The Art of Manliness - #257： The Productivity Project

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.720 Well, along with getting into shape, being more productive is a common goal people have.

00:00:23.560 And while there are a ton of books and articles out there filled with productivity advice,

00:00:26.880 which ones actually work? Well, my guest today took a year out of his life to test all the

00:00:31.040 productivity advice out there and has written a book sharing what has worked for him. His name

00:00:34.740 is Chris Bailey, and he's the author of the book, The Productivity Project, Accomplishing More by

00:00:38.960 Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy. And today on the show, Chris and I discuss the common

00:00:43.000 misconceptions about productivity that lead people astray in their goals, why having a why is the

00:00:47.860 most important step in becoming more productive, and why planning your day around your personal

00:00:51.840 energy cycle can boost your productivity significantly. Chris also gives specific

00:00:55.740 tactics about how to beat procrastination, strengthening your ability to focus. This

00:01:00.120 episode is chock full of actionable advice, so take notes. After the show is over, check out the show

00:01:04.440 notes at aom.is slash productivity project. Chris Bailey, welcome to the show.

00:01:13.680 Brett, thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:01:16.480 So you wrote a book called The Productivity Project, where you took a year of your life

00:01:23.200 to experiment with being more productive. You tried all sorts of different things, and then

00:01:29.660 you cataloged it on your blog and then in your book. So I'm curious, why did you decide to take

00:01:35.800 a year out of your life? I think you had job offers on the table. You passed those up to do this

00:01:42.060 experiment. Why did you do this? Well, somebody's got to do it, right? I mean, there's a lot of

00:01:48.060 productivity advice out there, I think. And this life hack kind of space. There's this whole

00:01:54.900 productivity sphere on the internet and in books and literature. And so I really wanted to take a

00:02:01.380 year to follow this curiosity of mine. You know, some people have normal interests like cooking and

00:02:07.440 politics and manliness and shaving, you know, whatever gets people going. But for me, for some

00:02:15.680 weird reason, I have no idea why. It might be the fact that both my parents are psychologists,

00:02:20.700 which kind of makes me a bit of a weirdo, I guess. I've been into this idea of productivity.

00:02:26.820 And I don't mean product, you know, productivity as it's a word that has a lot of baggage attached to

00:02:31.540 it. You know, people think of something that's so cold and corporate and all about reducing their

00:02:36.500 life down to a spreadsheet. But the way I think of productivity and the way I've always thought of it

00:02:41.380 is we only have so much time. And so the best productivity tactics exist to allow us to accomplish

00:02:48.820 more in what limited time we have. And so I wanted to take a year. I looked at how much money I had in

00:02:55.360 the bank because I'd worked up to that point so that I could receive a couple job offers. So I looked

00:03:01.480 at how much I had in the bank. I didn't have a ton, but I thought if I eat a lot of beans and rice and

00:03:06.280 live with my girlfriend for a year and really kind of slummed it, I could make it through a year or 12

00:03:12.080 months of following this curiosity of mine where I could separate the productivity advice out there,

00:03:18.200 kind of work as a sieve in a way where, you know, take in all the research, interview as many experts

00:03:25.060 as would talk to me. Thankfully, more spoke to me as the project went on and, you know, poured over

00:03:31.120 journal articles and books to really filter out and experiment with what works and what doesn't.

00:03:38.080 So you weren't just looking at life hack blogs to get the ideas for your experiments. You were

00:03:41.800 actually looking at scientific research on the issue of the facets of productivity that are out there.

00:03:48.100 Well, I think you have to because that's the thing about the best productivity advice is the best...

00:03:54.240 Here's the thing about productivity advice, man. Like you got to read, you know, for all the time you

00:03:59.100 spent reading or even listening to people like me ramble on about productivity advice, you have to

00:04:04.000 make that time back and then some or else you're basically just looking at productivity porn. And 0.61

00:04:09.940 there's a lot of productivity porn out there. And most life hacks are like, oh, fashion this pen to

00:04:14.960 a paper clip and put it on your shoe and you can get more... Like that's, you know, a lot of hogwash

00:04:20.320 that's built into tactics like that. Like don't get me wrong. It's fun to read about. And I love reading

00:04:26.340 about that stuff as much as the next guy. But really, I think where productivity earns its keep

00:04:33.660 is in allowing us to basically get everything done that we have to so we have more time for what's

00:04:39.920 actually meaningful to us. Right. So let's talk about how you kind of mentioned how you define

00:04:44.220 productivity a bit. It's about getting more done in the limited time you have. But it seems like you

00:04:51.040 have a broader definition of productivity because most people, when they think productivity, they

00:04:54.460 think time, time management. That's what I do. But how do you... What other facets of life do you

00:05:00.380 incorporate in productivity? That was the fascinating part of the productivity project is I went into it

00:05:07.060 thinking, okay, you know, the way to become more productive is to work faster, faster, harder,

00:05:12.180 harder and manage my time better. But when I started zooming out, because when you start looking at the

00:05:19.100 factors that go into into something like productivity, you really begin to get a sense

00:05:25.560 of the ingredients that contribute to exactly what allows us to get more done. And so when you

00:05:31.040 start at that definition, you know, if you started a different definition, you might come up with a

00:05:35.800 different conclusion. But if you start with the definition of productivity, where it's how much we

00:05:40.080 accomplish, and more than that, it's about accomplishing what we intended to do. Because, you know,

00:05:45.880 that's the thing too, is if we intend to have a really business-like day and submit a few TPS

00:05:52.120 reports, whatever those are, and we intend to ace a job interview and ship a new product at work,

00:05:58.900 and then we do, I would argue that we're perfectly productive. And the same is true if we intend to

00:06:05.440 have a nice, like I got one of these coming up tomorrow. I can't wait. You know, tomorrow I've got a

00:06:10.920 massage booked. I've got a few books ready to go. I have some academic papers that I'm going to read

00:06:17.540 because that's what I do for fun. Please send help. And that's what I intend to do. And I think if you

00:06:23.680 call, you know, intend to have a relaxing day on the beach and then you do, you're perfectly

00:06:28.440 productive in those cases. But when you zoom out to look at the different ingredients that contribute

00:06:34.740 to your success in that way, you realize that productivity is a lot more than just managing

00:06:40.840 your time. Because if you can't focus on what you intended to do, it doesn't matter what you

00:06:46.240 schedule. And the same is true for your energy levels, where if you intend to, you know, do this

00:06:51.600 day and you burn out at one or two in the afternoon, your productivity is going to be toast.

00:06:56.960 And that was kind of the model that I came up with by the end of the productivity project is I realized

00:07:03.600 that every single lesson that actually, you know, earned its keep, that actually allowed me to earn

00:07:11.380 the time back that I spent on it fell into one of those three different categories, either a better

00:07:16.440 managing my time, my attention, or my energy. And I think all three of these ingredients are crucial

00:07:24.380 in our productivity. And why is understanding that productivity is more than just time management

00:07:29.780 important in our knowledge economy? Well, because we no longer do work with our hands,

00:07:35.800 we do it with our brains. And because we have such a limited pool of physiological energy in our brain,

00:07:42.260 and we only have so much ability to vote, you've probably experienced that sensation where you're

00:07:48.300 trying to hunker down on your work and you're staring at the same email for 10 or 15 minutes

00:07:53.780 and looking at your response to it. And you just think, okay, man, I need a break. And then you

00:07:59.180 step back from it. You know, you get a coffee or something like that, you take a walk, and then you

00:08:03.780 come back and you rewrite it in two minutes and send it. You know, these ingredients are so crucial

00:08:10.140 because for that simple fact, we no longer just do work with our hands, we do it with our brains now.

