267: Insights from Google's Productivity Expert—On Saying No, Cozy Corners, The Laundry Method, and More with Laura Mae Martin

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Almost anyone should be able to share. What are their top three priorities? Even if you're not in the nitty gritty of what you're doing or how you're doing it, I think it's just helpful to communicate that to people because it makes them feel like you're giving a little peek into what you're working on and now they're on your side as to why you can't do it. You know, they're like, oh wow, sounds like you definitely can't do my event. So it's kind of like getting with them and helping them understand your time constraints.

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Welcome back, Free Timers. I am so thrilled to have today's guest here with us, Laura Mae Martin, who is the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google, in the office of the CEO. With huge thanks to former podcast guest Jenny Wood, who put us in touch. Laura coaches Google's top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and and sends out a very popular weekly productivity newsletter that reaches over 50,000 employees, probably many more even by now. During her nearly 14 year tenure at Google, Laura has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is now living in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband and three young children. Today we're talking about her forthcoming book, available for pre order, A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing. Laura, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

When Jenny told me about your role working in the office of the CEO, I started drooling like this is a parallel career that I probably couldn't have even dreamed to have. But the front row seat that you have to helping the highest level executives manage their time like that just sounds utterly fascinating to me. Yeah.

What people don't know is I actually kind of made up the role myself, which is funny. So I was doing it on the side in what we used to have as a 20% role at Google, where you're able to do something and it's not your core role, but it's still something that you're contributing to the company. And so I was doing those roles that you mentioned in my bio, you know, event planning and product work. And then I was just doing this on the side. And so it's one of those roles that I kind of grew into it being its own full role, which is a pretty cool story. And like you said, I couldn't even have dreamed that up when I started at Google. That's what I wanted to do or would do.

I have so many questions about this, but how long have you been in this role now?

Since it was created about six years now. So I did a lot of the work on the side before that and then it was about six years ago that it became a full time role for me.

What have you learned about how such senior level executives manage their time differently than say, more junior people or those of us who still struggle with it? I'm just so curious what you've observed and maybe even things that they still struggle with.

Yeah, that's actually what I was going to say. I think the most surprising thing is I worked with a lot of new Googlers, what we call Nooglers. I had worked with a lot of mid level people, people who are managers, some individual contributors. And so I think as I started working with executives, I assumed that they would have totally different problems and schedules and things like. And I think what was most interesting is just how a lot of people at any level deal with the same struggles when it comes to productivity. Whether that's huge demands on their time, constant email flow, figuring out what are the right things to prioritize. I think that it's just interesting to see that that spans any level. I will say, you know, with executives sometimes they have a little bit more control of their schedule because if they move a meeting then people in their org will find a way to attend kind of thing. So that does help some, but they also just are really focused on priorities. That's, I think one of the biggest things that I've learned is I work with an exec and I actually learn from them and then can teach other execs the mindsets that they're bringing to the table. Just constantly thinking about what are the things I'm focused on right now. Not getting caught up in the weeds when other things come through their desk and just, well, that's not one of my big focuses right now, is the next year vision of the company. Does this actually fit in there? This, my team is going this place and I'm looking globally. So I'm focused on this. And so I think it's just great to see when people are able to really take that step back. And a lot of people are able to do that. Executives are not. So that's one thing I've always just been impressed by.

One of the things you address in your book is. Oh, I find the most challenging topic when it comes to productivity is saying no. And you share five ways to say no to incoming requests. I'm curious, because what senior level executives or people who achieve a lot of success in their career or of course, fame and celebrity. The crush of the inbound is so high, just the volume is so strong of people who want their time. And I could imagine that for executives, it's coming from all sides. People that they report to want to meet with them, their teams need to meet with them. They have skip level directs kind of down the chain that want to meet with them. They have family requests. So I don't know. I'd be so curious to hear about saying no at that level of inbound. I remember Oprah talking about how she manages email. Essentially she doesn't, because there will come a point where any previous systems break down purely because of the quantity of what's coming in, let alone any systems for actually saying no once you make the decision.

