Focused - 106: Home Offices with Laura Vanderkam

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Laura Vanderkam joins the podcast this episode to talk about challenges and opportunities in working from home. Mike and David also break down their ever-evolving shut down routines.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by your friend of mine, Michael Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Great. And I'm real excited this week because we have a guest. All right. We are thrilled to have author Laura Vanderkam of The New Corner Office, the book in the podcast that she just recently released on the podcast. Welcome to the Focus Podcast, Laura. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. David and I are big fans of the book. So thank you for sending that to us. I also listened to it on the audio book, which you narrated and did a great job. You have a lot of stuff in there that is very relevant for our focused audience. And we've got limited time to talk about some of this stuff today, but really excited to have you on the show to talk about why results matter more than where and when work happens. Exactly. We're all finding that out these days. Exactly. Laura, was this idea, I mean, was this something you were working on before,

you know, the madness started? Or did this kind of arise out of what's going on right now? This arose out of what was going on right now. So in mid-March, I looked around and noticed that a lot of people were working from home for the first time and talking with the various organizations I work with, both in terms of producing my podcasts and writing books. They were interested in reaching the audiences that were dealing with this too. And so I started this podcast called The New Corner Office and realized that it could be a book as well. So my publisher and I collaborated on getting this out quite quickly. The reason it was able to go so quickly is that it's not a print book. By distributing it by e-book and audio book, you get around the whole thing of having to print copies, ship them through warehouses, get them into stores. It's just a much quicker turnaround process.

So, yes, this all began after the pandemic began. I can say having read the book, it doesn't feel like a rush book. I mean, it's so thorough. That's what I really liked about it, honestly. So I thought you may have started it early. but congratulations to you. Well, thank you. I'm glad to hear that. It's weird because I feel like when this all started, because I worked in an office for 23 years and then I started working from home like five years ago. And so I kind of had it wired down, but my day job, I'm a business lawyer. And all my law school friends collectively lost their minds in March because they were used to having support staff and big fancy conference rooms and all the no idea what they were supposed to do. And now we're in the second phase

where they just want to be on Zoom calls all day, but they still aren't getting anything done. But how do we get to the third phase where people can actually start doing work again? Yeah, so it's like the different phases of mourning here that we go through. It's a new way of working. Working from home is a skill

and it might help for people to recognize that, that of course it's going to be hard at the beginning. Like if somebody gave you a basketball and told you to start playing basketball, like your first games would not be that good. So as you get better at it though, you start to figure out what works for you. You start figuring out how you can set your own schedule. You figure out the right balance between that sort of interactive work, those Zoom calls that everyone loves to hate, and this sort of interactive work, those Zoom calls that everyone loves to hate, and this sort of focused individual work that also needs to get done. And you figure out how you can troubleshoot a lot of things yourself, be more self-directed, and how to still

set some boundaries between your personal life and work life. Because I know that's been a real pain point for a great many people that when you don't have a commute, it is no longer easy to tell when the day is done or to feel like the day is done. And so a lot of people are really struggling with that. Yeah, now you, some people may be listening to this and they may be thinking, well, this is great, but you've been working from home for a long time

and you've been able to figure this all out. I've got to figure it out now on the fly. But in the book, you actually share a bit of a story and you've had to make some adjustments as you figured this out too. What has kind of been the biggest adjustment you've made or the biggest surprise from not just you working from home, but your significant other working from home, balancing, having kids at home, but your significant other working from home, balancing, having kids at home, that sort of thing? Well, back when I first started working from home like 18 years ago, I mean, it was really a long time ago, I had the same problem many people do, that I would half work and half not work into the evening.

And partly that was that I didn't have much else going on in my life. I didn't have a family at the time. And so there was nothing really pushing back on that. And what I wound up doing is joining a bunch of community choirs. So I would have rehearsals in the evening, which would then force me to get dressed and leave the apartment and go see other people and stop work by about six o'clock on those nights, which made me much more efficient. So I was really glad that I had figured that out pretty early on. Obviously, this has been challenging for everyone to not only start working from home,

but having everyone else in their families be home at the exact same time. And it has been a struggle this past few months. For instance, I always love to do my focused, drill down, deep work in the morning. 9.30 is like a really, really productive time for me. And then this spring, of course, my school-age children all had their morning Zoom calls right at 9.30. And even though they all had devices they could work on or whatever, there would still be somebody needing tech support

or somebody would be like, oh, I can't do whatever. Mom, I'm not done with this. It's every single day. I just had to become better about saying, okay, well, what time is available to me? When can I have time that is focused? And when are the times that I'm just going to have to deal with the rest of the people around me? And so by recognizing that there would still be some time for focused work, that allowed me to relax a lot more. So, you know, figuring out what those times would be and making sure that I was matching the right work to the right time. Yeah. When it comes to children and their parents, the equation is access equals demand.

If you're there, they need you. Exactly. Exactly. Equals demand. If you're there, they need you. Exactly. Exactly. So what does that look like as you've figured out where you can do your deep focused work? I think that's one of the struggles for a lot of people who listen to this show is they like the idea of working from home full time, maybe, but maybe they've got just like a side hustle and they're having trouble putting in the effort when the only time they have is when they don't really feel like doing it. It kind of sounds like you've had to figure that out. And even though it's not ideal for you, maybe you've been able to adjust some things and find those pockets of time where you

can still do the deep focused work. How do you do that? Well, certainly using the early mornings works for a lot of people. If your kids are at least old enough to not be waking up at the crack of dawn, you might decide to wake up at the crack of dawn and use time before the house starts waking up. One thing I've had to do is work at night after kids go to bed, because one of the things I do is record a lot of podcasts and, you know, the house is quiet in the early morning or at night, but my voice sounds terrible in the early morning. So I had to start using the evenings for that, taking care of the time that is available.

And of course, you know, where we have childcare for our younger kids, like over the summer, it's been great to have that Monday through Thursday. And, you know, having another adult be in charge is, I mean, critical long term if you're trying to work from home. It is very difficult long term to be both the primary caregiver for your children and trying to work. having maybe smaller number of work hours, but being able to fully focus within them and have somebody else being in charge of your kids during that time than trying to do both at once. I love that idea. I think that's a really important strategy. And that's something that a lot of people that I've talked to have kind of realized as they started to work from home is that it doesn't really matter if they're putting in the 40 hours, they can try to put in

the 40 hours, but there's so many additional distractions maybe at home that they're putting in the 40 hours. They can try to put in the 40 hours, but there's so many additional distractions maybe at home that they're just as productive. They get just as much done if they only worked 20 hours and they were more strategic about it. How have you kind of shouldered that load and decided who's going to watch the kids, who's going to work, and when are you balancing? How are you balancing those things? Yeah. So we have a sitter right now during business hours, Monday through Thursday. So my husband and I are both working during those times. And then we tend to split Friday. He has a more traditional job. So he tends to work in the morning because a lot of organizations

already have summer Fridays where the day would pretty much be ending around noon or one o'clock anyway. So I tend to not schedule a whole lot of phone calls on Fridays because most people don't want to do this on Friday afternoons. But I can do a lot of writing work, for instance, in the afternoons on Friday while he is with the kids. And then if, you know, we need time on weekends or the evenings, we can trade off with each other as well. And then if you know we need time on weekends or the evenings, we can trade off with each other as well. I think the idea of the sitter, this is kind of something that maybe people wouldn't think about because you think, well, I'm home. My significant other is at home.