00:08:17.120 And we need all the energy and all the focus that we can possibly bring to it. You know,

00:08:22.520 never mind the fact that we have more distractions and interruptions than we've ever had before in our

00:08:29.240 history. You know, this makes this more, I would say, holistic view of productivity, where it's the

00:08:37.980 confluence of our time, attention and energy more important.

00:08:42.280 Right. One of the things I love about your book, you start off very broad, big picture,

00:08:46.280 the 10,000 mile view of things. And you argue that it's important for people to have a why

00:08:52.480 of productivity. They need to have a purpose on why they're being productive. What happens if you try

00:08:58.440 being productive without a purpose?

00:09:00.820 Well, this is one of the things that I found with the most productive people I encountered over

00:09:06.620 the course of the project is the most productive executives, you know, stay at home moms, you know, 1.00

00:09:14.120 whatever person you want to look at, they had a reason for investing in their productivity.

00:09:20.240 And so the least productive people that I found are the ones who worked on autopilot mode.

00:09:25.840 And you've probably felt yourself falling into that mode before where your email inbox becomes your

00:09:31.760 to-do list, your working in response to the work that comes your way, instead of setting a direction

00:09:38.320 for where you want to go. And so knowing why we want to become more productive, I think is crucial.

00:09:44.860 And having a why before you invest in your productivity, I think it's essential to keep you

00:09:50.900 motivated to keep going. For me, it's a sense of us only having so much time in our day to live our

00:09:59.180 life. You know, the clock is ticking. This is my reason, you know, your reason might be

00:10:04.380 that you want to become vice president and have a massive house, or that you want to live, you want

00:10:12.280 to retire by the age of 40. Whatever your reason might be, you know, in my case, it's that we only

00:10:18.440 have so much time, you know, we think we live until we're 90. I was thinking about this idea the other

00:10:24.040 day, so it might come out, it might not. But this is one of those shower thoughts, you know,

00:10:28.000 when you kind of let your mind be. I was thinking about it the other day, and we think we live to

00:10:32.820 90, but we spend a third of our life sleeping, so we basically live to 60. We spend a third of our

00:10:37.860 life working, so essentially we live until we're 30. And once you account for the household chores,

00:10:42.700 the eating, the kind of maintenance stuff we do, we might have a lifespan of 10 or 20 years tops.

00:10:48.940 And so I think that's why productivity exists, is because we only have so much time to live a

00:10:55.100 meaningful life. Right. So you focus a section about measuring productivity. Yeah. Because right,

00:11:01.660 there's that phrase, what gets measured gets managed. Oh man, that phrase. Oh, it makes me

00:11:07.800 upset. Sorry. Makes you upset. Okay, well, why does it make you upset? So I mean, why is that?

00:11:13.380 Because in the knowledge economy, how do you measure knowledge work? You know, you could have two

00:11:19.380 programmers, and programmers are a good go-to example. You know, you give them both an hour,

00:11:25.720 and programmer A writes 800 lines of code, programmer B writes 20 lines of code. How do you

00:11:32.140 measure their productivity? It looks like the programmer A who wrote, you know, hundreds of

00:11:36.300 lines of code is infinitely more productive when programmer B might have solved the problem in the

00:11:42.560 first five minutes. And, you know, solved it smarter using more experience and knowledge than the first

00:11:48.940 guy. And this is, I think, why measuring productivity is more of an art than a science in this way, where

00:11:57.380 when it's about how much we accomplish, rather than any other factor, it's more difficult to manage in

00:12:05.280 that way. Like you look at where we used to work, when we used to work in more of a, I call it the time

00:12:11.800 economy in the productivity project, where there was a direct relationship between how many hours we

00:12:18.960 worked and exactly how productive we were. If we worked one hour on an assembly line, we shipped 10

00:12:25.940 widgets. If we worked 10 hours on that same assembly line, we can do 100 widgets. Simple math, because

00:12:31.900 it's hard to, simple math, because it's hard to do math live on a podcast. But today, you know, the

00:12:38.280 connection between how long we work for and how much we accomplish has been severed, because we can

00:12:46.140 invest more in cultivating how much energy we have, and we can focus deeper on our work and get two

00:12:54.060 hours of work accomplished in 30 minutes, if we invest in our productivity the right way. And productivity

00:13:00.800 tactics that allow us to do that are elusive. You know, I experienced with hunt, I experimented with

00:13:07.880 hundreds of them over the course of the project. And I probably whittled it down to about 20 or 25 in

00:13:13.980 the book, because these tactics are hard to find. But the most, the best ones allow us to, you know,

00:13:21.240 take a step back and think about what's actually important.

00:13:24.840 Right. So, I mean, it sounds like you're saying you can't measure productivity, or is there a metric you

00:13:30.020 can use, or are you just sort of, if you get the stuff done that you needed to get done, you are

00:13:34.540 being productive?

00:13:35.600 I would say that. And the way I measure my productivity is I keep an accomplishments list.

00:13:41.460 And so, throughout the week, whenever I make a milestone in, you know, in a certain project,

00:13:47.020 whenever I knock something out of the park, whenever I ship something, I put it on the accomplishments

00:13:52.740 list, and I look back on that at the end of the week. And, you know, this goes to the idea that,

00:13:58.180 and I fall into this trap all the time, by the way, where the idea that we want to invest in our

00:14:05.300 productivity, where we want to become more productive, on a certain level, implies that

00:14:10.980 we're not entirely satisfied with where we're at already. And it's kind of a problem to rectify,

00:14:17.820 frankly, when it comes to investing in our productivity. But I've found that keeping this list

00:14:23.500 allows me to really align what I'm doing over the course of the day to what will actually allow me

00:14:32.460 to achieve more, rather than just do more. Because, you know, when that connection between

00:14:37.940 how long we work and how much we accomplish has been severed, you know, that idea of looking at how

00:14:44.140 much we accomplish has never been more important. And this is what bugs me about a lot of traditional

00:14:49.080 team environments, by the way. I was speaking at Google last week, and the way they manage their

00:14:57.460 employees at Google is fascinating, because they don't look at how many hours the employees there

00:15:03.660 work. Because, you know, somebody could work eight to four, somebody could work 10 to six, it doesn't

00:15:09.640 really matter. What matters is how much they accomplish. And that's really what they look at,

00:15:15.660 at the end of the day. And, you know, if there's a pet peeve that I have with the way we manage each

00:15:22.300 other in organizations, and, you know, the way we manage our own productivity, it's that we look at

00:15:27.700 what we do, rather than how much we accomplish. And that's the thing about busyness, right?

00:15:34.520 Is busyness is really no different from laziness, when it doesn't lead us to accomplish more over the

00:15:42.840 course of the day. Because we could be busy answering email all day long, or we could be

00:15:47.020 busy checking social media all day long. But because not all tasks in our work are created equal,

00:15:54.800 we have to separate what's important from what isn't, and really align ourselves to work on that

00:16:00.460 instead, I think.

00:16:01.960 Well, that's great. That's a great segue to my next question. How do you figure out what's

00:16:05.040 important and what's not important?

