Remarkable People Behind the Podcast - Do you have White Space?

Foreign. Welcome to behind the Podcast. I'm Jeff C. Here with the amazing spectacular Peg Fitzpatrick. Look, see, I'll put your name. You didn't put your whole name on. See, mine is on there now.

I just. I'm like Madonna.

So the second string is on today because Guy had to work. So it's us. But this is amazing podcast that you can find@remarkable people.com so let us know where you're from, where you're watching from today. Yeah. So what's Guy doing? Is he. He's speaking and he.

He. Yep, he's doing a speaking. He's otherwise engaged at a speaking engagement. A virtual. So maybe. I was going to say maybe you're watching it, but you can't be doing two things at once, so you be on that one. So, yes, today, Jeff and I are going to talk about the podcast this week, which is a fantastic topic. It was productivity and it's based on. I have the book Let me go there so bad at me a minute to think. Reclaim creativity, conquer busyness and do your best work by Juliet Funt. Yeah, Juliet Funt.

And I knew who she. Because we've talked about this before. It's like, is this the lady? Is this like, is she related to. And she is. She's related to Alan Funt from Candid Camera. If you were old like me, you remember seeing that on tv. My parents loved camera came. I did not know. And she. She talked about at the beginning of the podcast that it was a radio show and he first like started interviewing like service vets and service people and soldiers and that kind of thing. And so that was really interesting how that came. But she's the daughter of Alan Fudd.

So smile, you're on camera.

And because guys on here, we've got.

Back when show jingles were good.

Yeah. So we've got some people in the audience. Let me pull this up really quick. We've got some people watching from Saudi Arabia. Thank you for watching. People from India are here with us today. Gordon from England. So people from Iraq. We've got all sorts of people watching today. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Ryan is from Salt Lake City. Tons of people here. Texas. Way to go, Alex. I'm from Texas as well. Yeah, don't mess with Texas. So anyway, so excited for you guys to be with us. And make sure you do check out the podcast@remarkable people.com. this was. What was the title of this one? I can't what. It was Juliet Fundt. The.

It was like productivity expert. I Can't remember. I wrote too long ago.

So. So here's our icebreaker, because we're talking about productivity today, and Peg is going to give us all her productivity tips because she's so productive. She is what holds the glue that holds remarkable people together. But here's the question. Does your calendar stress you out? Does that stress you? When you look at your calendar in the morning, do you get up and go, oh, no. What do I have to do?

My favorite one is when Google Calendar sends me a thing saying, you have nothing on your schedule today.

That is nice. That is nice.

But, yeah, I think especially with hybrid and virtual working, people's calendars are even more packed. When are you getting your work time in? So Juliet actually had some really great tips for that. But does your calendar just stress you out looking at it? Mine does if it has too much stuff on it and if they're too packed together, you know, if they're big things that you're planning for, those kind of things do stress me out. And then if you have something where you're going to be live, whether you're live streaming or if you're doing a presentation, getting ready for that takes a long time. I never build that into my calendar, but it does take a good amount of time. Well, it does. Just to get your lights and to get everything. You keep your setup all the time. I move mine because my lights clipped on my imac right now, so if I could leave it there, but it's just annoying. And my camera is right in front of my face, so I couldn't see anything to do. I just move them to my other imac. And then.

So people like the book? Some people have read it. I like the book. One Minute to Think. Yeah, so it is a really. I'm. I have not read it yet, but it's on my list because I'm a kind of productivity kind of nerd. One of my good friends, Eric Fisher, has a podcast called beyond the To Do List, and it's all about productivity. A lot of great people on that, but so my. So one of the things she talks about in this podcast, which I think is very important for productivity, that I really started to implement after I heard it. She talked about white space. And when I heard white space and Peggy and I talked about this a little bit earlier, is that when I heard the term white space, I thought she was going to talk about, like, in design, you want to have white space so your eye isn't. It's not crowded. Your message, your call to Action, whatever in marketing comes through. But that's not what she's talking about. So, Peg, you kind of alluded to it earlier. So tell us what white space is.

Well, basically, Juliet says you shouldn't have. When you have your calendar all set up, you shouldn't have everything touching. So if you have a whole bunch of events and there's no white space in between your calendar items, you're not giving yourself time, not only just to breathe, maybe get some water, walk around, but just creative time to think. So what she's talking about, white space, is planning time into your schedule so you can write, so you can have creative thought process, so you can sketch things out for a project that you're working on. Because if your mind is going all the time, you. Your brain just can't function. And I definitely feel that, especially working in social media with the news cycle for the past however long it's been so bad. Like, there's just so much coming at us. There's news, there's ads. There's just the amount of information that is thrown at people in the digital age is very high. So, I mean, definitely time without white space, you could do like a combination of a whole bunch of people that we've had on the show, you know, for being more productive and giving yourself creative time. From Julia Cameron with morning pages, which I still do morning pages every day. So creativity doesn't happen by accident. You. You actually have to have plan some time in your schedule. So that's what the white space is, and it is important.

