Ep 309: [LIVE 1-2-1] How To Be More Productive

She said, well, I have to lose weight. If I don't, I won't see my children graduate in two years.

The story you're about to hear is real. A real client working with David Holman to achieve extraordinary results. David has worked with high performers such as Olympic athletes and business owners, as well as those looking to develop meaningful relationships. Aside from names and certain characteristics which have been changed to protect clients confidentiality, all other details are true. This special season is brought to you by the Self Belief Chief podcast.

In today's episode, you're going to listen to me talking with a client who's looking to advance in their career. And they've diagnosed as an issue around their work ethic. And if that they can develop that side, it will really start to open up opportunities for them. So I'm going to share with them some really simple ideas that might be helpful for you, but also tell them a story about someone I once spoke with who kept losing weight and then putting it back on and losing weight and putting back on, and they couldn't work out how to permanently keep it off. I said one thing to them that would change their life forever. So you might be thinking, how do we find drive? How do we maintain it, and what's the key ingredient? Let's get into the episode.

But I want to be able to, like, manage my workload better so it looks like I have a better work ethic, if that makes sense.

Okay, so when you say it looks like you have a better work ethic, looks like that. To whom?

Well, the thing is, sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. So, like, I try to fix everything, but I can't. I don't. I don't know. Yeah, again, I don't know if that falls on the work ethic, but it's related in a way. This guy, I just want to know when, like, if it's somewhere I can not, like, take on too much stuff, rather than, I don't know, I don't know. I want to really.

As you might have noticed, there's a lack of clarity for this client in terms of exactly what the issue is in terms of exactly what they want to work on. And without that clarity, it's hard to bring the result we want closer. I always say clarity brings things closer. So what you're going to see me do here is ask some questions about examination. Exactly what is it that we're trying to change? What is it we're trying to improve? Because without that knowledge and without that information, we tie our own hands. Don't we? And we get stuck. We can't do anything about it. So what is the real reason that they want to make this change?

When your work ethic isn't quite right or it's not as organized or sort of taking on too much, what's the consequences of all that to you? How does that start to affect you? Maybe both in terms of your work, but maybe also your personal life?

Well, it kind of affects me. Like, it's a little frustrating, it's a little stressful because you. I don't know, it's. I guess it's kind of a problem of mine is that kind of want to take on more than I should. Usually I can get it done, but it still kind of leaves me just feeling stressed out, like always, kind of thinking, wondering how I could fix this, this, or that. Like, it's no off switch. Does that make sense?

Okay, yeah. No, I get that. When you want to take on more.

Work.

Why do you want to take on more work? Just having. It's a good. It's not bad trade to have. Right. And it shows that you're committed and everything. But why. Why do you have that desire or feel compelled to take on more work that you think actually this is too much for me.

Because, well, I generally want to do better, and I also want to do. I just want to do more and learn more as well in the process. But I guess also the. I don't know, when you do more, you tend to get appreciated more. Makes sense. Yep.

Okay.

Those are. Those are a few things. That example.

Yeah. Okay. So it goes back a little bit to some of the previous conversations we've had. One thing is that if. If there's an aspect of here that we want to be seen to be working hard to get a level of appreciation, but also to help us advance in our career. And not necessarily a bad thing, but it also, if we don't know who's. Who we're doing that for, then we just have this scattergone approach of working hard all the time. Now. It's good to have work ethic. It's good to have drive and all of that. Of course it is. But a part of it's going, well, I want this person to know that I do have a good work ethic. Then it goes back to that thing of, who am I working hard for? Who would appreciate the hard work the most? And let's make sure that they see it. Whereas actually, with everyone else, I'm doing plenty of work already. I don't need to be doubling down over here and over here and over here. Maybe I just need to double down over here a little bit. Now there's loads of sides to work ethic, loads of sides that we can talk about. So I want to make sure that we keep it nice and simple and really pinpoint exactly what you want to talk about. So what I've heard you say is, okay, I take on a bit too much and it gets me stressed out. I sort of like taking on too much at least because the idea that I may get more appreciation and that helps me advance my career. And third part is how can I sort of perhaps be slightly more efficient in that I'm getting maybe more done potentially in less time. So which, which of those. It might be accumulation of all those things, but pinpoint it to me slightly by, by asking me as a question and then we'll, we'll crack on and talk about exactly that. So try and frame it to me as a question of David, how can.