00:16:06.500 Nothing like a good segue, right? Am I right? The way I like to do this, and it's difficult

00:16:15.420 to invest in your productivity if you don't first take a step back and consider what you actually

00:16:22.400 want to become more productive on. And I think that's the thing a lot of people miss with the

00:16:28.500 whole life hack space and productivity advice space, is you have to have a good sense of what's

00:16:35.000 actually important in your work. Because when you get right down to it, you don't get paid to check

00:16:40.320 email. You don't get paid to be on social media. You don't get paid to be busy. You get paid to do

00:16:46.820 a small number of things. Usually, most people in the knowledge economy, where we trade our knowledge

00:16:53.480 and our productivity for a paycheck, as opposed to just our time, we get paid to do more complex work.

00:17:01.140 And so I think one of the best things, and I write about this in the book, but I'll give you

00:17:06.720 kind of the Coles notes or the Cliff notes summary. I'm in Canada, so I accidentally dropped these

00:17:14.240 Canadian references like Coles notes. We're getting 20 centimeters of snow today, by the way,

00:17:20.040 in November. It's absolutely disgusting. But I think one of the best things that you can do

00:17:27.060 before you invest in your productivity is make a list of every single activity you do in your work

00:17:35.820 over the course of a month. And this is freeing in and of itself, by the way, because how often do

00:17:43.560 you step back and think, okay, what am I actually doing here? But once you have that list, ask yourself,

00:17:49.420 if I can only do one thing on this list day in, day out, every day, all day, which of these would

00:17:56.340 allow me to accomplish the most? Which of these is the most meaningful? And that is the most productive

00:18:03.840 task in your work. Because again, productivity is how much we accomplish, not how much we produce.

00:18:10.960 And more than that, it's about working deliberately and with more intentionality behind what we're doing.

00:18:18.040 So taking this step back and thinking about what's important is crucial. And once you get the first

00:18:22.480 one, once you got that list, think, okay, what's the second most valuable activity that I'm actually

00:18:30.260 doing here? And what's the third most valuable? And you'll probably find that after you've picked

00:18:35.420 two, three, in some cases, even four activities that are central in your work, your productivity after

00:18:42.520 that will drop off a cliff. Because we really, in our work today, only a few things are important.

00:18:50.160 It's mentoring new employees, it's writing code, it's, you know, writing, whatever it is that's

00:18:58.820 central in our work. And everything in addition to that, either supports our work like email and

00:19:05.360 instant messaging and calls and meetings, or it can be eliminated or delegated entirely.

00:19:11.060 So that's, you know, long answer aside, that's, that's one of the most valuable things. And it's

00:19:17.960 kind of tedious, right? But it feels good after you do this, because you get a signal of what's

00:19:23.360 important.

00:19:24.520 So let's say you figure out what your three or four things that are the most important in your work.

00:19:31.180 And you mentioned like, with the other stuff that's not so important, you either delegate or

00:19:34.720 eliminate it. What do you do with the stuff that you can't delegate or eliminate? How can you manage

00:19:38.820 that more effectively?

00:19:40.560 Like email?

00:19:41.600 Yeah.

00:19:41.760 Like meetings?

00:19:42.820 Oh, man.

00:19:43.600 Do you have a lot of email? How do you deal? I'm curious, like, what your email situation is like.

00:19:50.020 Actually, I don't get too much email.

00:19:52.000 No?

00:19:52.680 No. I've made myself hard to get to.

00:19:57.640 I have it. I have your email.

00:19:59.680 I'm going to send you a lot of, I'm going to send you like five or 10 emails a day now.

00:20:03.100 Right. Well, you have my email address.

00:20:04.180 Hey, Brad. How's it going?

00:20:05.300 Yeah. Hey, Brad. How are you?

00:20:06.340 No, like on my contact form, I don't have a contact form. I have my post office box address.

00:20:12.000 Oh, that's cool. Do people send you like handwritten?

00:20:14.740 Yeah. And people send handwritten letters, which, I mean, most of the email I was getting through

00:20:18.800 that form were PR stuff. And so as soon as I put that buffer up, that just almost disappeared.

00:20:26.500 Oh, man. I need to get me some of that. Because I probably get probably a similar situation as you.

00:20:33.860 50, 100 PR messages every day.

00:20:37.220 Yeah. I don't get that.

00:20:38.300 Archive, archive, archive, archive.

00:20:39.840 But yeah, things like that in our work, like email, like meetings, we can't get rid of email, right?

00:20:46.700 Nobody in their right mind gets rid of email. But when we can't eliminate something entirely,

00:20:53.140 we can either delegate it. So I have my assistant kind of comb through my emails to

00:20:58.380 archive anything that's selfish or anything that's too promotional so that I can deal with

00:21:05.660 the rest. I check my email once every day at 3 p.m. But the better way to do this and the more

00:21:12.080 realistic way to do this instead of delegating is to shrink how much time and attention we spend on

00:21:18.880 these tasks instead of delegating them. And so, you know, scheduling windows throughout the day

00:21:24.540 to check your email. I think a good place to start with this because, you know, it's so difficult to

00:21:31.280 make drastic changes like these overnight. If you can't, you know, set up a P.O. box, because that's

00:21:37.320 that's kind of a cool idea. I might have to do that. I might steal that, man.

00:21:41.820 You should do it.

00:21:42.280 It is to simply notice how many times you check email over the course of the day automatically,

00:21:49.700 because chances are the number is a lot higher than you think. I think it was rescue time that

00:21:57.280 looked at how many times over the course of the day knowledge workers checked email and they checked

00:22:01.860 it an average of 41 times. And when I saw this stat, I thought there's no way I checked my email 41

00:22:08.180 times. And so I made a little tally myself and I checked it like 35 times. It was ridiculous because

00:22:13.520 email is this, you know, we get so much validation and stimulation from checking it. We get it fires up

00:22:22.540 every emotion in us. And so by pre-deciding when we're going to invest our time into something like

00:22:29.680 this, we can level up and become a lot more productive. I have an autoresponder where if somebody

00:22:36.460 emails me, it says, I only check my email once a day at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I'll get to

00:22:42.860 your message then. And it's simple. And people seem to not be too upset about it because they realize that

00:22:51.080 email isn't an important and vital aspect of our work. You know, it feels important and vital. But as long as

00:22:59.120 somebody gets a response and doesn't have to wait forever for it, we can level up and become more

00:23:06.600 productive that way. So by pre-deciding and how we're going to shrink these elements, I have a kind

00:23:11.640 of a VIP email where the people that I work more closely with, like my publisher, like my agents,

00:23:19.640 like my assistant, they have access to this email address so they can ping me throughout the day and

00:23:26.040 and I can correspond with them that way. But everybody else, you know, it's kind of a filter

00:23:32.240 in that way where I've pre-decided how I'm going to shrink these elements and deal with them that way.

00:23:38.520 All right. So batch the email, only check it a few times a day and just focus on email and that's it.

00:23:44.400 I guess another thing with that is like, don't use your email as a to-do list.

00:23:47.980 Yeah.

00:23:48.200 I think that's what a lot of people, that trips me up often is that's what keeps me in my email all the

00:23:53.880 times I'm using it as a to-do list. Yeah. And that's, that's a, it's a tough

00:23:59.940 habit to break, but it's one that's worth breaking, you know, taking, and it seems like an extra step,

00:24:05.800 right? You know, you get an email, which has something you have to action and then you take

00:24:10.540 that and you put it on your to-do list. It seems like, like more hassle than it's worth,

00:24:14.580 but you got to realize that when we're constantly tapped into this world of email,

00:24:19.980 I think it was Gloria Mark, she's an attention researcher I spoke with in the project. She

00:24:25.600 found that when we're totally interrupted in our work, we can lose as much as 25 minutes

00:24:31.280 of productivity because of that interruption. So when we have email notifications popping up

00:24:37.640 into the corner of our screen and buzzing us on our phone, that can derail our productivity a lot

00:24:43.840 more than we think, especially when it requires our full attention to deal with. And so it might seem

00:24:49.740 more efficient to use your email as a, as a to-do list, but it really isn't in practice.