Yeah.

So you've been trying that in your calendar and has that been helping?

Yeah, so. Because I don't know. I have like a to do list of. I. Like, I always. When one of the things. And I think it's getting things done talked about, like dumping something off. Like, always. Like, if you have an idea, don't stop what you're doing, but dump that idea off. Because I can go in rabbit trails everywhere. So I just have an idea. I dump it to my to do list or an idea place where I can capture that idea. But my to do list is always longer than my calendar. And so what I've been really doing is trying to schedule stuff. Like, even if it's like writing or scheduling social media or whatever is actually putting it and time blocking it on the calendar. And I tend to just stack those on top of each other. But after listening to this podcast, I was like, okay, yeah, I need those breaks. 1. It doesn't make me feel like I'm so Rushed. And a lot of times it goes out the window after the first, you know, time block anyway, it's like, crap, I went too long or I had a call or something. And this buffer helps me get things done. And I. And also have that creative time to think and have a breather. A technique that a lot of people use is a pomodoro. I think it's how you say it, technique where you work for 25 minutes and then you stop for five. The problem with that is a lot of times I get into the flow like around 25 minutes. I don't need to take a stopping. And so, but even having these, these buffers, they kind of work like that, that time between your calendars, those, those breaks where you can take a breath and you can move on.

So, so, and, and I actually, because I was reading this and thinking about this, you know, you know, we're going to take a holiday break this year because we're going on two years for the podcast and we, we publish every week. So we're going to plan ahead and have, you know, two weeks during the holidays when we're just going to have off so we can come back fresh. You really need to schedule that.

And podcast will still go on, but we just won't be there working on it yet.

Yeah, it'll all be. Yeah, from. You guys won't even notice we're not there. But we will have a break.

Right? Exactly.

Which honestly is more work because you have to do, you know, double stuff.

To get it to get in there.

Yeah. It's not like you don't have the same amount of work, but at least you do have a break, Right?

So John goes, where's Guy? Well, Guy is speaking right now. That's why the second string is in. And we are happy to talk with you guys, but. Yeah. So does the calendar freak you out? How do you guys use productivity? Any practice productivity hacks that you have? Because this show@remarkable people.com, this, this podcast episode was all about it. A lot of great tips in there that you want to make sure you guys check out. The other question we have is who's feeling zoom fatigued? Who's ready to be done with the zoom calls?

So the virtual calls.

What about you, Peg? Do you know, I mean, we talk and our team talks, but.

Yeah, but we never zoom, so I'm thankful. Thankfully not zoom fatigued, but I know a lot of people, they're doing studies on it and it's just really killing people from one thing that I Like, about the way we're doing this right now is I'm looking at a plexicam. I'm not looking at myself.

Right.

When you're looking at yourself talking, it just does something to your brain. It really does. Like, it makes you. You're like, oh, no. You know, it makes you stressed. It makes you. And so some workplaces have people greet at the beginning, turn the cameras off. But, you know, we were all kind of hoping that we were going to be done with this kind of hybrid working, but most people aren't. Jeff and I have worked at home for years and years and years.

Right.

So I'm actually kind of used to it. But is when you do have a lot of Zoom calls, it's that scheduled calls in general. I mean, the question is zoom fatigue. Because she does talk about the on camera stuff, but really scheduled phone calls, like in your time are so tough.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, okay, 1:30, I have a call at 1:30. And then you're like, you know, do I have it? Do. Are they calling me? Like, it's just. We used to just pick up the phone and call people, remember?

Now we're always on. Yeah. The. One of the things which I think of and luckily I've kind of built and a lot of people do not have this. So I am very blessed that I am where I'm at. But so many meetings. To me, meetings kill so much stuff. And I have friends who seriously are on Zoom, like all the time until lunch and they're off. And I'm like, well, how do you get any productivity done? And I don't get it. So I think there's good ways to use it and there's some bad ways to use it. I think it's great for connecting when we're locked down. I've loved live video and stuff since it started. But yes, I think there can be too much, especially if you're not being productive. Shannon goes, I'm fatigued, period. So Shannon says, I feel that. So I want to give a big shout out to Shannon Hernandez. He is another one of us on the team at Remarkable People. He helps with the sound design. He makes everything sound amazing. So if you see Shannon in the comments, give him props if you like the podcast because he is responsible for a lot of the ways that. How great it sounds.

So really we just had a really great shout out from a previous guest for the sound design.

Yeah, Adam Curry liked the sound design channel. I need to send you that email. But yeah, he was. He was Impressed with the way it sounded. So how cool is that?

Adam Curry, former MTV vjannon Hernandez.