Right. I think at the Oprah level, you know, at that level, I'm sure that she would love to email back every person that emails her or every request that comes in. And unfortunately, she probably isn't able to do that like you mentioned. So I think one of the first things is just having good systems. And so a lot of the times if you're a senior exec, you would have a group of people working with you that understand your priorities. And that's something I talk about in the book as well, is just having those priorities really, really clear and then communicating them to somebody like an administrative professional that's working with you or a chief of staff or somebody that's your comms lead who's deciding where you should speak. And so having that first level of filter before a Request gets to you can be really helpful because it basically gives somebody else the power to say oh, this is something that they're going to want to see or this is kind of in the middle. I'm going to let this person decide or no. I've seen them say no to this request in the past and so I will be able to do that for them without every single one coming to their desk. So I think creating that filter, that set of priorities and maybe if you're a speaker and you say I'm only willing to speak at events with X number of people or more or having some of those rules can be really helpful. And then also one of the ways to say no in the book that I talk about is the no but which I feel like is probably my most frequently used. So if I am not able to help someone with a request or I'm not able to speak or I'm not able to lead a training, I always have somewhere to point them that is a easy resource that is going to be helpful to them as well. So, oh, I'm not able to speak, but here's a list of other speakers around the company who talk about the same topic. Or I'm not able to speak, but here's a self study that you can follow with your team. And I think it's really good to have those things set out for your top common requests. I'm sure Oprah has that as well. Just when someone wants to be a book for her book club, she probably has like a form they can fill out or a prerequisite before they can even get to her. So having those kinds of systems can help. When you're at that level, you also.

Share the know because strategy. Do you feel it's important that a person declining give a reason. When should people give a reason? And when did you just say I'm sorry I'm unavailable or no? And here are the resources like you just suggested.

A big setback that people have with saying no is because they feel like saying no too often or saying no in the wrong way can actually lower your social capital with that person or your likability or availability or your image. So I think that the no because does a little bit to combat that. You know, of course if you're working on something that's confidential or you don't feel like you need to share your priorities for whatever reason, you can do that. But I think if I'm thinking about when people say no to me, I feel the most respected when they point me in Another direction, as we discussed, or if they say, wow, what you're asking me sounds like a really great project, I wish I had the bandwidth to work on that. Unfortunately, this quarter I'm actually focused on these three things. And best of luck with your event. I think that that just kind of shows me that they gave it the thought. They really aren't able to fit it in because, wow, those three priorities are really big things that they're working on and it just kind of shares what you are prioritizing. Because let's say I have another request for that person that does fall into those three priorities later on and they're like, oh, yes, actually that really does help. Want to move one of my goals forward right now. So I think it's just sharing information. You know, almost anyone should be able to share. What are their top three priorities. Even if you're not in the nitty gritty of what you're doing or how you're doing it, I think it's just helpful to communicate that to people because it's makes them feel like you're giving a little peek into what you're working on. And now they're on your side as to why you can't do it. You know, they're like, oh, wow, sounds like you definitely can't do my event. So it's kind of like getting with them and helping them understand your time constraints.

That makes a lot of sense. It's interesting, this topic of productivity in general, because even when I was at Google in the early days, you know, we brought in getting things done by David Allen. That was probably. I don't even know when that started, but I started in 2006. 7. And of course productivity evolves over time, but I feel like Google as a company has always been obsessed with this in a good way. Productivity, efficiency. This is why I love Google tools and I've always used them when I was internal and external. What did you feel like was missing from the conversation either when you started in this executive productivity advisor role or even what sparked you to write the book? Because there is so much out there, but clearly you were serving a need that didn't have a solution yet?

