Afford Anything - The Power of Deep Work, with Google’s Productivity Expert Laura Mae Martin

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

#523: How much is an hour of your time worth? Google's Executive Productivity Advisor , Laura Mae Martin, joins us to answer that question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How much is an hour of your time worth? We're going to answer that question today with Google's executive productivity advisor, Laura May Martin. And actually, it was through reading your work that I found out that the Google CEO has a very simple morning routine, an omelette, tea, and a physical newspaper. Yes. So some of the things that we have previously assumed about productivity, that you need an elaborate 87-step morning routine that involves a cold plunge and infrared light, for example, or that you need to get to inbox zero right away and live at inbox zero constantly. We're going to dispel some of those myths. We're also going to find out precisely how to determine how much an hour of your time is worth, not in a way that hues to a strict mathematical formula, which is what many people in the financial space, tend to believe, but in a way that is a bit more comprehensive. And we are also going to cover

how to focus during deep work chunks. So maybe you allocate three or four hours for what you intend to be deep work, but you end up staring off into space, building a chain of paper clips. We're going to talk about how to hone your focus for maximum productivity and overall a better life. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make carries a trade-off, and that applies to your money, your time, your focus, your attention, your energy. It applies to any limited resource that you need to manage. So how do you better manage those limited resources? Today, we speak with Laura May Martin, Google's productivity expert to get the answers. Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being on the show. Laura, what is productivity? I think productivity is traditionally been defined as your output, how much you're churning out. But I think the new definition of productivity is merging into how are you achieving holistically? So are you creative? Are you functioning? Are you well? Is the productivity that you found lasting? And so I talk a lot about the two pieces of productivity, which are both execution, which we're used to, but then also vision. Are you having that full circle contribution of new ideas and then acting on them? How would a person measure that?

How can you self-assess whether or not you are productive in both vision and execution, both in your work life and in your life? Right. Yes, I never say work you and personally you because there's really only one you. The main goal is always, are you happy? A lot of times we want to achieve something because we think if we achieve that, then we'll be happy. And so the ultimate goal is truly happiness. So if you feel like you are on top of your work, if you feel like you are contributing, if you're having new ideas, if you are well and you're

feeling well and all of those things, that's what I define as uptime and finding that zone of productivity zen where you're avoiding burnout, you're contributing member of your work, you're contributing member of your life, you're focused on the things you want to be focused on. What are the biggest obstacles that stand in the way of that? Busy's not important as one of the principles I talk about. Because busy is important is one of the obstacles that I think people latch on to. And it inhibits them from finding that overall productivity, that wellness. So, you know, a lot of people have language that they glorify where it's, I have back-to-back meetings.

I'm so slammed. I, you know, have a bigillion emails in my inbox. It's kind of like there's an episode of Seinfeld where George tells his friends that if you act like you're stressed at your desk, that your boss is going to think you're doing a good job because anyone who's shaking their head is naturally working really hard. And so I think that that being a joke in the episode, it is something that some of us glorify. And so I think that just because you're working really hard and working a lot doesn't always mean you're working on the right things. And so I really argue about setting intentions, which I know you agree with and, and, and, being really focused about what do you want to achieve and what is it okay to let go of? And then the really less is more mentality. How can I really take all of my energy focus on the right

things at the right time in the right way so that my output matches my intention? And I think that's the ultimate definition of productivity. And so this goes to the core concept of affording anything using affording in the broad sense of the word when it comes to what you can afford with your time, with your energy, with your concentration, with your attention, because all of these are limited resources. And so affording anything is fundamentally learning the allocation of limited resources. Right. But in the moment, it can oftentimes be difficult to discern what is signal and what is noise. How do you develop the skill set to be able to refine that? Yeah. So I think that the phrase you use is so true in the moment. Part of that is getting ahead of it. And so I talk about setting priorities.

If somebody stops you on the street, you should have an idea of what your top three priorities are for your time right now, just like you might have top three priorities of, you know, your financial goals or something that you're working on. You want to have that in the back of your mind all the time to find so that when that new invite comes in for a committee that you would say, oh, that is a good opportunity, you know, you have that laser focus, maybe even have it written down, but is future me going to be glad that I took this on or is future me going to wish I focused more on the things that I've set out to focus on? So really getting ahead of that. The second piece is the signal and noise and I call it urgent and important and really using that language, just like when you're,

you know, overwhelmed, it can be helpful to label your feelings and say, no, I'm actually just surprised or this, you know, breaking it down. And so when things, seem crazy if you can actually say, okay, what is urgent, what is important? Things that are both, it's okay for me to derail and work on those things or focus my time on those things. But when things come up that are urgent, but not important, it's important to actually label that out and say, okay, it feels urgent, but it's actually not something that fits into my priorities and I need to find another way to deal with it. That's not using my time and energy. Right. So when it comes to top three priorities. How does that apply when we think about the various verticals of our lives?