We can just make this work. But that's a brilliant strategy, I think. It's a business expense because it's freeing you up. It is. It totally is. And I mean, even before the pandemic, I talked to so many people who are like, oh, you know, I want to try working from home. I think I could save a lot of money on child care.

No, no, no, no, no. This is this is not a way to save money on child care. It's if you try to do that, you are going to wind up incredibly distracted and frazzled and feeling like you're pulled in many directions at once. And I know a lot of people are dealing with this as a crisis situation right now. But in order to make daily life sustainable, you really do need to figure out a good schedule of coverage so you can at least get some hours. Now, if you and your partner want to split every day, one of you does the morning, one of you does the afternoon, or maybe you can double up over

nap time or a few hours of screen time. But designating one person to deal with the kids and not only, you know, keep them safe, but keep them out of the other person's home office during that time can go a long way toward making people feel like they can still move forward with their businesses or their careers. Yeah, I think it's really a challenge. And even when you do split time, they're kids, you know, what are you going to do when they walk in and they say, mommy, you know, will you play a game with me or something? How do you say no to that? Well, you can. And also that that's this, this is the key thing. If you are splitting the job with a partner or, you know, a sitter,

they have to understand that part of the job is keeping the kids out of your office. So they can't wander off and do yard work during the time where they're on. Like they're the one who needs to be playing that game with the kid during that time so that they're not wandering into your office. So in worst case scenario, you might go work in your parked car. Honestly, I've sat in the minivan

with like the windows open and worked out there. And you know, you're in the driveway, it's all good. Yeah, whatever it takes. They're not gonna find you there. You had mentioned earlier, And you know, you're in the driveway, it's all good. They're not going to find you there. You had mentioned earlier, and Mike had also commented on the idea of, you know, getting focused on task versus time. And that's one of the themes in your book. And I really like the idea, particularly when you're adjusting to a new work environment.

Too often, we get obsessed with, well, how many hours did I spend working on it as opposed to how much did I actually accomplish? I really feel like that mindset change can really change your productivity. Could you talk a little bit about how you're doing that and what you advise people? So it's so important to manage by task rather than time, because when you start working from home, you get rid of a lot of those group time norms that give structure to a day. Like even in very progressive offices that talk a lot about flexibility, there tends to be a time where most people are supposed to be there. There tends to be a time that most people leave.

And if you disappear for a big enough time in the middle of the day, people are going to ask where you went. Like they probably aren't going to fire you for it, but you know, there's enough of a pushback that a lot of people just don't experiment with it. But when you work from home, you don't have those group time norms. You don't have the commute to book in the day and say, well, you know, I got something done just because I went to work and I put in my eight hours and therefore it's been an honest day's labor. How do you do that when there's no commute? You need to measure by something else. And what that something else can be is what results you have achieved in the course of a day. And obviously some jobs are more

obviously results oriented than others. I mean, if you work for a daily newspaper, did the newspaper come out? Like you said, on people's driveways, that's a pretty clear metric of whether you got your job done. But, you know, many others are a lot less clear, but it's a good habit for people to be in to set sort of weekly goals, like weekly priorities and goals and what would be a challenging but doable amount of work for the week. And you can talk about this with your manager. You can talk about this with your manager. You can talk about this with your direct reports. And then you can break it down into daily task lists. Like what are the steps I could take toward those weekly goals today and tomorrow and

Wednesday and Thursday and so forth? And then, you know, every day, hold yourself accountable for them. You know, you can formally check in with each other or you're sort of more self-directed. You might not need to do that. But the idea is that this is how you say, well, this was a good day. If I got these, let's say, five challenging tasks done, then today has been great. And now I can end the day. And it doesn't really matter what time it is. And, you know, yes, a lot of us who have done this for a long time have learned to set daily task lists that take about eight hours because, you know, what amount of work can fit in that time. But it's more about achieving a certain set of results as opposed to saying, look, OK, now it's five o'clock so I can get up from my chair. because you mentioned the task list and you make the point in the book

that your task list is not a wish list. How do you balance the focus on getting things done as opposed to the time that you put in while also limiting yourself? You mentioned earlier one of the big struggles being to avoid working later and you joined some choirs. So you had a forced shutdown by 6 p.m. I can envision that might be an easy mistake to make, though, when you do start focusing on the task versus the time is that you just end

up with too many tasks. Yes, you have to be very disciplined about this and create a resilient schedule. I mean, anyone can make a perfect schedule of like, well, if everything goes perfectly today, if all the stars align, this is what I'd like to get done. No, it has to be realistic. And you don't know exactly what will come up in the course of the day, but you can be pretty sure that something will come up. So you have to leave space to deal with it. And that's why your challenging but doable daily task lists have to leave some space for the unexpected. But when you do that, then you can in fact get through these lists. And that's an incredible feeling. If day after day, you actually cross off everything that was on your list for the day, it becomes more of a contract with yourself. If you put something on the list, you know, you absolutely will do it.

And that actually gives your brain permission to relax. Cause if you put something on the list for Thursday, you can stop thinking about it until Thursday. Cause you know, there's a time for it and you know, you will do it. Um, and, and if for some reason it can't happen Thursday, you've got a backup slot for it on Friday. Like you you've for this. And that allows you to relax and be very focused. It's amazing, you know, the human brain, like if you wake up and give yourself a 20 item task list and you finish five, you like go to bed feeling defeated. And if you wake up and give yourself a five item task list and you finish five, you go to bed feeling like a hero. It's very true. I mean, it's all about setting your expectations at the right level. And I'd argue that you're much better off setting limited

expectations and meeting them than setting high expectations and not meeting them because there's absolutely no virtue in putting something on a to-do list and then not doing it. I mean, it's just as not done as if it was never on the list in the first place, only now you feel bad too. So we've really gotten the worst of all worlds that you haven't done anything by putting it on the list. So better not to even put it on the list. We have to be honest with ourselves. And you give yourself the self-image of I'm the person who doesn't finish the things on my list. Yeah. And there's nothing good about that. Yeah. And I would argue too that, and this comes out throughout your book, that

now that you're working from home and if you haven't been working at home, picking that list is even more important. It's even harder now for all the reasons we were talking about earlier. You have to be very clear on what is important work to do. And some of this is, you know, really thinking about what people are going to need in the future, because they're not going to just magically stop by your cubicle and remind you. I mean, you have to anticipate people's needs. You have to proactively reach out for help. Because again, your boss isn't going to walk by and see that you're stuck on something. You have to be, you know, a big enough person to call and say, I am stuck on this. I need your assistance. Or figure out other good tasks to do while you are waiting for that assistance. So there really

is so much more responsibility that comes with setting these tasks. But, you know, I'd argue that great, we're adults. I mean, this is what work should be like. We should be more self-directed. And if anything, you know, good comes out of all this pandemic is that a lot more people are learning that skill of setting their own tasks, managing their own time, and feeling the real sense of accomplishment that comes from making steady progress toward big goals. Yeah. And I would, I guess I would follow up that and say, for people that are working from home for the first time, there are opportunities too, right?

