Focused - 228: Time Surfing, with Paul Loomans

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Welcome to Focus Podcast. I'm David Sparks and joined as always with your friend of mine, Mike Schmitz. Hey Mike, how are you doing? Hey David, pretty good. How about you? I'm doing really well. And today we've got a special guest on the Focus Podcast. Welcome to the show, Paul Lumens. Yeah, thank you very much. Paul, I first became aware of you when reading the most recent Oliver Berkman book, the Meditations for Mortals book. And he referenced you in the book because you came up with the idea, we're going to

get into it deeper in the show of gnawing rats and white sheep and just an interesting approach to dealing with some of the things that we don't want to do in life. And I said, this guy sounds interesting. So I bought your book. The book's called I've Got Time. It's a recent release, right Paul? Yeah, I've Got Time, well it's released already seven years ago with another title.

Then the title was Time Surfing, and the editor changed the title now in I've Got Time. It's the same book, the same content. Okay, but you've got some really interesting thoughts on time management. The subtitle is a Zen Monk's Guide to a Calm, Focused and Meaningful Life, which is something that we're very interested here on the Focus podcast, where we like to tell folks life is more than just cranking widgets.

And I read the book. It's a quick read, not too long. What is it about? It's about 150 pages, very easy read, very nice thought, written very well, Paul. Now, you're calling in from the Netherlands. Did you write the book in English or was it translated? No, no, it was translated by an American translator.

Well, he or she did an excellent job. It's very conversational. Yeah, thank you. But we thought we'd have you on the show to kind of talk about I've Got Time and some of the interesting principles that you share in the book. So I guess what I'd start with, Paul,

is there's a couple ideas you have in the book that really stood out to me. But before we do that, just tell a little bit about what brought you into the whole idea of writing a book about productivity in general. Well, that wasn't my purpose at all. So before I was an actor and director of physical theater and loving a lot my job I was doing. And at the same time, I was also responsible for a meditation center in Amsterdam, the European Zen Center.

And I had a family with three young children. And just I tried like everybody to manage my three tasks as well as I could. Well, I had thought of my own system to manage all these three themes as well as I could. And this way of managing my time didn't satisfy me anymore. So I tried to do something else. That was the starting point. You know, I think there's an interesting sub group of people who think about this stuff, who are also meditators.

I have meditated for a long time. And in hindsight, I think what it gave me is the ability to disconnect from a lot of the attractions of social media and some of the distractions that exist these days. But I think you brought it to another level. And we frequently talk on this show about the role of intentionality. Like I have this theory that all productivity advice is just about teaching people to be intentional

about what they do ultimately. And so I thought you being a Zen monk, you actually brought a lot of that to this book on the top level. Because I feel like this intentionality theme is always just below the surface in advice about productivity. But what makes your book interesting to me is that you address it directly and it really is the underlying foundation of the book. At least it felt to me like it was. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. So you decided that it wasn't working for you. So tell us what you did.

I had three lists in the beginning. Before I started doing something, I had three lists. One list for acting and directing pieces. That was a very detailed list because I was in several productions. Then I had a second list for the European Zen Center. It was detailed also because I had a lot of things in my head from an organizing point. The family with three young children, I think every parent can tell you when children are young, you have to organize and manage a lot. So because I had these three teams, I had three lists and each evening I saw myself looking at these lists and taking off two points from one list and immediately thinking of renewed themes that

had to be added to this list. Also this list, they scared me. They always gave me the impression there was so much to do and I had done this day so less. And so also I hadn't done everything that I had thought in my mind I would do this day. It was always less and this train did never stop. And then also I remarked something. I thought me as a Zen monk, I thought my Zen meditation would bring me closer to what I was doing, and it certainly did. I could remark this very well in Zen temples, in Zen surroundings, but when I was in a normal social surrounding and I took the same gestures as everybody, so making lists and taking off what you are doing.

I remarked that I was just trying to finish my tasks and to empty my lists. And I was not living for what I was doing. Yeah. And I thought as a Zen monk, this is not what I want to do. This is not how I want to live. So that was the point. I think for a lot of people, they're, they're a task lists. I mean, just that name task list is a source of anxiety.

