, your day, your energy during the day. And software is just a part of that system. No matter how good it is or how expensive the productivity software is, is not going to give you a system. And that’s because no software is complete. No tool is perfect. You can’t build an entire house with just a hammer or even a multi-tool.
No one thing can get you the perfect combination [of features] for your work because everybody’s work is different and no company could make enough money designing the perfect tool for just one customer. So you’re going to have to integrate several different pieces of software. Even if you’ve got the one almost perfect productivity system, you’re still going to get some requests in through email.
Most email clients nowadays like Gmail or Outlook have integrated task tracking software that’s good at reminding you about unanswered emails or responses or setting a To Do list based on the words it finds in an email, and while that’s very impressive it’s not a complete system either. It can’t scale very well and it can’t cover every eventuality. So you’re going to need something that you can trust fully to be the core of your system.
In fact, I’d almost argue the only complete software is something like Windows, Linux, or the Apple operating systems. They do literally everything. But what are you going to do with that? That won’t make you more productive at all. You’re going to have to get more specific than that!
So let’s get a bit more specific. I just mentioned a few softwares. So I’m a big fan of Google Sheets. I’ve used Notion and I think it’s great, but I already had my own system, so it didn’t add anything to my workflow and so I stopped using Notion. todoist is great as well but a similar story; I already had my systems, largely based on Google sheets, and so those are perfect for me.
That’s because Google sheets or Microsoft Excel (Sheets is free) are incredibly flexible. If you look up some code, or you’re able to code, you can go even further with them, but even the standard spreadsheets are very flexible. There’s a lot you can do with them, but you have to set it up your own way in your own system.
And then it might not even add that much for you if you’re someone working on your own and you’ve already some perfect pen and paper systems, you work well in a written diary, maybe you use the Bullet Journal/ “Bujo” techniques, then maybe Sheets wouldn’t even add much for you if there’s not much number crunching to be done in your work.
So I’m saying you need to get more specific to the problem. So, okay. What about some software aimed at improving your focus? There are browser plugins like StayFocusd or News Feed Eradicator and they can be great at limiting your use of social media or other websites.
StayFocusd can block anything. For example, you just manually set it and it gives you a certain amount of time for the day that you’re allowed to spend on that site and it can be very useful, but then that’s good productivity software IF you were having a problem with browsing websites. If your systems are already habitual enough and disciplined, and you didn’t have problems with browsing the wrong websites during work hours, then those softwares won’t add anything to your day.
When it comes to tracking your time and billable hours for clients, you could be using something like Clockify or Harvest, and they can be great, particularly if you’ve more clients or you want to integrate the stopwatch directly with billing the client automatically. But you could equally be using a pen and paper and a stopwatch very well for years and have no interest in this type of software because your system is already in place and it’s working perfectly well for you.
So to answer that client’s question – what’s some good software that could make them productive? Well it’s whatever fixes the specific problem that you’re having, whatever saves you the most time, and whatever integrates the best with the existing systems that you have.
How Open Loops Destroy your ability to Focus, and what to do about it.
Full Transcription below
Hi, how’s it going? I hope you’re well.
So I’m trying something new today. I’ve been a blog writer on and off for the last number of years, but I’ve never done a video blog or “Vlog”, if you will. So welcome to this… This is what that is [actually this is the transcription of that vlog, but let’s not be pedantic].
What I wanted to talk about today is open loops and how they destroy your ability to focus.
So what are open loops?
They’re ongoing processes that don’t have a resolution that are taking up space in our mind. So if you use the analogy of a computer, it’s like multiple browser tabs being open that are each consuming some of the computer’s working memory. You might also have a few apps running in the background, maybe even some larger programs like video editors that are still open, not being used, but they’re just holding something that needs to be finished that you haven’t saved and closed down on the computer. That’s all using the computer’s RAM and it’s reducing the computer’s ability to do work.