I X, I will ask you how can I be more efficient at work?

So we really now know the question. It's to do with efficiency. And in the workplace, efficiency is about how can I get more done in less time, distraction free. That's really the key aspect of it. But here's the issue. In a world where our phone is what, 10 inches away from us at all times, in a world where there's so much positive and negative reinforcement, there's so much going on and there are so many distractions, how do we become more efficient?

So a couple things I'll mention and then we can, I'll highlight a few things that we could concentrate on or focus on that help people and then we can make some decisions about what you think would be most effective. So I'll mention a few things. When I was younger, had quite a tough time at, particularly at school where I'm half Christian, half Jewish and experienced quite a bit of discrimination at points. And every day my anxiety would build up. During the course of the day it'd be okay at the beginning and then just build and build and build and build and it get really, really big and really, really so high in my chest. As I got older, I was finding that each day that temperature kept rising through the day. And then by the time that I started my business, I was finding myself also dealing with other people's problems that they've got going on. It was all just building up too much. By about 2 o' clock, I was burnt out every day. And if I had to take on one more bit of information or taken one more task or one more job or whatever it might be, I was going to explode. It's just way too much. And that was every day. So the first thing I had to do, which I've done every year, every single day, for every single year since I've had my business, is that I don't wait to handle things in terms of my own stress level and emotions. I do things in a precautionary way. And one of those things is I went, when does that anxiety and stress start to peak? And I went, it's two o' clock every single day. That's going to peak about 2 o'. Clock. And if I don't do something, then by the time it gets to 4, 5, 6 o', clock, I'm going to be out of my mind. Like, I'm just going to be going crazy. So at 2 o' clock every day, I schedule half an hour to do three things, which is one, I do an exercise, sort of some brain training exercises that you can get on your phone. Just do that for five minutes, just to use different parts of my brain. Because when you're at work, you sort of the same parts of your brain are always used, being used, and the rest of your brain's not using. So do this brain exercise five minutes just to fire up the other parts of my brain, just so it awakes, reawakens everything. Then I'll do about five to 10 minutes of just meditation and then I'll do another, say five to 10 minutes. I've got a list of all the things I've ever done, things I'm grateful for, lots of other things. I've got my phone and I just read through that and that helps me to reset so that in the afternoon, where I've got more work to do, more to go on, I'm back to, back to zero again in terms of that temperature. It's come right back down again. And then I can operate again in the afternoon and I can function. So one thing for you potentially is we just need a bit of a reset for you somewhere in the day. So my first question would be, if you say, look, I'll take on loads of work and it stresses me out, we might just take. It might just be five minutes that we do this. You don't need to do it for half an hour necessarily. Can I ask you, on average, what time during the day would you say you start to feel it a bit more? I'm sure some days are worse than others. But what time of day do you go? Actually that's when I'm really starting to feel a bit stressed by all this.

Probably, probably similar to you, but because by like early afternoon, because sometimes I don't take lunch, I just get, I just get dug in and. But, but like you say like around two or so I noticed, like just. Yeah, I can't do anything. Like my brain, brain struggling. So I guess I force feed caffeine half the time, but that's not good, I guess.

Yeah. And that goes to a different aspect which we could talk about, which is one of the most unsurprisingly important things for work ethic and drive is energy. Right. And when we don't have the energy for it, we're really kind of working at like 30% of our capability. So sometimes we can get stressed and it's just because we, you know what it's like when you're tired, you can feel really anxious and stressed and frustrated. When you, when you feel rested, you're like, ah, this is fine, I can do this. They're really easy. So the second thing talk about. So what we've got one is a reset we can do. Second thing we can do is actually build our energy up. Now how, how would you rate your sleep out of 10?

I've been fun enough. I've been working on that better lately. But before six and a half, six months. Okay, so.

And tell me what you do, Tell me what you do in those sort of. In the half an hour before you go to bed. So are you watching tv? Are you on your phone? Are you doing. What are you doing?

Yeah, most likely on my phone, which I know I shouldn't be feeling before bed.

And why shouldn't you be doing that?

Because of the lights and screens and all that.