And, you know, it is like so much in like the daily tally of failure. Like you get to the end of the day and you didn't complete what you had on your list and you feel like you didn't do it right. And I think a lot of people really struggle with that. And that's why your book got to this story and you're telling about how you got to this point. And then you told what you did next and I like had to literally stop and set the book down

and just like process that for a minute. Because what did you do? Well, the first thing what I did do before the point where you are speaking about is that I formulated for myself what do I want to, how do I want to live when this is not the way I want to live, how do I want to live? And then I said to myself, I want to live out of peace. Not that in the evening, when everything is done, more or less, I'm diving on my coach and I still have an half an hour of rest. No, I want to have this rest, this peace in my mind at every moment of the day. That was my aim. at every moment of the day. That was my aim. And I thought everything that makes me, that is in, that stresses me and that keeps me away from this aim, I'm going to look at it

more closely. And one of the first things that put me away from this, from this aim were the lists. And I looked at, one, I looked very well as these three lists, how perfect they were and how I tried to manage them as good as I could. And I thought, but this brings me away from what I want to. So when I'm honest to myself, I have to find another system. But I didn't know which kind of system but I knew one thing I knew for sure. That was I don't want to have this anymore. So I took my lists up and I throw them away. I love that. He just tossed them. You know, there's a book that was very influential on me. It was Thich Nhat Hanh's Miracle of Mindfulness book. And in the beginning he explains how he had a friend

who was raising children and had a busy life and asked him, well, how do you keep a meditation practice? How do you remain mindful with all that going on? And his response was, well, I look at everything I do as an opportunity to be mindful. And that I thought was always very insightful. But I'd never thought about it in terms of productivity tools. And that I thought was always very insightful. But I'd never thought about it in terms of productivity tools.

And you did. And that's when you hooked me with this book, because it's like, what a kind of revolutionary thought, but at the same time, it kind of makes sense too. Yeah. And it's also a theme of, there is also, yeah, the word stress is also important in this whole matter. Because I was very conscious of when something caused stress to me. I saw the lists cause stress, but I saw also other things in my life that cause stress. And for example, one thing that causes stress is when you try to be mindful.

That causes stress. It's very difficult to be in something, to be aware of doing something and not being aware of what you're doing. It's very difficult. And when you try to, you become stressed. So time surfing gives an all other approach. It gives the same result. At the end, you are aware of what you're doing, but the way is completely different. In the first section on stress, you talk about this

The first section on stress, you talk about this analogy metaphor of a four story house. Do you mind talking through that a little bit and explaining how that potentially helps you deal with the stress? Yeah, well, the house with the four floors, you have the lowest part of the house, the cave. It's about emotions.

Time is the ground floor. First floor is about your thoughts and your behavior. And you have the upper part. And the upper part of the house is about communication. These are the four themes which are important to look at for your personality, but also for your behavior with stress. So they influence each other.

But time-serving is the ground floor, it's the basic. And it was also for me the starting point. Also, the other three teams came later in my life. When I saw, well, this is not the only theme in which can cause stress, also emotions can give you stress. And then I started to study emotions and then came my second book about emotions and so on. And now the four floors are really well documented. I'm still writing the fourth book about communication, so on. And now the four floors are really well documented. I'm still writing the fourth book about communication, but giving a lot of trainings in communication

as well. Yeah, the whole house is standing there. You mentioned that the walls of the house represent the tension in your body. Do you mind unpacking that a little bit? Why is that important? Well, it's like a kind of, the tension you can feel in your body is like, it gives you a very good idea of in which matter something is causing you stress or not, if you are conscious of it. And I'm

very conscious of it. I think my Zen practice made me more conscious and my Zen practice than I was before I was a physical actor. So I'm very conscious of my body. Maybe something more, a little bit more as someone else, I don't know. But I'm very conscious of when there is stress in my body. And that helped me a lot discovering the instructions of time surfing because I could see immediately when something was causing somewhere in my body stress. I mean, I think that's something everybody can experience. You don't even need to be a physical actor

or as in practitioner. Like you can feel often, like I recently we're dealing with something and I kept feeling this my neck and my shoulders, right? And like you're like, well, what is that? Because I haven't been doing exercise that would particularly stress them. But then you realize, no, I'm just wrapping up this thing I'm worried about into my muscles. And just being observant of it,

you often will find that. And I think anybody listening should make a point to be more conscious of what's going on in their body as they deal with stress. Yes, I agree. Can you talk about a little bit about the basement, you know, the emotions as they relate to these kinds of things we're talking about today

with the lists and this tension we put on ourselves? Well, the emotions, they involve in our work on several ways. Everything that we are planning to do in the future can scare you. Because we don't know how it will work. We don't know if it will be like we want to be it and there's not something unknown that will happen. And so it scares us. These worries, they transform itself in faults. But underneath these faults, there is an emotion. And this emotion is fear. So we fear about the future because we don't know what will happen. And to calm our fear about what is happening in the future, we start to fret, to think around, to try with our thoughts to calm what we are living.

