The Art of Manliness - How to Get Time, Priorities, and Energy Working in Your Favor

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

00:00:10.880 Now, when you think of your assets, you probably think of your money, but you also have three

00:00:14.200 other hugely important assets at your disposal too. Your time, energy, and priorities. When

00:00:19.300 you manage these assets poorly, you can feel overwhelmed and scattered and yet unproductive

00:00:23.220 and unfulfilled. When you manage them well, things in your personal and professional life

00:00:26.760 click and you experience traction and satisfaction. So how do you avoid the first situation and

00:00:31.840 achieve the second? My guest today, Kerry Newhoff provides answers in his book, At Your Best,

00:00:36.080 How to Get Time, Priorities, and Energy Working in Your Favor. We begin our conversation with

00:00:40.280 Kerry's story of achieving success only to suffer burnout and how burnout has become less of a job

00:00:44.780 problem these days than a general life problem. We then talk about how to leave what Kerry calls

00:00:48.800 the stress spiral and get into the thrive cycle. We discuss the two mental shifts you need to make

00:00:53.100 to better manage your time, how to keep other people and yourself from hijacking your priorities,

00:00:57.720 the power of categorical decision-making and separating the good from the best, and why you

00:01:01.520 need to put even your personal commitments on your calendar. We also talk about scheduling your daily

00:01:05.320 tasks and what Kerry calls your green, yellow, and red energy zones, and how to spend your time

00:01:10.000 more strategically. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash at your best.

00:01:23.100 All right, Kerry Newhoff, welcome to the show. Hey, it's great to be with you. Thanks so much for having

00:01:28.540 me, Brett. So you got a book out called At Your Best, How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities

00:01:33.200 Working in Your Favor. And this book talks about the changes you made in your life when you experienced

00:01:38.700 some pretty massive burnout in your career and in your personal life. It's about 15 years ago.

00:01:44.920 Can you walk us through what led up to the burnout and at what point did you realize,

00:01:49.420 man, I got a problem and I got to do something about this? One of my problems was I didn't realize

00:01:54.660 I had a problem. And I think that's how a lot of people get into this spiral of burnout,

00:02:01.000 whatever degree it happens to be in. Yeah. So for me, I had been in leadership for about a decade.

00:02:07.400 I was leading a very fast-growing not-for-profit organization. And I had a really terrible formula.

00:02:13.580 And the formula was that the more growth I had, the more hours I had to work.

00:02:18.480 And that doesn't scale. It just doesn't scale. I tend to be kind of a driven person,

00:02:25.460 strong-willed leader, strong-willed person. And I had convinced myself that I didn't have any limits,

00:02:31.280 that other people might have to sleep more, other people may have to take time off,

00:02:36.060 but I didn't really need to do it. Sort of a classic entrepreneurial mindset.

00:02:41.800 And that worked for a long time. I had people warn me all through my 30s. They're like,

00:02:46.000 hey, dude, if you keep working like this, you're going to burn out. And I'm like,

00:02:49.300 nah, that's not going to happen. And then what was the most shocking part of that for me

00:02:54.420 was in many ways, I was at the top of my game. I had just spoken to 2,500 leaders in Atlanta

00:03:00.200 at a major conference. It was like the biggest speaking event I had at that time to date in my

00:03:04.980 life. We were growing really fast. And I thought my life is fantastic. And then my body went on strike.

00:03:11.800 And I woke up one day and my usual passion was gone. And my thinking was not very clear. And I

00:03:18.140 thought, oh, I got to get some more sleep. So I did. And what was worse is I just kept getting

00:03:24.300 worse and worse to the point where my passion was gone. My joy was gone. I thought, wow,

00:03:30.040 maybe this is it. Maybe this is the end of road for me. And I had brain fog like I'd never had before.

00:03:35.260 So that's how burnout hit me. And yeah, I didn't recognize the signs.

00:03:41.460 I guess it was sort of like the boiling frog. You didn't recognize it as it was happening?

00:03:46.500 Yeah. No, exactly. And then one day you're dead. And looking back on it, I'm like, okay,

00:03:51.540 I did not declare a finish line. So my body decided to. And that seems to be a more and more common

00:03:58.760 story that you hear from leaders is like, I thought everything was okay, or I thought it was normal.

00:04:04.020 Now, having lived the last 15 years a lot healthier, I can look back and say that level

00:04:10.000 of fatigue is not normal. Like when you're driving your car for five minutes, you feel like you need

00:04:14.340 to pull over at the side of the road and have a nap. That is not normal life. When you're kind of

00:04:20.460 redlining your emotions all the time, or actually, what was weird with my emotions, and this could be

00:04:25.720 a clue for people to see how close they are to burnout, is I had found myself growing increasingly numb.

00:04:32.620 I wasn't feeling like life is a series of highs and lows. And as much as we'd all love to avoid

00:04:38.100 the lows, you're supposed to feel them. Like when somebody close to you gets sick, that is supposed

00:04:43.340 to register in your heart. And conversely, when someone has some really good news, you know, they

00:04:48.520 broke some kind of sales record, or maybe they're expecting a child or something, you should feel

00:04:52.540 happy for them. And I was increasingly just experiencing life as going through the motions, and I was kind of

00:04:58.480 numb. And then when my emotions would surface, they would often be not related to what they

00:05:04.920 should be. So if I've got two boys, if one of them was supposed to take out the trash, they didn't take

00:05:09.760 out the trash, I might melt down on them. And like, that's a three out of 10 on the problem scale, but

00:05:14.640 I treated it like a 12 out of 10. So there were signs at that point, but I just ignored them and blew

00:05:21.840 through them because I thought, well, the rules don't apply to me. And of course, they never apply to you

00:05:25.780 until they do. So you said you were a leader of a nonprofit organization. Is this the church that

00:05:31.100 you were leading? Yeah. So I was running a church at a time. I'd originally trained as a lawyer,

00:05:35.800 so I spent my 20s in university, which is a whole other story for another day, but went through the

00:05:40.460 whole law thing in the middle of law school, felt a call into ministry, and ended up finishing law and

00:05:47.260 then going into seminary. And I started at three very small, like handful of people, country churches

00:05:54.160 that really hadn't changed in about 30 years. And then obviously new leadership brings change.

00:05:59.420 And we became the fastest growing church in our denomination in the country and one of the largest

00:06:03.980 in the country in a period of about a decade. So it was that rocket ride that I was riding that just

00:06:09.400 about killed me. Well, and you make this point in the book, like you were doing the thing that you

00:06:15.060 wanted to do, right? You wanted to, you know, this is something you were passionate, you felt called to,

00:06:19.020 but the thing that you wanted to do was causing you burnout. This was happening, this happens,

00:06:23.200 you said this happens to a lot of people, people who they're doing the thing they love,

00:06:27.280 they're starting a business, they're whatever. And that's the thing that's, that's killing them.