00:24:55.980 And what about, uh, the, the maintenance, it's a mess today here in snowy Ottawa. It's like, um,

00:25:05.060 it's like the first snowfall of the season. You would think us Canadians would have this stuff down

00:25:10.080 where we get snow and we shuffle it, but, uh, having troubles drivers, right?

00:25:14.920 Drivers. Well, we've been talking about work stuff, but like, what about, um, like just life

00:25:20.880 maintenance stuff, like grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, you know, paying bills,

00:25:25.960 making appointments. I mean, some people, they can hire personal assistants to take care of that

00:25:30.180 stuff and they have the money to outsource a lot of this stuff. But like, what if you don't,

00:25:33.480 um, how can you, how can you be more effective? Uh, so there doesn't take up, it doesn't interrupt

00:25:38.940 your day and allows you to focus more on what's more important. Well, these are kind of those

00:25:44.600 maintenance tasks, right? Like, um, things we have to do to live a, a reasonable life that don't

00:25:51.740 necessarily progress our life forward in any ways. And so things like, uh, yeah, like you said,

00:25:57.280 making appointments, like cooking meals for the week, which I like to do every Sunday, like cleaning up

00:26:02.460 around the house, like doing grocery shopping and chores around the city. Uh, what I like to do with

00:26:07.740 these things is I've been annoyed by these types of tasks for a while. As somebody who's into

00:26:13.100 productivity, you know, I don't want to be a slob, right? You got to shave, you got to do beard

00:26:17.980 maintenance and stuff like that. But at the same time, these don't progress your life forward in any

00:26:24.700 meaningful way. And so, you know, it's funny, we're just chatting about batching because the best way

00:26:30.440 I've found a deal with these is to batch them all together. I like to do this on Sunday afternoon.

00:26:36.240 Uh, yesterday I made myself a couple cups of coffee, not at once, you know, I made one and then

00:26:41.440 drank it. Then I made another cup with an arrow. Have you tried an AeroPress by the way?

00:26:46.440 No, I have not. I know we've written about them before.

00:26:49.000 Oh, I'm sure. It's very like in the vein of what you guys write about. It's the best cup of coffee.

00:26:54.200 Uh, in fact, save yourself some money by not buying my book and buy an AeroPress instead.

00:26:59.720 Actually, actually they work, they work well together. Um, you know, I make a cup of coffee

00:27:04.740 on Sunday afternoon. And what I do is I sip on this while I have go through my maintenance day list.

00:27:11.520 And so this has everything like setting a few intentions for the week ahead,

00:27:15.920 like cleaning up, like doing groceries, like preparing lunches for the week, which I do with

00:27:20.600 my girlfriend, uh, like doing any errands that happen to accumulate. And the idea behind this

00:27:26.300 ritual is first of all, you feel amazing when your whole house is clean and also your mental space is

00:27:32.540 clean because there's, there's a direct relationship between how clean our environment is and how clearly

00:27:38.180 we think. Uh, in fact, you know, I'm kind of nerd nerding out about this idea right now.

00:27:43.620 If you want to be creative, you have to go into a messy room because the more scattered the,

00:27:49.800 the physical environment is the more scattered your mental environment is too. And, and the more

00:27:54.880 disparate your ideas and the connections you'll make will be, but the opposite is true too. You

00:28:00.460 feel more mental clarity when you're in a clean environment, but that's kind of a tangent, obviously.

00:28:06.180 Uh, so Sunday afternoon, I lump all these tasks together. I don't do them throughout the week.

00:28:11.680 I even have things like cutting nails on my maintenance day list because I don't want to do that

00:28:17.460 throughout the week. I want to make it a ritual of doing it on Sunday. And you feel like you're

00:28:22.280 propelled into the week ahead when you, when you tackle this ritual, it's frankly, it feels kind of

00:28:28.760 weird to talk about, but it is one of my favorite weekly rituals at home because you feel like you're

00:28:35.660 starting the week with a blank slate and a fresh slate. And when you set intentions at the same time,

00:28:41.920 you know, exactly what you want to accomplish in the week ahead.

00:28:46.540 All right. So batch everything and just focus on those tasks on a single day. Um, so yeah, I mean,

00:28:52.020 one of the things I found interesting about your book is that the theme is just focus on one thing

00:28:56.760 at a time. Um, because I think most people, when they think I got to get more done, I have to just

00:29:01.560 jumble, I have to juggle multiple tasks at the, at the same time, multitasking. But you talk about in

00:29:07.440 your book, the research suggests that multitasking is probably the biggest productivity killer and you

00:29:11.920 should just monotask or just focus on one task at a time.

00:29:15.680 Yeah. And this is, I think one of the best ways to become more productive in the moment. You know,

00:29:23.160 if taking a step back and, you know, one of my intention setting rituals that I love is the rule

00:29:28.860 of three. I do that every morning. We can chat about it in a sec, but once you, you've figured out

00:29:33.840 what's important, it's on a moment by moment basis that you work towards those goals. It's not on a

00:29:41.340 general basis. This is why so many new year's resolutions fall apart is we make these grand

00:29:47.180 intentions at the start of the year, but in the moment, you know, we, we, one part of us knows we

00:29:53.600 want a six pack by the summer. And the other part of us wants to, wants to eat a cheeseburger and,

00:30:00.520 you know, veg out with a bag of chips watching Netflix. And so it's in the moment that we actually

00:30:07.420 become more productive. And the thing about the way our attention is wired is we don't have a lot

00:30:15.020 of focus to give to the world around us. One study, one of my favorite studies shows that our brain is

00:30:21.740 processing. It has the ability to process 11 million bits every second. So we, that's how much

00:30:29.720 information it's being bombarded, uh, in terms of the nerve endings in our brain, uh, every, every

00:30:35.180 single second, 11 million. But in any given moment, we can only consciously focus on 40 bits of

00:30:44.020 information. And so you, you can kind of look around when you're listening to this podcast, you

00:30:48.980 know, what you have in front of you, what you're doing right now. Maybe you're in front of your

00:30:52.680 computer. You can see that maybe you're going on a walk. Maybe you're at the gym in the room that

00:30:57.160 you're in right now. There are thousands of things that you can focus on, uh, individual thoughts

00:31:04.080 going on in your head, uh, objects in your environment, but you can only consciously focus

00:31:08.580 on 40. And so the amount of attention we have to give to what's in front of us is very, very

00:31:15.880 constrained. And, you know, the idea that multitasking doesn't work is a bit of a myth, frankly, but in

00:31:23.220 only a certain way where we can multitask, uh, on habitual things. So things that don't take

00:31:29.520 conscious energy, you know, you can breathe while you're working. Thank God, you know, we do habits

00:31:36.240 automatically without much thought. So they don't take up too much attentional space. We can walk and

00:31:41.720 chew bubble gum at the same time. Uh, we can even do habitual tasks on the computer, like, uh, you know,

00:31:48.040 reading the news while doing a bit of habitual email even, but the most vital tasks in our work,

00:31:54.840 the ones you, if you did the, the activity, we were chatting about where you take a step back and

00:32:00.720 filter out what's important from what isn't those most vital tasks in your work, regardless of the

00:32:07.980 work you do are, are so important because they take more of your attention and more of your energy.