I mean, what are the opportunities people have that are now finding themselves in this position to excel? What kind of advice would you give them? Well, one is that you probably have a bunch of freed up time that was spent commuting. And ideally, you can use of freed up time that was spent commuting. And ideally, you can use this freed up time for things that you may have been under investing in in your life previously. I mean, whether that's exercising or hanging out with family or, you know, devoting time to hobbies

that you might enjoy or connecting with friends or anything like that. I mean, this is not a small amount of time for many people. I mean, even if it was only 30 minutes each way, five hours a week during sort of peak times that you could be using feels really wonderful to have that time back. You know, you can also experiment with working how you work best. When you escape those group time norms, you know, that you have to be in your seat at eight o'clock or people are going to wonder what's going on, you know, you might decide that you work better in a different way. Maybe you've never been very good at 8 a.m., but, you know, you can conquer the world if you start working at 10 a.m. Well, good to know. Like maybe you can shift your hours

a little bit if there's not that expectation of seat time. Or maybe you work better if you take a longer break in the middle of the day, but you're willing to start earlier and go later. Or maybe it's just even like physical comfort things. I know that in many of my office jobs in the past, I have spent the entire summer freezing because the air conditioning is set at a level that I don't find comfortable. So I'm sitting there, you know, in sweaters and blankets and trying to go outside every 30 minutes to warm up. And I don't have that problem at home. You know, I can set my thermostat for wherever I happen to be comfortable. And I can tell you I'm a lot more productive when I'm comfortable versus when my fingers are turning blue. And I imagine the same is true for other people as well. What other things have you done to create a good work environment at

home? You mentioned the temperature thing, but I imagine there's a couple other things people should maybe look at as they're trying to figure out where am I going to do my work when I am at home? Well, you need a good space for it. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a full formal home office, though long term, you might want to look into doing that. I mean, if you're staring down working from home for the next year, you know,, you might want to look into doing that. I mean, if you're staring down working from home for the next year, you know, maybe it's time to move if you were considering that to a place that has a better option. But ideally, you have someplace with a door for privacy. You have someplace with a window. So you have natural light. You have a good

workspace. So a nice desk or table that you can spread your stuff around. You have a chair that does not make your back hurt. And you have things you're looking at or listening to or even smelling, if that's what you're into, that make you feel your best self. So really think about what would optimize well-being and recognize that you can do that in your home office in a way that you couldn't in a corporate world. Even the CEO might not be able to dictate what's happening out in the grass outside the corporate office building, but you can at your house. Go plant plants outside your window so that you can look at stuff you want to look at. Go clear away any of the broken outside furniture that's sitting there. Make sure you have something beautiful to look at and really take advantage of these perks of the new corner office. Another thing I think a lot of people maybe are struggling with right now is the reliance

on the Zoom meetings. Any tips for people on how to make these meetings better? What sort of cadence should people be looking to do? Like how many is too many? That sort of thing? Yeah. So, I mean, the truth is that there's too many meetings in general. I mean, almost every organization has way too many meetings. And while there's some nice parts about actually seeing each other in person, face to face, some of those are removed when you go to video call. aren't seeing each other for those quick tag ups where you say like, hey, you know, you haven't responded to my email. Can you quick approve this for me? Or, you know, when you get a chance, just tell me what you think of what John said. Like those are the sort of two minute conversations people would have casually in an office that now become these formal scheduled 30 minute Zoom calls and they never needed to be. So one thing I encourage people to do is to really dial down

the number of meetings. Like if something can be accomplished quickly, don't schedule a meeting. Just pick up the phone and call the person. You are allowed to do that. It is not presumptuous. It is not rude. If you have worked with this person for six years, like it's okay to call them. Like you don't need to be worried about that. If they can't pick up, they won't pick up. But it's probably a much quicker way to solve whatever problem it is that you're dealing with. The other thing is that any meeting, whether it is in person or by Zoom or audio conference, needs a purpose. Like there needs to be some reason you are having the meeting, a real why. The first question when somebody wants to schedule a meeting should not be when, it should be why.

Like what is going to change in the world as a result of this meeting taking place? And if nothing is going to change, I'd argue that maybe a meeting isn't the best way to go about doing whatever it is you're trying to do. If there is a certain decision you are trying to reach, then that decision needs to require everyone who is going to be on that call or in that Zoom meeting. So you want to err on the side of having fewer people rather than more. You need an agenda that works toward the decision. And the agenda needs to account for what every person who is there is doing with every minute of their time. So if you have people who are just sitting there for a big chunk of time,

that suggests that probably they don't need to be there. Maybe you need to break this into two different objectives and have two shorter meetings so people can go to one and not go to the other. But if you do these things, you are naturally going to have a lot fewer meetings because it is impossible to plan eight hours a day of meetings with that sort of intensity. Like the only people who can do that are those who have like a dedicated chief of staff doing this for them. For the rest of us who haven't quite attained to that level yet, it's going to put a natural check on the number of meetings. And I'd argue that that's probably a really good thing. Yeah, I would add to that. Ask yourself if it's something that really needs a simultaneous communication or if it's not something that could use asynchronous communication.

At Basecamp, they have that check-in process. Some people do it with just a Google Doc where you could have a thing where people just check in and let you know where a project stands whenever they get around to it and you accomplish the same purpose as a meeting. Yeah, that's great. And I like that more than trying to do it by email. I mean, the problem with email is people sort of assume that nobody's reading their email and they're possibly right. So I mean, that's why they call a meeting is because they're sure people aren't reading their emails. And so if you have some system that has more accountability, like Basecamp or Google Docs or something like that, where you can see that somebody has put in their feedback,

then that's much more effective. Last question I want to ask you here. You mentioned the shutdown routine and you mentioned that you need to stop before you're completely spent, which I think is great advice. Do you want to unpack that a little bit? And then kind of a follow up question. What does your shutdown routine look like? So you want to stop before you're completely spent, because guess what, you're going to work again tomorrow. And probably the day after that, too. And, you know, five days on any given week. And so if you are completely

spent, then yes, you may have had what seems like a very, very productive day. But if you then do nothing the next day because you can't really motivate yourself, then you haven't come out ahead. We're far better off making sustainable progress, having a series of small wins day after day at a pace that we can continue. And, you know, there's a couple of different ways of thinking about this. I always remember the great by choice book, or I think it was Jim Collins, where he talks about the 20 mile march, you know, that the people marching toward the South Pole or whatever would march 20 miles a day in good weather, 20 miles in bad weather.

And the idea is, yes, you could have marched more in good weather, but that by limiting yourself to 20 miles in good weather, you would have the stamina to get through 20 miles in bad weather. And you knew how far you would get in any given day. And so, you know, I think it's the same sort of thing. We want to end before we are completely spent so that we can promise ourselves to get through challenging work tomorrow as well. And coming up with some sort of shutdown ritual is a great way to do that. A great way to say, okay, I fought the good fight today. I am going to live to fight the good fight again tomorrow. And there's lots of ways you can end the day. I mean, you know, you can sort of write in a journal. You can look over your to-do list and make sure that everything was done. You

can write tomorrow's to-do list. You could send an email to a colleague saying what you've done. You can call your manager if that's something you do to say goodbye and say what you've done or call a colleague to say goodbye. Go for a walk. You can, if your children are in some form of childcare or school, you can go pick them up.

