EPISODE 55 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: PRODUCTIVITY SKILLS THAT MAKE LIFE AND BUSINESS BETTER – NOT FASTER
Sonya:
Have you ever wondered how to be more productive in your working day? How do you get more out of your brain and work with it instead of against it? In this episode, I interview Christina from Project TGL, and she really got my attention when I saw her tagline, "Productivity skills that make life better - not faster." Sign me up for some of that.
Welcome to the Boom your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive? I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.
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Today, I have Christina, from Project TGL, with me and I am so excited to be having a conversation with her because her tagline is actually, "Productivity skills that make life better - not faster." And that sounds perfect to me. Hi, Christina, thank you so much for joining me.
Christina:
Hello. I'm so delighted to be here.
Sonya:
Why don't we start by you just giving us a little bit of a view about yourself and your background and how you started Project TGL.
Christina:
Oh, for sure. So about five years ago, I was working in science communication. I was actually teaching scientists and other academics, how to express their research in ways that make sense to regular people. And I was super, super exhausted, I was tired, I was really struggling to get through a normal to-do list on a daily basis. I knew my work wasn't the issue because I only worked three days a week and I actually really liked my job. And so I was just really desperate. I started reading everything I could possibly get my hands on about how the human brain worked, how we can have productive and happier lives and the more I read, the more I realized that everything I thought I knew was absolutely dead wrong. I thought I had to push myself harder, but actually it turns out that's not how your brain works.
There are so many simple tips and tools that are based on actual human psychology that are so much more effective. And I started getting my life back. I started reading again, engaging in hobbies, seeing my friends, and then a little while later, I was actually diagnosed with a sleep disorder, which explains why I was so low on energy. And now thankfully, I have a regular amount of energy, my sleep disorder is really well managed. But maintaining that actually requires a lot of boundaries, a lot of daily effort and time, so I still need every productivity tool in the toolbox to get a normal amount of work done in a regular week, because I also require a lot of time and commitment to just maintaining my health.
And yet the more I learned about all this productivity stuff, the more I thought everybody needs to know this. Everyone needs to know that they don't need to be so hard on themselves, that there are easier ways. There are ways that allow you to have your life, allow you to enjoy time with your loved ones, but also get a lot done and to feel really good about that. And so that's why I started my business teaching these productivity skills.
Sonya:
Yeah. Fantastic. And I think even for those listening that don't have any health conditions that they have to manage. I was listening to a podcast yesterday around similar kind of concept and this idea that it's not really about the hours that it's worked, it's about your productivity and your focus and what you actually get done during that time. And also this idea that we act as though we have infinite energy, so we think, "Okay, I'm going to block out 12 hours to work on my business today." Reality is you probably only going to get five or six hours of quality work actually done. So thinking of it from an energy perspective and structuring your day in that way, is far more effective than just going, "All right. I'm just going to work through this tiredness."
So what can we be doing though, to set ourselves up to have a really productive day? Because I know as business owners, that we feel like we're pulled in a million directions all the time. It's very hard to prioritize, because everything feels important. So what are some of the things that we can be doing and what do you teach people?
Christina:
Yeah, absolutely. So you're absolutely right that whether or not like me, you have an ongoing health condition, you have a very limited amount of energy. It turns out that your brain, like anything else that requires energy, runs on fuel. Like very, very literally, that's not a metaphorical thing, your brain burns fuel, that fuel is glucose. You have a limited supply in any given day, and that supply gives you about four hours of really good focus in any given day. Think about that, four hours and the average work day is eight hours, many people push themselves to work even more than that. Now that doesn't mean you can't get more than four hours of work done, but it means you need to be aware of the fact that you're only going to get four hours of really good focus and you need to make sure that those are going to the most important things.