A very similar process happens in our own minds when we’re trying to hang on to too many thoughts at the same time as focusing on the one thing we really want to be doing right now. So for example, these might be; you have to remember to add honey to your shopping list and you’ve to remember to call back Dave later. You don’t have these things written down anywhere and in the meantime, you’re trying to just spend a half an hour to get this one job finished that you’re trying to focus on all that [distraction]’s still going on.
And there might be several, several other things as well to add to that. So open loops can really reduce our ability to focus on what we’re trying to get done and really just make any job take a lot longer.
This is also called the Zeigarnik Effect after the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik who studied it.
So we want to be able to close these open loops and get back some of our focus.
So what would we do to diminish that?
The key thing here is to have systems that you can trust where your brain knows that those open tasks, even though they’re not finished yet, they’re ‘handled’. They’re okay to forget about. That’s the point you want to get to.
So for example, if I’m focusing on preparing the notes for making this video and something else comes to mind, like I have to remember to buy something downtown later, I have a little space on my daily tracker for notes and another one for distractions. The thoughts that come up and derail me from what I’m trying to focus on, those will get written down there.
And I know that once I’m finished this task, or once the timer goes off for the Pomodoro technique I’m doing, then I’m going to take those notes and put them on my actual to-do list, and I know that from there they’re going to get handled. I can trust that system. I’ve been using it long enough that once I write it down, it’s just out of my mind and I can focus back on what I was doing.
The “Two Minute Rule”
Now, if you’re not in the middle of a Pomodoro sprint or some other timed work and you’re in your daily life, you have a bit of flexibility, you’re cooking dinner or whatever, there’s something called the “Two Minute Rule”.
It’s that if a task that just came to mind takes less than two minutes to complete (maybe it’s putting away the mail, filing something into your filing cabinet or sending a quick text or remind somebody about something); if you can finish that task and close that loop in two minutes or less – you should just do it immediately. There’s no need to write it down. There’s no need to add it to a planner. Just get it done. Get it out of the way and close that loop as soon as possible.
Credit where credit’s due; David Allen talked about that in his book, Getting Things Done, (the two minute rule). So full credit to him for that idea. It’s become widespread thanks to the popularity of the “GTD” (getting things done) method over the last 20 years.
Delegate to close Open Loops
And the third way that we can handle open loops, or at least some of us can, is to Delegate it. Depending on what the task that comes to mind is, again, it might be better to write just that quick note if you’re in the middle of the timed sprint, but then after that sprint, you want to delegate it to someone who can have responsibility for getting that task done. And it might only take two minutes to delegate if you have employees, or if you have a virtual assistant that you trust, or maybe your kids if it’s a household task, you want to just ask them to get it done.
It comes back to the first thing I said, which is that you have to have systems that you trust to get it done. Otherwise the loop is still open.
So if your employees, or your virtual assistants are completely reliable, then fantastic! You can trust that that job’s going to get done. I then used the example of delegating it to your kids. Now, if your kids are fully trustworthy to finish whatever task you’ve given them, clean their room or whatever, great, you can trust that that open loop is now closed.
Otherwise you might need a new system. If you’re going to have to follow up on that later. It’s not a closed loop. But maybe you have a system for that where every evening at 9:30 PM (if these are teenage kids), you check in with them that their chores are done. You just have to ask them to do it once. Then you come back later and ask “is it done or is it not?”. Maybe there’s accountability for that. Maybe there isn’t. Just a quick, random example of a way you could handle that…
So that’s it! Just a few thoughts on what open loops are and how they derail us from our focused work and some thoughts on how to close them. I hope that’s useful for you guys, all the best.
Talk to you soon.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of this new format.
What follows is the transcript of an interview I conducted nearly two years ago, so in 2019, pre-COVID. I was speaking to Treasa Spragg about “struggle porn”, sleep, naps, deep work, and getting the most important thing done each day.
Of, if you prefer, listen to the audio version.
The audio was recorded in her car by the side of the road in Dublin city, and it was intended only as the basis for a written blog post – so this is in no way professional audio quality. You can occasionally hear other cars, and we even had to move the car ourselves at one point.