00:06:32.160 Like what's going on there? Well, you know, it seems to be a human condition. Yeah. Because

00:06:36.240 that's really surprising. Like from my own perspective, as a person of faith, it's like,

00:06:41.460 how could any of this be bad? And I think that kind of got in my way, to be honest with you,

00:06:46.840 because I thought, well, look, the church is growing like crazy. I can't be unhealthy.

00:06:51.140 And of course, I was unhealthy. But it also reminded me of what I saw in law. I mean,

00:06:56.980 I went to law school, I worked in downtown Toronto for a year, I'm Canadian, and I worked in the

00:07:02.780 financial sector. So I saw law at what you might call the top of the game, right? Like Wall Street

00:07:07.920 law kind of thing. And what I noticed there is all these people had dream jobs, my colleagues and the

00:07:14.580 people I was working with for that year had dream jobs. And most of them hated it. Like they had the

00:07:19.920 house, they had the, you know, I remember one guy had a horse farm in the country.

00:07:24.480 And every day he or every week, he would buy a lottery ticket, walk it into the firm. Of course,

00:07:30.660 I'm in my mid 20s. At that point, he'd wave it in my face. And he goes, Carrie, if I ever win this

00:07:36.760 lottery, I'm out of here, you'll never see my face again. And I thought, really, this is like the

00:07:42.480 pinnacle of success, right? Like if you're if you're gonna do law, this is near the top of the food

00:07:47.100 chain. And you hate the life you built? Like, what is that? And then I began to run into that

00:07:52.760 same kind of thing in ministry. And I've seen that in so many people's lives. It's just the stress

00:07:58.780 gets to you and you don't have a formula for how to deal with it. And success can leave you feeling

00:08:03.840 empty on the inside or burned out. What do you think is the nature of the type of work that causes

00:08:08.980 burnout? So like, I know that pastoral burnout is pretty common. Yeah, I can see lawyer burn. I know

00:08:15.800 that. And then like, there's caregiver burnout, like nurses, doctors, people, right? Is it like,

00:08:21.640 is if you're dealing with people? Like, is that what is that what causes burnout? Because I look at all

00:08:26.580 those, all those jobs, like, you just deal with a lot of people in difficult situations all the time.

00:08:31.840 That makes sense, you would get burnout.

00:08:33.160 Oh, for sure. In ministry, I mean, it's really hard to say no to people, people you love,

00:08:38.860 people you care about. We were navigating 30% growth year after year for a number of years.

00:08:44.600 So there was just a run. I've heard, I don't know how true this is, that 15% growth is scalable. Like,

00:08:50.000 you can handle that. Anything above that becomes difficult to manage. I was finding it difficult to

00:08:55.280 manage at that point. I don't know. It is endemic to certain careers. For sure, burnout, as I understand

00:09:01.440 the origin of the term, was originally a term to describe the feeling that doctors had in the 1970s.

00:09:10.380 It was like, I feel burned out. I've got compassion fatigue. I've got, you know, too many hours. And

00:09:15.180 the stories you have from the internships of doctors and the residencies are just crazy. And you do know

00:09:21.340 a lot of burned out lawyers. It's easy to get cynical. But what I'm noticing, and I don't know

00:09:26.700 whether you'd agree with this or whether you see this or not, Brett, in your work, but I'm seeing

00:09:31.360 it move from like a work condition to a life condition in the last decade. I meet burned out

00:09:37.200 people everywhere. I meet them in helping professions. I meet them in other jobs. I meet

00:09:44.440 them online. I meet them, stay-at-home parents feel burned out. I've met retired people who are

00:09:50.040 struggling with overwhelm. And I'm like, whoa, what's going on? I think technology maybe had a role

00:09:54.940 in that. And I'm a fan of technology. I'm a podcaster like you are. I run a digital company.

00:10:01.400 But for the first time in history, for the last 15 years, we're having to deal with being on call

00:10:06.420 24-7 with devices in our pockets that give the world access to us. I don't know that we're built

00:10:13.640 to handle that kind of scale of communication and access. So I see it expanding. And I've also seen

00:10:22.260 some very happy lawyers, some very satisfied pastors. You know, my last 15 years, totally

00:10:27.640 different story than the first 10 years in leadership. But yeah, that could definitely be

00:10:33.100 an issue. But I see it as pretty widespread now.

00:10:36.520 Something you also talked about in the book, when you started this burnout, like you didn't know,

00:10:39.800 you didn't recognize you were burnt out right away, but you did notice like, there's a lot of

00:10:43.960 stress and I'm just, it's crazy town. Things are growing fast. And you would start telling yourself

00:10:48.580 these excuses of, you know, what's going on here. And one of them was like, well, this is just a

00:10:53.960 season. Like, well, we get through this, like we get through this year and things will level off and

00:10:59.620 be better. And you get to the end of the year and it just got crazier. I mean, any other excuses you

00:11:04.240 found yourself telling yourself as you started experiencing this increased level of stress?

00:11:09.340 Yeah, that was, I mean, it could be a whole podcast. I had all kinds of reasons. And I had that.

00:11:15.460 Fortunately, I have good friends and good family. And they would say, you know, what's new with you,

00:11:19.620 Carrie? I'm like, well, I'm flying here, flying there. I'm writing this book or whatever.

00:11:23.420 Things are really busy. It's just a busy season. And eventually they started calling me on it.

00:11:28.400 And I realized, oh, like seasons have beginnings and endings. And if your season has no ending,

00:11:33.020 it's not a season, it's your life. So, you know, I got called out on that one.

00:11:37.820 Another lie I think I probably bought into or an excuse I told myself is this is the price of success.

00:11:43.280 Like if you want to have something that's growing quickly and you want to accomplish your mission,

00:11:47.800 it's going to cost you personally. I don't believe that anymore, but I fell for that hook,

00:11:53.880 line and sinker. And yeah, those are a couple of lies I believed. The other thing I really struggled

00:12:00.620 with was I had a sense of time famine. And I lived in this imaginary world where I thought,

00:12:07.800 if I could only have more time, if I could only have more time, and I just don't have enough time

00:12:13.000 to get a proper day off. I just don't have enough time. And I think the answer for me was always

00:12:19.260 around the corner, like one more hire or one more season, or if I can just get to Christmas vacation,

00:12:26.540 then I will be better. And of course, that never solves the problem. The problem was internal.

00:12:32.740 The problem was the way that I was approaching leadership and the way that I was stewarding

00:12:37.620 this life I had been given. And once I fixed that, all the problems, well, those problems

00:12:43.380 seem to go away.

00:12:44.600 Yeah. Once you get to Christmas vacation, then Christmas vacation is crazy busy because you got

00:12:48.080 all the holiday stuff you're doing.

00:12:50.460 And then you're living for spring break.