So here's a really simple thing that you can do so that you don't have to stop any of this. So, so what, what science shows on that, on that blue light that you get from. So exactly, exactly. Correctly identified, absolutely. Blue light is exactly like the sun. It tells our brain and body to stay awake. What they find is, let's say you're trying to go to bed at 11 and you put your phone down at 11. Most people think if they fall asleep within 15, 20 minutes, that if they get up at 7, they've had roughly 8 hours. Actually what they've had is just because you're unconscious doesn't mean you're in a deep sleep, which is when the brain and body is being repaired. It's Actually, for you to get into a deep sleep, if you've turned off your phone at 11, you're not in a deep sleep till 2am Takes three hours to get into a deep sleep. So actually every single day people think they're sleeping eight hours, they're only sleeping five. So here's what you can do to get more sleep without actually having to sleep any longer, without having to compromise any of that. So on phones and laptops, I don't think you can get it on tv, but phones and laptops, they have, they've got slightly better having kind of like a night filter, but they're still not great, they're still not very good. What you can get on Android, I think it's called Twilight. And on Apple and on laptops, I think it's got F Lux. But there are loads of these apps, they're all free, they take, they take 10 seconds. Sorry, go on.

It's a blue light filter thing.

Yeah. So, and I can put this in an email for you. So, but what, what it is specifically more than just a blue light filter. So you have these on your, your phone or laptop. As I said, I don't think you can get it for your TV. It takes 10 seconds to set it up, takes no time at all. But what they do, not only do they block the blue light, they emit a red light. So it's sending you to sleep. By the time I get to 11pm, let's say on my phone or laptop, that thing might have been switched on since I have it on quite a lot of the time regardless. Actually, rather than. So it might be on from say 5 or 6pm by the time it gets to 11pm, I'm, I'm doing that, I'm dozing off and so within, I fall asleep within 10 minutes, but I also know I'm in a deep sleep within 10 minutes. So my suggestion for you might be, this might be the easiest thing for you to do is imagine, let's conservatively say I said that you get three hours sleep less. Right. Let's conservatively say two. If you think about it, imagine that you don't have to go be in bed any longer, you don't have to stop using your phone or laptop, maybe a tv, but not too late, but say your phone or laptop, you just got this red light emitting, instead you use those every night. You get two hours sleep back in a week, that's 14 hours, that's two extra days worth of sleep.

That's tremendous.

So imagine what that's like where over the course of a month you essentially get a week's extra worth of sleep.

Yeah, because that's a problem too because I, I don't know if it's getting older or what. I wake up during the night to the pee. So it's like that interrupting sleep as well.

So. Yes, and a big part that. And a big part of that, aside from not drinking too late and a lot of other things, a big part of that when people do wake up in the night, it's because they've not been in a deep sleep long enough. So you're not in a deep sleep till 2am well, you could be easily woken up at 2:33 because you haven't really been in deep sleep very long. It's like being a light sleeper all of a sudden. So if you're in a deep sleep from say 11pm by 1 or 2 you're really, you're whole system is out completely. So you're less likely to be woken up at that point as well. So I think it's a really simple thing you could do. As I said, takes 10 seconds to set up. I can put in an email for you. There are loads of these types of apps, but not just ones that block blue light, but they emit a red light. And honestly, it changed my life and I make it sound like I sell these apps. They're all free. I'm not getting a cut or anything like that. They're all free. But my sleep was horrendous. It was absolutely horrendous. And I got. And after a couple of weeks of just getting all those hours sleep back, I was like, oh my God, is this how I'm supposed to feel? This is so much better. So. And that will improve your mood and that will help with your morale aspect as well. Right. You've got more energy than you're able to celebrate success more for other people as well. And you feel like doing it.