Yes, that's right. So let's see. So Shannon also goes, I have to build boundaries with zoom meetings. Yeah, I totally. I'm. I am with. And luckily, I mean, I get. Some people don't have a choice. I mean, they've been forced home and they've been forced this meeting stuff. And my wife had to teach for like, almost all last year from her house. I mean, it was horrible.

That's crazy.

But, you know, I get it with the meetings. Yeah.

Some teachers. Some teachers had to do for. They had to do in person and virtual. So they were like, trying to entertain people on camera and then also monitor the classroom. That would be so hard. Yeah. So, so hard.

Not very cool.

So, yeah, I think all this on camera stuff is just probably really.

It's. It's. Yeah, I think for productivity, it's a killer for me for live video. Connecting with people is really great. Like, I'm in Texas. A lot of people have no idea what I can do or what the Internet is. And it's really great for me to be able to go and, you know, connect with people like Peg and Shannon, who's amazing. So, second question. This is. This is really important. And she talked about this in the podcast as well. Do you schedule meetings outside of work hours? And this is important because now that we're home and I've worked for a lot of virtual companies where there isn't really home offices everywhere and the time zones can get a little bit trickier. So how do you do that? How do you navigate that? Do you schedule meeting outside of work hours? Peg, what about you?

I don't, unless it's really, really important. The last one I did was with Facebook team, and Facebook is obviously a huge company. And so that one was. It wasn't too late though. It's like maybe 5:30. So that's not too bad. But I will say I used to schedule stuff all, like, stuff at night, all the time. When I first started out in social media, it was like there was Twitter chats and I hosted a Twitter chat and I was doing, you know, doing all these things, and I just got really burnt out from it. You know, you can't work at night and during the day and then on weekends. And so now I'm much more protective on my schedule. I'm done at the end of the day. I don't do stuff on the weekends. I use SaneBox now for email where it does the Auto reminder. You don't have to do a holiday for people who watched a couple weeks ago and when we talked about have Erica's book right here, Erica Dewan's book, Digital Body Language. How to build trust and connection no matter what the distance. One of the things that I was looking for was an email service that let you do weekend reminder, not just a weekend message, every weekend without having to go in and set a vacation reminder because it's not a vacation, it's just off of work hours.

Right.

So I, so I, I'm trying SaneBox and that's actually helping. You still can check them if you want, but.

Right.

Juliet talks a lot about that in her book too. Just if you check your email though, it can just ruin everything. So if you tell yourself, I'm not going to check my email before I do my morning pages, because that's one of the things Julia Cameron says, like don't go online, don't do all the stuff. But if you go and check your email, it can just crush your whole workout, you know, look, whatever you're going to do because you might get some bad news or you might have something that needs to be fixed. Hello. Ian Anderson. Greg from the uk.

That's right.

So, yeah, I, I don't, I try not to schedule anything past, you know, work hours. How about you?

So, you know, like for today I have, I'm doing Leap Into Live, which is eCamm's big virtual event. I'm speaking there, so. And that's at like 5 o' clock to 6 my time. And I'm like, usually I wouldn't, but you know, special events and stuff. You want to help out people that you like and that's cool, I get that. But I'm also like you. I try to schedule stuff and if, like, if I'm doing something that will be like on a weekend, once in a while there's an event on the weekend you have to do or something. I'll try to build space back into my calendar with the time blocking that like Juliet talked about and make space for me to like recover or do something that I was gonna do. So. And the other thing is, it's also seasonally, I think seasons of Life's different. My kids just let. I don't have kids in the house anymore. I don't have a. I mean it's a lot quieter than it used to be. I don't have to go somewhere every night. Like, I know Ian's got kids, he's taken to practice, he's Taken to singing lessons. I mean, that's. I mean, it's seasonal, and I know things that are gonna. It's different for different people. And. And you got to make stuff work. You know, what works with you if you're trying to get ahead. Sometimes you got to wait till the kids go to bed and you do stuff at night. But here's a little hack that I've done, because one of the things that killed me so much on the weekend is I would look at my email, and we've all had that boss before. Like, when you see that email, all of a sudden that adrenaline dumps in your system like, crap, I gotta deal with this now, or I'm gonna worry about it all weekend. So what I've done, I have an Apple watch, which I like. I love my Apple watch, but I changed the face on the weekend to Mickey Mouse. And so that way, when I look at my watch, it's a reminder that don't check your email. You're off. Because it's easy when you work from home or you're an entrepreneur. I know that I can Mickey Mouse around a little bit on the weekend and have that permission. So that's. Those little reminders you kind of have to do.

Yeah.

As you're going.