So, for example, I have priorities that are related to my work. I have priorities related to my health. I have priorities related to my friends and family. I have priorities in these various verticals. Should we develop top three for each vertical? And if so, are there infinite verticals or should we limit those? Yes, this is a good question. I think the main. thing to think about is there's not work you and personal you and family you and health you. And so, you know, then by putting it in verticals, it gives you the idea that you can make three top home goals and then three top work goals. But at the end of the day, the point is there's only one pie of time. There's only one way to split all of that up. There's going to be more than three

priorities, obviously, but you kind of want to choose your big three because you want them shining a light so that when things come in, that have to do with those, you know, to prioritize them. It's kind of the rock jar mentality where you've got to put the big rocks in. Obviously, there'll be pebbles and there'll be sand and there'll be lots of other things. But if you don't put the big rocks in first, you can't shove them in when the sand is already in there. And so it's really about thinking through, well, I have just one me. And so how are my priorities shifting. So when I'm working with an executive who says, I had these priorities and most of them were to do with work, but now I'm taking a new job and I'm moving my family across the country.

Well, that now becomes a big piece of the pie. That's now going to be a big priority for the next three months. And so we really need to think about how is that going to manifest itself as far as your time goes? That's going to be taking trips to looking for housing. That's going to be, you know, all of these things that go into a huge move. And so what can we think about taking off of your plate in order to make room for that. And so that's kind of an example of a flex where it's like a certain life event happens or, oh, you're taking on a new role at work

or you have to do a little more after hours. What is that going to look like for how you're committing outside of work and what you need to clean up there? I don't like the word balance because it insinuates that you're teetering, you know, but it's a constant flex of and a flow of where am I. And I think just the idea of choosing three things and knowing that there's sub things, just allows you to keep that trade-off mindset because you have to put something down to pick something back up.

Earlier, you mentioned the distinction between urgent and important. And many people who are listening to this may be familiar with the Eisenhower decision matrix of urgent and important. And for those listening who are not familiar with that, it's essentially a two-by-two matrix, two rows, two columns. What's urgent and important, what's urgent and not important, what's important but not urgent, and what's neither of the two. right? And everything fundamentally falls into one of those four squares. But when I have tried to map tasks that are on my to-do list into the framework of those four squares, sometimes there's a lack of clarity as to where something fits. And also sometimes where something fits is context-dependent or time-dependent.

how do we use a framework like that without allowing that framework to be too static or too reductive? I found it more helpful to use it in more of a reactive way. So the way that he intends and the way that you're talking about is kind of mapping out your tasks and where do they fit ahead of time on this and then how much time are you spending in each quadrant. And I also found that a little bit limiting because it's unrealistic that any task is always going to fall in one place or that, like you said, it can be totally different and varied as it comes. So the way that I flip it is more when something comes up. How can you use the matrix to map and use that language, whether it's as an individual as a team, to decide how to handle that moving forward? And so

I think the biggest thing about urgent and what comes up is, again, being realistic about how much that's happening, how often it takes. And so I talk about, you know, an ER doctor does not also schedule well-patient appointments throughout their day because that would just be ridiculous. They know that people are going to be coming in. They're prepared for urgent. And so they adjust their schedule in that way. And so many people do have an urgent role. And that is going to come up. But it's about making that then one of your top three priorities, knowing that you need to leave room in your schedule for things that come up. So the way that might look is saying, I wish that I could commit to this weekly meeting or this weekly committee, but I need to leave room in my schedule for things that inevitably come up with my role.