Yeah. Plus you're sharper generally. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. So. So two things we've mentioned so far. So one is having a bit of reset during the day. Number two is about sleep. And then I'll mention two other things and then we can, I can get a sense from you what you think would be the best thing for you to do going forward. Third thing is, and I don't know how, if you're, if your work is necessarily how much you'll be able to do this because you're having a lot of interactions with people. I don't know how much you know about gamma waves, but basically there are different waves for different purposes. So there's delta. If you, if you listen to say music that was what called, what are called delta waves. It helps you send. Ascend you to sleep. Gamma is really good for focus and for creativity and not getting distracted. Essentially when you listen to gamma waves, it locks you in. If I've got to do a bit of work in a short space of time, that's what's going on because I'm going to get so much done. So it might be a thing where, yes, maybe you can't go and listen to it all day long every day because you've got to speak with people, but there might be an aspect at some point during your day where for 10 minutes or whatever, it might be maybe half an hour where you're not working with people, maybe you got to do some admin or something like that that goes on and that will just keep you locked in and it will get your brain really firing, keep you without being distracted and that will really help you, help you one stay focused and then you feel better about actually having been really efficient with your time. So that's a way that I get people, when I, when I speak with people who want to, who are having to stay really late all the time, I go, what? This is what we need to do. You'll get loads of time back because you'll be doing things more efficiently. Essentially, that's the third thing. And then the last thing I'll mention, then we can discuss some of these things. Do you do to do lists? Do you write to do lists?

No, I usually unfortunately keep it just keeping my head like what I need to do.

Yeah, okay. But I was actually going to say to do lists are a bad thing.

Oh yeah.

The reason being they're not totally a bad thing. But what they find is when we have to do lists or we try and keep it all in our head, which that's probably part of the reason why you feel stressed actually is trying to remember it all. What they actually find is more effective in terms of efficiency and getting more done is rather than going, have I done everything I needed to do today or have I ticked everything off this list or everything in my head? Well, what they find is that you start developing the self image of I'm. Because we never finish our to do list or we never finish everything that's in our head. So every day we go home going, I've not finished everything, I've still got more to do. And then we start developing this self image that I'm someone that doesn't get everything finished. And imagine how that feels day after day, week after week where someone like, I've always got this list of stuff to do and I never get it finished. It's always all this stuff that's open, right? What they find is if you rather than going have a to do list, you go, am I going to, how much time am I going to commit to this distraction free. So for example, if you've got to let, I'm going to come up with a really trivial example in your world. If I've got to fix this com, this person's computer, right, Can I spend an hour or whatever amount of time, half an hour, half an hour, fixing this computer distraction free. And what they find is when you get, when you do that, you feel a greater sense of accomplishment. But they also find you get more dumb than having a list of things that you got to do. They find if you go, I will commit to this thing distraction free for this period of time and do it, you actually get more done. And part of the reason for that is a psychological aspect which is I'm feeling like I'm actually achieving things and succeeding. I'm getting stuff done. My self image improves that I get things completed. And when you think you're good at something or feel even better at something, guess what makes you want to do more of can be as simple as that. So anyway, I've spoken enough so I'll just mention those four things and then we can talk about any of them that you'd like to talk about. So a bit of a reset to get your stress down, improving your energy. That might be as simple as getting that app on your phone. The fourth third thing is listening to gamma waves. And the fourth thing being sort of removing lists and kind of being more focused on committing to periods of time distraction free. And that allows us to be more efficient. So I don't know how you feel about those ideas or if any of them are more interesting than others to you, but do you have any questions or is there any of those that you go, actually I think that would be more helpful than the others.

No, I think all four in tandem will work for me.

So the client likes all four of these ideas, but I want to make a really important point that I would stress to him. Life is not about how much you learn or how much you know. It's about implementation. It's about who effectively can implement the necessary steps. And there's a really important part which is Science shows when you take one commitment at a time, you have a 95% chance of turning it into a permanent habit, something you're going to keep. But when you take on two commitments at a time, you only have a 32% chance of keeping one of them. So while someone can like all four of those ideas, trying to do them all at once when you've not done them before is doomed for failure. It's not going to become a permanent change. So what we do is we do one and we do that for a week, and once we've got that down and we're used to it, then we put in the next one and once we got that for another week, you've got those two things that you've been doing, one for two weeks, one for one week, then you add the third one in. So I say it takes about seven to 10 days to turn something into a habit. So take one thing at a time, implement it, get used to it, and then put in the next piece. So I talked this client through in this conversation about those things and then later on in the conversation, which is where we're going to pick up now, the client mentioned something which would seem so abundantly obvious. How has this not come up already? How is this shift not been made? And whilst it sounds trivial, don't judge, because we all have the same version of this in some part of our life, an area where we just don't find the same level of drive and commitment as maybe we should. So what is this thing the client has yet to mention?

I guess most of us kind of rarely on time, but like, I don't know, normally the business doesn't mind that, but as long as we get the work done. But I think it would still improve work ethic, maybe more punctual.