00:32:15.260 And if you're productive, more of your time than any other task in your work. And most people, um, you

00:32:23.900 know, 1% of people, these super taskers are able to do this, maybe even less than 1%, but most people

00:32:30.760 can't actively focus on more than one of these at one time because for the simple fact that your

00:32:38.620 productivity benefits, the more attention you focus on these and they're more detailed, uh, they're more

00:32:44.840 immersive. Um, they take more focus to do right. And so this is why multitasking doesn't work is

00:32:51.340 because the most productive tasks in our work require more of us.

00:32:57.860 So that's why you argue instead of like having this massive to-do list in front of you where you're

00:33:02.080 just kind of clicking off, you know, checking off things, just narrow your to-do list to three big tasks

00:33:07.600 a day. Yeah. And this is called the rule of three and it's one of my favorite rituals. Um,

00:33:14.620 and here it is. And this is, you know, it's a simple thing that you can action right away

00:33:18.540 that, you know, again, you have to earn the time you spend investing in productivity advice back

00:33:23.620 this you'll earn back a hundred times over every morning. At the start of the day, you fast forward to

00:33:31.060 the end of the day in your head. And you ask yourself by the time this day is done, what three

00:33:37.040 main things will I want to have accomplished? And it does a, it does a number of things. It sounds

00:33:42.160 like kind of a simple rule, but it, excuse me, it at one time, it allows you to separate what's

00:33:49.880 important that day from what isn't. And unlike a lot of other systems where, you know, it takes hours

00:33:56.540 to organize everything on your plate and you, you lose a lot of time and actually working and actually

00:34:03.880 being productive on those things. It only takes three, four minutes every morning where you define

00:34:10.180 these three things and you separate what's important from what isn't. And you can consider

00:34:15.640 your constraints at the same time. So, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I work for myself. I have a lot

00:34:21.340 of autonomy in my work as, as you likely do too. And we have more flexibility and more control over

00:34:28.060 what we intend to accomplish, but we can consider the constraints. And so if we have a full day of

00:34:32.860 meetings or if we're working a job where we don't have total freedom and flexibility with how we spend

00:34:38.740 our, our time, attention, and energy, we can adjust our schedule accordingly and our attentions

00:34:45.180 accordingly. And sometimes, sometimes our day will inform what we intend to accomplish. And so this

00:34:51.160 is kind of, you know, these three tactics. And by the way, at the start of the day, I do this. And

00:34:58.040 also at the start of the week, every Sunday, I define my three weekly intentions for work and for home.

00:35:04.200 So this is how I get, get some modicum of balance for the week ahead. And this is the idea, you know,

00:35:10.900 that we don't work on autopilot to become more productive. We work deliberately and with intention

00:35:16.500 to become more productive. It's kind of where that idea filters down. And so we start by looking at

00:35:23.180 what's important in general in our work. Then we look at what's important every week. Then we look at

00:35:28.760 what we intend to do every day. And, you know, if we only did three things all day, every day, we probably

00:35:35.020 wouldn't have a job after much of a period of time. So we need a to-do list, I think, in conjunction

00:35:39.980 with this to manage what we have to get done. But when we bring that down to the moment, where we

00:35:46.620 work on one thing at one time, especially when we have the most energy throughout the day, that,

00:35:52.980 I think, is the stuff that productivity dreams are made of. And, you know, I'm a bit of a nerd about

00:35:59.540 this stuff. So I might be a bit more into this than some other people. But that excites me more than

00:36:05.440 anything. Because that's how we actually achieve our broader goals. And that's actually how we

00:36:11.580 accomplish more. Because when we do those three things, we can choose what's important and actually

00:36:17.060 act towards that every day and every moment. We'll talk about energy management here in a bit. But

00:36:22.780 let's talk about procrastination. Let's say you have some task on your rule of three list that's super

00:36:30.200 boring. It's hard. But it's completely vital in order for you to progress to where you want to get.

00:36:37.720 And so you just put it off and you put it off and you put it off. So why do we procrastinate? Is it

00:36:43.860 because stuff is boring and hard? Or is there something else to why we procrastinate?

00:36:49.060 Yeah, let's let's look at like, what's something you're procrastinating on right now? I'll put you on

00:36:53.400 the spot. Let's see, I'm procrastinating on making some edits to a book that we're publishing here.

00:37:01.060 Oh, nice. So you look at a task like that, making edits to a book. And you know, I found the same

00:37:09.380 thing when I was editing my book or looking over the edits that that other people made. It turns out

00:37:15.900 that there are certain attributes a task can have that make us more likely to procrastinate on it.

00:37:23.400 And there's, if I remember right, there's seven of them. And I'm going to try to remember them

00:37:28.540 here. Those are whether a task, like you said, is boring. And so, you know, editing a book,

00:37:34.940 pretty boring. It's frustrating, whether it's difficult, whether it lacks personal meaning,

00:37:40.960 whether it lacks intrinsic reward, so it's not rewarding in and of itself, whether it's ambiguous,

00:37:47.680 or whether it's unstructured. And so the more of these triggers, essentially, a task has,

00:37:53.120 the more likely you are to put it off. So editing a book, it's pretty boring. It's a bit frustrating,

00:37:58.180 because, you know, it requires a lot of attention. It's difficult. You know, it might be difficult,

00:38:04.420 but it might be more tedious than difficult. It's not really rewarding in and of itself, because

00:38:09.740 books are pretty long, as people know. It's pretty ambiguous, and it's definitely unstructured.

00:38:16.260 And so this is why we procrastinate on stuff. You know, you look at something that you don't

00:38:21.500 procrastinate on, like watching Netflix, as an example. You know, I wouldn't know anything about

00:38:26.780 that. But, you know, watching Netflix doesn't have any of these. It's not boring. It's not

00:38:30.900 frustrating. It's not difficult at all. It probably lacks personal meaning. So, you know, unless you're

00:38:36.480 watching, like, nature documentaries or something. It, you know, it's not ambiguous. It's not unstructured.

00:38:43.740 In fact, it's so structured that you get, like, a little preview of the next episode, and it

00:38:49.980 automatically starts playing before you're finished watching the current episode. Again, you know, as a

00:38:55.580 productivity expert, I only know this from the research that I've done, obviously. But, you know,

00:39:01.800 it doesn't have any of these triggers, and so we don't put it off. You know, doing our taxes has most

00:39:07.660 of them. But by using this science behind why we procrastinate, it turns out that we can actually

00:39:15.160 flip these triggers around. So if editing the book is boring, if you find yourself putting it off,

00:39:22.060 you know, you can make a plan to reverse that. So if it's boring, you can go to a fancy cafe and get a

00:39:27.880 latte. You know, it's almost, you know, Christmas here. And so maybe you can get, like,

00:39:33.400 one of those, like, candy cane lattes or something. I had a rosemary latte the other day. You know,

00:39:40.740 like, rosemary, the herb? It's pretty good in Ottawa here. If anybody's in Ottawa,

00:39:46.740 email me and I'll let you know the place. So you can make it less boring by doing that. That makes

00:39:52.120 it less frustrating at the same time. If it's unstructured, you can make a plan over the next,

00:39:57.780 say, two weeks to do chapter one this day and chapter two this day and make a schedule for when

00:40:04.440 you're going to do these things. And by making this plan and setting these intentions, you can

00:40:10.360 actually reverse the triggers around and make it a more enjoyable experience and less likely that

00:40:17.320 you'll put it off. Fantastic. Any other tactics besides tweaking the triggers to reduce

00:40:22.560 procrastination? Part of it is thinking about your future self at the same time. This is one of my