And so that type of language just people tend to overcommit when it comes to priorities and time. And so what I try to encourage people do is under commit because when you commit at about an 80% level, what happens is it ends up being about 100%. And so you want to go in with less than you think you can handle, which you end up being at the right instead of, I think that this is a good amount. Now you're at 120, 130%. And so, you know, just being realistic about how much time does this take. Is it focused on my priorities? And I like to use my spouse or manager to really discuss those priorities. Going to your manager and think, I feel like I have a lot. I have a lot of things on my plate right now. I feel like these tasks are coming up. Where should I be shifting? Sometimes it's, it's good just to get guidance from someone who has a bit of a wider view and then they're on board

with you and can help you shape your time. Many of the people who are listening to this right now have financial priorities, but financial priorities necessarily require time to execute. How should a person think through whether or not a given financial priority is worthy of their time? And let me give a couple of examples. So let's say that person A is thinking about, potentially buying a rental property, but that, of course, is a huge investment of time, not just of money, but of time. Person B is really interested in learning how to buy individual stocks. But again, to do that well requires quite a lot of time and a lot of experimentation. Person C is interested in saving money by virtue of cutting back, making more meals at home,

meal prepping, mowing their own lawn, cleaning their own gutters. They want to reduce some of the expenses of their household, but of course there's a time and money exchange for that. So how should each of these people who are all considering different things weigh those possibilities? And then we'll go to person D who's thinking about doing all of the above. Yeah. Person D can't decide if they should buy rental property or invest in individual stocks or just focus on mowing their lawn and meal prepping, right? How does person D make that decision? I think that for me, anything that has to do with tradeoff, so finances or time, I really encourage people to get data around it. So for let's say it's a new meeting that someone wants to take on or a new side, side job,

you really want to have the actual numbers about how much time per week that's going to add to your total overall commitments because what happens with, let's say, meetings and then we'll go to finances, people say, oh, sign up for this biweekly or I'm in this. It's kind of like a monthly thing. And all of those are big. We don't know, is it an hour monthly? Is a one hour biweekly meeting the same in your time as 30 minutes weekly? So actually taking a period of time, let's say three months, I like to look at three months because it's big enough and saying, what does this look like for my time and getting a total number? And then, looking at other commitments you have and stacking it against that. So if it's somebody who says,

you know, I actually want to do all of my gutters. So I actually talk about that in the book, like understanding the value of that. So actually how much do you estimate that time is going to be? And then what is your time worth to you as far as what you're trying to save? And then doing some math on is that going to be a positive ROI for me? When you're trying to hit one of those goals, like a rental property, do some research, figure out how much if I hire a property manager, how much will that be on my time versus not hiring? If, you know, how much time do I currently have in my week to be doing that? If I started having to add an hour a day for that, what would have to go? And so, you know, getting that actual data. And then I like to talk about connecting to future you.

And so the psychology tells us that we have a little bit of a disconnect to our future selves from our current self. So we think of them as a different person. We don't make that mental connection. And so I like to actually put myself in end of year me and think, well, okay, I'm here. For example, I got asked to speak at an event and it was on Halloween. And I was having a hard time deciding whether to do it. It was a huge event, but I have young kids. And I was just like, so I imagined Halloween me. It's four o'clock. I have to board a flight. What am I thinking? Am I thinking, oh, I'm really glad I did this. It's okay.

You know, it's a huge event. Or I said, no, it's the day after. I see the recap from the conference. What am I actually thinking in that moment? And so the more that you can connect with future you, so I'm the person who wants a rental property. And in three months, I know that I gave up this time each week. And I'm mentally, I'm thinking through that.

And now I'm able to purchase that. What is that mindset? And is it the, am I in the best place as future me to do? that. So the more that you can think about yourself down the line and then use the data to analyze those tradeoffs, then that's where you're making your best decisions. You mentioned calculating the value of your time. Now, this is something that I've struggled with because it's easy to calculate the value of my working hours, right? That's simply a function of salary divided by number of hours worked. Or if in the case of an entrepreneur,

take your last one to two years worth of total income because your income is going to be a bit volatile, divide that by number of hours worked, right? That's a fairly straightforward calculation. But it's harder to know how to value an hour spent not working because certainly there are hours that I spend showering, brushing my teeth, exercising, calling my mom, right? Those don't have any type of monetary ROI, but they also can't be outsourced. I can't outsource brushing my teeth. Right. And so how do you value those hours? Yes. I totally agree with these. When I ask people how much spend an hour of their time is worth, they instantly go to salary, but that's usually not what I'm talking about. And of course, it's going to be subjective. There's