But our thoughts are not capable of doing this. Our thoughts are not capable of calming our circumstances. We think we can, but we cannot. The only thing which can calm our fear is accepting the fear, is feeling the fear. And that's the, well, we are immediately in one of the, one of the seven instructions. That's the sixth, sixth instruction. Sixth instruction about background programs. I call it this, these kinds of thoughts that all the time turn around all the, always in the same, same way, trying to calm down what, what are our fears. It's just, I call it background programs. Yeah.

Let's talk about the seven instructions then, because I think this is really kind of the foundation of the book. You gave up your list and then you started observing yourself and you came up with some principles that were useful for getting your work done. In fact, I think that's something I want to say right at the top here. I'm sure there are people listening who are like, well, I'm a fancy businessman. I can't just throw away my list.

Well, let's listen to the seven steps that Paul is recommending because I think variants of this can help you no matter how busy you are. Maybe there's some things in here that can actually allow you to be more present with the work you're doing. But you did make these observations for these seven instructions. Let's start with the first one then. Do one thing at a time and finish what you're doing. Yes, that's really the basic thing. I think we are all multitasking a lot. And one of the reasons we are so much multitasking is that we became so well in communication. We can communicate

so quickly to each other, as we are doing now. We are zooming to the other part of the planet. We are so well in communication and we can send of the planet. We are so well in communication and we can send amounts of information very quickly to each other through different channels and everybody has different channels which he uses for his communication and so we try to do this in between. I'm writing something and in between I try to answer my email because the more quickly I've done my email, the more I've freed my head from thoughts that are maybe disturbing me, so I should keep my head free. And then we are all the but the small things in between they interfere in this bigger task that you want to do. On a negative way, in fact, they are very negative for what you are doing. You cannot concentrate anymore when you are disrupted all the time.

The first instruction is do just one thing at a time or when I call it differently, I say also do the things one after each other and not one beneath each other. I feel like this is like such basic advice but in the modern world so hard to follow. I think everything you said is true, and every day the distractions, and some of them are pleasant distractions, frankly, show up, and if you're trying to truly be focused on the thing that you're doing, I think technology and just all the distractions in the world today

make that super difficult. What kind of advice would you give someone listening to this that wants to try and adopt this practice? Let's say they're not a meditator, they've not got the experience you do, but they do want to take this seriously. What are some tricks they could use? Well, the first thing I would already say is close your email. Close your email.

Don't have your email opened all the time. So you choose the email and let not that email choose you. Each time doing one thing at a time doesn't mean that you need to do one thing during two hours before you may make it shorter. But I only look at emails at very strategic moments. So when I finished something then I allow myself to open the email, doing some email. Well email isn't a FEMA part but I take it as a task email and not as something in between. So that would be my first advice to people.

Yeah, I also like the mantra you talk about in the book. That was taught to me by a Zen teacher a long time ago, the idea of like, now I am brushing my teeth, just like telling yourself if you start doing something that this is what I'm doing and reminding yourself that you're not doing anything else. Yes, that's the second instruction. The second instruction, the whole instruction is be aware from what you're doing and accept it.

And, in fact, this second instruction that tells you that everything you do, no matter how small it is or how insignificant it is, see it as something that is as important as everything else. This also if you are going to brush your teeth or if you are going to somewhere else and you have a walk from five minutes, this walk from five minutes is very important. If you're going to cook, not only eating is important, but also cutting the vegetables is important. And for me, you shouldn't try to do it with a lot of consciousness, cutting the vegetables, but it's only accepting it. That's the only thing, accepting it as the mean action of the moment. And then when you do this, it changes color. We do a lot of things for later. I'm now cutting the vegetables to put them in the, to be able to cook. And I'm now

cooking to be able to eat. And I'm eating to be able to finish. And I'm now cleaning the table to be able to do something else. We do a lot of things for later and the second instruction is do the things for themselves. And it helps when you do something reluctantly or when you do something very quickly, it helps to name it. It's not something you should do all the time. In my vision, do it only when you really have something you do reluctantly or do it during a couple of weeks because very quickly you will be accustomed to it to be also give your concentration to small tasks. It's natural to be concentrated also in a small task. So it will very quickly become usual for you.