00:40:30.160 favorite tactics, and it's kind of a weird one. But we are so disconnected with our future self,

00:40:37.220 which is basically just ourself, but in the future. In front of me here on my desk, I have a nice framed

00:40:44.840 picture of myself, as most egotistical people do. But this picture of myself is of a 60-year-old version

00:40:54.480 of me. And I had this picture done up and framed. I actually got a fracture done where they print the

00:41:01.140 picture on a glass. It's pretty cool. And it sits on my desk all day so that I can consider myself in

00:41:06.840 the future. And it's kind of a simple cue. But so often we put stuff off because we're disconnected

00:41:13.140 with our future self. And so this is why we have a bunch of, you know, to work off the Netflix theme

00:41:19.320 here. I've been watching a lot of Netflix this weekend, especially I was reorganizing my filing

00:41:25.720 cabinet on maintenance day yesterday. And so I got through a few episodes of shows. But this is why we

00:41:32.000 have like documentaries that we're bound to watch someday. We buy all these classic books, and then

00:41:38.180 we end up reading, you know, the trashy books or listening to other stuff instead or watching TV

00:41:44.260 because we're disconnected with this idea of our future self. And in fact, if you wheeled yourself,

00:41:51.600 Brett, into a brain scanning machine, into an fMRI machine, and, you know, I told you, Brett, you know,

00:41:58.020 think about yourself, but in 20 or 30 years, and then think of George Clooney. The fascinating thing

00:42:06.020 about these brain scans would be that they were basically identical to one another. And so we

00:42:12.820 basically view our future self as a stranger, which is why we put stuff off. This is why we agree to,

00:42:18.560 you know, where we wouldn't want to have coffee with somebody tomorrow, we agree to coffee with them

00:42:23.440 three weeks from now. This is why we sign up for weird courses and stuff down the line where we

00:42:30.660 wouldn't want to necessarily do it next week. And so by considering the idea that in the future,

00:42:37.960 we'll basically be as we are now, except, you know, maybe a little bit more productive and

00:42:42.880 successful, we can consider the idea that chances are, you know, we won't have an infinite amount of

00:42:48.500 energy later on. Chances are, we won't have boundless time, maybe we'll even have less time,

00:42:54.720 if the trend continues, or more time, if we invest in our productivity. And we can consider the idea

00:43:01.380 that most things are worth doing right away. Right. Okay, that's fantastic. So let's talk

00:43:07.060 about managing energy. Because you say that productivity isn't just about managing time,

00:43:11.760 it's also about managing your energy as well. So you argue that you need to, in order to be

00:43:17.420 the most productive you can be, you need to work in your biological prime time.

00:43:23.140 Oh, yes. So how do we, how do we figure out what these prime times are? First, I did it kind of a,

00:43:30.900 an intense way in the productivity project, because, you know, why not, right? I only had a year to do

00:43:37.700 this stuff. So what I did for the span of three weeks, and I did a little prep before, is I cut out

00:43:45.320 caffeine, I cut out alcohol, I cut out sugary foods, because they kind of spike and, and influence

00:43:52.620 your energy levels, and then you crash. I ate small meals, so that my energy was frequent throughout

00:43:58.460 the day, I and I woke up and fell asleep naturally, because all of these ingredients influence how much

00:44:05.560 energy we have over the course of the day. And after I cut these out, and caffeine, I cut out

00:44:11.460 beforehand, because it takes our, our body a little while to, to, to catch up and kind of beat the

00:44:18.380 procrastinate or the, the caffeine withdrawal, is I charted how much energy I had out of 10,

00:44:25.160 every single hour, every single day for three weeks, excuse me, and then, excuse me, I need some,

00:44:32.200 some more coffee, I think. And then I charted how much energy I had. And I looked at how much

00:44:39.520 the kind of trend lines over the course of these three weeks. And I found something remarkable.

00:44:46.360 And it was that without fail, there were natural patterns to my energy levels over the course of

00:44:54.260 this time. And so I found between the hours of 10 and noon, and 5 and 8pm, I had more energy than

00:45:02.060 in any other hour of the day. And I did a bit of digging into this. And part of it depends on our

00:45:08.140 chronotype, which you might have heard of, which basically dictates how much energy we have over

00:45:13.100 the course of the day. And so morning birds, these people who rise at, you know, 5am to meditate and

00:45:20.800 do yoga and stuff like that, they have more energy early on in the day. Other people who kind of

00:45:27.120 half stumble out of bed and struggle to get by like me. You know, I'm one of these people who works

00:45:35.200 late into the night, because that's when I have the most energy, we have more energy later on in

00:45:40.320 the day. And so the idea is by getting a sense and a feel for when we naturally have the most energy,

00:45:47.000 we can adjust our schedule accordingly, and shape it around when we naturally are the most productive.

00:45:53.600 Because there's a direct connection between how much energy we have, and how productive we are,

00:45:59.500 the more energy we bring to our work, the more we're going to accomplish. And because as we were

00:46:05.600 chatting, not all tasks in our work are created equal, when we do our most vital tasks, like the

00:46:12.200 three intentions that we set at the start of the day, when we naturally have the most energy.

00:46:17.580 So I like to do my three daily intentions between 10 and noon, and between 5 and 8pm.

00:46:22.880 And that's because I want those to be as productive as possible. And I want to do as

00:46:29.880 good of a job as I possibly can on them. And tasks like email, you know, I check my email every day

00:46:35.080 at 3pm. For the simple fact that I have the least amount of energy, then an email isn't that vital of

00:46:41.740 a task for me. And so we usually don't have total control and flexibility over how we manage our

00:46:48.860 schedule over the course of the day. But we usually have some, you know, we can come in a bit later

00:46:54.320 into work if we have flex hours, and, and we were more productive later on in the day, or we can show

00:47:00.660 up at 7am, not notpm, and be productive in those hours, if we find we have the most energy then.

00:47:08.020 And so the idea is that by shaping, you know, all hours of the day, not all hours of the day are

00:47:15.460 created equal. You know, there are some when we're naturally more productive than in others. And by

00:47:21.380 shaping our schedule around those hours, we can level up to become even more productive that way.

00:47:28.020 Great stuff. Yeah, I've been trying to do a better job of managing, scheduling my work around my energy

00:47:32.800 levels. I know that I'm more focused in the morning, like mid morning. So I try to do more of my writing

00:47:38.820 during those times. And then yeah, email, I save for whenever I'm just like,

00:47:42.700 are you? Are you a morning bird? Would you say? Like, what time do you usually get up at?

00:47:47.300 Well, I feel like I used to be a morning bird. But I've slowly shifted to being a night owl for some

00:47:53.180 reason. I don't know why. I've kind of just let it happen.

00:47:57.500 Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, maybe maybe you were trying to force waking up early into your schedule. And this

00:48:03.540 is what I found, because our chronotype and the way we're wired stays pretty consistent over time.