00:12:51.940 Yeah. Then you're living for spring. But then you live for those moments and you have to do a lot

00:12:55.720 of work before you take the break. And then you can kind of enjoy your break. And then when you get back,

00:13:00.400 there's all this work that's built up because you've taken a break. And then you just have to

00:13:03.440 work like the Dickens to catch up on your work. It's yeah. All right. So yeah, that's an excuse

00:13:09.060 you got to get out. Like this is just got to accept that this is the normal. This is the norm.

00:13:13.480 I've got stuff. Things are out of control. I need to get a handle on it. Let's talk about first,

00:13:18.140 like how we get on that pathway towards burnout. And you argue that it's all because we hop on what

00:13:26.060 you call the stress spiral. And there's stages to this. What's the on-ramp? Like what gets us onto

00:13:31.840 this downward stress spiral?

00:13:34.520 I tried to put my finger when I was writing the book, I tried to put my finger on the condition

00:13:38.620 that so many people find themselves in. And I named it the stress spiral. And the stress spiral is

00:13:43.980 really three conditions we find ourselves in, overwhelmed, overworked, and overcommitted.

00:13:50.760 And I would say the majority of leaders I interact with these days, and the majority of people I know

00:13:55.380 in my life would identify with two or three out of three. I feel overwhelmed. I feel overcommitted.

00:14:02.600 I've said yes to too many things. And I'm overworked. I'm putting in too many hours doing whatever I do.

00:14:08.840 And how do you get there? Well, I think you get into the stress spiral. As I really thought about it,

00:14:13.100 there are three primary assets all of us are handling every single day, no matter what your life

00:14:17.920 situation is. Time, energy, and priorities. On a vacation, you're dealing with that. How are we

00:14:22.900 going to spend the day? What's the most important thing to do? Do we go out for breakfast? Do we eat

00:14:27.600 in? Do you think we have time for a round of golf today? Or so-and-so wants us to do X. So it's time,

00:14:34.540 energy. I'm pretty tired today. I don't know whether I can do 18 holes, or at least maybe we better get a

00:14:39.640 cart, right? Or priorities. So even on vacation, you're dealing with that. And at work, that's what

00:14:45.060 you're dealing with. And in life, in normal life, you're dealing with that all the time.

00:14:49.160 And when I began to look back on the period leading into burnout, I noticed that my time was

00:14:54.780 unfocused. I spent it very randomly, usually in a reactive mode to whatever was happening in the

00:15:00.860 moment. My energy levels, I was really unaware of other than most of the time I felt tired.

00:15:07.280 And then the priorities that I was dealing with, I just let other people hijack my priorities all the

00:15:12.860 time. And so when you have unfocused time, unleveraged energy, and hijack priorities,

00:15:17.140 you end up feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and overcommitted. And hence, you're in the stress spiral.

00:15:22.920 So this unfocused time, I mean, you said you were reactive. I mean, would you just wake,

00:15:27.620 walk in the office, look at your inbox, and let your inbox dictate what you would spend your time on?

00:15:32.560 Totally. I let everybody. Knocks on the door, inboxes, you know, texting was becoming a thing in 2006.

00:15:39.880 And again, rapidly growing organization. Everybody wants to meet with you, and you want to meet with

00:15:45.480 everybody. And then, of course, in ministry, in a helping profession, you're dealing with a lot of

00:15:49.960 crises. I was talking to a pastor the other day who said his Saturday got blown up by two families that

00:15:55.920 were in crisis. And of course, what I've learned is when your marriage is falling apart, that didn't

00:16:00.360 happen on a Friday night, and now you need help on Saturday. Your marriage has been falling apart

00:16:04.440 for years. So perhaps I can't meet you on my day off, but maybe I can meet you next Tuesday at three

00:16:09.680 o'clock. But I didn't know that back then. So I just let other people determine how I spent my day.

00:16:15.020 And then the really stressful part of that is like, now I run a digital communications company. But back

00:16:20.580 when I was working at a church and leading a church, there was a message due almost, you know,

00:16:24.940 every Sunday. And so I had to show up with something fresh to say, something faithful to say,

00:16:30.220 and something marginally creative, so that engaged people's attention. And again, you know, when you

00:16:37.640 lead a larger church, preaching is an awful lot of the formula for why people come. And so I had that

00:16:44.380 pressure. And when I let other people hijack my mornings, my afternoons, that left like late afternoon

00:16:50.080 for me trying to come up with something I was going to say on the weekend. And of course, then that always

00:16:54.420 bled into the evenings and into days off. So it was just a mess.

00:16:58.580 And it's going back to this working, not in align with your energies. Like sometimes you just work

00:17:03.280 on like these really hard, like writing a sermon, for example, like something that's really creative,

00:17:07.620 requires a lot of thought, a lot of energy. And you'd have to work on that when you weren't feeling

00:17:12.900 that. And sometimes it would end up subpar. Exactly. Yeah. Like in the stress spiral,

00:17:17.480 unleveraged energy is something I had to think about as I got healthier, because I realized my energy,

00:17:24.280 even on my best days, when I'm fully rested, I'm healthy, I'm feeling good, I'm not burned out,

00:17:30.400 it waxes and wanes over the course of a day. And everybody who's listening to this knows that

00:17:35.640 because you've identified yourself at some point as a night owl or a morning person or Daniel Pink

00:17:41.900 would argue a lot of people really peak midday, let's say between 10 and 2 or they're afternoon

00:17:47.020 people. But there's a percentage of people who are morning people. Do you have a bias one way or

00:17:51.420 the other? Like, would you say you're a morning person, Brett, or a night owl? I would say morning

00:17:55.300 person, like late morning. That's when I get my best work done. So your peak hours would be what?

00:18:01.100 After nine? Yeah, I'd say after nine. So like between, yeah, nine and 11, nine and 12, I would

00:18:07.660 say would be my best hours. Okay. You know what you just did? You just confirmed science.

00:18:12.460 Oh, wow. And I lived in my 30s as though I had 12 peak hours in a day. And nobody does that.

00:18:19.100 Like maybe a robot does or your car can run for 12 hours at a certain speed, but human

00:18:24.560 beings can't. And you've just affirmed what I discovered the hard way. You get about three 0.98

00:18:29.920 to five peak hours in a day where your energy is at its best, where you have no brain fog or

00:18:36.640 very little, and you're feeling great. And the ideas flow. If you're a writer, like you produce

00:18:43.380 your best content in that time. If you're working on strategy, your thinking is clear. You're able

00:18:48.560 to map out the future. If you're working on spreadsheets, you just haven't got that many

00:18:52.240 errors, right? Or maybe you came up with a really creative pivot table that you haven't

00:18:56.620 thought of before. That's about three to five hours where your energy is at its peak. And

00:19:01.600 then all of us end up with an hour or two in a typical day where we're kind of dragging.

00:19:06.980 For me, that's between four and six in the afternoon. Do you have an hour or two where you're

00:19:11.500 like, yeah, I either need a nap or I need to go for a run or something?