There's no actual. So I think in the book, I have eight questions to ask yourself if you're thinking about that. But I like to think of it as, what would you pay for an hour of time to not do something that you could do? So let's say you wanted to switch your flight. So you get home an hour earlier. You want to ask yourself, what would I pay for that? And of course, that's going to vary if it's midnight versus if you've been gone a week. Or I have. want to clean out my gutters. It's going to vary by person, too, and it's going to vary by your financial situation. So for someone who's like, I actually enjoy being outside, I like being on a ladder, that idea of how much am I willing to pay for someone to clean out my gutters is going to be different than me who does not want to clean out my gutters. And so you want to ask yourself, even if I did delegate it, is someone going to do a better job? So that's the teeth brushing example. So there's all these things that go into it. And you can get to a number and just have that general number in your head. But it's also important to think about things constantly and know that

you're always making that trade off with your time. So for some people, they just enjoy cutting the lawn, which is one of the questions. Like, how much do I enjoy doing this? And then the other piece is, what would I be doing instead of this? And so for a financial question, that would be, I would be having X dollars towards my financial goal. So if that's the gutters, if that's cutting the grass, if that's cooking your own meal, you're thinking about the dollar value to your next financial goal. And so I think it's more, instead of finding some magic number, I think it's more about having that mindset constantly. So another example is I had a friend and she had one set of baby bottles that she was washing every night. And I think I give this example in the book. And I

asked, how much time does it take you to do that? It was about 20 minutes. And I'm that annoying person who's like, well, if you want to think about the value of your time every night for a year of feeding a baby of washing those bottles versus the cost of buying a new set of bottles so that you can dishwash them every night, you really want to be thinking about is doing this every night for 20 minutes worth the $80 that I would have spent on another set. So it's just, it's more of a mindset and I would be constantly thinking, oh, this is not a good use of my time. But of course, arguments can be made. Maybe she likes washing this. bottles. Maybe she doesn't have the cabinet space. You know, there's all these small things that go

into it, but it's more about the mindset and asking yourself those questions when it comes to saving, when it comes to using your time to make sure that you're considering all the possibilities. Now, you've come up with a list of eight questions that you can ask yourself as you're trying to figure out what is the value of an hour of my time? What are those eight questions? The first one is, do I like doing this task? So this is something that you would be, be thinking about for any task or project or something you're taking on. So if the answer is yes, you can be a little looser on the value of your time since you're also getting the benefit of enjoyment. Will it take more time to find someone else to do it? So delegation is not always the

benefit because you may have to upskill someone to do it like skilling someone to brush your teeth. That doesn't make sense or skilling something to do that you do better. And so unless you're hiring someone to do that long, long term, that's benefit, but one-off, maybe not. Is there something I'd much rather be doing instead? So that comes in, obviously, with financial goals. So where is that money going instead? And is that worth it to me? So if you are saving for a financial goal, the answer is obviously, yes. And then the trade-off in terms of time, right? Exactly. Yes. The hour that you spend doing X is an hour that you're not spending doing Y. Exactly, which plays into the next one, which is, is my time much more valuable elsewhere. So if you are paid hourly and you could be making more money, spending your time

doing that and paying someone to do your task at hand, then you should consider paying someone to do the task at hand. Do I feel like I should do it? Even though you could pay or delegate someone else to do it for you, some people have that sense of accomplishment. Like, you know, I could hire someone to cut my grandma's grass, but I feel like I really should do that. It gives me that, again, sense of accomplishment, that sense of ownership, that sense of enjoyment. So for some people, that's a consideration. someone else do this much better. So even if you have the time to be doing a task, it still might be worthwhile to delegate it because the results are going to actually be better and benefit you. And then lastly, if someone asked me to do this tomorrow, how much would I pay out of pocket to do

nothing instead during that time? So I like that as the ultimate equalizer because sometimes, like you said, can I work at the moment I'm brushing my teeth? Not always, but it's basically if you could do nothing, how much is that worth to you? And so just not to do that activity is a better way of thinking, how much would I hire someone to do this? How much would I pay to not do anything during that hour? So all of those, you know, like I said, I don't think you ever end up on a complete exact number. You can have a general number in your head, but it's more about taking that lens to all things that you're doing or hiring for or using your time on. And zooming out big picture, what strikes me as I hear these eight questions is that so much of the time, I think particularly in the finance community, we approach a question like how much is an hour of your time worth with a very mathematical lens, right? We just try to endlessly iterate the spreadsheet to figure out more and more complex ways of creating a formula that will give us a precise number. But it's easy to conflate precision with accuracy. And what strikes me when I hear your

list is a lot of these are subjective questions that speak to enjoyment and uniqueness. Right, because like you said, and like I was saying, the gutter situation is going to be different for everyone. If somebody likes doing a task, that's going to feel different for them about the tradeoff. If someone is aggressively saving for something, they're going to be less likely to want to pay for a household task to be helped with than I would. So I think it's just it's just about being aware of that and knowing that it could change based on your goals. It might change based on who you are and it might change in your season of life. And so it's not good enough to just come up with one number and you're done. And now that applies to everything because there's always

