Become a Master of Compartmentalization

Business brain, episode 555. Wait, I got that backwards. It's 5:55 for Wednesday, June 5th, National Gingerbread Day 2024. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or six, we dissect them, we digest them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains each and every time we get together here on this wonderful palindromic Episode Day. In Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out here in sunny California, I'm Shannon Jean. If you'd asked me 10 years ago if I would be sitting recording episode 5:55, you know what I would have said?

What's that? Damn right, that's right.

That's right. And yeah, yeah. So, you know, persistence, man, and, and continuity. I don't know if those are different words, but this sounds cool. The same different words. It's. It's huge in everything.

Yeah. It's the consistency.

Yeah, yeah. And, and showing up all the time and not being afraid to suck and, you know.

Yeah, we'll probably suck today too.

That's okay.

It's fine.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Some good, some bad.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yep.

So it's great.

But there's good stuff that comes out. I noticed myself doing a thing and you know, this show, because we do it so consistently, is. It's a double edged sword because I share all of my secrets here. So that's the. If there's a negative side to the sword, that's it. And, and the only reason it would be negative is if you happen to be on the receiving end of one of my secret tricks, you know, that I'm aware that it's a secret trick. It doesn't mean that it's any less authentic. It's just, you know, that I'm aware of it. But the positive side of the sword is that I am aware of these things because I'm always thinking about, you know, analyzing what I do because it's what we do. I've trained my business brain or my brain to be the business brain all the time, or at least most of the time. And I caught myself doing something the other day. I had a lot of emails from. This was Friday afternoon. I had a lot of emails from the month of May that I had not yet addressed. And it was, you know, like, I think at some level we all do this kind of thing where you, you know, you see the stuff, you triage it as it comes in. Like, I don't need to do anything about that. Now, I'll do that later. And I usually have on Tuesday mornings for me is the time where I carve out to catch up on those emails from the past week that I had not addressed yet. May was an interesting month with some travel and holidays and some craziness in my personal and music lives. And so, like, those Tuesday morning things weren't as productive as they usually are.

Sure.

And I got to Friday and I was like, I have to do this today. So, yes, it meant that I was answering emails saying, at least starting with my apologies for my delayed reply. And that is true. I was. I was, I intended, I felt all of those things. And after I sent out one or two of those and I copied it to my clipboard because I knew I was going to have to use it again, you know, and. And I was like, you know, there's a better way to acknowledge this and be gracious about it and thankful about it without shining a negative light on me, but still shining a positive light on the person that waited and is the recipient. And so after the first two of probably 30 emails, I changed it from my apologies for my delayed reply to thank you so much for your patience. The month of May has been crazy for me.

I like it.

I know. Same. And so I wanted to share it here. And this is. This is where I'm sharing my secrets. But. And I. And I found myself using it since then, too. You know that. Thank you for your patience. You got to be careful you're not using it in every single email you send to the same person, because then it then it does not seem sincere. And it really is sincere when I send it.

Yeah.

I am very thankful for your pay. You didn't beat down my door. You waited. That's amazing. I realize I may have missed out by not getting back to you in time, and that's on me. But still, like, that's cool. Thank you for your patience.

Yeah, I like that framework because.

I.

You know, it's number one. It really inverts it into something more positive. It just makes it positive instead of, you know, recognizing this and kind of a negative framework.

Yeah. I don't want to give you a negative framework. I want to. I want to deliver the positive. That's.

Yeah. So you're, you know, thanking them in the beginning. You're recognizing in a respectful manner, like, hey, you know, I couldn't get back to you. Thanks for your patience.

Yep.

And then you just move on and that's it. I think that's cool.

Yeah. With most of them I didn't even say the month of May was a crazy month. Like, there were a couple where I did that. If it was something where I felt I wanted to communicate a little bit more. But otherwise, it was. Thanks for your patience. Here's my thoughts on this. Right into it, you know, let's go.

I like it. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, I. Yeah. I'm gonna have to adapt and remember how.

Yeah, you can steal that. That's right.

Yeah, I'm good. I do it all the time. Same, you know, different things. Yeah.

I always say my kids used to get mad at me, and they still do, but they know it's coming, where they would come up with some interesting phrase or funny thing or whatever, and then they would see it the next day, like, on my social media, and they'd be like. Like, dad, dad, you stole my line.