00:19:14.500 Yeah, like three, between three and five. That's when I usually do my workout. It's

00:19:19.880 like 4.30.

00:19:20.700 Very typical. And a really good use of your workout zone. I know that's important to you,

00:19:25.360 but are you training for the Olympics? Probably not.

00:19:27.960 Yeah.

00:19:28.860 No.

00:19:29.400 So you don't need to take your prime time to do your workouts. A lot of morning people still

00:19:34.000 work out in the morning. And if that really helps you be more productive, awesome. But I've

00:19:38.000 moved my exercise to the late afternoon because otherwise I either want to have an app or I want to

00:19:44.180 I want to get moving my body so that I sort of get re-energized for the evening.

00:19:49.760 So what I discovered with that time is I was spending it really unstrategically,

00:19:55.040 wasting my best hours of the day where I could produce the best content that I was capable of

00:20:00.220 producing and often putting it off till the late afternoon when I was already tired, over-caffeinated,

00:20:06.020 and when I didn't feel like doing it anymore. And it just created this stress spiral that led me

00:20:11.880 further and further and eventually into burnout.

00:20:14.180 And I want to talk more about how we can leverage our energy. And part of that is getting on what

00:20:19.600 you call the thrive cycle, which is the opposite of the stress cycle. And the first step of getting

00:20:24.100 on the thrive cycle is focusing your time instead of having unfocused time. And the first step in

00:20:30.860 focusing your time is you have to make two critical mental shifts about time if you want to do a better

00:20:37.180 job managing your time. So what are those two mental shifts?

00:20:40.340 Well, the first mental shift I made was I had to get past my excuses, which we've hinted at already.

00:20:46.140 And my excuse was, I don't have the time for that. And I read this little book. I don't think it's

00:20:51.620 even in print anymore. And I don't remember where I got it or even what the title is. But it was about

00:20:56.200 what is your life like if you're the President of the United States? I think it was written for

00:21:00.360 eighth graders. I don't know how I ended up reading it. It was probably a bad season of my life.

00:21:04.080 But it was really fascinating. And I remember having this aha moment where I thought the President

00:21:11.600 of the United States gets as many hours in the day as any other human being. And he or maybe in

00:21:17.300 the future, she has to, at that point, govern the free world with that same 24 hours in a day that I 1.00

00:21:24.280 get. And it made me think about all the really successful leaders I admire and the very best.

00:21:30.380 They make you feel they're never in a rush. They have all the time in the world for you.

00:21:35.300 They really pay attention to you. And they might be running 20 companies, but you'd never know it.

00:21:41.180 They're not frantic. And I started calling myself out on my speech and auditing my speech. And I made

00:21:48.820 myself stop saying things like, I don't have the time to do that. Because I realized I did. All through

00:21:55.460 my 30s, people said, Kerry, you got to write a book. You got to write a book. And I'd always say,

00:21:59.160 I don't have the time for that. I don't have the time for that. Well, since I burned out,

00:22:02.420 I've written five books over the last decade. And I had the time for it. I just wasn't taking it.

00:22:08.920 I also got rid of my excuse language when it came to, sorry, I couldn't get that done.

00:22:13.620 Well, actually, I could have gotten it done. I chose not to. And when I got honest with myself,

00:22:19.640 it really made me come to terms with how I was squandering time.

00:22:22.880 And then the second shift I made when it comes to time management, and these are easy to recognize

00:22:29.700 and to understand, very difficult to do. But I would say, just to wrap up the first one before

00:22:35.000 we dive fully into the second one, is stop saying you don't have the time. Start admitting to yourself

00:22:42.440 you didn't make it. Now, that's really hard. But if you're consistently for a month not making the time

00:22:48.880 to work out, that tells you something about your priorities. Or if your mom's been saying,

00:22:53.340 hey, when are you going to call me? And for a month, you haven't called your mom because you're

00:22:57.140 telling yourself, I don't have the time, I don't have the time, I don't have the time. Well, really,

00:23:00.440 you haven't had like 20 minutes to call your mom in the last month, like it makes you get really

00:23:04.500 honest with yourself. And then the second mental shift was to decide to abandon balance and embrace

00:23:11.440 passion. I had thought about balance as a life goal for a long time and probably put it on my

00:23:17.240 New Year's resolutions on different years. And then I began to look at balanced people, people,

00:23:22.900 very few people claim to have achieved balance. But when I saw it, it started to bother me. Because

00:23:28.740 in the lives of the people I knew who would say, hey, I'm really balanced, it seems like their

00:23:33.580 balance was a retreat. They kept stepping back, I'm doing less work, I'm doing less of this, I'm doing

00:23:39.700 less of that. And as I thought about it, I thought, you know what, like, I don't want to do less with

00:23:46.020 my life, I want to make a difference. And so I decided to abandon balance and embrace passion.

00:23:51.500 That whatever I allow on my calendar, whatever I allow, if I'm going to preach on the weekend,

00:23:56.320 I'm going to do a killer job. If I'm going to do this interview, I'm going to walk in prepared.

00:24:00.580 If I'm going to have a date night with my wife, and we've been married for decades,

00:24:04.520 I'm going to show up fully present. If I'm spending a day with my sons who are now grown,

00:24:10.220 I'm going to be there, not like half on my phone.

00:24:12.680 So I just decided, whatever I allow in my life, which is a minority of the opportunities that I

00:24:18.180 have, I'm just going to be fully present, and I'm going to do it passionately. And that has made a

00:24:23.560 huge difference. And by the way, that also applies to time off. If I'm going to vacation, I'm going

00:24:28.320 to vacation. If I'm going to sleep for eight hours, I'm not going to apologize for it. I'm going to

00:24:32.400 sleep passionately. I'm going to get a great night's sleep, so I can hit the ground running the

00:24:37.140 next day. So those were two really helpful ways to think about time and how to approach time.

00:24:42.980 I've got the time. If I didn't do it, I just didn't make it. And then whatever I allow myself

00:24:48.140 to do, I'm going to do passionately. And I imagine what that did is it made you

00:24:52.280 pickier about the things you committed to. Way pickier. Way pickier. And it got me to the point

00:24:59.660 where I thought, I'm just not going to say yes. And this is still hard. If you're looking at an

00:25:04.240 active thing, I have to work on daily. Like you, I get far more opportunities than I have

00:25:09.660 time available to do them. Just this morning, I had a text from a friend. Hey, you want to be on

00:25:14.100 my podcast? I asked my staff. They said, well, you're booking three months in advance. So I had

00:25:18.580 to let them know, no, I can't do it. And old me would have found a crack in the calendar and would

00:25:24.580 have said, yeah, I can do that with you. And my assistant said, but Carrie, you need to write a really

00:25:29.240 good article for next week. You got a book launch coming up and you got this coming up and you got that

00:25:33.040 coming up. You really can't do it. So yeah, that allows me to be fully present for this interview

00:25:38.760 as well. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the

00:25:45.280 show. Well, so this, you know, focusing your time is very connected to hijacking or preventing hijack

00:25:51.320 of your priorities. So this is an example. You have these filters in place that you've put in

00:25:55.860 place for yourself where it makes it harder for other people to hijack your priorities. Any other

00:26:00.920 tips that you found that are useful to prevent that from happening?

