In this solo talk, business innovation strategist Donna Brown argues that the prevailing culture of endless busyness and long work hours is counter‑productive and stifles genuine creativity. She references the book Time Off and her observations of the post‑COVID lockdown period to illustrate how intentional downtime, silence, and “doing less” create mental spaciousness that fuels innovative thinking. Brown critiques the badge‑of‑honor mentality around 60‑70‑hour weeks and attendance‑based pay, suggesting that organizations should focus on the essence of their brand and business rather than the volume of tasks completed. She encourages leaders to strip away non‑essential activities, ask what truly nurtures their people’s creativity, and consider simple external perspectives that can dramatically improve processes. Throughout, she invites viewers to reflect on their own habits, share experiences, and explore how minimal effort can yield maximum impact.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Donna Brown. I'm a business innovation strategist, and this is Beyond Business and Branding. I love business, and I love branding, and I love looking at what is beyond that. What can these 2 amazing, gorgeous, frustrating, exciting, boring, all the things— what are these 2 great concepts and structures and practices? What can they bring to the human experience? What can they What can they offer us? What can we— how can we engage with them in a way that makes us better individuals, better human beings, but also contributes to the world in a way that's significant? And today what I'd like to talk about is doing less, right? There's a book, I can't remember the author's name, Time Off. I saw the COVID and it's like, it's on my reading list. I have to see that. But the time off is such a creative time. And it's something we've been made to feel guilty of. There was a badge of honor in the '80s, and well, even now for a lot of, for a lot of companies and a lot of sectors, to the 60-hour workweek, the 70-hour workweek, as if there's some sort of, you know, prize at the end of this martyrdom. And I don't think there really is. And, you know, you only get to be a martyr when you're dead. So you might want to rethink that whole approach to things. And productivity has been busyness. It hasn't been, what are you actually creating? There hasn't— there's just been a real emphasis on getting stuff done, right? Checklists, Trello boards, productivity hacks, Pomodoros, all the things. But nobody's asking you, or very few people. There are people too, so I won't say no one, but there's a real tendency to get caught up with the amount of things you get done rather than the importance and the significance of what it is you're doing. And I like to invite my clients to see how little they can do. I don't mean in a lazy way, but What can you get rid of? What can you glean? You know, what are the— what is the essence of your brand? What is the essence of your business? And from that, new things can grow. Maybe some of the older things, you'll see that they weren't necessary or they're not functional to your company, whether it's internally or externally. And even if you're a person, even if you're a one-man band, we still have these things. It's not that they don't That it's not applicable to a small, a small reality as it is to a large one. And are you asking people to do things because you, you resent giving them a salary and you want to feel like they've done enough to earn that salary and you keep giving them more and more to do so that you'll feel less anxious about having to pay that salary? But is that the best use of their time? Is that the best use of your time? You know, by doing less, what do you allow to happen? What do you allow for creation? I think there's been a lot of innovation in this period. We're in this sort of post-shutdown lockdown period, and it was a very creative period for most people once they got a handle on the anxiety and a little bit of the weirdness of staying at home. And everybody's rhythms changed, and we were all of a sudden allowed To hear ourselves think. And that actually is something that somebody at my hairdressing salon said, like the guy who was washing my hair said, I finally got enough sleep and I, and I could hear. I chose not to go home to spend time with my family because we'd all be sort of locked in the same house. I chose to stay by myself and I could hear myself think for the first time in a long time. And how important is that? You know, silence and the spaciousness of silence, right? We have music going or the television going or we're checking our phones or our devices, and I'm terribly guilty of this, and so that it becomes a nervous habit to pick it up. It becomes a nervous habit to engage with something else other than ourselves and our own thoughts. But in that time off, when it expanded beyond how many things you could binge and how much you could sleep in, all of a sudden there emerged that, you know, from the— as the mud settled and the water cleared, there was all of a sudden more space for creative thinking and for turning inwards to seeing what it is we want to do and what would be interesting for me to do. Rather than what do I have to do? So the doing less is part of that. Doing less is asking of your people also, what do you need to feel nurtured and creative and productive? Because you can get a lot more done in less time if you're not overtired and if you're not pulled in 75 directions and constantly being interrupted. But also that concept of paying, you know, being paid for attendance. My sister says that, you know, about having to go into the office is like being paid for attendance. And so what, you know, and then they want you to stay there a certain number of hours and you need to prove you were there to justify being paid. But what if, you know, so what would it take for you to feel, if with your employees, for them to, the people who work for you, whether they're, you know, whether it's contracted out, whether they're working from home, whatever it is, what would make you feel that it had been productive? And what would you like them to contribute? Do you feel that you're the only person who is the, you know, creative in the company or in the organization? Or that sometimes somebody who comes, you know, somebody who can come from outside in a very simple way can just notice something and shift how you, I don't know, do a funnel or your onboarding system, something Very, very simple, if you like, but seen with the eyes of an outsider can change everything. So spaciousness and doing less, you know, are all part of the same thing. How little can you do to get the effect that you need? Sort of the, what is it? Minimum effort for maximum effect, I think people say. It's still true though, but we've gotten confused with this idea of productivity, be doing lots of things, a little bit like an assembly line. This is kind of like a leftover from the Industrial Revolution. And I think you'll all remember the Charlie Chaplin film or Lucille Ball and her chocolates, you know, whichever. And that just more is not always better. And so by doing less, maybe you'll create more. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and whether you are somebody who does that naturally, whether you struggle with that. And, you know, maybe in the comments below we can find a few ideas of how to move you in the right direction. I'd love to hear from you. Bye for now.