I always ask my kids, can I post that?

Oh, no, I don't. I didn't. I didn't attribute it to them. I just would post it, and they'd be like, you, I can't believe you did this. I'm like, now, you don't understand. I am an excellent curator.

Yes.

It's not right. I like, I listen to all the drivel that you throw at me, and if I posted all of it, I'd have zero followers, because a lot of it is crap. But occasionally, right, like all of us, but occasionally, there's a gem, and I am the one curating that gem, so that's why I get credit for it. They still don't buy it, but, you.

Know, they give you a hard time. Before I want to. I have another topic I want to talk about, but I think, speaking of patience, I just want to mention this because this maybe happened to you as well.

Do you?

See, if you're not. If you're listening in the car or something, you can't see what I'm holding up in my hand. But just yesterday, I got another small batch of 1099s in the mail. What? For 2023. What was the date yesterday?

The date yesterday? We're recording this on. On Tuesday, June 4th, so you can do the math.

June 3rd. And I'm still getting 1099. So I. I always ask people, how can you file your taxes in April when dribbling in throughout the next, you know, three months after that? Are these 1099s? Just blows my mind. And I called and said, hey, what's going on? It's like, oh, yeah, we just can't get Them processed enough. Thanks for your patience.

Thanks for your patience.

But anyway, I just thought it's interesting if, if you find yourself doing that feedback at Businessbrain show and share how you, I mean, are you like me and just file an extension every year? I mean, that's. We have to do it.

Yeah.

I haven't filed in April forever. I mean, if you have, you got to pay it of course, by the 15th or the 18th, whatever the day falls on, but for the rest of the paperwork, man, we don't file it until October.

No.

You know, by the time everything comes in. It's crazy. It's crazy. However, that's not what I want to talk about today.

No. Shall we set all of that stuff aside and really kind of focus our attention on this next topic?

Yeah, let's compartmentalize it and work on it that way. And matter of fact, I would like to share with you how I consider myself a master of compartmentalization.

Okay.

And this is how I've run my life and have a ton of stuff going on and all these different businesses and crazy this, crazy that, and, and still remain productive. Because we don't use the word busy on this show because we're being productive at all times, not just busy.

That's right.

And, and so I, I've, I've kind of broke down this strategy of how I think now it works for me and I'd love to share that with you today.

Great. Let's do it.

Yeah. So the first part is, is understanding why you're, you know, why you have to compartmentalize. And the, the beauty of compartmentalization is that you, you treating everybody in your life with more respect. Your family, your kids, your wife. Because you've, you're not letting these other things intrude on your focus.

Yes.

When you're, when you're in, they'll love you more for it. And you're also treating your employees with more respect and more focus. Your business partners, your suppliers, your advisors, your podcast listeners. Podcast listeners. All because you are actively focused on learning how to compartmentalize. It's not just a happenstance thing. And maybe some people are better at it than others.

Some people are definitely better at it by default than me. But it is something you can pay attention to and learn.

Yes. If you self aware of it, you can help train yourself. And one of the first things that I think to do is to set clear boundaries. Meaning I'm going to go work. Whether you work at home, whether you go, it's easier, I guess, if you leave. But let's say you're at home or you have an office on your property like I do, or you're in, just in another room, you letting people know, like your family, hey, it's 8am I'm gonna go work from 8 to 11 and I'm gonna come out, I'm gonna come out and I'm gonna say hi or see you for lunch or whatever we're gonna do. But communicating those boundaries, very important because you don't wanna intermix these things unless it's an emergency. Of course you'd like to tell your family, hey, okay, I'm gonna be doing this. And it's the same on the, on the flip side, if you leave the office every day at 4pm or you're 12 to 2 to go to your kids or a game or whatever, let other people know. And it could be just as simple as an outgoing message. One thing Dave does really well when he's travels, if you call him or send him an email, I don't know because I don't call him. So maybe. But when you get an email, he says, hey, I'm away, do me a favor and please resend this message after this date. And I think that's great because you're setting these boundaries of I'm away focusing, I'm at this show, I'm at this event or whatever it is, whatever it is, you're just teaching around people around you how to, how to respond to you. And that's the boundaries. And so you do it with your, your professional life and your personal life. And I've just found the better you communicate that, the better the results will be.