So everything I teach starts with understanding how your brain works. Now, for self-compassionate productivity, for listening to the needs of your body and your brain, I have a few simple tips. Starting with just making sure that you're taking breaks throughout the day, those 15 minute tea breaks, going for a walk around the block, whatever it may be, that actually really recharges your mental resources, it resets your brain ready to focus for the next focus session. The second one is to make sure that you're getting a decent sleep, if you're able to. Now, not all of us are able to, some of us have small children, for example, that may disturb that sleep, or other things going on in our lives, but to the extent that you're able to sleep is the most important recharger of that fuel bank that you have for daily energy.
Tip number three, is to do one thing at a time, to get great focus. We focus so much better when we're just doing one thing at a time. And tip number four is to, when you need a burst of creativity or insight, when you need to attack a problem from a new direction, actually let your mind wander. You have much, much more creative ideas when your mind is wondering than you do when you're trying to tackle the problem one step at a time.
Sonya:
Oh. So good. And I think, it's funny, when I worked at an office for a company, I used to get so frustrated that I would be there for nine, 10 hours a day and these 10 coffee breaks and things I used to feel like, "Oh my gosh, you are wasting so much time." And then when I started working from home and I would have four or five hours of really solid deep work and I'd start early, finish early and I'd hit this real, just block, at about two or three o'clock in the afternoon after I'd done those solid hours of work. And I would honestly beat myself up so much, I was like, "What's wrong with me? Why is everyone else able to hustle their way through this? Why am I not performing as I should be?"
And it got to the point that I would just push and push and push myself beyond that, despite the fact that I'd probably been sitting on my computer since 7:00 AM and had had a very, very productive morning. I felt like if I wasn't putting in those hours and not... If I went to have breaks, I would beat myself up. I understand now that we're not super human and we do need that time to recharge. And what you've just said about letting your mind wander, it's like a lot of people say that they get their best ideas in the shower, or when they're exercising, or your mind is not... If you say to yourself, "I'm going to sit down and be creative," how many times does that work?
Christina:
Yeah, exactly.
Sonya:
Never, never works. So my question is, if you had total control over your schedule, you had no other commitments or anything, and you could structure the perfect working day, is there any scientific evidence to show what that would look like? Or how would you go about it based on the research you've done?
Christina:
Yeah, there actually is, but what that looks like will be different for each person. One of the things that it will depend on is your chronotype, which is just a fancy word for your personal body clock. It turns out that there's a biological basis, that's some people are morning people and some people are evening people, some people are somewhere in between, and that's actually hardwired into your brain. That's not likely to change throughout your lifetime. So the first thing for structuring your perfect day is to understand at what time of day you're at your best, and that will be different sometimes for other people in your family or for your friends and your colleagues, than it is for you.
So I know for myself, for example, I'm not a morning person. So my ideal structured work day involves doing just bits and pieces that don't require a lot of focus or energy throughout the morning, taking a decent lunch break, and then doing my most focused work throughout the afternoon, making sure that I take a short break somewhere in the middle there. But if you're a morning person, your ideal workday will look different. It will look like, getting to your most important work first thing before you allow other distracting inputs to enter your mind.
One thing I wanted to say about taking that short break, because you mentioned earlier that you would hit two o'clock and then hit a wall, is that actually the ideal time to take your break is before you hit a wall. So if you know, based on your personal experience, what time of day you tend to hit a wall. For me, because I work on a delayed schedule, I do an 11 to seven workday, my wall is about 5:00 PM. So I actually need to take my break about an hour before that so that I don't hit that wall. If I'm taking the break at 5:00 PM, it's already too late. So whatever that time of day is for you, where you know you've hit that point where you're struggling to focus, try to actually take a 15, 20 minute break half an hour to an hour before that.
Sonya:
And what should that look like? Are there activities we can do that are best going to regenerate our energy and our focus? What do you recommend? I mean, is picking up the phone and scrolling through media going to do the trick, because that's what a lot of us tend to reach for when we're having a, and I say with quotation marks, "a break."
Christina:
Yes. I'm sorry to say, that's not going to do the trick. Yeah. So there's a few very well-researched guidelines for effective break taking. So disconnected from technology is more effective for recharging your mental resources, than remaining connected to technology. Physically getting up and leaving the space that you work in is also really helpful, because our brain is really good at associating particular places with particular activities. So if you stay at your desk or wherever it is that you work, your brain is going to stay in work mode, whether you want to or not, so physically getting up, walking away.