00:26:04.620 One hijack priority person is you. You are a good hijacker of your own priorities. I know I am 1.00

00:26:10.980 because I can be completely undistracted. So let's say I recognize I've got those peak energy times,

00:26:17.300 which mine are about seven to 11 AM. And I'm going to work on a really big article for a major

00:26:22.120 publication. I am fully capable of distracting myself. I may have put the world at bay and said,

00:26:28.500 you guys stay away and they stay away. And next thing you know, I'm five videos into a YouTube

00:26:33.520 wormhole that I can't get out of, or I get bored. We're getting addicted to being constantly connected

00:26:41.780 to other people. So I think you can hijack your own priorities. So I encourage, and this is not new

00:26:47.380 advice, but I encourage everyone, turn off all notifications on all of your devices. And a shocking

00:26:55.080 number of people have never done that. And you can program a few people to ring through. I have

00:27:00.360 some favorites on my iPhone that can get to me anytime, but they're the kinds of people that

00:27:05.240 tend not to interrupt me on a constant basis, or they wouldn't be a favorite. So if you're worried

00:27:10.820 about your daughter, well, your daughter can phone through. That's fine. But if she's interrupting you

00:27:14.820 five times a day, you can have a conversation with her about that. So you have to watch your own

00:27:19.860 distractions. Another one definitely is people. People can be a huge distraction. And there's a

00:27:27.600 principle, I think, for how you manage your time, which I hope helps a lot of people. And it's simply

00:27:34.400 that the wrong people will always ask for your time, and the right people never will. Maybe your

00:27:40.340 spouse, if you're married or your partner wishes that they could spend more time with you, or your kids

00:27:44.820 wish they could spend more time with you, or you haven't talked to your best friend in a little

00:27:48.580 while, they're rarely going to be as persistent as some of the chronic underperformers at work,

00:27:56.140 or the people whose lives are constantly in crisis. So again, being in ministry, you know,

00:28:01.060 we had crises almost every day. And what I learned over time, and this is hard, but people who are in

00:28:06.680 the helping profession will probably realize this, there are some people who actually do not want to

00:28:11.880 get well, and they will suck your time. So sometimes it's the people who always have a new crisis in

00:28:17.720 their life. It's like, well, last week, it was this, but this week, it's this, and they want to see you

00:28:21.660 and they want to see you this morning, and they want to see you on their schedule. And I had to learn

00:28:26.320 that probably that is not the best use of their time and not the best use of my time. Psychologist

00:28:33.220 John Townsend says people like that sometimes have a flat learning curve. They just want your time,

00:28:38.320 but they don't want to get better. Another thing you'll do as a boss, and I've been a boss for over

00:28:42.660 two decades, is you'll say, well, I got to spend time with my low performers, the staff member

00:28:47.560 who's always late, or somebody who just can never hit their targets, right? You're really not doing

00:28:52.860 very well at this job. So I got to meet with you again. And you owe that to everyone once or twice.

00:28:58.160 But the reality is, there's probably some people in your life that you've been meeting with now for

00:29:02.720 months about being late, and they're still late, or the people who never hit their quotas.

00:29:07.920 And you got to ask yourself, like, is that the best use of your time? Because number one,

00:29:13.180 those meetings are draining. Number two, you're not helped by it. And number three,

00:29:18.060 neither are they. And if they're looking for a way to improve their lives, you're probably not the

00:29:24.680 coach that's going to help them do it. So what I've had to do over the last 15 years is make sure,

00:29:29.620 yeah, I'll meet any team member anybody wants. But if my coaching isn't making them better,

00:29:34.680 why do I keep coming back to that week after week after week? When I cleared all of that off

00:29:40.380 of my calendar, first of all, I had way fewer meetings. Secondly, I then started to call up

00:29:46.060 some of the best people in my life, like the top performers, who is your best salesperson,

00:29:50.780 who's your best vice president, who is your best associate pastor, who is your best whatever,

00:29:56.500 and meet with them because they're not asking for your time. And they're doing a great job doing what

00:30:00.900 they're doing. But what I've learned is those meetings are almost always energizing. Number

00:30:05.600 two, everybody gets better. So your mission actually gets accomplished. And number three,

00:30:11.140 they really appreciate it and will lean in even harder. And you should do the same with the most

00:30:15.960 important people in your life, with your family, with your best friends, with the people who are

00:30:20.520 really producing well. It creates kind of a virtuous loop, a virtuous cycle.

00:30:25.860 How do you handle, okay, so what's about those people who come to you for help? Like they're just

00:30:30.160 struggling and you keep meeting with them and nothing seems to get better. How do you tell them

00:30:35.380 this isn't, I can't do this anymore in a way that's, I guess, compassionate is the right word?

00:30:40.380 Because obviously they're struggling and they're hurting and they're, they need something. So how do

00:30:43.980 you say, this isn't the best thing for either of us? What does that look like?

00:30:49.620 Yeah, it's hard. It never gets easy. But what I would typically do, it's not that different from

00:30:54.580 your question, is to sit down with them and say, you know, I really appreciated meeting with you.

00:30:59.440 Clearly you've got a lot going on. I am not sure that I'm the person who's going to be able to

00:31:04.800 help you with that. So I did go to seminary as well as law school. And, you know, I'm not a

00:31:10.960 counselor. I don't have a doctorate in that. And so what I would often do in a case like that,

00:31:15.340 and of course, as our church got bigger into the thousands, I had to start referring people almost

00:31:20.360 immediately to trained professional counselors. But that would be one thing. And that happens in business

00:31:26.220 too, right? Where sometimes you're meeting with people and you realize I'm not really helping

00:31:30.520 them with that. And if that's the case, you can get them professional help. You can do an outside

00:31:36.100 referral, or maybe there's somebody else in the firm or someone else in the organization that is

00:31:40.780 better positioned for that. But I started to have that conversation. And I would just say,

00:31:45.740 I don't have the toolkit to fix your marriage. That's not what I trained for. I can preach a decent

00:31:51.260 sermon. And I would often tell people, I can counsel a thousand people on the weekend. I'm

00:31:55.840 just not very good at doing it one-on-one. And most people got that. Most people understood that.