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Now, on the topic of tasks, there is some argument to be made that certain tasks are better done in certain locations than others. And I want to kind of approach this conversation in two ways. First, we'll talk about the fact that so many people, so many knowledge workers right now are in the first few years of adjusting to either remote work or hybrid work. And that has a lot of time management and energy and concentration and focus management implications. So let's talk about that first. And then the second topic, which is related to an aspect of that, is choosing specific locations, if you do have some location flexibility, choosing specific locations for specific tasks. But to the first part of it, many of the people who are listening are knowledge workers who

in recent years since the pandemic have adjusted to either remote or hybrid work. There's a wide range of, do I like it? Do I not? Am I more productive? Am I not? How should a person who works better from home adjust their work life accordingly? How should a person who works better at the office adjust to their work life accordingly? Like you said, there was a lot of mixed feelings about going back into the office. Some people said, wow, I was at home. I was the most productive I've ever been. I really enjoyed that. Some people were so relieved to go back to the office because they focus better there. And so, again, it's not a one size fits all. And the most important thing is really asking yourself, what are my patterns of productivity? And how do I capitalize on those? So in the book,

I describe people as home basers or outfielders. And the real question there is, where do you do your best heads down, non-collaborative focus work? And so most people have that knowledge of themselves. They are the people who are either very excited to go back to the office, in which case, those are outfielders, or they were people who were a little disappointed because they were so focused at home. And so if you have the ability to split your schedule in a way that some days are at home, some days in the office, you want to be really, really intentional about what you're doing on those days. And so I am that way, and I'm definitely a home baser.

So I focus so good at home because there's no people around and I kind of have this zone at my desk. And so I look at my week and I know the days I'm going into the office and I slot work in the right places. So I talk in the book about your power hours, which are your most productive hours of the day. My power hours on my home days, those are like sacred times. Those are times when I will not schedule anything except for the work that I want to focus on, the priorities I want to do because I know I'm in the spot that I do my best work at the time that I do my best work. That is primo work time. And so I keep that free as much as possible. Now, if somebody at, asked me, and I know in the office, I tend to be a little more distracted. I'm here, I'm there,

I'm chatting, which is fine because I've protected the home days for work. But if somebody asked me to do a meeting, even a virtual meeting, I suggest the days that I'm in the office, because I know my day's already going to be pretty chopped. I don't have any big work blocks at that time. It's okay for me to take a meeting and much, much better for me to have that meeting then than to cut into one of my deep work and focus times. And so it's really about knowing yourself and then shifting your schedule as much as possible to capitalize on where you do your best work. And when it comes to deep work and focus, we've had Dr. Cal Newport on the show several times. He's a, as you probably know, computer science professor at Georgetown University,

who has written a book titled Deep Work. And he very much is an advocate for having blocks of time that you hyperfocus on some complex task that requires a high level of concentration because those are likely going to be, if you're a knowledge worker, those are likely going to be the things that you do that get you promoted. Right. However, it can sometimes be difficult to focus during those hours. So you might have, I'll speak for myself, I might have a three to four hour block with no meeting scheduled, no distraction scheduled.

I'll put my plane on airplane mode. And then I'll just zone out. To quote office space, right? I might just zone out, even with all of the distractions eliminated. How can a person, as we talk about how to manage your hours, how can a person also manage their focus and their concentration in the hours that they have devoted to a deep work block? Yes. I think we all, and if you haven't done all the distraction prevention, you know, we all know those blocks where I'll work on this from 9 to 10. It's 9.05. I just saw a chat. It's 9.10. I just got to check the seat. email real quick. Oh, I saw this tab open. Maybe I'll start it. Now it's 945. I only have 15 minutes left. You know, so I think when time management is a is a buzzword a little bit because it's like we want more time.

We need more time. But you had that time. You have the three hours. That example, you have the hour. So I think the bigger piece is the energy and attention and the right ways of getting started on tasks. And so the first piece of your three to four hour example, I would say, what did you say you were going to do during that time? And if I asked you on a new day, what is the best possible time for you to do that? You want to make sure that your answer is the time that you've scheduled to do it. So when you look at your to-do list, you want to say, when am I in the perfect mood to do that? And that's when you want to set the time for it. Because what happens a lot is we misalign our energy and our time and we schedule these deep work blocks that are nowhere near when we're feeling our most productive. And so it's going to be hard to do.