I, I agree. I, I, you know, I've never been, I've mentioned this on the show. I've never been technically diagnosed with adhd, but I don't think I need to be. But I have learned that I have a tendency to try and do, you know, try and make it all happen at the same time. And it's terrible. It never works. And so, like, creating those boundaries, not only is it good for all the other people in my life if I tell you I'm not going to be available between 12 and 2 today or whatever, or I tell my family I am going to be available between 12 and 2, but I'm going to work between 8 and 12. Well, that gives me a deadline.

Yeah.

And then I look and I, I, you know, like, chunk out my day. I compartmentalize my day. It's like, all right, well, I only have a Limited amount of time to do this.

That's right.

And I noticed the other day I was. We. We just got some new. Like, we built some new cabinets in our kitchen, but which is awesome. To kind of go along with the new cabinets we had installed in our kitchen. But, you know, it meant taking all the crap out of the old cabinets, sifting through it, deciding what to keep, what to throw away, hopefully more of the latter, and then putting it away in the new cabinets. So our kitchen table has been full of all the crap from the old cabinets as we sift through this stuff. And I caught myself half sifting through this one drawer. Old. An older drawer for tools. And it, you know, it used to be just the tool drawer. And then of course, it was like, well, there's more room in here.

Junk.

Junk drawer. So, yeah, it becomes a junk drawer. And I was eating my lunch in the middle of, like, a Tuesday while also half paying attention to myself sifting through this, and I stopped and I was like. And I've. I realized a trick that I have learned. I leveraged my inner judge, and I shamed myself for doing this, because I said, all right, here's the deal. You know that if you are sifting through this while you're also eating your lunch, you're going to have to sift through this again because you're gonna miss things that are tools in this drawer. And I don't know why I'm hearing an echo from you, Shannon, but. But I am hearing an echo from you. I think something happened to your mic. All good. Oh, we lost Shannon here.

Not yet, but I will.

Oh, you're back. Are you back? We hear you. Oh, I hear. I hear myself echoing in your room again Now.

Now I'm back. Sorry.

All right, great. No, it happens.

Yeah.

I told you some part of this episode would suck. That's it. Yeah, but I, I, you know, I caught myself leveraging that inner judge and said, okay, look, if you do this with split focus right now, you're going to have to do it again. There's no way you're gonna catch all of the little tools that are in the drawer. And it was at that moment that I decided, okay, I am going to do it now. I put my plate with my sandwich down, and I got into, like, hyper focus mode, which happens to be one of the superpowers of adhd, you know, And. But it. But the only way I got into it was by shaming myself into it. It was a productive shaming.

Right. Well, you're kind of setting the boundary in your head.

Exactly.

I set the boundary with everyone else.

Like you are gonna do that. Yeah. Nobody else was even in the house. Nobody knew that I did this. And I, I took, and it took five minutes to go through the drawer and find all the tools. And when I was finished, the best part was I was 100% certain that there were no tools left in that drawer of otherwise junk. I was like, okay, great, check the box. Like this, that's good. Is now we need to go through it for other things. That's fine. But the tools are now out and they're in the new drawer where they belong and all of that. And it's that, that awareness of needing of the benefits of compartmentalization that got me there.

Yeah, yeah. And like you're talking about too is your, how you use your time. And another part of this for me is chunking up your day as I call it. And it's understanding. Okay, I'm going to get in the office at this time, let's say it's 8 o'.

Clock.

I'm going to work for 40 minutes straight, whatever the number is for you. 30 minutes, 20. You can use the Pomodoro method.

Yes.

If you know what that is.

We talked about it with Bob Levitis on this show a number of years ago. Yep, that's right.

So you know, for me it's about 30, 40 minutes.

Yep.

And then I, I, I'm trying to focus on one thing, but after that I'm ready to shift. I get up, I'll wave out of my seat and change my view. I may walk outside. Ideally I want to get outside as much as I can during the day and break things up. So it kind of resets my brain. Then I walk back in, even after just a couple of minutes. I may get a drink or something, come back and sit back down. Then I'm ready to hit my next task. So, and I'm not thinking about what I was working on the previous 40 minutes or whatever that time frame. You just give it up.

You're reset.

No. Yeah, you reset. Maybe I made some notes before I got up after my desk of, okay, when I continue, I'm gonna come back and do this later. But you, you're stopped and you moved on to the next thing. So chunking up your day, I like 30 to 40 minute chunks with a little, you know, brief break in between. Yeah, it's, it's hugely powerful.