00:32:01.260 When it comes to low performers at work, if you are not seeing results, that's the time where perhaps

00:32:07.300 you don't have the right fit. It's that adage of hire slowly and fire quickly. And as much as we hate

00:32:13.220 firing people, I had to do that once or twice at the church. I've done that on occasion in my company,

00:32:17.940 but sometimes we get it wrong on the hiring, or the skill set isn't right. And I've learned to do

00:32:24.020 that a lot better over the last 15 years. But if you do it well, and you do it compassionately,

00:32:28.720 usually a year down the road, they're better off, and so are you, because it wasn't the right fit for

00:32:32.820 them. And if you can help them see it, then that's great. Or alternatively, perhaps you're not the

00:32:39.320 coach to bring that out in them. Maybe there's someone else in the company, an outside person,

00:32:43.020 who really can motivate them to show up on time and create better habits, but you're not doing it.

00:32:48.920 So I think when it starts to feel like that movie Groundhog Day, where it's just the same thing

00:32:54.260 happening over and over again, that's a clue that that is not a healthy relationship. And it's

00:32:59.980 probably time for you to spend your time doing other things.

00:33:03.340 And besides managing people who take a lot of your time, energy, and resources,

00:33:08.760 you also, there's the other problem with managing your priorities is that you might have so many

00:33:13.460 good opportunities presented to you, that if you say yes to all of them, you just overextend

00:33:18.200 yourself. So how do you, one, figure out, okay, what is the thing I should say yes to? And then two,

00:33:24.520 how do you say no to opportunities without sounding like a jerk or snooty or whatever? 1.00

00:33:30.980 It's easy to sound like a jerk. It's not hard at all to do. So you got to be really, 1.00

00:33:35.500 really careful. And that's a situation we find ourselves in. Our content that I write and

00:33:40.360 produce gets accessed over a million times a month, which is insane when you say that out loud.

00:33:45.580 But just imagine the inbound that comes in as it would for your show, Brett. It's crazy sometimes

00:33:52.420 when you see the inbound, and I'm really grateful for it. But yeah, like most leaders listening to this,

00:33:57.800 whether you lead something small or large, you have more opportunity than you have time available.

00:34:04.040 That's just life. Too many people want to do things with you, and that's a good problem to have.

00:34:09.200 So a couple of things. One thing that is kind of a secret hidden power is the power of categorical

00:34:16.140 decision-making, that you will start to see patterns in your invitation that comes in.

00:34:22.820 So I get a lot of speaking requests. And we've been able to pinhole some speaking engagements that

00:34:28.640 I'll always say yes to, and increasingly, a number I'll almost always say no to, unless there's a

00:34:34.920 very compelling reason. So for example, I tend to speak to leaders rather than just general audiences,

00:34:41.060 which means counterintuitively, I'd rather speak to 100 leaders than 1,000 generally assembled people.

00:34:49.300 Why? Because I think the leaders are going to have a bigger impact down the road.

00:34:52.760 So as a leadership event, that's a categorical decision. Much simpler examples could be when

00:34:58.700 I was leading a growing church, I decided I don't do weddings, which seems really weird. It's like,

00:35:03.660 you're a pastor, you should do weddings. Well, I didn't because it wasn't the secret to the growth

00:35:09.280 in our ministry and the life change we were seeing. Secondly, they almost always happen on a Saturday,

00:35:14.560 and that was my family day. I had two sons who were at home at the time and a wife I love very much,

00:35:18.740 and I didn't want to spend every Saturday out doing weddings for people I barely knew.

00:35:24.880 And third, we set up a system where we had outside referrals they could go to,

00:35:29.080 so that made it easy. And people would sometimes say, well, that's not fair. You don't do weddings,

00:35:33.000 you're a pastor. And I would make exceptions. So if you were in my family, or you worked for me,

00:35:38.820 you were my assistant, I would do your weddings. And if people didn't like that, I'm like, well,

00:35:43.180 you can marry into my family or become my assistant, and then I'll do your wedding. 0.76

00:35:46.520 But otherwise, it's not going to work. It just doesn't scale.

00:35:51.060 And so I think that helps. Another example of categorical decisions, you've seen this in Mark

00:35:55.840 Zuckerberg and used to see it in Steve Jobs, they wear the same thing every day. What is that?

00:36:00.660 It's one less decision they have to make. So what are the decisions you can make right now

00:36:05.760 that kind of pre-decide it? So another classic example that's really easy to implement,

00:36:11.580 because I'm best in the mornings, when I realized that, I stopped doing breakfast meetings.

00:36:16.560 Breakfast meetings were generally not the most strategic thing I was doing with my time anyway,

00:36:21.460 I could easily flip them to afternoon coffees or lunches. And then I got my writing done in the

00:36:26.540 morning, which is one of the most important things I do, as well as my vision casting and

00:36:30.440 planning and strategizing, got that done in the morning. And so if people ask me for breakfast

00:36:35.620 meetings, it's not personal, Brett, I just don't do breakfast meetings. Oh, okay. And most people get

00:36:40.400 that. So those are some categorical decisions. And then how do you do it so it doesn't sound

00:36:45.160 mean? Well, if it's a category, that helps. It's like, I'm sorry, I'm just not available for breakfast

00:36:50.300 meetings. So that's one way to do it. The other thing I would do is I would be very kind in the

00:36:56.640 way you do it. So I joke with my staff all the time that basically I pay some of them to say no

00:37:01.180 all day, and that's what they do. And so it sounds like this. Man, I'm so honored you would ask

00:37:06.340 Carrie to do your event. Thank you so much. Looks like you're up to some really great stuff.

00:37:11.260 Unfortunately, given our present commitments, we're not able to say yes, but we really appreciate

00:37:16.440 you asking if there's any other way we can help. Please let us know, Carrie, something like that.

00:37:22.220 That's what I think you can frame it in such a way because it is a privilege. And you got to be

00:37:27.360 sincere. If I don't want to do the event, I wouldn't phrase it that way. But the reality is,

00:37:33.000 I would like to do almost everything that comes my way. I like people.

00:37:36.340 I can't believe I get to do what I do. People are good. They have wonderful things that we'd

00:37:41.460 love to be a part of. But in order for me to do the things that I do that seem to move our mission

00:37:48.340 forward, the podcast that I host, the writing that I do, the speaking I accept, I have to be focused

00:37:54.580 on that rather than on some of the other priorities that come our way.

00:38:00.420 And one thing I want to point out too is when you say like, hey, I have a commitment that I've

00:38:03.500 already made, that doesn't necessarily have to be a work commitment. It could be a personal

00:38:08.380 or family commitment too.

00:38:10.620 Bingo. That used to, I was coaching a leader this week who got stuck on a Saturday, which

00:38:15.640 was his day off. And he's got five kids. So that's a serious investment and they're all

00:38:20.740 at home still. None is in college. And I used to get caught on that all the time. And so this

00:38:26.500 Thrive calendar, which is part of the system that I talk about in At Your Best, basically

00:38:32.200 gives an assignment to all of your time. So if you look at my Saturday, I have a recurring

00:38:37.340 appointment every Saturday that says family time. Now, right now at this stage of life,

00:38:41.480 family is my wife and I. And sometimes we see our kids on the weekend and friends. But

00:38:45.420 that way, if you come up to me and corner me at a party or something, you say, Carrie,

00:38:48.880 what are you doing this Saturday? I can pull out my phone and go, oh, I've got a commitment.