Yeah, you really do. I mean, I. When I'm writing, I try to, like, use my laptop and go into a different space that's not at my computer. Not. Not at my computer. I work all the time just so I can even mentally be like, okay, I'm sitting at this desk and I'm on my laptop. I'm going to do this. And you do sometimes have to do those little tricks for yourself, because then, you know, the next thing you know, you're like, well, maybe I should. I could just check this. And you're thinking about something, and you're like. And then it can totally ruin your train of thought.

Or your thought process or notifications are the bane of. Turn those puppies off of the phone. And on your. Because nothing kills your. Your productivity or your train of thought. Like, if you're all sudden, get something. Hey, Peg says, hey, check out this new picture of Poppy, my dog. I'm like, oh, I want to watch it. So.

And with Apple, Apple tries to tie you into everything. You could have notification that goes on your watch.

You.

You know, you could have a message that comes down on your computer. You're like. And sure, all those things are handy, but they're handy for getting you to look at your iPhone, is what they're so it's just the iPhone addiction. And it's not even that you want to be. Is that you're work addicted or email addicted or like any of those things. Yeah.

Ian said it's hard for him not to check his email. One of the things that I think is the best thing ever is do not Disturb. So I have it set so it goes on a certain time at night and a certain time in the morning. So only my kids can get through or I don't get those notifications to distract me. So I think you could also do that same thing and use your do not disturb on your devices, like Juliet was talking about in the podcast@remarkablepeople.com where you can. You have those, those. Those white spaces in your calendar. You can turn on do not disturb. So you would actually have that. That downtime.

Right.

So.

Right.

So we got some great. Kit says this. Hi. From Vancouver. Peter McKinnon had a good suggestion using a Moleskine notebook. The reasoning being it can't distract as a phone or computer can. Further or handwritten notes stick in the mind. And that's why the remarkable tablet. That guy.

I was just grabbing mine. Yeah. Remarkable tablet is also.

Oh, you got blurry.

I totally went out of focus.

There you go.

There we go. Yeah, I use my tablet all the time. I just go on there and it's the same thing. I do like writing with paper, too, but the remarkable tablet is great for that, where you can just take a quick note, you can sketch something out. You know, you don't get distracted by other stuff. But Pete McKinnon is also the man, so he's got good ideas.

Yeah. Shannon says I haven't.

If you're listening, we'd love to have you on the show.

That's right. You're remarkable. Very much so. He says I've had to put my phone in the other room because I've been so unproductive. Yes, I've done that. Even just help sleep. Scott goes. I have all notifications from apps turned off on my phone except text and my church small group Slack channel. So that's good. Yes. I mean, I would. I sometimes turn on. I mean, do not disturb doesn't let text go through. But I do that for my live shows, which I need to do. I forgot to do it today because Peg was distracting me. But yeah, so do not disturb. I love all that. And it's even said so. Like, if my kids try calling me during the show and it goes to voicemail, but if they call right back and it'll come through. So I know it's an emergency so you can set those really cool things inside of do not disturb, which is really, really helpful. Ian says switch off all of his notifications and we are digitally programmed auto human. That's true.

I've turned off all my notifications too, because it's too distracting if you turn it on at all. Like I was giving you a hard time. You never pick up your phone. I'm like, I, I have stuff off. You turn it on and there's always leaks that come through. And then all of a sudden I'm getting a ding for text. And it's like they make it virtually impossible without using that to turn off everything you got to go through. And it's just too much. They honestly caused me anxiety. This I've been doing social media for ever. I'll sound so old if I say it. Look, I'm in my 11th year, so if I had my notifications on, my brain would be like, ding, ding. You can't do it?

No.

Can't do it.

No.

Don't need it.

So here's our another question. What helps you keep your life balance? I gave my little Mickey Mouse watch trick. What about you, Peg? What do you. I mean, what do you. You said you turn off your notifications.

Any other hacks that you turn off my notifications? Yep. And I did the do not just I do the do not disturb. And I also have, I'm doing sanebox. So it sets up my message at the end of the day Friday and then on, on Monday morning. And know if I want to, I could still check it, but I don't have to. It's. And it's so far it's made it so much less stressful just as far as like not feeling like I have to check it. And the more that you make those things part of your process, the less stressful it is to do it. And then adding in some holiday break time for us, I feel like was a really big important thing because you could, hypothetically speaking, you just keep working at social media and writing and doing look all the time. There's never a break. It's never done. Social media is never, ever done. Yes, something else needs to be done. And so you have to just turn it off and say, I did this much. I'm done. And then also reading is a brain shut off for me. And I do books versus Kindle because my Kindle is on my iPad. And then I might want to check something else. So when I pick up a book I pretty much am just in the book, you know, reading, and I still enjoy that. So.