I’m also not a professional interviewer (nor am I trying to be). So… excuses made… But I’ve decided to make the audio (and its transcription) available now anyway as there’s a lot of great wisdom that Treasa shared here, that people struggling with sleep and work in 2021 will find helpful.
As many people, myself included, prefer to listen to an interview rather than read it, I’ve provided it in audio format on YouTube, with its transcription available here. The transcription is of course more searchable, for quotes, etc.
So! Now, please enjoy this interview with Treasa Spragg.
Kevin:
Hi! So, who are you and what do you do?
Treasa:
I’m Treasa Spragg. I am the CEO of Revolution Project Ltd, and I basically get people moving and then I help them to sleep optimally.
Kevin:
We were going to talk about struggle porn, so, what exactly is struggle porn? Where does it come from, and how is it at odds with science?
Treasa:
Do you know what’s hilarious? The guy who’s responsible for wrecking our sleep is… Of course, the term struggle porn did not exist back then, but in 1879 when Edison created the first light bulb, he set us all off on this whole thing of thinking that we could use the hours of darkness to be “productive.” He famously used to say that he only needed three or four hours of sleep a night and that we shouldn’t be focusing on losing sleep, we should be focusing on a better use of that time. But since then, you’ve had so many people, unfortunately, mostly males of no particular age, but who do the whole hustle and grind thing and think, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. You can get by on three, four or five hours a night.”
Treasa:
We’ve had some famous people like Margaret Thatcher, Trump, people like that who sleep very little, but all of the scientific research shows you’re going to be chronically sleep-deprived if you have less than six hours. Seven to eight is optimal for the majority of people. There are ways to find out precisely how much you need, but most of the global population would fall between seven and eight hours. More than nine is as detrimental to your health as less than six.
Kevin:
I wasn’t aware that more was bad… And is it true that there’s a fraction of 1% of people who do get by and are fully healthy on two hours, three hours?
Treasa:
There are people that are called super sleepers. It’s a genetic anomaly and there have been very, very few of these people in the world, but they genuinely only need an hour and a half…
Kevin:
Which is one sleep cycle, is that right?
Treasa:
That’s only one sleep cycle, yeah. That’s genuinely all they need. There is an interesting opposite phenomenon called the fatal familial insomnia, that is genetic, so it hits and it has only appeared, I think, in Italian families, where it just has a sudden onset. It could be in your 30s, and very, very quickly, basically, you develop really bad insomnia. And then, of course, you have all the resultant health side-effects, including dementia and people die! That’s sort of the opposite end of the scale. But most people who say that they can get by on three and four hours, if you put them in a sleep clinic, and if you actually got some researchers to do cognitive tests, you’d find that that isn’t the case. The Sleep Doctor, that’s his title, in the U.S., his sleep cycle is only 78 minutes. It’s rather funny for a sleep doctor, but he actually only needs five of those cycles, so he does get more time in his day than the average person.
Kevin:
Right. Because it’s five times 12?
Treasa:
It’s, well, five times 78 minutes.
Kevin:
But he’s saving five times 12, because an average sleep cycle is 90 minutes, so he’s saving an hour per night?
Treasa:
Oh, yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah. He gets more bang out of his day. You need five sleep cycles per night. Very unique things happen in the sleep cycles, and even the way the way that we have more deep sleep in the early part of the night, which is why it’s a really good idea to try to get to bed around 10:00 as opposed to midnight or 2:00 AM. And then we have more of the dreaming. We spend more time in dreaming in the later stages… But even the light sleep, particularly the light sleep and wakefulness a couple of hours before you wake up are also really important.
Treasa:
The different stages all have different purposes. I mean, scientists are still asking, “Why do we sleep?”. There are still so many questions around, why do we sleep? We’re only just beginning to find out things about dreams and things like that. But yeah, we need the five cycles.
Treasa:
Nick Littlehales works with football teams, Olympic cycling teams, all of this kind of stuff. He will say, “Look, it’s not optimal, but if you must, then you can get by with four good nights and then three nights where you’re only getting four cycles. But you make sure you adjust your time for going to bed and waking up so that you get four cycles.” And then you have what he calls a “controlled recovery period” the next day where you’re getting a full cycle in optimal conditions.