If you're able to, if you're in a location where you can, and if you're physically able to actually going for a walk, so moving your body in some way, whether that looks like really gentle movement or pushing yourself a little bit harder, is also more effective for break taking, and looking at plants. Actually, it turns out that our brains really love plants. So the ideal break is leave your phone in your office, go for a walk outside and look at some trees.
Sonya:
Okay, good to know. That's so funny. Well, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? You hear so much research and even anecdotal evidence, with people going out and going camping for a couple of days and it resetting their body clock. I guess it's kind of like a mini reset when we're out in nature, isn't it?
Christina:
100%. Bizarrely, if you can't find any plants to look at, even looking at the color green has some beneficial effects.
Sonya:
That's excellent. All right, be right back, I'm painting my office green. I was having a little stickybeak on your blog earlier, and I think there's a... I've always been someone that's been interested in productivity a lot and constantly looking for new techniques, and I guess, that shiny object kind of thing. But I know a movement that gained a lot of traction over the last few years is the Pomodoro Technique. It's not something you necessarily endorse. Can you talk to me a little bit around what that technique is and why it's not necessarily the best method for each person?
Christina:
Totally. So the Pomodoro Technique is short sprints of focus broken up by very short breaks, which may sound like exactly what I've already been saying. But the Pomodoro Technique, I'm trying to remember, I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's 20 or 25 minutes of focus and then a five minute break. Now it turns out that this is actually really not ideal, because it takes your brain 15 to 20 minutes to get fully focused on the task at hand. Now, that means that if you're doing the Pomodoro method and you're spending 25 minutes working and then taking a five minute break, you're spending 20 of those minutes getting focused and you only get five minutes of focused work before you take that short break and then you need to refocus all over again.
Now, if you're doing short tasks that only go for 15 to 20 minutes and don't require that much focus, the Pomodoro method works just fine, but if you're doing something that is an important task, that will take you longer than 20 minutes, I would highly recommend setting those focus sessions to go for longer, more like 50 minutes to an hour before you take a break, because then once you've invested that 15 to 20 minutes getting fully Sonya:
Oh, I'm so glad you've said it. Because I always thought that I just think once you get into that flow and that groove with your work, 25 minutes is not a long period of time at all. And it takes you such a long time to get into that state. So thank you for saying it.
Christina:
Yes. I do want to say though, that if you are someone that is continuously switching your attention between things day in and day out, you may actually struggle with a full hour of focus. Because it turns out that focus is a bit like a muscle, we need to build it up over time. And if you overtax it more than what you're used to, you'll get exhausted pretty quickly. So if you aren't used to spending a full hour focusing, then maybe just try to increase those focus sessions a little bit at a time.
Sonya:
I have a question in regard to the concept of deep work versus busy work. And I read the book, Deep Work, by Cal Newport, which was... Oh my gosh, game-changer, love that book, highly recommend it to anyone listening that has not read it. It's this concept of busy work, and we all have it, no matter what job we do. So whether it be all those phone calls and emails and notifications that are coming through that we do have to handle, what is the best way to do that? Should we way be re-examining our communication structures? Should we be batching when we check emails? Is that always realistic? What do you recommend?
Christina:
Well, that depends a lot on the specific type of busy work that you're doing, but yes, batching is a wonderful approach to that type of busy work. In my online course, I actually have a whole lesson about checking email and finally getting on top of your inbox because I know that's a big issue for a lot of people. And one of the things that I recommend in that lesson is, if you're somebody that's hired to manage an inbox, you're going to need to be in that inbox a lot of the time, but setting aside those kinds of things where your role is to be continually connected, check your inbox so much less, really check it so much less than you are tempted to do. One or two times a day is ideal, so for a lot of people that might look like checking in first thing in the morning and last thing before logging off.