00:38:53.460 Why? What's up? And then most reasonable people leave it at that point. I got pigeonholed into

00:39:01.920 so many things that I ended up doing on a Saturday that I didn't want to do because I had nothing

00:39:07.140 in my calendar. Friday night's date night with my wife. We usually were involved with a small

00:39:12.240 group with our church. So that goes into the calendar. And then Sunday afternoon for years

00:39:18.100 just said rest and refuel on my calendar. So if you're like, what are you doing Sunday?

00:39:22.260 It's like, I got a commitment. But I needed that to do Monday well. So yeah, you can totally

00:39:26.840 program that right into your calendar. Just set up recurring appointments. I've actually got a free

00:39:32.120 calendar download that can do that for you. You just set it up once and then it's done.

00:39:36.400 And then if you want to break your own rule, go ahead. If it's a really great opportunity and you

00:39:40.380 want to give up a Saturday, you can always say, well, you know what? I can change my plans and I'll do

00:39:44.580 that on Saturday with you. But for the most part, that gives you an out. And it makes sure that

00:39:49.260 the people that you care about the most get the best of your time because they're always

00:39:53.880 the victims, right? When you squander your time, the people you care about most are always the

00:39:58.000 victims of your squandering of that time. Yeah. I think that's an important mind shift

00:40:03.300 to happen in people. It's like you treat your personal commitments the same way you'd treat

00:40:07.440 a work commitment or even like a doctor's appointment. Because I think oftentimes we think

00:40:11.260 personal commitments like, well, it's not that important. And so you can be like, well,

00:40:15.640 yeah, I can do that thing. But that takes away time from your family.

00:40:19.980 Well, and blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it's really

00:40:24.940 jail disguised as liberty. And I would encourage you when you're listening to this, as long as

00:40:29.960 you're not driving and you can do it safely, pull out your calendar right now and look three months

00:40:35.160 ahead. Chances are what you'll see is a whole lot of white space on your calendar. And you think,

00:40:40.320 oh, good. December is going to be amazing. Or February is going to be fantastic. And then you

00:40:47.420 get to February or December, it's no better than it was right now. And you're overwhelmed,

00:40:51.940 overcommitted, and overworked. If you make some pre-decisions about how you're going to spend that

00:40:56.060 time now, that Saturday is always going to be family day and Sunday is going to be games day.

00:41:01.140 And Monday night, I'm going to take some personal time to do a hobby. And Tuesday night,

00:41:05.840 we're going to get together with friends. And Wednesday night, I'm going to bed early because

00:41:10.500 Thursday is always a meat grinder. If you put that in your calendar and you program it,

00:41:15.380 you're going to start to live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. And I think most

00:41:18.840 people, you're exactly right, Brett. They don't feel that they have permission to do that. You have

00:41:23.140 permission. All right. So we've talked about focusing your time. We've talked about managing

00:41:27.120 your priorities better, making sure other people don't hijack your priorities and you stay on top of

00:41:31.100 that. Let's talk about the energy. We've kind of been kind of flitting about it through our

00:41:35.140 conversation. So you make a big point is that you need to get an idea of when are your energy

00:41:41.040 levels the best during the day and do your most important work then.

00:41:45.400 Yeah. Everybody's going to have a slightly different time window. Yours is nine till noon.

00:41:49.360 Mine is about seven to 11. And that's on a good day. Sometimes it's like seven till 10. That's all I

00:41:53.900 got, right? We're not robots. But you will have three to five peak hours in the day. And everyone from

00:41:59.800 David Allen to Cal Newport to others and the brain research that's been done shows that are really

00:42:05.000 maxes out at about four or five hours. So you're not going to get eight. But figure out when that is.

00:42:10.440 And if you're a night owl, it could be 8pm to 11pm. I'm not going to argue with that. If that's when

00:42:16.140 you're at your best, pay attention to that. So I call that your green zone. Your red zone is what

00:42:21.780 we've already touched on. That's when you're tired, you need a nap, you need more caffeine,

00:42:25.520 you got toothpicks to keep your eyes open, right? You got them poached between your eyelids,

00:42:30.380 that kind of thing. And you're just tired. And then everything in between is what I call a yellow

00:42:34.940 zone. You're not at your best. You're not at your worst. And so what I would do is give every one of

00:42:41.160 those zones a main task every day. So for me, I'm a writer. And I also do podcasting. So it's

00:42:48.340 interview preparation. And it's also original writing that I do in my green zone. I do almost no meetings

00:42:54.780 because I can do those fairly well in my yellow zone. In my red zone, that's what you should assign

00:42:59.980 to your least important tasks. Or something like a workout. Again, if you're not training for a big

00:43:05.180 event where you're a professional athlete, your red zone is fine for working out. It's going to

00:43:10.660 rejuvenate you. It's going to make you feel better or take a nap or do something routine like just

00:43:15.820 empty your inbox or fill out that expense report and get it in. Something that isn't going to take a lot

00:43:20.920 of original cognitive energy. And then your yellow zone is for everything else. And so you have green,

00:43:27.660 yellow, red. And the most important thing in managing your energy, and this is where I started

00:43:32.820 to see exponential returns. Because the irony in my story is I'm leading 10x what I was when I burned

00:43:39.240 out. And I feel like I have more time. I feel like I've got more energy. And it's because I protected

00:43:44.480 that green zone. It was canceling breakfast meetings. It was not allowing other people to interfere with

00:43:49.860 that green zone so I could get the message written when I was still leading a church. So I could get

00:43:53.900 that article done. So I could get the book edited. So I could think strategically about where we're

00:43:58.560 heading in the next few years as a communications company. Occasionally, I will bring in some team

00:44:03.340 members. We'll do some really important brainstorming in those morning hours so we can move the needle

00:44:07.900 on our mission. And when I protected that time, it began to produce exponential returns.

00:44:14.840 The other thing I would say about your green zone is when your energy is at its peak,

00:44:20.780 don't just move through your task list. Yeah, you probably got some catching up to do.