So that's one of the things that I do is I now have certain spaces. Like I have a special chair that I go right. And there's no distractions over there. And it's also where I read and I have a Kindle. I love my Kindle Oasis because both Peg and I are book nerds and I love my Oasis and I feel like business books. I read on my Kindle because I underline that. And I have a service that takes it and puts it, the underlying things into a place where I can go back and use them later. But for pleasure reading, for pleasure to relax and stuff, I have the Oasis that only has books on it, and it also has the. It takes away the blue light so I can read it at night. And I don't get this. So. And I have a certain spot that I do that. So this is a great question from Ian. He says the clutter of social media feeds is overwhelming. How do you manage your feeds? That's a great question.

I like to use Agora Pulse to go in to respond to stuff because that listens. It's not as stressful as going to Twitter where you can see a whole bunch of other stuff. I like to use Agorapulse also because I can avoid the news. I can avoid seeing anything that I don't want because even though I blocked words, they still pop up on Twitter. So I feel like it catches more than I do. Even though you're really careful, especially Facebook notifications or messages get buried sometimes. So I just go in there and I try to do that as a practice to just go. I still go live on Twitter just to see what's going on and see what's twent. What twinning can't even. What's twenting on Twitter. Who is this? Can't talk anyway. But I do like to check in on Twitter occasionally. But I like to use a CORA pulse just to get. Get the messages. And I feel like it's. It's much more efficient for time. How about you?

Yeah. So agorapulse because I can listen and I don't miss any comments. Like, I'll go back after this show today and see if I need to respond to any questions or anything like that. And agorapulse does a great job for that. But also I use. Because I like to. I like to read and I like to keep up on. In my show, the Friday shows me news live where I do that. It's a lot about news and I need to keep up on the news. But I use Feedly and I've really curated feeds where I get things that I want to read and it's not distractions. And I can. I can organize that and put it out that way. So having sections. Yeah. Where you can not. And I'm really working on trying to stay off social unless I'm creating content. I'm trying to create more or have a better balance of creating versus consuming, because I think we have tended to. That's all we do anymore is consume. And I want to create because that's who I am and what I want to do. And so I think you consume too much.

That also zaps your creativity because then you start getting imposter syndrome or too many ideas or it's too. It's just an overwhelm. I like to use Smarter Queue for my scheduling, which is weird because I use more than one thing, but I use Smarter Queue for scheduling and I have my Feedly in there. So I have all my categories and they're all selected. Then I can just hit automatically. It'll do the things. If you really wanted to be automatic, you could just feed stuff in without. You know, you can just put them in. But I don't do that. I cancel.

We should go to Pulse, if you're listening. I really want to feed Lean integration. Come on. So, I mean, Ian, hopefully I answered your question. The other thing is, I think it's also to give yourself permission not to have to be there and see everything. You know, for a while there, it used to be like, must see tv. Did you see Knight Rider last Wednesday? Yeah, I saw it. Everybody was watching it. Now there's shows everywhere. Everybody's talking about this. You have to watch this. And giving yourself permission. Like, I don't have to do that.

Sometimes you can't go on social because you'll get a spoiler alert. If you don't want to watch the whole season at one time, it'll be ruined because you'll see a spoiler.

So I'll. I'll. I. And I have very specific places I go. Like, I'm like, I a Disney nerd. So I like go to Lou Mongello stuff. I love how he does Community and all that stuff, and that makes me happy. So I. And I listen to his podcast and so I go to his group and so I have specific places. But I think giving yourself permission that, like, you know, and even if you miss somebody, I use a Girl poll. So I don't. But once in a while things will slip through the cracks. Somebody like, why didn't you answer my question? I'm like, man, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to. And give yourself permission that it's okay to do that. Shannon says he has a non negotiable to build time in for exercise. That break helps me recalibrate and stay balanced even on my worst days. Shannon kind of helped. I mean, he and I talk a lot and I have been for the last probably, I don't know, year or more. I've tried to walk every day like two and two, two miles or more. And that has helped a ton. Before your day start. I like to ease into my day. When you have kids, man, when they. You have to, it's like you get up and you like, bam. School starting, bam. I gotta feed them, bam. You know, now I can ease into my day. It's really zen and chill. I like it. And so, yeah, got kids, man. It's coming, it'll happen. But I feel your pain. So, yeah, I love to ease in my.

Yeah. We walk at the end of the day. We walk the dogs at the end of the day.

Yeah. So Ian says great stuff, but the algorithm is skewed towards people who engage. So if you don't engage with others, your posts don't do so well. Totally true. But I think it's my thing is. Is like if doing that, listening and going back and engaging with people, that's. That's what I think. Yeah. You want to engage then.

I, I do. I do have a couple periods. Like I do go on Twitter live and then I also go on Instagram because.

Right.

Instagram is a place where I mostly am just talking to people. So that's like conversation with people that I don't see anywhere else. So that's live. I don't usually respond to that stuff on Instagram, but then sometimes people will come in at older posts and that. I'll see that in there. But I don't know, Instagram is like.