Kevin:
So these three and five hours sleepers are just supplementing with coffee during the week, and then they’re crashing for most of Saturday and Sunday morning. And then they’re effectively jet lagged come Monday.
Treasa:
Yeah, and it doesn’t actually work. You get into a really bad cycle with trying to offset your tiredness with caffeine. You’re going to go into just a really bad cycle because all caffeine does is block your sleep drive and then it’ll keep you up because it can hang about. It has a half-life of seven to eight hours depending on your physiology.
Kevin:
So, don’t take coffee in the afternoon…
Treasa:
Yeah. It’s best to have no coffee after 2:00PM. I mean you do get some anomalies of course. You always will. We’re all slightly different physiologically, but the general rule is [no coffee after 2pm]
Kevin:
Do you follow your own advice? You get [five sleep cycles] even with kids; [no coffee]?
Treasa:
Oh, yeah, I almost don’t drink coffee at all. I’ll have a decaf sometimes, but I really have to hunt down a decaf that hasn’t been chemically treated to be decaffeinated. But yeah, no, herbal teas, and turmeric lattes, and decaf tea after… Yeah, about two o’clock.
Kevin:
Yeah, I’ve never been a coffee drinker. Although recently, I found a jar in the press after someone moved out.
Treasa:
Oh, funny, yeah.
Kevin:
I was really tired one day. I was like, “I’ll try it.” And because I don’t drink it, it’s like-
Treasa:
Oh, yeah, it has a huge effect on you.
Kevin:
Yeah! Initially. But then, it’s just going to wear off.
Treasa:
It does. Well, it basically blocks the tiredness signal in your brain. When it wears off then-
Kevin:
…it doesn’t make you less tired, it’s just that you don’t realize it for a while.
Treasa:
Exactly. It just blocks that information from you. And then when it skulks off a way to its corner, all of a sudden you get this message like, “Whoa. You’re this tired.” Instead of the tiredness creeping up on you gradually.
Treasa:
Once you actually realize, “Look, it’s been telling us fake news for years essentially.” That’s what coffee has been doing. See, a lot of us, we’re all ritualized. Every habit, whether it’s a good habit or bad habit, it’s a ritual, so it’s something that we’ve become so used to doing. It does take… I say to people, “Don’t worry about shifting something by five or 15 minutes. It might feel as nothing, but once you’ve done it for a month, you’ve actually made a massive difference.”
Treasa:
I will have people who are like, “I love an espresso after dinner at eight o’clock at night.” I literally just ask them to bring it back in 15-minute chunks at a time. Or, if their dinner is always late, then just instead of having the espresso, moving it on to something that’s a substitute that they actually enjoy, so that you don’t have to do it in one fell swoop. I find that that’s like New Year’s resolutions. You’ll say all of these things, and then it’s too much too fast. Psychologically, we don’t like pain.
Kevin:
Funny, I generally am a cold turkey person. I’m a huge believer in habits as well, like if I’m learning something difficult, like a new piece of music or something. I don’t know when I’ll get there, but I’m going to do a little bit every day and I’ll get there. But then whether the thing is like, “Oh, I take cold showers now so that’s what I do every day.” I’m not doing it once a week, and then twice a week-
Treasa:
Yeah, you’re doing it every day.
Kevin:
Yeah, straight away.
Treasa:
Excellent. Did you read some Wim Hof stuff or how did you get into the cold showers?
Kevin:
I had heard things about it, but even conflicting things like, “Cold showers are great to wake you up, cold showers are great before bed to get you to sleep.” I was like, “No, come on, [they can’t both be true].” But in the end, I was trying to get some work done at 10:00 PM or something. I was really tired. I was sitting in the chair. I was thinking, “I can’t, I can’t. What will wake me up? Splash the face with water! It doesn’t feel like enough. I need it all over me. I need to really cool down. Do you know what? I will try this [cold shower thing]. I’ll do 10 seconds. I’ll make it 10 seconds.