And I would add to this, an excellent way to experiment with this is with eating. Like I think quite often we eat our food, but we don't actually experience eating our food. When I was first learning about this stuff years ago, I remember I was a young professional and I had something going on at work I was stressed out about and I years ago. I remember I was a young professional and I had something going on at work I was stressed out about

and I had a Zen teacher frankly, and we had a meal and she said, you're not eating your food, you're eating your problems. She could see it in me, you know? And that really was eye opening. But like take them, you know, if you're listening to this today, eat an orange and actually eat the orange and just

see and then you can carry that into any phase of life. Yes, but David, my vision about this is very not moralistic and not dogmatic because I much more preach an open attention because when you are cutting the vegetables and you are when you are cutting the vegetables, you're thinking about a problem. This problem needs attention, probably. Yeah. So you can give it attention. And it chooses just this problem chooses the moment where you're cutting the vegetables to present itself to you. Because there, it seems that at this moment, you have time. And so just be open to everything that presents itself to you. It's more the attention from time serving is more try to calm down

all the factors in your surrounding that interferes, all the things in your surroundings that make noise, try to calm them down. And then out of itself, there will come a natural attention. So when you don't have any more people who love music here and people asking your questions there and your phone doing beep beep beep there. And when all these things calm down and also the problems in your head, you take them first and on a certain way very seriously, then there starts to be an inner calm and an inner present that comes out of itself without any willpower. That's one of the secrets of time-serving. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. Hiring the right person for your

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Do you mind explaining a little bit more about what those are and why they're important here? Yeah, I often say when people ask me what is the most important instruction of the seven, then I give as an answer I can't say. All the seven instructions are important, you need them all and they all are very close together. But when one continues and asks me I should take one of the seven instructions and point at it as the most important, I would take one of the seven instructions and point at it as the most important, I would say it's the third instruction about the briefers. The briefers is the most important of the seven. If you don't practice the briefer, the rest won't

work very well in later. And you could define a briefer as a small pause, but that's not doing right to the breather, I think. Of course it's a small pause, but it's much more as a small pause. I would say it's putting yourself off. We are the whole day through, we are on. At the moment we wake up, most of people have their phone beside their bed and they take their phone and from that moment on you are on. And the moments your brain or your energy is saying, give me a break, probably you will take your phone and doing something

on your phone. And then you are still attention, you're still focused. The first instruction is let your focus go off, put your focus off. So put yourself off. And when you do this, and the second thing, what's important in the fruit instruction, that defines when it happens. Because when you're going to sit down and you say, now I'm going to do nothing, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to do nothing. But when you are going to do something, to do something you can do on the automatic pilot. When you're going, for example, cleaning something

or making a cup of tea, when you're doing something you can do on the automatic pilot, then your mind roams free. And then a kind of small miracle will happen. And that's the first instruction. I like the the specifically you mentioned that when you're not sure what to do,

that's a good time to take a breather. That one resonates with me because typically, if I'm not sure what to do, my mind clicks into, well, there's probably a thousand things on the list that you should be doing right now, quote unquote, should be doing. And it immediately kind of tries to get me into the state of hurry that you and rushing that you talked about in the previous instruction. So this was one of my big aha moments from reading, reading your book. And

one of the things that I need to do a better job of is recognizing those moments. And you do a great job of pointing out specific triggers. Like when you find yourself saying, hang in there, you should probably take a breather. When you're not sure what to do, you should probably take a breather. And being okay with doing nothing for a little while is sort of a reset.

Yeah, but doing nothing is very difficult. So I make more precise. It's doing something you can do on the automatic pilot. And that's very precise because when you do something, you cannot take your phone. When you are putting all your dishes in the dishwasher, you cannot look at your phone at the same time and you don't want to do it. But your head starts to roam free at that moment. And that's the secret. And your head starts to roam free, gives a lot of, in fact, what is happening on the, I would say on the first part of the instructions of time serving, it gives you calm, it calms you down, but in the second part of the instructions, which we will see later on, in the second part it will give you good ideas, it will give you good ideas and it will give you a relationship with your subconsciousness. And that's a very important part of time serving,

this second part also. You know, create breathers between activities. Any tips you can give people, I guess you've already shared, do something that you can do on autopilot. Pull weeds, do the dishes, things like that. Yeah, everything you can do with your hands. Everything you can do with your hands.

And when you are working at home, you have a lot of possibilities. The small tasks in your home are all briefers. And when you are in working spots with a lot of people around, then just go to the toilet on another floor, go outside, making a walk around the block, go and make yourself a coffee or a tea only for yourself and not also for the people around you because they need breathers too. Yeah, bring something away. Be creative in your breathers. It's the most important

of all the seven instructions. And take them all, you can feel it very well when you have worked for one and a half hour, one hour maybe, and in a certain moment you feel that your brain is not so clear anymore and you are not so creative anymore. And that's the moment to take a breather. And breather is, don't stay behind your screen. A breather is stand up, and then you think what you're going to do.