Yeah, that's such a great question. And you being from Google can understand. I think it was like 10 years ago when I started doing some of these trainings. I was like, oh, maybe I'll reserve the productivity at Google Page or Alias, like things that are available in the company. And when I looked, they were all available. And so I think that was like my first signal that it hadn't really been organized around yet. Like you said, there was a lot of like hacks. And of course our products are so laser focused on productivity, but I think the piece of personal productivity. So how do I as an employee, as a person, as a family member, how do I really make sure that I'm the most effective? So team productivity was focused on engineering, productivity was focused on product productivity was focused on. So I think that I kind of organized a lot of efforts that were going on across the company that were a little bit fragmented into that idea of personal productivity. And so when I started it and the whole world was kind of taking a turn into this idea of productivity is not just an output, it's not just how much am I accomplishing per hour, how many calls am I doing. It's that long term view which Google has always taken of its employees, of how do I come up with great ideas, how do I foster creativity, how do I prevent burnout, how do I make sure I'm a functioning person at work and home, how do I make sure I'm happy with my job, how do I make sure the people I'm managing are happy? And so I think it was that holistic view at the intersection of productivity and well being. That's where I really struck a chord and that resonated with a lot of people. And I think that's what my book is about and I think that's where it's landed. So a lot of people sign up for my annual challenge, which is actually starting soon, which I call no Tech Tuesday night. And so some people would think, oh, I don't understand how like taking a night off of technology has anything to do with productivity. I think that would have been the original thought. But my productivity at Google program now puts on that challenge because we know that if you take a night off of technology and reset and engage with hobbies and spend time in nature, et cetera, you're actually going to perform better at work the next morning. And so I think that that's one of those examples of things that might not have been thought of as productivity in the past, but now we're taking that long range view. And I think that's where my program has really settled into, is that intersection.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Another real sore spot, despite any of our best efforts, is email and never ending inboxes. I am so curious because not only do you send this enormously distributed internal newsletter, so you must have a lot of Sisyphean email to tackle, but it just seems like no matter how hard I tried when I was at Google, and even to this day it is my biggest source of what I call micro guilt. Just a constant feeling that I'm behind. I'm slow getting back to people. Even people I really care about. Not just people, the obvious stuff that's easy to archive. So tell us, why do you think we still struggle with email so much? Or at least I do. And what are some of your favorite strategies for taming inboxes?

Yeah, a lot of times when I start my coaching sessions with executives, a lot of the time we start with email. And I think that's just because email is, as you mentioned, it continues to be such a sore point for people. It's personal. It gets caught up in your mental state. You know, you're waking up in the middle of the night like, oh, I forgot that, or I'm constantly looking at it, or things like that. So I feel like cleaning up your email is always one of our first steps. And it's funny, people who take my email course, they're like, oh, this changed my life, I'm sleeping better and things like that. And I'm like, it's just an email class. But it's really because email is clouding up their mind in that way. One of the tactics that I start with is just eliminating any emails from your inbox that you don't need to see. I think a lot of times people come to me with like a very high unread count and they see that as like a badge of honor. And I'm always like, well, that means you're either not getting back to all those people who actually need you, which is not good, or you're signed up for a lot of things you don't actually need to open, which is a lot of the time, the case. And so people think if they're getting emails that they don't need to open, that it's okay because they're not opening them. But the unread, the bold in your inbox is meant to grab your mental energy. So you're kind of wasting what I call energy points in the book, little energy points all day by having those emails that you don't necessarily need to open. So first step is clearing those out. Second step is making the things you do need to see stick out. So if you have a manager and that manager emails you directly versus your entire team, that should look different in your inbox. So setting up those little flags of how do I know what's in this email before I open it? And then the last piece, which I go into in great detail in my book, is what I call the laundry method, which is thinking about your inbox, the way you think about your dryer. So most people know how to do laundry. You open the dryer, you know you have your clothes. But imagine if you open the dryer, you pulled out a pair of pants, it was still wet. You're like, you know what? I'm going to throw it back in with all these dry clothes. That would be. Mark is unread. I find one shirt, I'm going to fold it, walk it all the way up to the dresser, walk all the way down, fold another shirt, walk all the way up, walk all the way down, found one sock, too lazy to find the other socks. I'm just going to put it away. And then, you know what, it's the end of the night, start the dryer all over and start it on cycle until the morning when I open it again. So that's how a lot of people do their email. They're just kind of like picking and choosing in it. They kind of do one thing. They don't batch tasks, they don't ever empty the dryer. And so my method talks about thinking of it as laundry instead of piles like things I need to fold, things I need to hang, you'd have things I need to respond, things I need to read. But the point is, you're getting them out of the dryer. Getting to what I call inbox, zero is dryer zero because everything's in a separate folder or laundry basket. And then you're batch tasking because we all know by the fifth shirt that you're folding, you're better at folding that shirt and you're taking an entire pile of shirts up to the dresser for one time. So that's the way you would do Respond, respond, respond, respond. And then if you think, oh gosh, where is that pink shirt? You know that you've touched it once and put it in a pile. So you're not stressed about it because you actually have told your future self what you need to do with it. And when it's not just kind of lurking in this big pile pile of new email and some email you've seen and some email you haven't seen. And so it's really just getting a good system, but then remembering that you can't filter a bajillion emails through that system. You have to limit what's getting into the system, flag what's really, really important, and then trusting that system to sort your email in that laundry way.