00:48:09.700 And I think a lot of people like the idea of being an early riser. And I did dozens of

00:48:16.500 productivity experiments over the course of the project. And, you know, things like living in

00:48:21.200 isolation for 10 days. I meditated for 35 hours one week, I became a total slob for another week,

00:48:28.300 all in the name of productivity. But another one of them was waking up at 530 every day. And it took

00:48:36.120 me a few months to kind of wedge this schedule in this routine into my life. And I finally had it

00:48:42.620 though, a few months into this, the ideal routine that I thought at least that productivity dreams

00:48:50.240 are made of, I woke up at 530 to make a coffee. At six, I walked over to the gym, I planned out my

00:48:57.820 daily intentions while I was working out. Then I made a healthy breakfast, I meditated,

00:49:03.200 I showered, I connected to the internet because I disconnect from the internet between 8pm and 8am

00:49:09.120 every day. I did that during the project and still do. I read and then I started working at nine and I

00:49:14.020 felt so productive because I got so much done before the rest of the world woke up. But I quickly

00:49:20.600 realized that I absolutely hated the ritual. I had to go to sleep when my friends and my girlfriend

00:49:28.320 wanted to hang out. I had to go to sleep when I was on a roll because I was so productive late at

00:49:33.360 night. And because I wanted, I needed to wake up at 530 and didn't want to compromise on sleep,

00:49:38.760 which would have been worse. And I realized that I absolutely hated the ritual because I simply have

00:49:44.600 more energy later on in the day. And that led me to a lot of research where there's no difference

00:49:51.000 in somebody's socioeconomic standing, depending on what time they wake up at. It's what we do

00:49:57.180 with the hours of our day that make the difference in our productivity. And you can think about it

00:50:02.620 logically, right? Because if you have one person that wakes up at 530 and does their routine, then

00:50:07.960 you have somebody who wakes up at 9am and does their daily routine. And the routines are the same,

00:50:13.360 they're going to be just as productive. But what does change over the course of the day is how much

00:50:20.200 energy we have and how much energy we have to bring to our work and to our life. And I think

00:50:27.200 we got to structure our day around that rather than, you know, I was in love. And this goes to

00:50:33.280 the idea of knowing why we want to make a change that we were chatting about earlier. I was in love

00:50:39.560 with this sepia tone fantasy of being this early riser who was ultra productive and woke up early every

00:50:46.940 single day. And, and, you know, I finally had it. And I realized that because of the way I'm wired,

00:50:52.260 and because of the fact that this change wasn't that important to me, it really was a waste of

00:50:58.660 time. And so not all productivity advice will work for you. And so, and this is one of the other things

00:51:04.680 that I found in the project when I was kind of separating the advice that worked from the advice

00:51:09.160 that doesn't is whenever anybody's doling out blanket productivity advice, you should question

00:51:15.720 that advice. Um, because there's a lot of people who, you know, they want to promote their, their

00:51:21.360 book or their system so that they can, you know, get speaking gigs and consulting and stuff like that.

00:51:27.480 Um, and you should always question advice. That's kind of this blanket advice where somebody has,

00:51:33.020 seems like they have everything figured out because it's really not what productivity tactics are the

00:51:37.760 best, even though some work better than others for most people. It's what productivity tactics are

00:51:43.820 the best for you. And this is true for email, you know, batching email. If you think that doesn't work

00:51:49.620 for you, don't do it. You know, figure out, figure out a different way to, to re you know, shift your

00:51:55.600 focus between email and other elements of your work less. If you think waking up early won't work for you,

00:52:01.780 don't do it. If you think a maintenance day or a maintenance half day won't work for you and you love

00:52:07.000 that feeling of, of maintaining these elements of your life throughout the day, don't do it. Um, and that,

00:52:13.060 that speaks to the idea that productivity isn't about how much we produce. It's about how much we accomplish

00:52:18.340 because the best productivity advice out there will be self-reinforcing in that we'll do it.

00:52:26.100 And then we'll feel so good because doing so allows us to accomplish that much more that we'll keep going

00:52:31.640 with it. But we really have to figure out the stuff that works for us and, and leave the rest.

00:52:37.100 Right. I also think people need to keep in mind that, uh, what works for you at one time might not

00:52:41.100 work for you in another time. Yeah. I've, I've noticed that the way I manage my day has changed

00:52:47.660 since when I was not married to when I was in college to when I have kids. Um, it's changed because

00:52:54.780 the circumstances change. And so you have to adapt to that. Um, and I remember I tried really hard to

00:52:59.660 keep doing the way that I used to do things before I had kids and like, that doesn't work. So I've had

00:53:05.000 to adjust and, uh, that's worked out for me. Well, that, that's the thing, you know, productivity

00:53:10.280 is so often a process of understanding our constraints. And so as, yeah, exactly. As the

00:53:16.800 conditions of our life changed, the tactics will change that work for us. Like waking up early is a

00:53:21.520 good example of that. We'll stay wired the same way, but once we have kids, we might find that waking

00:53:27.060 up at five 30 every morning, even though it's kind of a struggle to, to get in bed at a reasonable hour,

00:53:32.160 uh, we might find that those hours are the most serene and that we're able to write during them

00:53:37.220 and that we're able to have some time for ourself and kind of charge up before the day starts. And so

00:53:42.940 we really, I totally, I'm with you. Yeah. So let's talk about managing attention. Um,

00:53:49.660 because that's an important part of you can manage your time, have things scheduled down to a T

00:53:53.300 you can be working your prime time hours, but if you're not focused on your work, that that's all

00:54:00.060 for not. Um, so let's talk about the thing that causes like trained us to be unfocused monkeys,

00:54:07.760 basically, um, is the internet. Um, the internet just sucks productivity out. And I think we talked

00:54:13.620 about earlier, you, uh, you know, you, you need to take a break, you know, I'll just check Reddit for a

00:54:19.440 bit or I'll check Twitter. And then, you know, an hour later you're like, Oh my gosh, what just

00:54:23.880 happened? Um, and then you're trying to get focused on your work, but you want to keep checking your

00:54:28.420 email. So what can we do to get a handle on our internet driven distraction? It's funny because

00:54:36.100 the research shows, and this was a study done by, I believe Tim Pitchell out of Carleton University in

00:54:43.380 Ottawa, he found that of the time we spend on the internet, we spend 47% of our time procrastinating.

00:54:52.360 And so what that means is things quite literally take twice as long when we're connected to the

00:54:58.700 internet while we're doing them, which is a ridiculous amount of time to waste. You know,

00:55:02.920 if you want to get, in other words, four hours of work done and, you know, eight hours of work done

00:55:07.580 in four hours, just disconnect from the internet because it'll allow you to, to be distracted so

00:55:14.300 much less. But I think the answer comes down to dealing with the distractions that derail our

00:55:21.680 productivity ahead of time. And for the simple fact that we're most productive when we work towards our

00:55:27.700 goals in the moment and the distractions, especially those that reside on the internet,

00:55:32.840 the ones that are the most distracting are such because they're more attractive than our work

00:55:39.920 in the moment. And so going on Facebook or Reddit will always be a sexier task that we want to do

00:55:47.940 more than the actual real work that's in front of us. And so making a plan to deal with these

00:55:55.380 distractions, whether you find you're interrupted by email or Reddit or Twitter or Facebook, whatever

00:56:02.620 the hell you're, you're distracted by making a plan to deal with these ahead of time before they come 0.60

00:56:08.380 up. And before you're tempted to fall into a black hole of them is, is kind of the way out. And I've

00:56:16.520 been thinking about this idea recently too. And I think that distractions and interruptions that derail

00:56:24.200 our productivity can be kind of separated by two factors. The first is whether or not we have control

00:56:30.100 over them. And the second is whether they're annoying or whether they're kind of welcome or

00:56:35.740 a fun reprieve from our work. And if you kind of in your head, close your eyes, not, not if you're

00:56:42.280 driving or at the gym or in public, cause it might look kind of weird. If you draw kind of a two by two

00:56:47.520 grid in your head and on the left side is whether or not you have control over these things. And on top

00:56:54.120 is whether they're annoying or whether they're fun, the ones you can't control, um, you can't prevent

00:57:01.060 them from arising because you can't control over them. You know, whether they're fun ones, um, like,

00:57:07.420 um, you know, a call from your loved ones while you're working or your team coming by your office

00:57:13.340 to say, Hey man, you want to grab lunch? It's on me. Um, those are welcome, uh, distractions or, or ones

00:57:19.320 that are unwelcome, like phone calls or meetings you can't avoid. You can't deal with these ahead

00:57:25.740 of time, but you can deal with how you relate to them as they come up. And so you can welcome the

00:57:30.380 ones that are fun and, and try to get back on track as quickly as you possibly can for, for the

00:57:36.640 ones that, that are unwelcome. But for the ones that you can control, like email alerts, um, one of the

00:57:44.320 worst productivity detractors are email alerts because we're constantly bombarded by them.