That could be an end of the day or picking up a spouse at a train station in the future when people are commuting again or go walk the dog, whatever it is, but something that tells you, okay, I'm done. Because otherwise, especially with people who have smaller apartments or homes, you might be able to see your workstation for the rest of the evening. And it's very hard to convince yourself like, okay, I can relax. I can do other things. If you can see your workstation, you have that sense of guilt, like I should be doing something else. So in order to get rid of that, you need some contract you can have with yourself, some sort of psychological way of

saying, okay, this is it. This is it for today. I can now be in relax mode, even if I can see my computer while I'm watching TV. Can you share your shutdown routine with us? So mine is honestly just shutting down my laptop. That may sound silly, that that's all it really is. But for years, I wasn't even doing that. I would, you know, keep it on because it goes into sleep mode. So I wasn't like wasting power or anything. But it turns out it will still fry over time if you never shut it down, word to the wise. So now I tend to, you know, I don't shut it down at five because I often will go in and, you know, enter answer a few more

emails after dinner or something like that. But I do aim to have it shut down by about 730. And at that point, I am fully done. Like there will be no more work at that point. I'm acknowledging to myself, this is it. Whatever I've done by this point is the end of it for today. And you know, it's been good. It makes me feel like I can read or even if I just want to surf the web, I can do it without feeling like I should also be researching something else I should be doing. That's good enough. Yeah. Well, awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. There's a bunch of other stuff that we didn't have time to get to like masterminds and retreats and primary and secondary workspaces, buying pens that make writing a pleasure. So definitely, gang, go check out Laura's book

and her podcast. Where would you like to send people if they want to know more about the new corner office, Laura? Well, you can just come visit my website, which is lauravandercam.com. And you can find out information there about all my podcasts and the new Corner Office and Before Breakfast and about the new Corner Office ebook and all my other books as well.

Awesome. And we will have links to all of that stuff in the show notes. So thank you so much for joining us today, Laura. Thanks for having me on. This episode of Focused is brought to you by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN lets you access the internet as if you are from a different country. Now,

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and many more. And you can choose from almost 100 different countries inside of the app. It's so simple to use. You just fire up the ExpressVPN app, you change your location, you hit connect, and then refresh the page and the show or movie that you want to watch will magically appear. And it really is magic. I used this even earlier today. I was trying to watch the Star Trek Discovery Show, which is part of CBS All Access here in the US, but it's available on Netflix in the UK. So I installed ExpressVPN on my phone. It walked me through the whole setup process. I was able to pick my server in the UK and went into the Netflix app, found Star Trek Discovery. As soon as I switched to the UK-based server, it unlocked that show for me. I was able to hit play and watch the first episode of Vulcan Hello, which actually is a pretty great show. I'm generally more of a Star Wars fan, but this is a really great show and I

intend to watch the rest of this using ExpressVPN. And right now, if you go to ExpressVPN, expressvpn.com slash focused, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. of ExpressVPN for free. That's expressvpn.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So Mike, reading Laura's book got me thinking about working from home, and I thought it'd be fun to kind of check in with you and share my story too about how it's going for us. So now that we're a few months into the pandemic, it's still going on. How are you doing and how has it impacted you? Yeah, well, I think that I made some mistakes, honestly, when we started this. And the big ones being with the

ergonomics. And lately, the last couple of weeks as we record this, I've been dealing with some pretty major back pain, which is a combination of factors. A bad bed when we went up to the cottage, built up stress, bad ergonomics when I was there at the cabin trying to get some work done, working from a card table, all hunched over. And we got back and my back just kind of locked up on me. And especially at night, it would tighten up and it was really, really painful. So I'm basically through it now. I went to a massage therapist. That helped out a lot. it now. I went to a massage therapist. That helped out a lot. But obviously, when pain is sufficient, change will come. So I'm in the middle of all this and trying to figure out what am I going to do differently to make sure this doesn't happen again. And so I made a couple of modifications to

my home office with more of a long-term vision in mind. I think when we started this quarantine, working from home, all this forced change with COVID-19, people just kind of enjoyed the freedom and maybe they were working in a way that now that they've done it for a while, like me, maybe they're realizing that this maybe isn't the healthiest way to do it.

All right. Well, I think ergonomics is always something important, whether you're working at an office or working from home. What steps are you taking? from the standing desk that often. I was grabbing my laptop and working from the couch, doing all these other things and kind of was asking myself, why? Why am I avoiding working from my home office? There's a couple of things, but obviously the first thing that I realized I needed to do was to get a decent chair. And I've heard people extol the virtues of like the Herman Millers and stuff like that. And I always thought to myself, there is no way I'm going to spend $1,000 on a chair. Yeah.

Well, David, I confess to you, I spent $1,000 on a chair. It is not a Herman Miller. I put the link in the doc. We'll put it in the show notes too. But Fully, which is the company that makes my standing desk, has these Kapisco chairs, they're called. They're designed for standing desks. I ordered the one with the foot ring. So they're elevated and you sit in them and they're not sliding around on you. And they look kind of weird. And that's because it's designed so you can sit in it like a normal chair. You can also sit on it sideways and drape your arm over the side. You can turn it all the way around and use the back in front of you.

And I just think that this is going to fit the way that I work. Now, because I spent a bunch of money on this, I ordered the exact one I wanted, which wasn't in stock. So it's not here yet, but it should be here in a couple of days. And I am very excited to start using this chair. Okay, this is the strangest looking chair I've ever seen, Mike. It looks like they left part of it off. But now I'm looking at the pictures and people use it backwards. Like, you know, so if you're listening, like you've got a normal chair and you lean

back into the chair, there's a backrest. This chair basically has a backrest or a frontrest, depending on how you sit in the chair. Right? Yeah. If you watch the video on the page, they show people like going from one position to another, which sounds kind of ridiculous. But when you realize that it's kind of like for someone who is at their standing desk, but they tend to fidget or move around a lot, this allows you to do that

and still be comfortable as you're changing the position in the chair itself, rather than rolling around in, say, a Herman Miller type desk chair. Ah, man, I gotta admit, it's kind of cool looking. I am not a fan of arms on office chairs. I feel like it's ergonomically bad for me to rest my elbows on armrests. So like the chair I have, I bought many, many years ago at Staples and I threw the armrests away, but this is like takes it to a whole new level. You can also sit in this chair sideways because the way it's made, but it looks like now it goes up in it, but it's not just made for standing desk height. It looks like it can go down far enough that you could actually put your standing desk down to standard level and still use this chair too. Maybe, although that's

not how I intend to use it. I believe that it's designed for like a standing height desk. And the foot ring that I got is something that you put on the bottom so you have a place to rest your feet as you are sitting in the chair and it is elevated. Nice. So that's how I intend to use it. To be honest, I don't really go up and down with my desk at all. I only bring it down when I want to sit and I don't have a chair. I have this like inflatable ball thing that's supposed to be good, but I don't like it. I never sit on it. I grab my computer and I go sit probably in the worst possible position for my back on the couch. And so I want to avoid that. And I think having a nice chair is the thing

that will, will help me do that. So I got the, the tan leather one. I went all out with this thing. I tend to keep it for a very long time. And this is by far the most expensive piece of office furniture I have ever bought. Wow. And you also got the footrest on it. Yep. I got the footrest. So that's a, it's an add-on. It wasn't a ridiculous add-on. Paying for the leather version of it was the biggest price upgrade. But I wanted to get exactly what I wanted, basically. And so I was tempted to get one of the ones that was in stock just so I could have it here. But again, long-term view, I don't want something that I'm going to be frustrated with in a couple months. So I did a ton of research, as I do with everything.

I looked at all the options, decided this was the best one for me, and then just bit the bullet and wrote the check. Wow. Well, good for you, Mike. I mean, you need to have a good chair. And you've got your into coffee, fancy pins, and now a very strange looking chair. So you are officially a nerd. Congratulations.