I started the habit then, and I’ve continued it every morning instead of coffee. I rarely do it in the afternoon anymore, but it gets me right up. Even if I have only had five or six hours. [Though] I’m generally an eight-hour sleeper.
Treasa:
I mean, the thing is that depends on your age as well. The thing is that once kids go from being kids to being teenagers, their circadian rhythms are knocked out by three hours. All of a sudden kids have genuinely been feeling sleepy at 7:00 or 8:00. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, it’s 10:00, 11:00, midnight, which really frustrates a lot of parents. But once you realize that this is something they have no control over, they’re genuinely not tired until later, but they still absolutely need their sleep. And so schools shouldn’t be starting as early as they do, but the gradual restoration then of your circadian rhythm back to a decent time can be something that people don’t focus on. So you can come out of your teenage years into your 20s and you still have this thing of going to bed too late and it requires moving back. What’s optimum for our bodies is that because we do have, the circadian clock actually is a 24.5 hour clock, but it gets reset every day by the melatonin.
It is optimal if you go to bed at the same time every day and wake up at the same time every day. When you start doing that, what happens is even at the weekends, I’ll wake up at 5:50AM naturally on the weekends. I might lounge in bed a bit longer and just be thinking and ruminating, but I have hours to get stuff done before the kids wake up, which is brilliant. But if I, then, am going out, I’ll have a nap that afternoon and I’ll have a nap the following day. But it is better for your body. It’s better for your brain function.
Kevin:
So if you’re going to be out late, you make sure you get an evening nap first or something?
Treasa:
Yeah, get a nap the previous afternoon. You don’t stay in bed longer. You get up at your normal time, but I would definitely then have another nap in the afternoon.
Kevin:
What’s your nap alarm clock set for? 25 minutes?
Treasa:
It depends. Basically a half hour if it’s just a general day and for whatever reason, I’m feeling tired, that’ll happen once in a while. But if I’ve gone out to salsa or something and I’m back late, then I’ll try to have a full cycle and I’ll set the alarm for 90 minutes and make sure the bedroom is dark, and quiet, and everything.
Kevin:
So you’ll get one full cycle.
Treasa:
Get one full cycle, yeah.
Kevin:
I can’t remember where I heard it, but my nap timer is set to 25 minutes because you don’t want to hit 30 and be the first third into your cycle because you’ll wake up more tired than when you began if you allow yourself to hit 30 minutes or something?…
Treasa:
Well, it’s if you go beyond the 30 and particularly 60, or 30 to 60 seems to be really challenging for people because you probably have gone into just that part of the cycle that you don’t want to be woken up from. You always want to be woken up towards the top of the cycle.
Kevin:
Is there a name for that part of it?
Treasa:
Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s the deep wave, so it’s your deep sleep. It’s the slow wave of sleep. It’s just if somebody will call you, they’ll really have to shake you, or the alarm goes off, it pulls you out of it. Yeah, which is challenging.
Kevin:
So, 30 or 90 minute naps, but you don’t really want to be in the middle of that?
Treasa:
Correct. There’s something that Matthew Walker recommends, but very, very… just once in a while. If you’re very tired, but you do have to be productive, he advises taking a cup of coffee-
Kevin:
Nappuccino?
Treasa:
Nappuccino! Taking a coffee, having 30 minute nap. You wake up, the coffee will hit your brain in 20 to 30 minutes, and, Bob’s your uncle, you’re going to be very productive for the next little while. I mean, the thing is that caffeine has been shown to have… It’s the prefrontal cortex that it affects and it definitely helps your cognitive function, but then all of the other side effects cancel that out. It’s just if you have to give a presentation, or something or other, or something’s happened and you need to be-
Kevin:
Special circumstances.
Treasa:
Special circumstances, yeah. You don’t want to be doing stuff like that all the time.
Kevin:
Yeah, it’s not a daily ritual to be to getting into.