And so Ian, I get this. And part of our job is to do this. But also I would say, you know what if you're creating content and you're being there for your people, like, I know you do the live shows and stuff, then you know, it's okay. You don't have to go and engage with everything that, you know. I think you give yourself a little bit of break on that because I just think there's no way to keep up because they need our content and they want us to keep doing that stuff. And I know they do better when you engage, but sometimes you just gotta for the mental health go, I'm not gonna be able to ever create content if I just go and have a meltdown. So I think it's a balance. Yeah.

If you want to do a good meltdown though, just do it on Instagram Live. So. So people can be a witness.

Right, exactly. So then you, your thing would go up. Put it on TikTok. Put it on TikTok. Yeah. So Shannon goes, I need to get on your Twitter last page sets up notifications. Yeah. So, okay, so we've asked what keeps your life balanced? The last one other question is when was the last time you took time off from work? But Peg, if you, if you love your work, you'll never work a day in your life. Remember that.

Yeah, like that. Or. Or you'll only work every day, night and weekend of your life.

Exactly.

I do love my job, but I. You know the time that off that I've been taking is the weekends, which I didn't usually used to do. So I feel like that is a win so far and I'm actually looking forward to our upcoming times. I used to travel back when that was a thing and I. We would always do instead of a staycation, we always did work cations. But almost all of our trips were tied to work.

Right.

A work event. So the last one that was a hundred percent vacation. I went to Paris with my mom and my sister and that was a couple of. That was. That was the fall before COVID hit. So September, what, 19. So long ago.

So I have.

How about you though? You took it? Yeah, I don't take some time off.

I mean I take, I mean it's work stuff too. But I think if you look one of you like what you're doing, taking time off for work or doing it for work is a kind of a benefit. And again, I am totally blessed. Love what I do. I have a lot of freedom that a lot of people don't. But I've also found that the. I am more creative, the more I take that I make sure I take time off. Like I'm trying really to take like a Sabbath or day of not working either on Saturday or Sunday. And the thing is, because the schedule, I'll. I'll switch them up. It's not always the same day. But I try to do one thing where I, I don't work or I work on stuff that is, that gives me energy later in the week. Like, I know that, like, if I get and write some stuff for a really cool podcast I want to launch and have this creative outlet or practice my piano or write some music or whatever, then I'm like, okay, that gives me juiced up for the. For the next, you know, next week. So I think more. My thing is now managing energy.

Yeah, managing energy is important. Yeah, sorry. Finish your managing energy.

Oh, I just think. I think instead of me managing my time more, I'm trying to manage my energy more. One, because I'm old and I run out of energy. Like, I just like these young kids. Yeah.

I was going to New York City. That was something that we would do, like on the weekend. You know, we would plan a weekend, go to New York City because we can drive there. So it'd be like, leave Friday, get there Friday night, drive home Sunday. New York City has the best energy and best, like, I come home. For me, like now living in New Hampshire, I would. I like it because it's all quiet here. Then you go to New York, it's all like, buzzing and go see a show and it's like, you know, travels.

I think travel can. Can jazz you up too. I mean, I think that helps with your injury. And I'm. I get to go to speak in November, so I've been looking forward, forward to that. So a small, small event, so that'll be fun. So last vacation was in November 2015. You need a vacation.

That's a long time. I hope you're taking some time off at all. That's hard. I mean, it's hard. And now, you know, people are switching jobs. There's so much going on. I feel like some people are good at taking it. I think it depends on what you do. When you work for a company that has, like, set hours, I think people maybe take their vacation more. I don't know. I've never been someone to take like, sick days or. I don't know.

I'd love to take those people take what they call a sabbatical, where they have like a month off. I'm like, who are these people? Because I want to do your job. Because, I mean, that would be.

They work at Facebook and Instagram and sometimes they take like a year.

Yeah, that's really hard. To go back to work after a year of not working. That would be really hard.

You'd be broke, so it'd be real easy.

This, this podcast we're talking about, all this stuff, productivity, you can find it remarkablepeople.com. the guest was Juliette Funt. She is amazing. It's a great book. It's a great episode. There's a lot of things that I even like. Yeah, because like I said, I started doing her white space more. Like, you know what? I need some time. Instead of stacking things up on my calendar, I need some, you know, just to get up and walk around and, you know, think about stuff. So I think it's a really great episode. If you like productivity, if you need some help with your productivity, there's a lot of great knowledge nuggets in there. Ooh, that's a good hashtag. Knowledge nuggets. So, last question. Does your workplace hallucinate urgency? Now, I had asked Peg, like, what did you get? This is a misspelling. What is this? So talk about what this is.