First thing is you stand up and then you go to clean, bring something away, go to the toilet. But stand up, don't stay with your screen. Yeah, I agree. It's like it shouldn't. Going to YouTube or online shopping, that doesn't help. You need to move. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Your fourth instruction is give full attention to drop-ins. Could you explain that a little bit? Yeah, that's a typical Zen instruction also. All the first three instructions are also Zen instructions, I would say. You practice them in a Zen temple unconsciously. But also, this fourth instruction, giving full attention to drop-ins. If someone is calling you, you can see this instruction, understand this instruction very well with children. For example, when you have young children around you, and at the moment I was discovering time-serving, I had, and you have young children around you and these children ask your attention during you are doing something. You don't want to give them attention because you're doing something.

So you leave me alone. I want to finish this. But the child will go on until it gets your attention. So what helps you at this moment is turn your head and give full attention to the child that is asking you, Papa, look at what I made. Oh, and then you give the child full attention. That's beautiful. Wow. And at that moment, you can make an agreement with the child and you can say to the child, well, listen, I'm doing something. I need all my attention. Can you play for a while, for example, 10 or 15 minutes, and asking me your question afterwards? Oh, I will come to you.

I will come to you and look what you have done in 10 minutes. Okay? And Papa is in between, is going to finish this. Is that a deal? But I gave the child full attention. Yeah. So the fourth instruction is give full attention to drop-ins. That doesn't mean that you immediately go playing with your children or immediately

go explaining your colleague what he wants to know. You can say, it's possible you say, we do this in half an hour, you agree, but you address yourself with complete attention to the person that asks you a question. One of the things I like about this particular instruction is that you define a drop-in as someone or something that arrives unannounced, but you mentioned that notifications are a form of drop-in. So it's not just people, which is typically maybe what people have in their head when they are trying to mentally picture what is a drop in. Yeah, you're completely right, Mike. And that leads us to the second part of the fourth instruction. The second part is try to avoid to have interruptions as much as you can.

Avoid to have interruptions. So for example, for notifications on your phone, I think a lot of people notice already today, we are all working on it, but put off your notifications. Put off your notifications that they don't make noise, that they don't interrupt you. But the same is for your colleagues. Try to find a way of working where you have all the time you have one hour or one and a half hours in which you can work without being interrupted. And that's very precious, precious to do this because all these interruptions are destructive. When you are doing something creative, doing something where you need all your attention, your mind needs to up to 10 minutes to reach the level when you are completely in a creative

mood or a focused mood. And then in between you are interrupted, you can start out of, you can start again, you can start again out of from zero. So create time without being interrupted. That's the second part of the fourth instruction. And going to the fifth, now this is the one that Oliver Berkman wrote about, is transform gnawing rats into white sheep.

This one's my favorite. Yeah, you know, it might be mine too, because I feel like, well, explain it Paul, then we can talk about it. Yeah, for me, it's very natural. It's also, it's a Zen behavior, I think. Zen behavior is when you have a problem, look at it. When you have pain, look at it.

When you have a problem, yeah, go and look at it. That doesn't mean that you need immediately to do something, but looking at it makes that you, and then not only look at it, I would add also turn around and look at it from all the sides. And when you look at it from all the sides, this thing that was before was a problem starts to become the more and more custom to you. And I would say only end with looking at this thing that was a problem until it's your friend. And it's your friend when you know it very well. Oh, oh, this is why I'm not doing it. Oh, this is where I fear about. Oh, this is where I need some

help with because I cannot do it alone. And when you understand it, it calms down in you and then you know what you have to do. maybe you don't know exactly but you know you this is the part I don't know and because you know what you not know it calms down into you because you somewhere you you suppose I will find a solution I will find a solution because now I know what's the problem so the the fifth instruction is go and look at your knowing rats, turn around until they become your friend. And I call this white sheep. Because when it's your friends, it's not popping up in your head at each moment anymore. It calms down and it's in your subconscious. Again, this word subconscious, it's in your subconsciousness. And that's very important because it's not only immobile in your subconsciousness, it's dynamic. It's

not static, it's dynamic in your subconsciousness. Your subconsciousness tries to help you. I've read so many books about productivity over the years and studied so many theories, but I'd never heard of this approach before. And the context of this is what is it about those things that you know you should do and you can't do? And that's really, I think, kind of the way you define these gnawing rats.

And your approach is not, like so much productivity devices, like, well, this is, you need to sit down and make a list. You need to, you know, there's all these things people will tell you to do to get these things done that you don't want to do, but your, your approach is no, look at your relationship with that thing. Yeah, exactly. And I think that is so useful.