I also, I did a couple other things too. I mean, that's the... Well, let me just follow up. I have one point because I did too have spent money on my chair recently. As part of my office move, I'm downstairs on a wood floor. And I realized that the plastic wheels on my chair were messing up my floor. Uh, so off Amazon for like 50 bucks,

I bought a pair of roller blade office chair wheels and it's amazing. It's amazing. Okay. The best upgrade I've ever done. You have to explain these. I'm trying to picture roller blade chair wheels. They're like low roller blade wheels with ball bearings in them. They're rubber,

fully rubber wheels. And they have the peg, you know, the mounting peg that's on every office chair. Cause if I don't know if these mounting pegs on yours, yours looks like it's a little funny, the wheels on your new chair. But,

and so you can replace, you can basically upgrade any office chair with these roller wheels. And like for the people that have to get like the plastic mat, I'm not going to put a plastic mat in the middle of my floor. These are a replacement that do the same thing. And the chair very easily rolls now. And I've got rubber wheels on the bottom. I'll put a link in the show notes. They're on Amazon.

They showed up in like two days. It was a great spend for me. So you are going to be undefeated in the office chair relays from now on? Oh, absolutely. I am ready for it. I don't know. I'm looking at the picture of your fancy chair. I'm not sure that, I think my wheels may be better than your, your chair wheels, but that's probably the only thing that's better. Yeah. You don't want to race in the Capisco. You'd probably tip over. I know, you could get backwards on it, kind of lean into it. I could see that working.

All right. So what else did you do to bring more ergonomics in? Well, the rest of this isn't really ergonomics, but there were a couple things that Laura talked about that I think were important, like having a source of natural light, having a window. I'm in the basement and I don't have a window. So I know that that impacts me and it makes me want to not stay down here for extended periods of time. And I've also found that I'm doing more

video stuff, video calls, webinars, things like that. So trying to figure out a better light source, I found that I have this BenQ e-reading light, which was sent to me a long time ago. And it's been sitting in my closet and I haven't used it. It's got like this curved beam and it's designed like you put it over your computer, your screens, and it makes it easier to read. But I kind of put it over my desk and over all my screens, kind of tilted a little bit towards my face. And not only does it give me better lighting, but I think it actually makes my video look a little bit better too. So I kind of killed two birds with one stone there. And I really like this thing. It's pretty bright. And I don't think it's naturally kind of

marketed as like one of those sunlight replacement sort of things. But that's kind of been the effect that it's had on me is that I don't get quite as stir crazy when I'm in my office and I can stay down here for longer periods of time. Yeah, I think that that makes sense. I mean, having good light and Laura talked about this during her interview as well, makes a huge difference. And for me in a few minutes, I'll tell you how much I like the light I now have. It's great. but the um yeah that makes sense anything you see you're getting a new keyboard too aren't you yes uh so a lot of what i do is right and i have a code keyboard that i've used for a long time which is a clicky keyboard it's got the the clear switches and it's been fine, but I've kind of always wanted something with brown switches ever since I got this keyboard or key cap tester. Yeah. It's kind of like a fidget toy I play with

here on my desk. And Keychron came out with a new Kickstarter for the K8 keyboard, which I think looks amazing. So I pre-ordered that and it should be here in a couple of weeks. And it's got all the fancy RGB stuff in the background. It's got the brown switches out of the box. But what's crazy about this one and really the reason that I wanted to get it because I want to play around with this stuff, you can actually take all of the keycaps or not keycaps, the switches, out of the keyboard and replace them with other switches without having to solder anything. They are hot swappable. And I just think that's pretty dang cool. Yeah, man. It just sounds to me like the ultimate distraction.

Honestly, it's like, oh, these switches aren't hard enough. I'm going to spend the next hour changing my switches. That's cool. I don going to spend the next hour changing my switches. I don't think it's something you do on a regular basis, but it is like, it's future-proofing the problem, quote-unquote problem, I'm having with my current keyboard is that these switches

aren't exactly right for me. And I wish I could just replace them, but I don't want to solder, and so I can't. And this keyboard allows me you know if there's a new switch that comes out that's the exact right thing for me theoretically i can order those without having to buy a whole new keyboard put those in and i'm ready to go and if a switch goes bad you can replace it the keyboard isn't a failure for you at that point so

that's kind of cool and it's a i think they call it a three quarter keyboard. So it's got the arrow keys and the, um, you know, the insert home page up buttons, but it doesn't have a number pad on it. Correct. And it also is a Bluetooth compatible with up to three devices. Nice. So this could work for my Mac, my iPad, and theoretically even something else. My Mac, my iPad, and theoretically even something else. Total game changer. I have the Kraft keyboard, and it's an excellent keyboard. And I like having the number pad because I tie macros to the number pad. And so I'm kind of in with that. But it's also got the three Bluetooth radios.

And I keep my iPad on the desk in front of my Mac. So I am many times a day switching that keyboard between those two devices. Once you get that, you will not be able to go back. I have a Bluetooth keyboard that I've used with an iPad in the past. And I do like the experience of typing on a keyboard using my iPad with a trackpad. But having to use that keyboard on my Mac also and having to reconfigure the Bluetooth all the time, it just is a pain and it's not worth it. So theoretically, I can just tap the button, take it with me, and I feel like that's going to be helpful as I consider... You know, another thing Laura talks about in her book is like primary versus secondary workspaces. Well, I have a MacBook, so I can bring it with me other places,

but I like using the iPad that way. And I like grabbing that, bringing it upstairs and using the keyboard or I sit out on the back deck and do some writing there. That's really intriguing to me. And now I can do that with the same keyboard. Yeah. Nice. Well, uh, my ergonomic situation has been fine. Uh, although your chair is very interesting to me. Um, the, uh, but my, my big challenge with working at home has been the change of people, right? So for several years, I was working from home and I was home alone all day. You know, my wife went to work, my kids went to school. One of my kids didn't even live here for a while. And I had tons of time to myself every day to get my work done. So I had ultimate control in terms

of availability. Like when were my, when was my productivity prime time? I could customize to that, you know, and just like Laura had the problem with her time being 9.30, but that's the time her kids needed her, I'm having the same issues. Because my office is no longer a separate room in the house. My office is kind of the exact opposite of what Laura said a good home office should be. I'm almost in the smack dab middle of the house now. The upside is I have massive windows in front of me and I have tons of light. That room, it's the most well lit room in our house. It has kind of like skylights up higher in the walls. It's got, that's the high ceiling room

in our house. And I love the light in that room and it makes, it just brings energy to me. I can't even explain how much more I feel like getting work done in there than I do in the old studio, which was pretty dark. It only had one small window. So that's, that's a win. But the downside is I have four, three other people in my house and a dog, right? So the whole day people are coming and going doing laundry. If you turn the laundry machine on when I'm recording in that room, I can't record because the machine comes on to the recording. It's just like, and anybody that wants to go to the kitchen to have lunch

is going to walk through my space. So it's like the least private room in the house. And that was a problem because one of the ways I pay for my shoes is I make these field guides and I record podcasts and I've had to really adjust to it. And at first it was kind of a bummer, but then I realized I was whining about stuff that I couldn't control. So why are you doing that to yourself? Just figure out a way, you know, figure out a solution. And I realized that my kids are not young kids. They, they're, you know, teenagers and more,

they like to sleep in, you know, and my wife is also a night owl. She'll stay up at night and, you know, do stuff around the house. So I go to bed early enough that I can wake up at seven. And then I, uh, I take care of the dog. And then usually I'm at my computer around nine, I'm sorry, seven 30. And then I've got two to three hours where there's nobody around and the dog takes a nap in the morning after she has her, you know, business and her walk and her food. So I've got like two to three hours a day where I'm not going to have any interruption. And it always happens between like eight and 11. So why don't I embrace that? And now that is my recording time. So every day I have that block out for recording screencasts for the field guide, or if there's a video I'm working on or something,