Because every time you switch your attention from one type of task to another, you're resetting that 15 to 20 minute clock of focus that we talked about earlier when I mentioned the Pomodoro method. And so every time you switch over to your inbox from something else, your attention's switching, and you're no longer focused on the task that you were previously focused on. So if you can do all of your email in one block in the morning, and one block in the afternoon, you're going to have so much better focus on everything else that you're doing throughout the day in between.
Sonya:
Hmm. I feel like for me, this is something I'm really trying to work on, because I live in my inbox, it's always open up from my computer. Something I did early in my business, which I'm really glad I did, is that I don't have emails come through on my phone. And because of that, I've never gotten to the habit of checking them on my phone, which I'm really grateful for. But I genuinely feel almost this level of anxiety when I'm not constantly checking it, and I think that's that addiction mechanism we have happening with social media as well. You're looking for that next hit or it's almost like, "Okay, there's no fires to put out, everything's fine." Do you think it's more of an issue in regard to our work culture, in that email is almost treated as phone calls now, in that we have almost been programmed to expect a response instantly?
Christina:
Yeah. Yeah. 100%.
Sonya:
I even have some clients from time to time that will send me an email, and I'm not even kidding with this, 30 seconds later I've seen it, it might come through, it'll pop up, 30 seconds later my phone will ring and they're calling me to let me know that I've got an email that they want me to look at. So it's just, I think an interesting observation around how we think about emails, the communication method as well.
Christina:
Yeah. Yeah. So if you do have clients or colleagues who do tend to treat email that way, as something that needs to be instantly responded to, one tool that you can use to manage those expectations, is to set up an auto responder, which every time you get an email just sends out an automatic response that says, "These are the times of day that I tend to check my email. I'll get back to you then." Now the really important thing to do when you set up that kind of auto responder though, is to actually stick to what you say in it. Because if you say, "Oh, I check my email every afternoon, I'll get back to you by 4:00 PM," and then you don't do that, people will stop trusting it and then they'll start picking up the phone and calling you every time they send you an email again anyway.
Sonya:
Hmm. Yes. And I think, on a flip side to that as well, is having that auto responder set up, but then still emailing them outside of those times as well, so it then programs people to think, "Disregard that," as well. So I think, you mentioned before that you've set up a lot of boundaries around your work, and that sounds like one of them, what other boundaries have you set up to help you manage your health and your energy levels?
Christina:
Well, what that looks like for me will be obviously quite different to what it looks like for other people. But one of the boundaries that I set up, as I mentioned earlier, I have an 11 to seven workday. Now that is really informed by the fact that I do have a sleep disorder that requires a fair bit of management, so that gives me most of the morning from when I wake up until about 11 o'clock when I get started on work, to do all the things that I need to do to focus on my health. And also just to approach the morning in a really relaxed way that allows me to begin my workday feeling energized and ready to get going rather than feeling rushed and exhausted.
Of course not everybody has the ability to decide what times they want to work necessarily. Although as business owners, that is one of the big perks of having your own business, is that you get to manage your own workday. One of the other boundaries that I do set up, just on the topic of email, is that if I am responding to emails outside of, because I work 11 to seven, if I'm responding outside of business hours, but I don't necessarily want to send out this message that people should be working outside of business hours or should be pushing themselves really hard, I actually use an app called Boomerang, or in fact, now it's even built into Gmail's function, to send those emails out the first thing the next morning, so that people are receiving them during business hours, rather than receiving them whenever I happen to be working at a time that may not suit them.
Sonya:
Yeah. I think that's a good idea. And I do love that Gmail now has that built in, I remember installing that app a few years back and it's... Yeah, absolute game-changer. And I think sometimes even when you're managing a team, if you for whatever reason, I'm working late or I'm... I have the opposite schedule to you, I like to start work at 7:00 AM. I don't want to be putting that pressure on my team and making them feel like they have to re responding to me at all hours. So I'm not great at it, but I'm trying to get into the habit of making sure I'm only messaging them or emailing them during business hours as well. And I think leading by example with that is a really good thing to do. Again, I'm not great at it, but it is something that I'm becoming more and more conscious of.