Uh, and I think for even like reading the book, it immediately brought to mind two or three projects and things on my mind that are my gnawing rats and using that skill of attention to it and developing a relationship with it. I mean, it's just such a great idea. I've just never seen it before in a book like this. And it was at that moment that I'm like,

I would really like to get this guy on the show. Well, yeah. I make one jump back to the fourth instruction. One of the drop-ins possible is it's not only drop-ins in your surroundings, you have also drop-ins in your head. And the drop-ins in your head are the have-tos. I have to do this and I have to do that. You're talking with someone and you think, oh, I shouldn't forget to do this.

I have to do this. This was a typical thing I remarked when I had no lists anymore. What I remarked was these drop-ins in my head. They arrived with stress. They didn't arrive calmly. Paul, you shouldn't forget to call your sister because it's her birthday, it came in with stress. Paul, you have to do this. Don't forget it. And so because I didn't have lists anymore, what I started to do was giving it more attention. I looked at it. I looked at this theme. Oh, it's my birthday sister. Oh, I know, I know I have to. Why I have to, nobody tells me I have to, I want to. So I thought I want to phone my sister. Okay, I want to phone my sister. And at the moment I pronounced it like this, I want to phone my sister, something changed in my head.

And the same what happens also with with glowing reds. Something changed in my head and I thought, oh yes, maybe tonight I'm going to, and maybe at that moment, and this is what I want to discuss with her. And then I forgot it, I forget it. At that moment, it arrives in the subconsciousness. At the moment you make contact with something you want to do in the future, if it is a drop in or ignoring red, when you make contact with something you want to do in the future, it comes into your subconsciousness and your subconsciousness has two parts. Two parts, it's like a cave. The first part of your subconsciousness is everything you want to do in the future. The second part of your subconsciousness is everything

you have done in the past, all your experiences, all your experience, all your knowledge. It's huge. It's a huge library. And these two parts of the subconsciousness, they communicate together. So at the moment you have a glowing red and you look around it and it becomes your friend, it is in the front part of your subconsciousness. And now, and it happens unconsciously, you don't see it. Because it happens unconsciously, you don't notice it even. Your ancient part of your subconsciousness is trying to find solutions and giving you good ideas. And then next morning, you stay under the shower and you think about, I have a good idea with my glowing red. This is how I'm going to act in the future.

And that's because you activated your subconscious, your unconscious thinking. And I would say that is the second secret of time serving, using your subconsciousness, you're using the unconscious thinking in your work in resolving your problems and making progress in going on. So that I wanted to explain about about knowing rats. I love that. And I also love the picture that you paint of a gnawing rat and contrasting it to a white sheep Because it's totally the perspective and examining it from all of the different angles that you described about but the gnawing rats You specifically in the book to find it as tasks that eat away at you under the surface So with a gnawing rat, that's the one thing that is demanding your attention

But when you talk about when you talk about viewing it as a white sheep, you have at the end of this instruction, you paint this picture of sheep in a flock where it's like one of many and it can stay over there with all the other ones until you're ready for it. And that part in particular just really resonated with me. Yeah. Yeah. And nowadays I also talk about rough diamonds. Ignoring reds are things you already should have done in the past. And rough diamonds are the plans you have for the future.

The nice, nice plans are in your head for the future. And rough diamonds you should polish. And it's the same thing as ignoring reds, transforming them into white sheep. The rough diamonds you polish. You ask exactly the same four questions. But the fact you do this makes that your future plans, your rough diamonds, they enter into this front part of your subconsciousness. And they are enriched by the ancient part

of the subconsciousness, and you will have good ideas, and everything will go out of its own. You know, I'm glad you shared the subconsciousness elements of your teaching, because, you know, it didn't come out for me as strong reading the book, and hearing you explain it really resonates with me. I feel like often the best solutions I've come up with have been from the background of my brain,

just giving it a problem and going to bed and waking up the next day. I always tell my kids, whenever they're worried about something, I say, if you wait till tomorrow morning, you'll probably know how to deal with it. If you'll just wait. Yeah. So often in life, whenever I've had like terrible news or I just felt despair, I, there's a part of me that knows if I just wait until tomorrow morning,

that I'll have an approach. And that's that subconscious brain at work. And what you've described now, David, that is that you are using this consciously. Yeah. You are, you already are conscious of this working and you use it consciously. And that's what I propose to people with their tasks also. Put some of your tasks consciously into your subconsciousness. And then let them simmer there for a while, for half a day or for a day, and then go back to it.