The output's going to be bad, even if we trudged through. So I give the example, if you sit down, at your desk and you feel like, I don't want to do this. It's the wrong time. And so, you know, getting ahead of that piece first. The next piece is getting rid of all those distractions. So I talk about in the book, acting like you're a separate person, childproofing for yourself. So what could I get into if I didn't want to work on this? I would probably open my email. Let's close that. I might go get a snack. Let's go ahead and get that. You know, I might be tempted to check my phone. Let's set that across the room. So you're almost taking that objective, you know, how do I make it so, boring that I will only be able to drop into deep work. So that's the second piece. And then the third

piece is trying to, instead of just zoning out or becoming frustrated with a large task or having a hard time getting started, what I like to do is almost trick your brain into how do I just get the ball rolling because that's always the hardest part. Let's say your goal is to run five miles every day. You cannot get over that mental hump because that feels so huge. That is such a commitment, then maybe you go down to three miles, still feels huge, one mile run. Still, I don't want to wake up for that. A walk, still don't. What if I just want to wake up at six and put my shoes on? That's my only goal. Can I do that? Yeah, that feels like doable. So now I've set my alarm. I've taken the time to walk all the way to get my shoes and put them on. Now that I've done that,

I'm probably awake enough to go outside. I'll probably go on a walk. And I might even run five miles at that point. But had I just made the goal five miles, that feels too hard for our brain to wrap around. So I call it Swiss cheesing, just poking little holes. How small can I get till something feels doable? So if this deep work block you had, maybe it was to build a brand new presentation for a training you're doing, instead of build new presentation that just, ugh, that feels again. So what about just open the slides and title it or find three fun images that you want to include. Now you have the images. you might, oh, I'll just put some bullets next to this. And so now you're getting the ball rolling, and that's how you drop into deep work. It's by getting over that little bit of a hump of the big

task. And now two hours have passed and the presentation's awesome and you're excited and you didn't realize two hours of past because you weren't interrupted. You were at the best energy and you got yourself started. And now all of a sudden you don't even need four hours. You needed two hours and you just got time back. So I think all of those pieces are important. And I think you said it best because we're not paid to email, we're not paid to meet. We're typically paid to work. And so those should be your most pristine times that you really care the most about is those deep work focus. Right, right. So make it as small as possible in order to get started. It reminds me there was a writer named Leo Babuta who wrote a website called Zen Habits, who often recommended that if you

want to start doing pushups, do one push up. Yeah. He was like, just get on the ground. And do one push up and then get back and then get back up and proceed on with your day. True. And if you do that consistently day in and day out, eventually one is going to turn into two. Right. Exactly. And if you said do 10 pushups a day, you would never, ever, ever get started. He was also famous for saying floss one tooth.

Oh, yeah. That's a good one too. I like that. So let's say that you are working from home. Well, your dad worked from home starting in 1996. Yes. Right, exactly. Back when it was still called telecommuting. Yes, exactly. That's true. And at the time, there was no Wi-Fi, so he had to be connected to the internet through an Ethernet cable.

Yes. So he got used to being locked into one place. And there's actually research that shows that there is a neurological case for that. Yes. So it's called state dependency. In the book, I give a study about scuba divers. and they took some on land, some on water, half and half. They taught them, I think, phrases or things they needed to remember. Then they switched them half and half. So half the people that learned on land went into the water, et cetera. And they asked them to recall. And it was statistically significant that the people who were in the same location as where they learned recalled better.

And so it speaks to the fact that our brain is taking in so many cues when we're working, when we're learning, and it's not just what we're learning. It's also the sights, the smells, the sounds, the environments. It speaks to why many authors, they write the entire novel at the same seat in a coffee shop, because the smell of coffee, their scenery, all those things puts them back into those characters and they're able to write again. And so when we think about how to use that to our advantage, it's really about finding different spots for different tasks so that it makes our brain easily slip in. So for my dad's example, he had one spot. And so he was really in work mode when he was in his office, but he didn't have the ability to bring his laptop around. So he was really out of

work mode when he left his office. A lot of people complained about that during the pandemic. It's hard for me to slip into work mode because I'm at my house. Well, you used to have your commute, your cube mates chatter, your coffee, all these things that kind of primed your brain so that when you got to your desk, you're already in work mode. And so the way to expand on that is, by saying, I want to do different types of tasks in different places. And this could be either in office or at home if you're hybrid or just around your home. So maybe when you want to take that time to really answer email and zone in, you sit outside on your porch. And that's your email place. And that's always your habit is drinking coffee and doing email on your porch. But when you code,