00:57:49.440 And every single time we get one, our, our focus is interrupted. Um, email alerts, um, you know,

00:57:56.640 social media alerts, notifications of most kinds. My, my cell phone never buzzes. It never beeps.

00:58:02.820 And I check my notifications whenever I check my text messages or whenever I check the time,

00:58:07.540 because my phone happens to be my pocket watch. And that's when I deal with the interruptions that

00:58:12.160 come in. It's kind of a natural break in the day. Um, you know, you can leave your phone at home

00:58:17.180 if you find that you're wasting a lot of time on it or that you're only skimming the surface of your

00:58:22.980 work, uh, when you're on your phone, which is often the case for, for a lot of people, or you can

00:58:28.520 disable a lot of the notifications that you receive ahead of time or download an app like self-control for

00:58:36.040 the Mac. Uh, you know, there are one ones for windows too, where you can create a list of sites that

00:58:41.320 you don't want to visit when you're in your peak productivity hours, maybe enable these apps during

00:58:47.460 your, your biological prime time. And so, you know, again, the, the advice will work differently

00:58:52.680 depending on the person. Um, but this I think is, is a truth that's universal is distractions derail

00:59:00.820 our productivity because in the moment we would rather be doing them than our actual work. And so

00:59:06.980 dealing with them ahead of time, they're infinitely easier to deal with ahead of time than they are to

00:59:12.260 deal with as they come up because we can't get away from them. They're more fun. Um, and so I think

00:59:19.380 that's the best answer is first of all, figure out whether you have control over it or not and change

00:59:24.280 how you relate to it if you don't. And if you do have control, make a plan to, to change it for the

00:59:28.620 next time. Awesome. So let's say you've done, you're doing that, right? You, you've put in the,

00:59:33.280 the, the checks so you don't check the internet when you don't, when you shouldn't be, but you're

00:59:38.240 getting to work and you find yourself, man, I just can't focus. Like I'm just, the internet has

00:59:42.580 trained my brain to be constantly distracted. Um, what can we do to retrain our ability to,

00:59:49.360 to focus on a task, um, deeply? I think it comes down to the idea of to continue stumbling

00:59:58.060 and, and, and to get back up and maybe more than that to, to try these tactics while being aware

01:00:06.740 of there's another firetruck, man, this day in, uh, it's a crazy day here. Again, that, that was a,

01:00:15.220 that was a, that was a, in that quadrant. I had no control over that side to change how,

01:00:19.880 how I related to, to that distraction that derailed my focus just there. Um, but it, you know,

01:00:27.820 that's the thing about the internet is it's so stimulating, um, that it's hard to kind of

01:00:35.040 separate away from that. And sometimes I find the best answers to disconnect entirely. And that

01:00:41.540 might sound drastic, but when you consider the idea that we spent 47% of our time on the internet

01:00:48.960 procrastinating, it can often be worth it, especially when we're doing tasks that are

01:00:53.720 aversive. And so when we find ourselves doing a task that, that flips those procrastination triggers,

01:00:59.080 so it's boring, it's frustrating, it's difficult, it's ambiguous, it's unstructured. We procrastinate

01:01:05.320 the most when a task is like that. And so we should get rid of the alternatives that are more, um, or

01:01:13.660 less aversive than that. And so disconnecting entirely, uh, as a good example, I wrote most of my

01:01:18.980 book while being disconnected from the internet. And so my publisher gave me, I think 35 or 40 weeks,

01:01:25.880 uh, but I ended up writing the book in 24 weeks because I was disconnected from the internet for

01:01:31.720 most of it, even though it's pretty research heavy and writing for me, I don't have a journalism degree

01:01:38.440 or anything like that. I'm just naturally curious about this stuff. I have a business degree. And so

01:01:43.400 I'm, I'm not a writer by trade and I find writing to be, it's a fun process and it's a meaningful

01:01:48.920 process, but it's a tedious process in practice. And I procrastinate on it more than any other task

01:01:54.740 in my work. Uh, but when I disconnect from the internet and you know, I so often leave my phone

01:02:00.880 at home when I go to a, my favorite coffee shop here and have my rosemary almond milk latte, um,

01:02:07.580 you know, which I drink with one pinky in the air and I write best in those conditions because

01:02:13.740 the distractions simply aren't there. Um, my computer, the wifi on it is off. My phone is at

01:02:21.040 home. So I'm not attracted by that more, um, frankly, attractive alternative than the actual work

01:02:27.680 that I ought to be doing. And so, you know, eliminating these distractions ahead of time or,

01:02:33.140 you know, cutting yourself off entirely when you have the flexibility to do so, I think is,

01:02:38.600 is crucial. And even if you work in an, in an office type environment where you don't have a lot of

01:02:45.100 control over your work, if you have the flexibility to attend an important meeting and not be available

01:02:51.240 or connected for an hour during that time, you have the flexibility to disconnect from the internet

01:02:56.920 for an hour or two. Very cool. Well, Hey Chris, this has been a great conversation. Um, where can

01:03:02.720 people learn more about your book and your work? Yeah, that was fun. Uh, my, my book is called the

01:03:07.980 productivity project. It's available. We're, we're translating it into, I think seven languages by

01:03:13.820 now, but you know, you, you walk into any bookstore or audio bookstore, uh, metaphorically walk into an

01:03:19.640 audio bookstore. I narrate it. So if you like the sound of my voice, um, you can get it there. If you

01:03:24.100 don't like the sound of my voice, uh, the physical copy or the e-copy is, is, is the place to go for

01:03:28.840 that. Um, so it's called the productivity project. And my website is a life of productivity.com and you

01:03:37.400 can find on that website, uh, all the experiments that I've conducted and all the articles from the

01:03:44.380 productivity project. And I I'm continuing to, to post an article every Monday, uh, while I, while I do

01:03:51.180 stuff like speaking and, and consulting, but I love writing more than anything. Cause even though it's an

01:03:56.700 aversive task and I procrastinate on it, even when not many distractions are around, um, it's,

01:04:03.180 it's so meaningful. And I love sharing ideas that way too. Fantastic. Well, Chris Bailey,

01:04:07.560 thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

01:04:10.740 My guest today was Chris Bailey. He's the author of the book productivity project. You can find it

01:04:14.900 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about Chris's work

01:04:18.880 at a life of productivity.com. You can see some of the metrics that he uses to measure his

01:04:23.460 productivity there. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash productivity project,

01:04:27.840 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

01:04:41.560 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

01:04:45.800 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. Our show is edited by a

01:04:49.780 creative audio lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing needs or audio production

01:04:53.500 needs, check them out at creative audio lab.com. As always, we appreciate your support. And until

01:04:58.400 next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - December 02, 2016

#257： The Productivity Project

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