I do that then. And I know in my head, that's the only time I'm going to be allowed to do that. Now I can do edits and stuff at any time of the day, but the recording part is the key part, right? And for the first time in a long time, I have constraints around when I record. And it's starting to occur to me that this is a win. That makes a lot of sense. I kind of wish I could record earlier in the day. I've tried that before. I think I recorded one podcast episode early in the morning because the guest was East Coast time and that's the only time they could do it is before work. And I got feedback from people who listened to that episode

because my voice was about an octave lower than it normally is. And they said, I really like what you've done with your voice. Well, I just forced myself to talk a little bit earlier, but it definitely wasn't comfortable and it's not something that I could do on a regular basis. And one time I did an interview with Mike Hurley and he's in London and I did the recording at like 5 a.m. And someone wrote me and said they thought I was high because I was talking about jazz too. But this isn't that early. This is more 7.30 to 8 for start time. And if I'm smart and I get everything prepped so I can just sit down and start recording, my voice is fine at that hour. And the downside is I can't do extended sessions.

Like sometimes when I'm working on a field guide, there'll be three or four days that go by where I'm working like 16 hour days on the field guide. The upside is there are not big stretches of time where I can work on the field guide, you know, because, you know, when I would do that, everything else would fall apart. You know, podcast prep would get behind, blog posting would get behind, legal work would get behind. And I would just be like on this, you know, this crazy, crazy, you know, pendulum swing where I'd be getting a ton of work done on one project, but everything else would be going to hell. Now I'm forced to do this time. So I'm trying to put it in every day or almost every day. Usually I'll take Sundays off and, and then I'll, um, but I'm making slow, steady progress on it during the

hours I'm allowed to. And because I'm not working 16 hour days on it during the hours I'm allowed to. And because I'm not working 16-hour days on it, I am keeping up with everything else in my life, which is a win too. So it's just kind of a funny story that I was very begrudging originally about moving the office downstairs and thinking, when am I going to get the work done? But actually, I think it might be a win for me. That's interesting. I know people who say that that's how they work, is those long extended periods when they're going to sit down and do something, they're just going to go till they can't go anymore.

And I've always kind of thought that that's just because that's what they naturally gravitated to. And if they were forced to change, they could, in fact, change. And it sounds like that's exactly what's happened to you is the force constraints have shown you there's another way to work here. And maybe it's better because you don't have to deal with dropping the ball with all the other areas. What Laura was talking about was the fact that you need to do this consistently. And that's the real valuable thing. It's not the

Herculean effort that you put in on that one day that you put in the 16 hours. It's showing up every day and being able to do that and be confident that you're able to get the work done. Yeah. So for me, it's kind of come down to I have the morning shift of recording. And then as soon as the family starts to wake up and move around, which is usually around 1030, 11, I stop. And then I have like a little home workout and meditation routine I do. So I kind of shifted back the original morning kind of routine. And then I shower and do all that stuff. And then usually by around 1130, I'm able to have a quick lunch and, um, and then get to work on legal. And I work on legal stuff until about four. And then I spend like an hour working on the blog and kind of background, Max Sparky stuff.

And then I shut down, you know, that's kind of like the ideal day. I mean, obviously they change when I'm recording podcasts or if I have, you know, sometimes my schedule alters, but the perfect day for me is like three hours to a field guide in the morning, four hours to the law practice in the afternoon, and then an hour or two to max parking in the afternoon. And that's a, um, I mean, I'm getting a lot of progress in and I'm more consistently shutting down, which if you've listened to the show for any length of time, that's been a challenge for me. So it's working out. If suddenly this thing gets cured

and everybody goes back to school and work, I think I would really try to stay with this schedule. This episode of The Focus Podcast is brought to you by Blinkist. Read over 3,000 books in 15 minutes or less. Start your seven-day free trial. Go to Blinkist, B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash focused. With the ever-changing routines, there's never a better time to learn something new. And with thousands of options available, finding the best way to learn can be challenging.

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All right, so before the break, we were just starting to talk about shutdown routines. This is something Laura talks a lot about and thought maybe we should revisit this again today. Yeah. When Laura said her shutdown routine is turning off her computer, I just felt like, oh brother, I am way farther down this rabbit hole than she is. Well, I thought about that because I want to just address that real quickly. You and I probably have a whole bunch of things that we do on our computers, which stay on. But when she said that at first, I was kind of like, well, that's really simple.

And then I thought, that's kind of genius. Because if I have to wait a couple minutes for my computer to actually boot up again before I can do anything with it, then I'm not going to reach for it. So I think that's kind of genius, actually. Yeah. Productivity hack right there. Yeah. I mean, the reason the shutdown routine is so important, in my opinion, is it kind of gets to a concept that I learned when I was a young lawyer in trial.

kind of gets to a concept that I learned when I was a young lawyer in trial. We were working on something late into the night and somebody said, hey, are you working late or are you just borrowing against tomorrow? And that always stuck with me. I feel like sometimes when you run too hard, you are borrowing against tomorrow. It doesn't matter if you get another three hours in today, tomorrow you're going to lose four or five hours because of it. And Laura even talked about that in kind of a different frame during the interview. But I feel like the shutdown routine is what helps me avoid borrowing against tomorrow. The other thing that the shutdown is important to me is giving me the ability to be disconnected during the day. Like a big part of my shutdown, I'm going to go through in a minute, is clearing up communication lines. And because I know I'm going to do that at the end of the day, most days, it allows me to be free from checking email, checking text messages,

and doing all this stuff during the day and actually get work done. So the shutdown routine, and then of course the last thing it does is help me plan the next day. But I have many more steps, but I think they're serving an important purpose for me. Sure. That makes a lot of sense. I like that phrase, be careful you're not borrowing against tomorrow. I think I've definitely been guilty of that. And when you frame it that way, it's almost like, well, duh, of course I should stop working now because tomorrow, if I have to make a choice between tomorrow when I'm rested or hour 13 on this project, when I'm fried, of course the hour tomorrow is going to be better, but we don't view it as like an either or situation. Yeah. All right. So let's talk through our shutdown routines. Mine is ever evolving.