I love the laundry method. I had even tagged that as something to ask you about and it's so true. Just this idea. We would never half dry a pair of pants or like you said, just go put things away in such a haphazard manner. And you're right too, that we also have to filter and manage the inbound. Like you can't stuff an entire closet into the washer or the dryer at one time. It's not going to work. The machine will break down. I just spent the holidays, like putting all my substack newsletters into a specific folder. And I also use the Substack app. I created the most epic Gmail search query. It's like a string that eliminates words like unsubscribe, manage anything that would be showing up in a kind of newsletter so that I can see if I'm missing anything from my SaneBox filtering. But the point is like it's controlling how much you have to batch process at all. And I just love what you said about like thinking of it like our laundry and doing it in manageable batches, but making sure that what we need to see really jumps out and sticks out too.

I mean, you make a great point like setting yourself up for success by having the least clothes in there possible. It's like you're cleaning out your closet before you start having this dryer full of things you don't need. And I think one of the biggest takeaways from that is just treating sorting, reading and answering emails all as separate activities. And so I think where people get into trouble is where they're trying to do them all at once. They're doing email for 15 minutes and they do each of those Activities where if you have 15 minutes, you should decide, this is my chance to sort. I'm only sorting now. I have 20 minutes later on. This is my chance to just read the things that came in that are industry news. Read, read, read, read, read. Now this is my chance to fold, fold, fold, fold, fold. And so if you take one thing away from it, it's just that those three activities coexisting is really energy points. From switching the energy back and forth to, oh, I'll sort this. No, I'll respond to that later. Oh, maybe I should read this. Oh, I guess I'll respond to this one email. So that's kind of like the basic of it. When you're looking at how to actually.

Get it done, that's a great permission slip because that's often true for me. Like, I try not to read my email throughout the day. It just gives me too much anxiety. But sometimes by the time I get to my inbox, like you said, I only have 10 minutes or 20, and so I need to pick. Okay, maybe there's two people that it's absolutely imperative that I respond to them today and everything else can wait or I'm going to take that 20 minutes. And just hearing you say it has kind of given me a logic for this of like, okay, I have 20 minutes, I'll read all the things tagged to read and just get those out of the way.

Right. And I'm such a big energy person, so matching different types of inbox actions to different energies is so important. Because if you have what I call in the book, your power hours, those kind of like two hours, we all know where we're just on top of our game. We're focused, they're different for everyone. We can really get things done. And I happen to have that block free from meetings and I'm diving into all my stuff and all of a sudden I start reading industry news. That's kind of just FYI to me, that's just the wrong place for that energy. And so if I really need to respond to some teammates and think strategically about decisions and respond to those emails, that's a great use. So if I haven't taken the time to sort them, I don't know where to go. Similarly, if a meeting ends early and I have 10 minutes and it's kind of my low energy time, I'm not going to start some big response to somebody. But that's a great time to read my industry news. So good thing I didn't start that in the morning when I had A bunch of energy. So it helps set you up for the right activities at the right time.

Another delightful concept in the book are cozy corners. Can you tell us about those?

When we moved into my house, I had this kind of odd sub area of our master bedroom. And we weren't sure what to do with it. It was too small to really make anything. So we put a little chair and a half in there and my coffee machine so I can have coffee without walking downstairs in the morning. And my kids call it the cozy corner because anytime they wake up or come in, that's only where we're sitting in a blanket and drinking coffee. And I make a rule about not doing any work or anything that's stressful to me at all in that corner. And so in the book, I talk about hotspots and not spots, hotspots being choosing the same area to do different types of activities. So I always answer emails in this chair. I always write articles in this coffee shop or in this spot in my office. Different types of activities paired with different locations. And the reason is because of state dependency. Your brain starts to associate the sights, smells and sounds of that spot with the work you're doing. So it makes it easier for you to slip into that work whenever you get to that spot, which is why a lot of authors say they wrote their book sitting in the same seat, you know, drinking the same coffee, listening to the same soundtracks, because that was a state they created for their brain. On the opposite side, not spots, is an example of the cozy corner. You want to have places where your brain has never thought of anything stressful, anything work related, anything other than relaxation. Because when I sit in the cozy corner, I'm immediately relaxed because that spot is not associated with anything other than relaxation. And so you want to find some of those safe spaces, whether it's your commute home or a walk that you do, or a spot in your house, whatever those things are that are always, always not stressful to you so that your brain has a place to say, ah, I know this is a place I can relax.

We'll be right back just after this.