So Juliet uses this phrase for workplaces that hallucinate urgency where everything is urgent. This has to get done right away. This has to get. Everything is urgent, urgent, urgent. And basically it just creates that environment where immediacy is everything, and it skews use everything. It's like making your to do list. And everything cannot be an A priority because it's not possible. So if you're just pushing the urgency when it's not really urgent, you're kind of like the boy who cried wolf. So does your workplace do that? And then how do you combat that? If you get the book, there's a whole chapter on it. So it's super helpful as far as just sometimes being like, okay, and if your boss sends you something and says, this is urgent, and now you have two urgent things, you can use the tip where it's like, you know, you can go back to them and say, okay, you gave me two urgent things. Which one is the one that needs to be done first? Because you can't, you know, run full speed on the treadmill all day.

Yeah, totally get that. So, yeah, speaking of people trying to get through my do not disturbs, my daughter keeps trying to FaceTime me. I don't know. Hopefully nobody can hear that, but it's driving me bonkers. So anyway, so, yeah, I think the. The. I think of a lot of it's us putting boundaries, like Shannon had mentioned earlier on our stuff, because I think a lot of bosses, in a lot of ways, everything is, like, at that, you know, red alert level. And we've got to be able to have prioritize. Be able to prioritize things. I saw a great YouTube video the other day. It was talking about how to do some of that stuff. And A lot of times we do that to ourselves, even if we don't have a boss who's doing that. We see our task list and we think everything has the same prioritization when it really doesn't. And they were saying, try to get just one thing done a day. And we say, well, one thing, I got way more things to do than the one thing a day. But then you can add those, like, what is your most important thing to get done during the day? So, like, if it's to write this blog post and you've been procrastinating, said, try it, do it for. Say you're just going to do it for five minutes, then quit. Just say that, tell yourself five minutes. And then what you end up doing is doing it for the whole thing and you get it checked off your list, then you can move on to a lower priority. But I think being, taking that, at least for me, that dump of adrenaline that happens when you start thinking about your task list, having that one thing, you get done and then slowly and then just move on to the next, is a great way to, you know, get rid of this hallucination of urgency. That was a great term. Yeah, so it is.

It's funny, I used to, I had something that I used to do that I'm going to do again because I forgot I used to do it. But on Fridays I would like write down a list for the next week. On Friday afternoon, when everything was fresh. And then during the weekend, you don't have to think about it. When you come back Monday, it's there, you know, versus just your calendar too, but just things, you know, things that need to get done. Which actually made myself a little calendar and remarkable. So I could just, you know, podcast stuff in there. You can just erase it and start a new one. So it's, it's like a little Etch A Sketch for work.

Yeah. So that's their new commercial.

We're an Etch A Sketch for work.

Armando goes, my co workers from Europe, some of them at least like to can take like a two to three week vacation each summer. And I just feel happy for them. Yeah, I bet you feel so, so like I was giving Ian a hard time earlier and he's always like, they have so many holidays in the uk. They're always doing something like, okay, yeah, which I wish we would do and really take them off. The problem is, even with holidays, we think that's a day to get caught up on work. And that's not us.

Australia, they take even longer breaks when they, when they go on vacation, they'll go for like five or six weeks. That's takes a long time to fly from there. So they'll be like, okay, I'm going to be gone. So people at Canva, they'd be like, I'm going to take. I'm going to be on vacation. When are you going to be back? It's like next, next month. I'm like, okay, great. But that's what they do.

Yeah. Wish we should do that. The starter trend. So Shannon goes. When I worked in an ad agency, they thrive off of hallucinating urgency. You could never get anything done. Yeah, I, I've worked in places like that too, where it just, it seems like it keeps stacking and you just deal with the squeakiest wheel, which is not a good way to. For productivity. So.

No, no. And it's horrible for creativity too.

Yes, yes. So one of my favorite authors and other than Guy Kawasaki, remarkable people.com is Todd Henry and he writes Accidental Creative and he has some really good stuff about, you know, manage your energy, how to, you know, he's got like a planner that I use, a kind of a guide where you can write those three things you need to get done that week and then work through them. And having his big thing and the thing that I've really taken away from his stuff is I have so many ideas. Like when I'm working on stuff, even during the show, I have ideas, I want to talk about this more or whatever. And instead of stressing about them and losing them, writing them down, but then not just writing them down, but have a system to process them. And so like on Saturdays or Friday afternoons, taking that and putting those in a system where you can retrieve them later. And I started doing that and that has helped so much with stress and that urgency, like that hallucination of urgency. And I have even systems now that do it automatically. Like I talked about earlier, when I highlight things in a book, it goes to a system, it categorizes them. It's called Readwise, which is amazing. So, yeah, yeah, you gotta have a.

Way to capture the ideas. Because ideas, especially if your brain gets overloaded, you'll just lose them if you don't get them down, Then so, so.