So I'm going to kind of put that on there. But so closing down the communication lines is the first thing I do. And I usually start my shutdown around 5, 4.35 in the afternoon. Is I just process email. This is probably the biggest step of shutdown because I look at email in the morning and do a brief sweep of email. If there's something on fire, I stop and reply to it, but largely I don't reply to email in the morning. I'm a nerd, so I have a keyboard maestro script that puts them into a folder for later in the day and then I don't see them until the afternoon. So I deal with all that. All the email that came in overnight and during the day that needs my response, I try to deal with it right there as best as possible. If I don't have enough time to deal with it all, I will just deal

with the most urgent and deal with the rest of it the next day. But then you start getting behind and then you got to deal with it over the weekend. And so I really try to get through the important email on the day. And, and also I'm getting better about just not replying to everything. But anyway, so I process email and I have three different accounts. I have the personal, the Max Sparky and the legal account. And I do all of that at the end of the day. I also have other venues of communication. Slack is important for the nerd stuff I do. Relay has a Slack channel and some of the other things I work on have Slack channels. So at the end of the day, I check that. I don't want Mike to send me a note about the podcast at 10 a.m. and me to not respond

to it at all that day. But he may not hear from me till the end of the day because i don't keep checking slack all day but you know having this as a shutdown item gives me the freedom once again to focus on things and not keep going into slack all day i do the same thing with text messages you know text messages my clients a lot of them have my cell phone number and they'll send me texts or even just family and friends. I want to be responsive to those, but I don't necessarily want to do it immediately. And at the end of the day, shutdown is when I do that. Nice. On the topic of email,

I feel like we've got a whole show on this at some point in the near future. That's been a big part of my shutdown routine too. I'll share some of the adjustments that I've made there. But I am coming to grips with the fact that I need to be even more opinionated about what I'm going to be doing via email than I have been. So everybody who thinks I'm already bad at email, I apologize. I just got a lot worse. Yeah. I know. I, I, I recently did like, I had a bunch of feedback from listeners that I wanted to reply to and had gone back to like January. And I recently just, you know, I did as my, I went back like two weeks and then I just archived everything and you know what the world didn't end spending. But I'm also trying to be better now about being timely responsive. And I think people understand if you've got a lot going

on that you can't necessarily reply to everything. One of the problems with going back and replying, I mean, this is, I guess, whiny podcaster problems, but if I respond to like a hundred listener emails, then I get almost immediately 80 replies to those responses. And I love talking to listeners. They're just like me. I mean, that's why they listen to the show. We're a bunch of nerdy productivity people, right? But there's just not enough time. I can do that or I can make field guides and feed the family. But it is a challenge. But by blocking time into the shutdown, it frees me up not to have to deal with it during the day. And I think that is an improvement. Yeah, I totally, totally agree. You got other pieces to your shutdown routine? Oh, so many, man.

So those are the communication stuff I deal with. I try to clear those out. I also try to buzz through Twitter and the Mac power user forums and, you know, the various forums that I'm a part of, but Mac power user actually pay for that forum. So I feel like I should go in there, you know, um, the, uh, so I try and go into the forums and, you know, like check in on those. And I've got like filters that let me know if there's stuff in there I should be looking at. So I try to spend a few minutes in

each of those. And that kind of is the communication part. And it's real important that I do that every day. So the people that I work with don't think I'm a flake. The next thing is just kind of like the system clear out. And I like I have drafts, and I'm writing into drafts all day, I clear out the drafts inbox and I have OmniFocus that I'm adding stuff to throughout the day and I clear out the OmniFocus inbox. And this is the chance where I have an opportunity to apply my filter and say, oh, I wrote that down as an idea of something I should do. This is where I should say, no, I'm not going to do that. And just like, you know, apply the filter. I also like the word consider because not every day do i do these

things but i have a couple considerations like i consider cleaning the studio if it's got if i look around it's got messy i like a really clean workspace and i do the same thing with my computer desktop at the end of the day it's it's on my list i look and see if there's stuff on my desktop i put it where it belongs and then i also that's's the time where I do the OmniFocus review. So, you know, once I get through the inputs, I deal with, you know, the system stuff. And if I have any projects due for review in OmniFocus, I kind of get all that down to the ground. And then I plan tomorrow. You know, I get the calendar out and I look at OmniFocus. I have perspectives on OmniFocus

show me important tasks over the next couple of days and I can start trying to whittle that list down like Laura was talking about to a manageable list. And that's also where I assign time blocks for the next day. Because of this kind of change in circumstances,

I have adopted the repeating event time blocking. So now every day I have an event from 7.30 to 11 to work on field guides or recording. That doesn't mean every day I do it, but that's my starting point. And then I'll delete it or move it as necessary as I plan the days out. But also put blocks in. And this is really true for legal projects. Like I'll say, Oh, the Wiley coyote contract, I've been meaning to get that done. I'm going to put a two hour block in for that tomorrow afternoon. And now I know that's going to get settled and all the pieces of that and

OmniFocus get moved to tomorrow. So I can see all the pieces as I'm working through that time block. so I can see all the pieces as I'm working through that time block. So I do that in the planning for the next day. And I also have a system where I have weekly priorities. You know, what are the things that I really want to get done this week? I try and check on those as I'm planning for the next day to say, Oh, how am I doing on my weekly priority of this? Is that, have I got time set aside for that tomorrow or do I need to wait another day on that so that's kind of the planning stuff and then the last thing I do is kind of the review stuff and I have right now I'm trying out day one I we've been talking a lot about journaling lately I've been trying a lot of tools I guess we'll have to get to that on the show at

some point but I tried Rome I've been trying a book right now I'm doing an experiment with day one and I have a day one template. But I used to do these things by hand in a notebook too. But I have a bunch of prompts. You know, how am I feeling? What were my wins? A new thing I've started doing with my daily review is I break myself down to maker, manager, and consumer. So I have three prompts, maker, manager, consumer. What did I do today as a maker? Well, I made a focused podcast and I recorded two videos for the paperless field guide and I wrote a contract for a client. So I kind of like summarize my maker achievements. And then as a manager, what did I do? Well, I properly planned the next day and, you know, I just try to rate myself as a manager for the day. And as a consumer, what did I do? Lately, consumer is I keep watching Last Avatar with my daughter.

But whatever. Maybe I watched a cool YouTube video that taught me something. Whatever. I listen to a good podcast or listen to a book. So I write those things down. And then the other prompts I have, and I don't fill out these prompts every day. But now that I have them, I can just delete the ones that don't apply to the day. What could I have, and I don't fill out these prompts every day, but now that I have them, I can just delete the ones that don't apply to the day.

You know, what could I have done better? What am I looking forward to? What were the most delightful moments? And kind of just give myself a chance to debrief myself on the day. So that was a lot more than just turning my computer off, but that's my current check-in. Nice.

Regarding the journaling, that is definitely something we'll have to unpack in another show. Uh, but just real briefly, my version of that, that I've been using recently, cause you shared some of your prompts. So impromptu journaling episode, I guess, uh, I've mentioned before I've been using these daily questions, which is an idea I picked up from Marshall Goldsmith and his book Triggers. That's a great book. Yeah, I really like these. This seems to work a lot better for me than any of the journaling prompts that I have ever used. And I don't know why. I know the thought behind this is simply the phrasing, did I do my best to, and then you insert whatever.

So it's not what did I do in specific areas, but did I put forth the effort? And then I do these in Rome and I recorded a video on how I do these. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes for people who are interested, but it's just a text expander snippet and it uses a zero to 10 sliding scale. And mine are, did I do my best to grow spiritually? Did I do my best to love my wife? Did I do my best to love my kids? Did I do my best to learn something new? Did I do my best to create something? And did I do my best to exercise? And instead of at the end of the day, putting in my responses, I adjust these as I go. So as we're recording a podcast, did I do my best to create something? Yes, I spent a couple hours making a podcast. So I'll bump it up to nine or 10.