So when you have an email and you think about this email, oh yeah, oh, what should I do? This is really... I don't know how to treat this. Read it again. Read the email again. You read the email again and then you make a small mark beneath it and you close your email. And then a couple of hours later, you go to the same email, you know exactly what you want to do

without any difficulty, without any obstruction. The trick to that, I feel like, is starting early to give your subconscious time. If you come to a problem at the deadline, you don't get to use that trick because you're at the deadline. So you have to come to a problem early enough to give yourself time to process it and then step away from it. What I suggest to people when they have a lot of deadlines is that you start with your deadline at the moment it comes in.

Because at the moment that a new task is coming in, mostly it gives also a kind of adrenaline in your body. Because, and it's another kind of adrenaline, it's not a deadline adrenaline, it's a kind of sparkling energy. Oh, this is new. Oh, this is nice. This is challenging. And this energy stays in your body during maybe half an hour, maybe an hour but not more. And when you use this energy right at the beginning, in the first half an hour that you get your new task, and then it's as if you put the train immediately on the rails. You immediately think about what do I want to do with this task? What do I know already about it? What do I not know? Where do I need help? And when you think

about it like this, then you can leave it. And then your subconscious will help you. And one day later you have already your first very good idea about this theme. And a couple of days later, you have a rendezvous with someone who is important about this theme. And it will go its way out of its own. And it will be a nice creative process instead of something you are working to a deadline, hoping you can finish it in the right time. and hoping you can finish it in the right time. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by ZocDoc. Find the right doctor right now with ZocDoc.

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a top rated doctor today. That's z-o-c-d-o-c dot com slash focused. That URL one more time, zocdoc.com slash focused. That URL one more time, zocdoc.com slash focused. And our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. All right, we started the show talking about the sixth instruction, observe background programs. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Yeah, background programs. You can understand when you have the first instruction, the first instruction says, do one thing at a time and finish it. But there are a lot of things who can take you out of this one task. One thing that can take you out of this one task. One thing that can take you out is, I'm doing this, but I have to do this. Afterwards, I have to do that.

That's the fourth instruction. I have to do this. Something else that can take you out are the knowing rats. You think, ah, I still haven't done my administration, I should do it, but I don't know. Well, not today. That's the second one. And the third one is your anxieties, your worries. How should I do this? And can I finish it? But also your worries about a friend that is ill, or worries about your children, or worries about your parents that are ill, or worries about your finances, or about the planet.

You have a lot of worries. What we are doing is, I explained already in the beginning, that underneath this worry is the fear. There is fear and fear is a completely different thing as a thought. Fear is an emotion and it has completely other ways of behavior. An emotion is a wave. An emotion follows a wave. An emotion follows a wave. It enters into our body, body-mind, causing a wave and it can also go away when you let the wave free. When you do nothing with the wave, it

goes off. But what we mostly do with worries in our head, what we mostly do is we contract and we unconscious, we say to ourselves, I don't want this. I don't want this problem. I don't want my child to do this. I don't want to be ill. I don't want my parents to become old. I don't want to have problems with my finances. I don't want this emotion. I don't want either to have this emotion. So we push against this wave. But when you push against the wave, you suppress it. You put it under pressure. And because we put our emotion under pressure, our thoughts start to steam. If you understand what I'm pressure, our thoughts start to steam. If you understand what I'm meaning, your thoughts start to steam and that's

steaming thoughts, I call it background programs. And we have the impression that the background program is very important and we can resolve it by thinking. But that's not true. It's only the result of the suppression under which you have to put your emotion under the surface. So you should put your attention on the emotion and not on the faults. And that's why the sixth instruction is be aware of your background programs, but be conscious of your background programs, but be conscious of your background programs, but don't follow them, don't nourish them. You should go underneath, you should go to the emotion

and feel the fears that you have. Feeling the fear without contracting anything in your system. Just feel the fear. And what can help to feel the fear is to name it. To name it and to say, I'm worrying about my jobs. I'm worrying about my finances. And putting your thoughts on the same level as your emotion by naming the emotion helps you to calm down the emotion. And then your head becomes clear and you say, well, I cannot resolve anything with my child, but I want to have confidence. Or I cannot resolve anything about the illness of my parents,

but I can visit them and I can just give them some love and that will help them maybe. So your head becomes clear and gives you right ideas, right solutions. Yeah, I feel like as a meditator for me that is one of the skills that I work on with it is the two negative emotions in me primarily is fear, but also sometimes anger. And thinking about the source of them, getting down to the emotional level, what I find is so often they dissolve if you just give them the attention they're asking for.