Yeah, punctuality is important. I've got sort of four key aspects really of driver work ethic are the hours you put in, efficiency and productive productivity, punctuality, as you just said, and commitment level as well. So, yeah, now is your business quite. What you just said is quite become a quite common thing, which is the work doesn't mind when you're in, or necessarily the amount of hours, it's just. Look, can you make sure you get the work done and do it well? So is your business quite a flexible working business, would you say, or is it quite strict?

Well, for our department it's a little more strict, but for others not so much because the service desk is more front, like frontline or customer facing.

Yeah.

So we, we kind of need to be there between this time, that time. But we also have redundancies who like the like call forward and like someone calls service desk it'll go to an on call agent and then now if they miss it then I'll go to me and, or my boss. So like we have redundancies put in place that we should basically be, be able to be contacted 24 7. So. Okay, yeah, so it's, it's not super strict but at the same time they, they still have a certain expectancy of us to be there by this time, by this time to this time.

So if there's an expectation, are you and your team meeting that expectation?

To be honest, no, not really.

So if we're talking, if we're talking about work ethic and the perception of work ethic, of having a work ethic, if we know someone, someone else has an expectation, then that sort of goes hand in hand with well, if we want to be seen of having a certain work ethic and someone's someone and if as long, you know, if they're important. So your ability to move forward in your career has an expectation and it's not an unreasonable one, if it's not an unreasonable one, then that might be a small adjustment to make. Now that small adjustment might be something as simple as, look, we don't all have to be in by this time every day, but maybe we do it where we have a bit of a, there are loads of variations of this idea, but like a bit of a rotor in terms of like each day. So on, you know, this week, this person needs to be in at this time on a Monday just so there's like at least one of you or something that is there and always available because maybe you don't all need to be there on time, but that's something to, you know, that's a consideration for you in terms of. Right. Am I, if I'm not meeting that expectation, what's the image that others have of me? And again, as long as they're not unreasonable expectations, then that's that question of. Right. Is that an expectation? Is that perception a perception I need to change? And is that perception affecting my ability to advance in my career? So I'll ask you that question. Do you think if other people have that perception, do you think that's affecting your ability to move forward?

Well, yeah, and in a way it does. Yeah. Because it would, it would give them the perception that I'm not reliable either.

Okay.

Yeah, I can, I mean I can just Be honest. I mean, I'll be honest, like, put myself in their shoes. Like, you kind of wanna. You kind of want to trust them to be there in case stuff happens. So you. Yeah, it wouldn't give a good perception. And so that's something I can try to work on going forward.

And. And, you know, the. The stuff we've spoken about with regards to sleep, you know, no doubt that if you've got increased energy level, then there's a bit more sort of vitality and vibrancy and therefore it's a bit easier to get in for a certain time. When you exhaust all the time, you're like, oh, if I don't have to, then. And a key part of. A key part of work ethic. I'll tell you a story I had a couple years ago. I had a woman write to me on Instagram or something like that. And she said, look, David, I've been trying to lose weight. I keep losing it and then putting it back on, losing it, putting it back on, and I can't keep it off. And I've worked with loads of personal trainers, all this stuff. So it's not, you know, I know what you have to do, but I just keep putting it back on. Do you have anything you can suggest of why I'm not able to maintain this? And I said to her, why do you have to lose weight? And she goes, well, I want to lose weight because I want to look good. I want to lose weight because it'll make me feel better. I want to lose weight because I want to have this thing done. I said, no, no, no. I didn't ask you why you wanted to lose weight. I said, why do you have to. So she thinks, and she goes, can I come back to you in a couple days after I've had a think about it? I said, okay. Didn't think I'd hear anything from her. And to her credit, she messaged me back a couple days later and she said, david, I've worked it out. I said, well, what is it? She said, well, I have to lose weight because in her situation, she said, if I don't, I won't see my children graduate in two years. Now she has to. We don't get what we want in life, we get what we have to have.

I wanted to finish up with that story because it's a really important aspect, probably the most important aspect of finding unrivalled drive and motivation. See, what we want in life. We all want things, but they don't all happen, do they? So I want to pose a question to you. A change that you want to make in your life. Instead of asking yourself, why do you want it? Ask yourself, why is it a must? My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life.

So enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy the rest of your life, and.

I'll speak to you again soon.

Sam.