Did I do my best to exercise as soon as I get back from a 15 mile bike ride or whatever? I'll bump that up into the appropriate scale. And then as part of the shutdown routine, I will update any that haven't been updated throughout the day because this is all happening on the daily notes page inside of of Roam Research. So that's part of a category that I call Get Clear. And this is something I picked up from Sean Blanc recently. I thought this was brilliant. I think David Allen has a version of this too, where Get Clear, Get current, get creative. And generally that's pertaining to your inbox. You want to deal with your email so you can get back to doing your best creative work,

your deep focused work, the work that actually matters. But at the end of the day, I find it helpful just to clear the decks and then plan for tomorrow. So I've got, you know, get clear and get current, basically. So I mentioned updating the daily questions. That's part of what I'll do at the end of the day. I will also empty out all of the things that are my buckets. So that's drafts, I'll capture things inside of drafts as I go. Quotes, tasks that I need to do when I don't have my fancy notebook with me. And then at the end of the day, everything from both drafts and the notebook ultimately is going to end up in the appropriate place inside of Roam. Like you, I go through the email and make sure that that's all clear. But one of the things that I noticed is that I've got all these messages that I have to deal with every day. And I wasn't happy with the numbers I was having to process.

So I was trying out Hay and I really like their screener technology. I think SaneBox does something very similar, although Hay kind of forces you to make decisions. Do you want this or don't you? And with SaneBox, it'll just continue to show up and you'll just keep hitting delete until you you make some modifications and some training so i went through and i moved a whole bunch of stuff to the same black hole and the number of emails that i get in a day now has been reduced by probably uh 100 to 200 i'm getting about a third of the email, I think, at the end of the day than I was. And I didn't really realize until I did all those trainings and I had less to deal with how much I resisted that just because of the number. Even though I knew I was going to

be able to crank through it quickly, I found myself not wanting to do that. And so just making it not just dealing with the symptom, but realizing what's the disease that's causing this. It's that I haven't unsubscribed from these things and I keep getting these things. I don't really want to see these things anymore and I have to keep deleting them. Well, deal with the source of it. And that's actually created a lot of mental margin, I guess, as part of my get clear process, as part of my shutdown routine. part of my, my get clear process as part of my, my shutdown routine. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I like, I have also been more aggressive lately. I made a smart email box that looks for email that contains the word unsubscribe. And I go through that like on a weekly basis and like, I'm not going to

unsubscribe from an unknown email because often that unsubscribe button is just telling them there's a human there and they can throw more at you but if it's like a company a reputable company that you know of and you bought something from them five years ago you just you know start pushing that button and remove as much of that noise as you can with same box and they sponsor mac power users so you know take it with a grain of salt but it really has made a difference for me because it, it gets the actual inbox count down to low. And I, I made a, a box in same box called feedback years ago, which it's on the Mac Sparky account and people with questions about field guides and other things that stuff comes, I don't know how same box figured it out, but it puts all, it kind of filters that email for me. So I can block time to do that.

And one of my tasks when working on the field guides is customer support. I view that as different than answering email. And so I have time set aside for customer support. And that's dealt with through email, but that's a part of the business that I need to make sure I do all the time. So it just kind of, you know, changing your frame of reference is good. And, and also just dropping the expectation that you're the guy who answers all your email. If you, if you have that, that is like, that is like an anchor around your neck, if that's your self image. And, and I don't know anybody that produces a lot of stuff that answers all their email. I

mean, it's just the fact of the life. Yeah. Well, even if you don't self-identify with that, if you have to go in ever and respond to somebody that you work with, who you do care about, you do want to reply on a regular basis, and they occasionally will email you, that creates the pressure to go in there all the time. And just to see if that person got back to you. And sometimes it's a boss who expects it. Sometimes it's just you don't want to disappoint a specific person. And generally, I would say, I agree with your statement. I don't want to be the email guy. But for a handful of people, I realized that I kind of did. And so I had to deal

with that. There's a couple of ways you can do that. You can talk to them directly and be like, hey, the best way to get a hold of me is, here's my cell phone number, text me if it's really important. Or if it's somebody you work with, there are other work-based tools like we use Basecamp, Eplonk Media. It could be Slack and stuff like that too. I hesitate to say that because a lot of people just move all the noise from email to Slack and now that's the tool that people have to check all the time. But for me, the big win was recognizing that there is an inherent bad taste in my mouth for having to deal with this just because of the volume. And so how can I improve the signal to noise ratio and look forward to going in there a little bit more so that it becomes consistent and I do it every day?

Because there were times when I just wouldn't touch my email for a week and then the day of pain and suffering comes and I have to get through everything. Yeah, and you end up spending like five hours there and it's just like it's insane. Yeah, not worth it, not worth it. So how do you make it more sustainable? I am. Yeah, I think making decisions on a daily basis of, okay, I'm just not going to reply to this. It's that's okay. Make the decision at the time of input. Cause if you start carrying it around for weeks or months, sometimes it just becomes additional baggage for you. Yep. Agreed. That decision

to deal with email at the end of the day in substance for me took place over time. I mean, originally, my thought was, oh, in the morning, I'll get through the email. And then the afternoon, I'll do a quick check to see if anything blew up during the day. But then I realized, well, in the morning, I'm super productive. This is even before that was the only time I could record. Like, why am I going to use my most productive hours answering email? That's crazy. So I flipped it and the morning just looks for emergencies and everything else gets pushed off. And I, uh, and I am better for it, but everybody's got to kind of go on their own journey here. And this is

something that'd be good to talk about in the forums. In fact, if you've got interesting shutdown routines that would also be interested for the forums, which you can find over at talk.macpowerusers.com. We have our own room there for the Focus podcast. Awesome. I do have one other part of this. So that's kind of like the get clear piece. Yeah.

And then the get current, this is basically where I look at the calendar. And so this is where I plan tomorrow. I'm not looking at the calendar to see what else I have today. It's looking ahead to tomorrow and what are the big things I'm going to have to work around as I time block my day tomorrow inside of the notebook. You mentioned that you have repeating time blocks. So you're probably doing this digitally, it sounds like, but I'm actually writing it out by hand still

every single day. And I really, really enjoy that process. So I continue to do that even though it's less efficient. And so the calendar will, those things will go on the timeline first. I'll pick my five tasks, up to five tasks that I'm going to try and do during the day, put that on the list, and then fill out the rest of the time block day for kind of where I'm going to be able to work on those. And also scheduling fun stuff in there. So we've been playing a lot of board games lately with everybody at home. And I look forward to putting that block from 8 to 9 p.m. after the little kids go to bed where we get to play King of Tokyo or Castles of Mad King Ludwig or Catan or something with the older two. And I put that on the calendar.

And then I see that whenever I go back to my time block plan. And it's something that creates a little bit of anticipation and joy and something that I'm looking forward to as I'm going through my day. Yeah, that's why you do it, man. That's why you do it. I'm time blocking music because that's a challenge for me. I want to play music every day and that's the thing I always sacrifice. You know, I've gotten now good enough at shutting down now and I need to get good enough at making time to make music every day.

But you know, we all have our little challenges. Right. All right. Well, well, those are our shutdown routines as of today, tomorrow, they may be different for both of us. You just never know. I think I'm going to go back. I remember reading Marshall Goldsmith's book and being really impressed. I think I'm going to go back and read it again. So who knows what my, uh, my prompts will be the next time we talk about this. All right. Well, if you don't want to go back and read the whole thing, I've got a podcast episode you can listen to.

Oh, yeah. Over. We'll put a link for that in the show notes. All right. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm. I want to thank our sponsors. That's our friends over at ExpressVPN and Blinkist.

Sound off in the forums at talk.macpowerusers.com and we'll see you in two weeks.