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A lot of people listening are small business owners running delightfully tiny teams and and it's likely that they have a right hand person of some kind. Now another one of my sliding doors careers, I always kind of look with curiosity at people whose role is called chief of staff or where they're like a super high level executive admin. I'm curious either from your own role or what you've seen working with people who are in these types of roles. What do you think makes those types of people excellent at their job? And the parallel would be for small business owners, it's kind of what they're trying to train their right hand person to do or how to find a really good one. What do you think separates the very best from the rest?

One of the biggest things to find someone who can think like you and take on some of those bigger things that you want to have off your plate is you yourself really understanding what your priorities are, how you work and being able to communicate that. Because unless you have a true magician who can always guess what you'd say or what you do or what you'd want them to do, when I see those relationships work the best, it's when the person, the executive or senior person who has hired this other person, when that person is so clear on what they do and don't want, what they will and won't attend, what they do and don't care about. I think that helps so much to have that other person be able to support them. So for example, when I do an executive coaching session, I always start by meeting with the assistant because I can usually gather a lot of what's going on without wasting the executive's time to hear just some of the basic things. One of the first things I always ask is what are your executives top three priorities this quarter? And basically from the answer to that question, I can tell how the session's going to go because it tells me, okay, does the executive have those three things really defined? Does the executive communicate those things with the person who is completely managing their calendar? So how good of an understanding does this administrative professional have of their own priorities and that's the way that they're going to support them. I also ask questions like do they have any boundaries? And same that shows me if they say, oh, he or she is not willing to meet after seven, or he or she really prefers someone to email them before they get time on the calendar, or he or she wants wants to review all slides before a meeting starts. Those kinds of things, those creating systems for yourself, I think is how you bring on someone who can support you in those systems. So I talk about in the book too, creating that user manual, that why o user manual? Just how do I work? What are my preferences? Stop letting everyone guess. And then once you've created that, when you share that with someone you hire, that can be really helpful. Of course I've hired people like this before. There are those people that you're like, wow, they just truly do think ahead. A lot of people have that brain. And I've found the best way to hire for that is really like a case study situation. So when I was an event planner, one of my first questions when I was hiring people under me was, I've asked you to plan and set up an event tomorrow for 50 people. Like, please create a checklist of what you would do between now and then and let me see it. And so that's just like a true real life case study way of seeing exactly how that person's brain worked. Did they think about the extension cords, did they think about whether the building was unlocked at that time, et cetera, et cetera, all of those things. So I think there are some things you can do to flush out the right talent. But I also think at the end of the day, if I'm not providing that person with my event policies and what we believe as a company and things like that, they're not going to be set up to succeed.

It also seems like the stakes are so high when you're working at that level. I mean, you're in the office of the CEO and you're communicating with a lot of people and you're at a very high level, probably high levels of confidentiality. Is there anything else that you've set up to ensure that things don't fall through the cracks?

For my personal workflow, I really rely on lists and I think that lists have a little bit of a bad rep because they can be so varied and some people just kind of keep a little post it note list and some people have like crazy amounts of action items because they are at such a senior level that they're talking about huge things that they need to do. And so having a system for yourself that you truly trust from anywhere, from, you know, I'm in a meeting with a senior person and they sign me an action item to. I remember that I'm going to a party next week and I need to bring a gift. All of those, while they're different in the sense that one is, quote, more important than the other, I think the point is, do I have a surefire way of making sure that that gets captured into a system that I'm going to see and execute on again? And so when it comes to slipping through the cracks, that's where you can prevent that from happening, by saying, no matter where, what I call in the book, a loop comes to me, whether it's I'm on a walk with my dog and I think about something I need to buy, I think of an idea for my team. In the meeting, I get an email from so and so asking me to do this. I think all of those things I would consider a loop. And then in the book, I talk about the life cycle of a loop. How are you getting that loop fully through to execution, or what I call close, and making sure that it gets done. So I think I focus a lot about that in the book. And no matter what your role is or how important or not important those loops are, when they're coming up, you need a way to make sure that they're locked and loaded when it comes to your actions.

I always say that writing a book is a front row seat to that topic. And it's like whatever you think you know, going in the book drills at home in very particular ways, where it's kind of challenging and you have to live the message so that by the time it's out, you've really been through it. How did writing uptime challenge you in terms of your own systems?