Kevin:
The angle was struggle porn as well, so to draw it back to that. Sleep is the main thing struggle porn is attacking, I suppose, but-
Treasa:
Well, I think as well, it’s the longer working day where people feel like, I think especially, I don’t want to necessarily namecheck, but there were a lot of talkers who were basically like “hustle and grind endlessly for five years, and then you’d have it made and you’d be able to coast”.
Five years of your life is actually a very, very long time in terms of doing a lot of damage to your health and your relationships. We always have to think, “What’s the cost of our life?” If you were to sit down and write, “Well, what’s really, really important for me?” The majority of people will say, “My health, my family, my friends,” maybe a passion cause or something. And then it’s like-
Kevin:
“…but it’s not my internet marketing business”.
Treasa:
Yeah. But it’s also like, “Well, okay, if I’m going to basically hustle like crazy for five years and disregard my health, not take care of anything that I love, my family, my friends, anything like that, is that life, is it worth it?” The thing is that you never know when something is going to happen to you. I think you have to always live like you have this present moment in this day, and that’s it, and it’s wonderful to have it. So I think you always have to, if your values are, or the things that make you really happy, if you know what they are, I think they have to guide you. And then at least every day you’re going to be happy and you’re going to be close to people. It might take a little longer to get to your goal, but not necessarily. I think if you create the right conditions-
Kevin:
Consistently do the most important thing every day and a few other, two or three tertiary important tasks, you’ll be getting there as well.
Treasa:
Cal Newport has two amazing books on Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. But with Deep Work, he talks about the fact that you have to train your brain almost as if you’re training your body in a gym to be able to do completely focused deep work. I love the thought of a power hour. I’ve known about that for a long time, but he was talking about you can extend your capabilities, but it really takes a lot of focus and training to get from one hour to four. But he thinks four hours is maximum that anybody can do in a day. That means anyone going into an office and working from 9:00 to 5:00, the most really good, deep, productive, excellent work you can get out of them is four hours. All the rest of the time is administrative, it’s relational, it’s meetings that push things along a little bit. But the deep unfocused work where everything, all the magic really happens, you can’t get more than four out of somebody.
Treasa:
Yeah. The thing is as well is that the proof’s in the pudding. I mean, he’s 37, he’s a professor, and he’s actually produced more papers than is the norm for somebody of his age and experience. Obviously, with the books as well. That’s where his second book was really, the second one that I read, Digital Minimalism, was really useful because it talks about the attention economy and what you’re going to do as an individual about that. How do I guard my own time? How do I guard the input that comes into me? How can I make sure that I’m choosing the input rather than just leaving it open by just saying, “Go on world,” via all these social media platforms?
Kevin:
Your mental diet.
Treasa:
Yeah, yeah, completely. I think it’s really important.
Kevin:
So he was saying four hours total in the day or was it a four hour blitz?
Treasa:
Well, it’s a four hour [deep work] blitz, but he reckoned that’s the most that somebody could do. Yeah, everything else would be… Yeah. Even for his office hours for students to come and see him, there are two set days of the week at these times. He’s very clear on the time he gets for family, and the time he gets for his own health, and things like that as well.
Treasa:
He doesn’t even do email. It’s really funny. He has all these caveats before you email him. Email is the only way. He has no social media whatsoever. You won’t find him on anything. If you need to get him, it’s via email. But he asks you, “Has your question being answered here? Or is it about this? Or is this something interesting that we can collaborate on? And if you think it passes all of these markers, send me an email. And if I agree with you, I’ll contact you.” So that there’s no onus on him whatsoever to respond to the emails that he does get.
Kevin:
Right. That’s Tim Ferriss’ way of doing it as well.
Treasa:
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin:
One person I found very interesting though is Arnold Schwarzenegger because he was challenged on the “sleep faster, no one needs more than six hours” thing that he’s very famous for saying that in graduation talks he’s given. I was like, I love Arnold Schwarzenegger for so many reasons and so many ways, but I never agreed with him on that. I was like, “You are very successful, but it seems to be in spite of this rather than because of it.” He did in that, it was a Tim Ferriss interview of 2017 I think. He said, “Look, that’s what I needed [personally].” He conceded a bit that , “I always just woke up. It’s six hours OF sleep, not ‘go to bed and get up six hours later'”. It depends how long it takes you to get to sleep and six is just what I needed. And if you need more, you should probably get more. Some people need five and that’s fine.” And so he sort of conceded on that. But had you ever… I’m sure you’ve heard him say that, and what would have been your opinions?