you want to be sitting at your desk with your monitor. And that's kind of your coding spot. And then maybe you're in sales. You answer client emails that you're always going to do from a certain chair in your living room. And so it allows you to then get your brain used to doing those tasks in those places so that when you go out on your porch, you're instantly used to thinking about email and you kind of slip into that mode. So you can do that whether you're in the office or in your house and it just helps train your brains. Right, right. And the scuba diver study that you mentioned at the beginning of your answer, that was a fascinating study because the level of recall that scuba divers had, depending on whether they memorized the string of numbers and letters

on land versus in the sea, there was a massive, massive difference. Right, because they were associating, you know, if you were underwater and you learned all these things and then you're underwater, you can recall all these things. So I think it can work for you. It can also work against you. So I talk about having not spots in addition to what I'm calling hot spots, which I just described because if you have a relaxing room in your home that you really love, and during the pandemic, we all had to invite work into our home like it was a guest. So I say just like with a guest, you need to create boundaries. You're not going to invite a guest into your room at 6 a.m. first thing.

You shouldn't do that with your work. You're not going to have your guests all the way until the last second before you go to bed. Same with your work. And so you need to have some spaces, especially if you work from home, that you've never worked, that are kind of your mental safe zones because if your brain has never a associated that spot with working or being stressed or thinking about work. And it then allows your nervous system to easily relax in that spot. So you want to have places where you don't bring your laptop that are just your Zen zones or whatever it is that you can just say, oh, when I come here,

I just, I feel relaxed. I never bring my laptop here and it's just a good spot for me. So that's something you can do if you're fully remote even that helps you create that balance. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe, but this time, why not look a little further? To Dubai, a city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures,

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Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca. Black Friday. IKEA. Bring home to life. Now, you mentioned email. I want to close this out by asking about how to manage email. I want to go into this by confessing that I manage email. If you were to look at how I manage email through the framework of how a person manages laundry, right? It makes no sense. So as you've described, if you were to manage your laundry by opening the dryer door, picking out one shirt, folding that shirt, taking it up to your room, putting that shirt away, then going all the way back to the dryer, finding another shirt, and then you give up halfway through and you panic when you need some clothing because you don't

remember if you've washed it yet or not. That is exactly how I manage email. And that has actually, it's a terrible habit, but it's actually even started spilling out to snail mail. I will sometimes go to my snail mailbox, my physical mailbox, and open the mailbox, look through letters, pick out one, and I put the rest back into my mailbox. Oh, that's not considering feature you. I literally will just leave the rest of the mail in the snail mailbox. Right. All time, that's.

Yeah. I'm like, I had it's junk mail. I don't feel like throwing it out. I just leave it there. So yeah, you're basically then using energy the first time you do that, then you're using energy the next time you're in the mailbox and maybe even the next time. So you're kind of screwing over future you. So and I think that one of the biggest pieces of the thinking of email like laundry is just because we all are familiar with laundry and the best way to do it. And so it really clicks with people. So I think that one of the biggest pieces is actually sorting, reading, answering. as separate tasks because you're doing a lot of context switching if you're folding the shirt and then you're walking all the way upstairs and then you're coming back down and then you say, okay, there's a pair of pants. Maybe I'll hang those pants and now you're moving on to socks,

but I don't feel like dealing with this one. It's wet, throwing it back in. So you're just wasting so much energy there versus if you had taken all the clothes out, just quickly put them into piles as its own activity. So that's sorting. It's just emptying it out. It's not saying I'm also going to fold as I'm taking things out because that's not a good way of doing it. You won't ever get through the dryer. And so saying, I'm going to actually take the time to just empty out what's in my inbox, maybe in the morning or the afternoon, putting them into piles based on how to set up future you. So how to tell future, Paula, what do I need to do with this? I need to respond. I need to read or I just need to revisit. It's somebody else's action that I need to go back and bump. And so those are really the only three

actions that any email can take. No matter what your role is, it's really, you know, something you need to do. something someone else needs to do that you need to follow back up on, or something that you just need to read or absorb, but doesn't require any action from you. And so once you've put those into baskets, now you can actually find so much economies of scale by basically saying, okay, I'm going to hang, hang, hang, hang, because you have all the hangers there.