I tell the story about, you know, I had everything in a system. I wanted to finish the book exactly on my timeline. I had my writing schedule, et cetera, et cetera. I was also pregnant and more than a month out from my due date, and my water broke. And of course, my little system was completely blown up.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes. That was one of the best learning lessons for me, I think, is just not even the best planners can plan when babies come. And of course, my focus immediately shifted to the health of the baby and caring for everything that was going on with that. So where I learned is that I did set myself up for success when I returned to writing because I had figured out again. Some of those good systems, like having my hotspots where I always wrote, going back to those spots, helped me to get right back into the flow of writing. And it did test me and kind of force me to use the systems that I was actually talking about to get back on schedule and things like that. I also really, again, focus on energy in the book. When is the right time to do the right activities? I am definitely a morning person with that power hour window between 9 and 11. So of course, I had blocked that every day for writing. And I found out a couple of chapters in that. I was almost too energetic at that time for writing, which is interesting. It was more of like a creative activity for me, which usually does better in your energy slumps, because when you're in an energy dip, you actually get bursts of creativity and that is easier to draw or write or some of those, like, softer activities. So I started being like, wow, I actually want to write in the afternoons, I want to edit in the morning, I want to make decisions about the book in the morning, even outline in the morning. But that was an interesting flip for me because I was writing about making sure you knew your energy times. And then I was like, wait, this is not my right energy time. So there was a lot of cool things throughout the book. And then I guess another piece was just thinking from the lens of a lot of different people. So obviously being at Google, like you mentioned, you're kind of thinking of that certain personality type. And I have worked a lot with executives outside of Google as part of our programs. But I started thinking about, what if I'm a student, what if I'm a small business owner, what if I'm an entrepreneur, what if I'm just a parent? And these are the same routines that I'm looking to come up with in my life. So that was a good exercise for me, is just to the book from each of those personalities and say, do I have good examples that would really sit well with that person? Is this relatable to all those people? Because this is not a book for tech employees. It's a book for anyone who wants to get more done and be happy doing it.

Your journey, like what you just described, of having already three young kids, one whose arrival came in the process of working on it, working at Google, moving house and home, that is proof that it works.

Yeah. A lot of people have said, I'm sorry, how did you do all that in a year? And I'm like, read the book. That's exactly how I did it. I wrote down the ways that I get these things done. And of course, you know, I'm not perfect like you said, I'm always still learning and obviously children at a whole level of time management challenges. But when you have good systems, that's really what helps. And I think when I started coaching people during COVID that was another piece of. It is just like when all these other changes are happening, whether it's like now you're working from home, you have a new manager, your job totally changed, having those tried and true things that you can always come back to, like a good list making system, like a good way of prioritizing, reprioritizing, that type of thing. I think even the zero based calendaring exercise, I talk about starting totally from scratch. What would you want your calendar to look like? Just having those tools to go back to really helps when things are all over the place or changing because you're able to reset with the systems.

If you could leave listeners with a permission slip to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

I think we've talked a lot about the title of the book being uptime, which is when a computer is operational and productive. And that's, that's what it's talking about, how to make yourself operational and productive and operating at your highest level. But I think a big piece of that which I talk about in the book is downtime. You can't have uptime without downtime. You have to restart the computer, you have to shut it down, you have to turn it off in order for it to function properly. So my permission slip would be to let yourself have those down moments. Let yourself have a night off technology, let yourself have those workouts, those meditations, those times when you're doing, quote, nothing. Because what we've seen time and time again is that rest and letting your brain rest actually leads to better overall productivity. So taking that night off from a problem, not working on it will actually give you a better answer when you wake up the following day. And so not feeling guilty for any of that downtime. If you manage people not making them feel guilty for that downtime, really understanding that downtime is something that you should give yourself permission to do.

I love it. And especially the permission slip to drop any guilt around it.

Yes, it's good for you.

It will improve your productivity and creativity. And I've certainly found that to be the case as well. Laura, this is such a joy to connect with you. There's so much more I could ask you. I wish I could just come shadow you for a week.

In the Life.

Yeah listeners, be sure to pre order your copy or buy one if it's already out. It comes out in April 2024 of Uptime A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and well Being. And Laura, is there anywhere else that you hang out online that you would want to send people to learn more? Keep in touch.

Yes, I post a lot on Instagram auramaymartin and I'm also on LinkedIn.

Awesome. I'll be sure to put those in the show Notes thank you so much Laura and big thanks for everybody listening.

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