00:44:25.020 But you've got to start developing your giftedness. If you want to be a communicator,

00:44:29.760 that's when you start looking at TED Talks and watching TED Talks or reading a book on how to become

00:44:34.360 a better communicator. If you're a lawyer, that's where you study cross-examination techniques or read

00:44:39.700 up on the latest case law. So you're not just prepping for that next day in court, but you're

00:44:44.080 actually becoming a better litigator. And it's like Malcolm Gladwell's rule that the way to become

00:44:49.920 world-class at something is to spend 10,000 hours doing it. And an hour a day in your green zone spent

00:44:56.720 to developing, to thinking, to exploring, to developing that gift will make you better and

00:45:04.880 better. You won't notice a difference right away, but give yourself six months and then give yourself

00:45:09.060 six years. And you'll be astonished at your development as a person. Because what happens

00:45:15.800 is if you don't protect that time and you don't do that, again, you're doing your most important

00:45:20.420 work. Because nobody ever emailed you to do your most important work, right? They're asking you to

00:45:25.820 do what is most important to them. So you get to that at four o'clock, you're half brain dead,

00:45:30.280 and you're never spending time developing your gift. You're just using it. So when I started doing

00:45:35.260 that with my green zone and then leaving the medium important stuff to the yellow zone and

00:45:40.860 the least important stuff to the red zone, that's where I've seen productivity soar.

00:45:45.360 And I've had the privilege of training thousands of leaders in the system. They've seen very similar

00:45:50.460 results. So it's a breakthrough for a lot of people.

00:45:54.240 So there's people listening to this saying, this all sounds great, but I'm not my own boss.

00:45:58.600 I'm not the CEO. So I don't have much control over my schedule. So how can I take advantage of this

00:46:04.140 green zone, yellow zone, red zone framework if I can't make my schedule?

00:46:08.860 It's a great question. I hear it all the time. So let's break that down a little bit.

00:46:13.660 First of all, think about an entire week. It's 168 hours in a week. A work week tends to be about 40 of

00:46:20.980 those. So you've actually got ridiculous control over 128 hours in the week. You can determine

00:46:28.140 your boss isn't telling you when to go to bed. There's no law that says the kids have to be

00:46:32.640 enrolled in sports seven nights a week. Those are all choices. And if you're finding your

00:46:38.760 overwhelm, and this is what's really interesting because having run healthier organizations for the

00:46:43.180 last 10 years, I'm realizing in coaching my own staff that a lot of them are realizing,

00:46:48.440 oh, the overwhelm isn't coming from work anymore. It's coming from life. So take a look at those

00:46:54.260 choices. Are they really working for you or are they working against you? And my wife and I have

00:46:59.340 raised two boys. They're in their 20s. And we had a rule back in the day where we just said,

00:47:04.920 you can each enroll in one sport at a time and one music lesson at a time. So we had one son who was

00:47:11.660 very musical, wanted to do drums and keyboard and guitar and everything. We said one at a time.

00:47:17.820 And so he did one at a time. And as a teenager, when he wanted to take up drums and we said, well,

00:47:22.100 that'll be on your dime and on your time because we're committed to other things. He taught himself

00:47:27.880 how to play the drums. They get ingenious. And then another son loves sports and wanted to do

00:47:32.840 everything. And we said, well, when hockey season's over, we can play football. When football's over,

00:47:36.740 we can play soccer. And so we just did one at a time. And we found that was a choice that really

00:47:42.540 worked for us. So you have a lot of agency in your life. But now let's talk about work.

00:47:46.680 So you have 40 hours on average as a work week. I polled hundreds of leaders. And these are office

00:47:53.140 workers. So if you're slinging macchiatos at a coffee shop all day, you'll have a slightly different

00:47:57.760 answer to this. But if you're a knowledge worker or entrepreneur, you work in an office,

00:48:01.640 that kind of thing, ask yourself, how many of your working hours are actual command performance

00:48:08.720 hours where you have to be in the boardroom for a meeting at 10am or on the Zoom call every Wednesday

00:48:15.060 at 9? And the answer that I get back is somewhere between 5 to 12 hours a week, 12 hours being the

00:48:23.360 all-time high watermark I've heard from anybody. So even if you're lower on the hierarchy, even if

00:48:29.700 you're middle management, you probably don't have more than 10 to 12 hours of that work week that

00:48:36.020 are prescribed for you. In other words, you have a lot of agency. So to do a little bit of math, and

00:48:42.020 let's go on the high side, because there might be somebody listening to this podcast, Brett, who's like,

00:48:46.320 listen, Carrie, you should see my boss. I have 20 hours a week where I have to be in this boardroom,

00:48:51.480 and then I have to do this, and then I have to do that. I don't have any control. If you are that

00:48:55.520 person, 20 hours a week prescribed by someone else means you still have control over 88%

00:49:02.560 of your hours every single week, which is an insane amount of agency and control.

00:49:10.440 So what I would do is I would focus on what you can control and not on what you can't.

00:49:16.360 And then as you work through this material, we encourage teams to work through it.

00:49:20.100 You can start to have some really fun experiments as a team. You can even say to your boss,

00:49:24.580 Hey, I listened to this podcast. I read this book at your best. I realized my peak hours are from

00:49:30.760 nine till noon, and I'm in meetings most of the time. I want to become more productive.

00:49:36.860 I want to help the company succeed. Is there any way we could move a few of those meetings so that

00:49:41.940 I could do this work on fill in the blank, developing sales leads, closing deals, whatever

00:49:47.420 you happen to be doing? Is there any way that I could work in that field? And maybe we move some of

00:49:52.460 the meetings around. And I'll do that for a couple of months. At the end of the two months,

00:49:56.420 you can evaluate. If you don't see an improvement, we'll go back to the way it was.

00:50:00.220 Unless your boss is insane, they will probably say yes. And if you open it up as a desire,

00:50:06.500 not a demand, I think you'll be surprised at how many reasonable bosses would love to see you win.

00:50:12.080 Well, Kerry, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and

00:50:15.360 your work? Yeah. You can learn more about the book and my work at atyourbesttoday.com. That's

00:50:21.340 just atyourbesttoday.com. And then everything you can butcher my name. It's very difficult to spell,

00:50:27.080 but I'm sure you can see it on your podcast app. It's kerryneuhoff.com. Just kerryneuhoff.com. And

00:50:31.860 for the book, it's available widely everywhere and atyourbesttoday.com.

00:50:36.520 Fantastic. Well, Kerry Neuhoff, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:50:39.040 It's been a joy. Thank you so much for having me.

00:50:41.680 My guest is Kerry Neuhoff. He's the author of the book,

00:50:43.760 At Your Best. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more

00:50:47.420 information about his work at his website, Kerry Neuhoff. It's N-I-E-U-W-H-O-F. Also check out our

00:50:53.280 show notes at aom.is slash atyourbest, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve

00:50:57.380 deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website

00:51:09.100 at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:51:12.740 written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:51:16.080 episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:51:20.300 sign up, use code MANLINESS at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up,

00:51:23.800 download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the

00:51:27.420 AOM Podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give

00:51:30.880 us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,

00:51:34.120 thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you'd think

00:51:37.500 would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,

00:51:40.660 this is Brett McKay, reminding you to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - September 27, 2021

How to Get Time, Priorities, and Energy Working in Your Favor

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