No, that's, that's a good amount of time. The flip side to that double edged sword Is if you do wind up getting up in the middle of a task, your brain also resets away from that task. So you have to spend some time getting back into it.

Yeah.

And that can be helpful, you know, if you're stuck for an idea or you find yourself kind of cycling on something. I find that with programming all the time, it's like, oh, I gotta get up. I walk away. I might even do a different task, a short one or something, and then come back and it's like, ah, my brain did something in the background while I was busy.

Yeah, the reset. So it can be good or you.

Have to manage it, but manage that reset.

Yep, yep.

And.

And then that, that workspace, while we're talking about that, I. It for me, and I think for anybody that really wants to become a master of compartmentalization, you. You have to have your own designated space that nobody can really mess with. I understand if you have to share a desk or share a table. You know, for years my wife and I worked on our dining room table at night as we launched deals on the web when we were trying to build that business. But the more you can isolate your own space, I think it's easier for you to chunk your day up, compartmentalize, set things aside. And it doesn't need to be anything fancy, but it just needs to be yours.

I can get into work mode so much faster. Faster sitting at my desk where I do work than I can anywhere else. And it, you know.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And. And then one of the things that I've, I've. I really didn't know this term until a little while ago, but. Or this, this. They call it the Eisenhower matrix. And I really didn't even know what that meant. But I have been doing these things and, and we'll share it in the show notes at BusinessBrain Show. But it's basically, you know, it's a matrix with four quadrants. Urgent, not urgent in the horizontal and not important and important in the. Yeah, you can probably pull it up right there. Yeah. Sauna has a good, good breakdown. If you scroll down, I think you'll see it even better. Okay, right. Keep going. Right, there it is. So the top left is urgent and important things.

Yep.

You just need to do that task with deadlines or consequences. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And below, as you drop into the. They're urgent, but they're not important. Important. Delegate it. You got to get. It has to be done, but you don't have to have it doesn't require your specific skill set. And maybe even we lean back into that 75% rule that we talk about. If someone can do it 75%, as good as you can, delegate it.

I did that earlier today. I felt so proud about it because it's something I absolutely would have done myself. I was like, I don't have. Like, I don't have time left in my day to day.

I'm doing it more and more. Yeah, yeah. You have to. Especially with. I work with this nonprofit, and I'm volunteering and everything.

Yeah.

But if you've ever done volunteer work, you know that the more effective you are, the more stuff you get kind of dumped on you. So I'm setting up, like, subcommittees, and then they're coming to me going, oh, do you want to make this phone call? No, no. That's the reason why you're the. The head of this subcommittee. You make you guys do all these things. I'll help you. But, you know, so important in the upper right, not urgent items that are still important. You can schedule tasks with unclear deadlines. And then the bottom ones, not urgent, not important, not important. Delete and just get rid of them. You don't have to do it. You don't have to worry about it. And I find that I kind of do this in a more casual manner.

Sure.

But it works pretty good. I like that. So, you know, this big part of this is delegating. You got to learn to delegate.

Yes.

If you're at a stage where you still have this kind superhero complex where you're the one, you think you have to make all the decisions, you got to work on that because you're going to be stuck and you're not going to be able to do it. And then lastly, I love this. We talked about this on the show a bunch of times. This to did list concept. I don't like to do lists very much, but I love looking back at my day and listing what I did get done. I call it my to did list. Because then I can see, was I really productive or do I need to pick it up a notch tomorrow? How effective was I? Because often it's like, oh, wow, I got a lot more done than I thought. And it allows me to walk away from my desk. I go down to my house. I'm going to compartmentalize now. Spend time with Renee. And I can leave it now if I feel like I didn't get a lot done. I may need to take some notes for tomorrow or set up some stuff, you know, but it helps a lot, and so compartmentalization's awesome.

And I agree.

You can practice it and you can get better if you have tips on how to do it. Feedback at BusinessBrain Show. We'll share it with everybody else. Help help us grow our collective business brain and get smarter.

Absolutely. Like he said, feedback@businessbrain show. Send in your ideas. We'll share them here on the show. We all get to learn from each other, and that's why we do this. Thanks so much for hanging out, folks, and we will see you on Friday.