Remarkablepeople.Com Juliet Funt if you guys, we'll give you just a few minutes to. I would love to know any of your productivity hacks, things that you do that help you get things done, lessen the anxiety of the urgency. Hallucination. I can't even say that Word today. But, like, what helps you? What are some productivity hacks that you have? I would love to know. So feel free to drop those down below because even if you're watching the replay, I think there'd be some value in that because I'm all about those productivity tips, so.

Me too. Me too.

Give us another one, Peg. Come on, give us another. I know you got another.

One of the things that I love, InsaneBox is that, which I never really thought about, but they said it could sometimes be damaging if you unsubscribe from lists because you're clicking on something that could be bad. So they have this little folder where you can drag it into the black hole.

Yeah, I like that one, too.

And then any email that comes from that comes there. And then the other one, I did start archiving my email. I think that was from the Erica Dewan podcast versus just deleting or saving. So just like, just getting rid of more stuff from my inbox. I. You know, you can. It's really hard to have, like, zero inbox, but mine is pretty low. Mine is pretty low in all my email, so I'm pretty happy with that. Yeah.

Do you have multiple email addresses? Do you have them, like, bouncing to different accounts and stuff?

No, I don't forward them because then it's like double work, it seemed to me. So I left it separate.

Cool.

So I have my work one, and then I have one that I use for, like, email list for stuff. So, you know, if I have more time, I'm checking the other one. You know what I mean? Or. But SaneBox has actually helped with organizing stuff and making it. I don't know if I've missed anything. If something went somewhere I didn't want it to. I don't know. But also me, I don't know. Maybe I didn't need it. I don't know.

So we have one great comment I want to bring up. So I use a sticky note with different colors. So red one is very urgent, green one is less important. That is cool. I used to have sticky notes all over my monitor, but I finally quit because I got a little iPad mini that I write all my stuff on now that helps do that. So that's good.

It's interesting that you have green for less important and red because color wise, you went backwards from a stop sign. You think green would be more urgent and red would be like, can wait. But that's interesting. Whatever. Colors work for you.

Yeah. So here's another one. So. Okay, here it is. When my inbox grows too much. 200 to 300 messages. It's just too much to me. Do you just delete it? That's what I want. Because who was it? That is it on the podcast? Does he just do a bulk delete?

Yeah, yeah, he did. And actually that story is in the book.

Okay.

Because this guy told that story to Juliet one time. How he. And he said it before on the live show where he just. A friend of his passed away, like in his 50s and Guy was on a trip and he was like, why am I wasting my life doing all this email? And when I could be spending time with my family? You know, no one's going to give you a prize at the end of your life. Like, you answered the most email. Like, that's. It's not going to be. You know what? So he just deleted everything in his inbox. And he never heard, hey, you never.

Nobody said anything.

He missed nothing. So I think he does it at the end of the year or different times. He'll do it. But yeah. Yeah, two to 300 to respond to would just. That would make me so stressed. Nope.

Yeah. So with that, make sure you guys go check out the podcast. Remarkable. Remarkable people.com. we would love it if you would give us a follow over there and leave us a rating and review. That really helps us out. And also, you know, teach somebody if they don't know how to do a podcast or even how to search on a podcast. Go and show them how to do that and tell them about this show that we have so many great guests. We got so many great ones coming up that it's gonna. We have a really cool one for our hundredth episode that's gonna be really, really special.

Yep. And we also have some lists on podchaser. So I'll share a couple lists in Podchaser. I think it was like two weeks ago. One of our guests recently recommended Podchaser to make a list. So we have. And do you remember who that was? It was some.

Oh, yeah, it was Chris Stone. Chris Stone helped give us.

Chris Stone recommended that. So thank you, Chris. And so I'll share a couple of those in the comments so you guys can check out. And actually, Podchaser is a pretty cool place to follow a podcast because they'll send you an email when there's something that you subscribe to. And it's just a really easy format to listen to the podcast.

And speaking of following, you can actually hold up your smartphone cameras right here and you can just see this QR code and you can go right there. Leave us. You could follow us there. You can leave a rating review which really helps the podcast out and that would really help us a bunch. So just use this QR code and you will be there where you need to go. The other thing. Oh, Armando did. He finished up his comment. I want to pull this up when inbox goes too much, 200, 300 too much for me to take the iPad and move delete as many as possible from there. It's more easier for me to do that there than from the PC. I get a lot more distractions at the PC. That is a great tip, Armando. Yeah, I love being able to swipe those messages on the iPad just to delete or archive really, really quickly. That's. That is a great tip. So thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing out. Remarkablepeople.com let us know some remarkable people you think we should have on the show. We would love to know that. And with that, we'll see you next time. Peg, I'll let you have the final word.

I got nothing else to say. Thanks for watching. And let us know if you guys after watching this show go listen to the podcast, come back and let us know how you liked it and what productivity you're going to try. Probably everybody should try the white space.

Yes, it's a great tip. See you guys next week. Bye everybody.

Bye.