Treasa:
I would have said, “Listen, you either speak in generalities or you mention the generalities, the general population need between seven and eight, general population needs five cycles of 90 minutes. And there are always outliers always, but you never, ever prescribe.” In my workshops, I show people how to actually figure out without going to a sleep clinic, how to figure out what optimal for them. Most people can figure it out in a week. For some people, it takes a bit longer because you have to have a couple of static weeks where you don’t have anything unusual going on and you can completely control when you go to bed.
Kevin:
It’s like a holiday week.
Treasa:
A holiday week or even just a week where you’re like, “I don’t have anything social going on or I normally go out on a Friday night, but this particular Friday, I’m not going to.”
Kevin:
What if night owls have to get up for 7:00 to get to work by 9:00? They won’t be able to figure that out on their own.
Treasa:
This stuff was really hard because one of my best friends, she lives in Dubai, which actually suits her time clock a lot better. But because she works for herself and because her work covers a whole lot of time zones, she is very, definitely a night owl. She does her work between 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM. She will generally then sleep until midday, one o’clock. She’s absolutely hugely productive.
Treasa:
In general, because we live in this kind of world, it’s unfortunate for night owls, for people who are… That’s their chronotype is to be a night owl. It’s really challenging because the reality is that we do need to… It’s really tough. I would be all for schools starting later. Do you know what was so daft? My 15-year-old, Monday through Thursday this entire academic year [2019], her first period has been maths, which is crazy. They’re not fit to engage at all. But schools should definitely be starting later for kids. This is where flexible working comes in and remote working. If you’re a night owl naturally, you can most likely arrange with your boss that you don’t start working at 10:00 AM, which is fantastic.
Kevin:
Yeah. That’s been my experience… I started work at 10:00am. I’m more of a night owl, not radically, but closer on that end and would start work at 10:00am when I was doing the game dev stuff. I found my brain was on by then. Now I’ve been like, “Oh, by 10:00, so many things can happen to derail you.” So now I’m trying to get up at 8:00 and do work from 8:30 until 10:00. Just get that one most important thing done. Then I’ll move off and try other things.
Treasa:
Can I ask you what that one most important thing is? Is this one most important thing that you’ve determined or is it a reaction to an email or something coming in?
Kevin:
The idea is that I don’t even check email till 10:00 AM.
Treasa:
Good, brilliant.
Kevin:
So I’ve written it down the night before on my spreadsheet. I’ll color green if I get it done. Color it red if I missed it that day. As I look back through the month, I’m like, “It’s mostly green.”
Treasa:
Good.
Kevin:
On Wednesday, it’s often been ‘write a blog’, but I might reprioritize that now, but the idea was just ‘get the blog done in the morning. Don’t let it drag on all day’. Other days, it would be something that should take an hour and it gets done first… If the most important thing is that I email one person a response. I’m not going to make that the one hour task.
Treasa:
Oh gosh, yeah.
So, a rather abrupt end there unfortunately. I could speak for hours more with Treasa, and there’s so much that she touched upon that I’d love to ask her more about. Like “wait, why exactly is getting more than 9 hours of sleep as bed as getting less than 6?”, but that will have to wait for another interview, I suppose.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this format, and that those listening on YouTube did as well. It’s the first time I’ve done a dual posting as audio and text, and I think I will be doing more of it in future. It makes sense to recycle the content to reach more people, whatever their media preference.
If you have any comments or questions (particularly for Treasa – maybe we could do a follow-up, more professional interview) please leave them in the comments.
Just a short post to mark that yesterday I launched the first “SUPER-Productive” Newsletter, containing a modest amount of news, the monthly top tip, and a free resource, the Habit Tracker Template.
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