Same thing, I'm going to read, read, read. And I'm also going to match this with my energy. So how about if I had put things into piles, what a waste it would have been to use my power hours to read industry articles? That is not the right. energy, but a meeting ends early in the afternoon. I'm a little sluggish anyway. Great time, 10 minutes just to read through those articles. So you're putting them in baskets for when you have the right time for that. You're making time for those baskets and you're batch tasking. And so

it's really just a lot of people come to me after I train them on this and say, oh, I made such a difference in my energy. And it's funny because it's an organizational system, but it's really about clearing the mental clutter. And it's about helping you feel like that email from my boss, that pink shirt, I know where it is. I haven't replied to it yet, but it's in my respond folder and I know when I need to reply to it. And I'm only touching those things two times. I'm the first time I see it and the time that I address it. I'm not, you know, people like to mark is unread. Every time you do that, then future use like, have I seen this? Oh, I have. Oh, wait. No, I have, but I'm not going to address it now. So now some people touch emails five or six times and they wake up

in the middle of the night. Did I ever respond to that? Where is it? You know, so it's kind of that way to create that ironclad system for yourself where inbox zero does not mean I've addressed everything. Doesn't mean I folded all the clothes. I might go to bed with clothes that haven't been folded, but I know where they are. I know how much is in that basket. So I know what I need to make time to do. I know where the pink shirt is. And I know that I've addressed everything that needs urgently addressed. And so it's again about intention and rethinking about how we're managing email because email is so personal and it causes so much anxiety for people. And it's kind of like a lot of people's first thing they see and the last thing they see. And so getting that in control, I always say is

the first step towards clearing some of that mental clutter. Excellent. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Are there any final points that you want to emphasize? I think you did a really good job of covering it all. I think that what it really comes down to is not making giant changes, just like achieving financial goals. It's more about being intentional and consistent about the small changes that really adds up over time. And so when people want to make a difference in their overall productivity, I never recommend giant overhauls or new tools that require all this upskill. And it's really just about what are some small changes I can make in my day and my time and how I'm spending it. And when you do that, you start to see how much it benefits you and how much more

more time you have or how much lighter you feel or how much more focus. And so it's just about getting started. Well, thank you. Where can people find you if they'd like to know more? I have a website, Laura May Martin, May has an E, and I'm on YouTube and LinkedIn. Excellent. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, redefine productivity. Laura is a lot of all about shifting how we see productivity. It's not just about cranking out work. It's about balancing creativity, well-being, and making sure that our efforts stick around, making sure that we are in this for the long haul. True productivity includes how you're doing overall, not just how much

you're getting done. I think productivity is traditionally been defined as your output, how much you're churning out. But I think the new definition of productivity is merging into how are you achieving holistically? So are you creative? Are you functioning? Are you well? Is the productivity that you found lasting? So work at a pace that you can persist at for the long term. It's a marathon. Set a marathon pace, not a sprint pace. That is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. Know your top three priorities. There's only so much that we can do. You can do anything, but you can't do everything.

And you certainly can't do everything all at the same time. So whittle down to your top three priorities. And then laser focus on just those top three. Because if you start saying yes to too many things, if you let too many other good ideas, crowd out the great ones, you end up doing nothing. Your work becomes so split between a handful of different directions that you don't end up making lasting progress in any one particular direction. So prioritize three at the most. What are your top three priorities? And eliminate anything

that isn't that or defer anything that isn't that. You should have an idea of what your top three priorities are for your time right now, just like you might have top three priorities of your financial goals or something that you're working on. You want to have that in the back of your mind all the time defined so that when that new invite comes in for a committee that you would say, oh, that is a good opportunity. You know, you have that laser focus. So laser focus on your top three priorities. That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Embrace deep work but do so at the time of day in which you are most productive. Each person has a certain time of day where your energy peaks, your focus, your concentration,

your performance peaks at particular times of day. Some people are morning people, some people are night owls. You know when that is for you. So figure out what time of day you are most productive and protect that time of day. Schedule your deep work blocks during that time. and protect it like it's gold. You want to make sure that your answer is the time that you've scheduled to do it. So when you look at your to do list, you want to say,

when am I in the perfect mood to do that? And that's when you want to set the time for it. Because what happens a lot is we misalign our energy and our time and we schedule these deep work blocks that are nowhere near when we're feeling our most productive. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Laura May Martin. Thank you for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member.

That's the most important thing you can do to spread the message of great financial health. In addition, chat with other members of our community at afford anything.com slash community. Absolutely no cost. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at affordanithing.com slash newsletter. And you can find me on Instagram at Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T. I'm also on Twitter at Afford Anything. Thank you again for being part of this community. My name is Paula Pant.

This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.