Can we change it up a little bit for a second? I just want to hear about your business and how you've built it. Is there any one thing as you've grown this business that you think has been a real game-changer for you, in terms of gaining new clients and doing the work that you love to do?
Christina:
Yeah. So I think the biggest game-changer for me, has been finding a way to network in a way that actually works for me. I am, despite being a public speaker and a workshop facilitator by profession, I'm an introvert. And so I get quite easily exhausted by large groups of people when there's networking events, where everybody's talking at the same time, I'm not somebody that inserts myself into the conversation until I get asked a question. And so in the early stages of my business, I actually really struggled to connect with other business owners. And finding a community that really works for me and for how I like to connect with people, a community that's built around deeper connections that are built over a longer period of time, rather than just meeting lots of people within a short space of time, has been a really big game-changer for me.
I have gotten some clients from that community, but I think it has helped build my business so much more just because I've had cheerleaders. And I've had people who understand where I'm at, who are able to give, the right word of advice at the right time, but also just give me great testimonials and talk me up around the place, that kind of thing.
Sonya:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And I think, it's something that I'm noticing, is that you give yourself permission to do business your way, setting your business hours, things like that. I think something I've been playing around with this year, a big one is changing my work hours from seven to 3:00 PM, and almost like this guilt I feel around it, or this guilt around taking time off for whatever it might be. Or I think I need to be doing all these things with my marketing, for example, to grow my business.
And I think a lot of business owners struggle with that, but you definitely seem to be someone that you just give yourself permission to do it. And there doesn't have to be that justification that I think, particularly women feel they need to give, for any decisions that they make.
Christina:
Yeah. I always have in the back of my mind, if I'm not doing my business in a way that works for me and for my life, then I might as well just have a job. I might as well just have a nine to five because that would not work for me, just as much as pushing myself to do everything in my business all day, every day and working hours that don't work for me. So yeah, if this business is going to be at all sustainable, if it's going to be at all something that I want to be doing in five years time, it has to be something that works for me on a day-to-day real life basis.
Sonya:
Oh. I love that. Yeah. As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm a big reader, do you have book recommendations?
Christina:
Yeah, for sure, I do. So it depends how much you want to get into the science. One of my favorite books, but I know it can be a bit dense for some people, is a book called, The Organized Mind, it's written by Daniel Levitin, who's actually a neuroscientist. So he talks about many aspects of organization, one of which is productivity, and he talks about all of that from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Now, he's a really good communicator, but he does get pretty deep into the science. If you want something that's a lot more just telling you the kind of takeaways that you can apply in a slightly more accessible format, then I recommend, Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg.
Sonya:
Oh, I haven't read that one, I will definitely go and check those two out. Where can we find out more about you? And you mentioned that you have an online course. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Christina:
Yeah, for sure, I can. My online course is called, Tweak Your Week. It is all about everything that we've just been talking about, self-compassionate productivity. It starts from a foundation of firstly understanding the basics of how your brain works, but in some ways even more importantly, it starts with getting you more head space. It starts with reducing your mental traffic so that you have the focus and head space to build those productivity skills. Because if you don't start there, you're just going to burn yourself out faster. And then from that foundation, we talk about how to get things done quickly and meaningfully, and how to manage your time.
Sonya:
Oh, my goodness. I needed you last year. It sounds amazing.
Christina:
That one is called, Tweak Your Week, and you can check it out @projecttgl.com/course. If you would like to check out my teaching though, in a free format, I can also recommend if you happen to work from home, I have a free 30 minute mini-course on productive work from home. So it'll take you 30 minutes to watch from beginning to end, and you can sign up to that one @projecttgl.com/wfh.
Sonya:
Oh, amazing. Well, Christina, thank you so much for your time today. There are certainly some things that I need to go and implement within my own business after this chat.
Christina:
Thanks so much, Sonya. I've loved being here.