If you look at the fear, what is the source of this? Why do I feel this way? Like financial fears for me is often common. My parents grew up in the American Depression. I grew up constantly being told that, hey, you never know, we might lose our house because that's what happened to them as children. And I, by addressing the fear directly,

and it's not even confronting it, it's just acknowledging it. That's all you really need to do to kind of let that kind of dissolve. And then you can look, okay, so what actively can I do to not have that happen to me? And it's like the emotion gets separated from it. It's a very, you have to experience it to believe it, but it's, I think it's quite a remarkable experience. And I'd never seen advice given along those lines in terms of productivity, but it makes so much sense. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, because it's taking you off of what you're doing. One thing you want to do, the worry takes it over. Therefore, it's important to study it also with productivity. Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned in this section that really resonated with me was the description of the two different systems and kind of a different way of explaining what you were just talking about, Paul, is to feel first and then think second. I guess I tend to be very much an over thinker, very analytical systems thinking, like I gotta find the cause of all this stuff,

but what you're describing here is really not a logic problem, it's the way that we're wired. And so one of my big takeaways from this is if you can just feel the feeling first, then think about what it's actually telling you you're in a much better spot to actually make a good decision about what to do with this thing. Yes. Yes. Well, this this theme of emotions and feeling, it's a huge theme. It's much

bigger as that we did what I explained before. It's much bigger than what I explained before. For example, emotions are also related with our youth and with our past. It's not only what I told before. When something is happening to you and it's related to your past, the emotion will be much more present, much more tenacious and also it will transform your emotion. For example, you can become angry because you push an emotion away, because you push your fear or your pain away, it transforms into sadness or into being aggressive. With emotion it's much more fine and well, that makes it a theme apart. And that's why I call it it has one of the one of the floors of the house, it has a whole floor for itself emotions to explain all the relationship with with your youth. But in fact, you can resolve it on the same way and you can treat it on the same way. You can understand what is happening and what you are doing and why you suffer

of your emotions, you can understand it very well. And this, the solution to it is very simple. It's not, not easy, but it's simple. It's simple. It's, it's opening yourself to also to your negative emotions. And then you've got the payoff at step seven, or instruction seven, use your intuition to choose what to do.

Yeah, the intuition, I often look at it as one of the characters, as a character in your system. And it's a character with a mind fault on its head. And this character is placed in the front part of your subconsciousness. So in the front part of your subconsciousness, where you have all the tasks you want to do in the future, in the middle of this cave is this character with a mind fault on its head, and it's your intuition. And this intuition, this character is the best time manager you have. It's all the time there, it knows everything.

It knows your calendar, it knows how you are today, it knows your plans in the future, if you create a relationship with everything you want to do. At that moment it's in the cave, when you create a relationship with everything you want to do. At that moment it's in the cave when you create a relationship with it and your subconsciousness, your intuition is conscious of that you want to do this in the future and also knows about the passion with which you want to do it and the importance with which you want to do it. It knows everything.

And because it knows everything, the intuition, it knows not only this is what I want to do in the future, it also knows this body of you wants to have some rest now. But this body of you wants to do something completely different, that maybe not helps for what you want to do in the future, it's not very productive, but on the long way, on the whole picture, it's very important you also do something for yourself, only for yourself. So the intuition can choose that seems maybe for your ratio not so logic, but for your whole system, it's very benefit

to follow your intuition each moment. And for me, I think your intuition chooses at each moment, it's capable of choosing at each moment exactly the right thing to do. When you give it this responsibility and you give it all the information it needs. But as I read it and tell me if I'm wrong, you're not just saying, hey, just do what you want to do. This actually comes at the end of a process of, you know, transforming your gnawing rats and giving attention to drop-ins and kind of sorting out in your head so much,

and then giving the intuition the power. Am I reading that right? Yes, yes, you're explaining it very well, David. Thank you. That's the thing you need to do. That's also the reason why it's the seventh instruction and not the third or the fourth. It's the seventh instruction. You need to do all the other instructions, and then as a present, you get the seventh instruction. At the present, oh, look, your intuition starts to work. Why? Because you let enter everything you want to do

in the future, you let enter into your subconsciousness. That's why your intuition works so well. One of the visuals you have here was really effective for me is a quote on page 105. It said that the capsule that drops through the slot fits the present moment perfectly. And I really like that that visual of like the bubble gum machines, you know, you put the quarter in and you turn the crank and then you get the little plastic bubble, the prize, you know, I like that because you can't force more than one of those things down the chute at a time. And really your only job if I'm, as I'm thinking about what, you know, what do I do with this is you open the door, you get the capsule, you recognize what this is, okay, I'm going to deal with this thing. And then when you're

done with that, you know, you go get the next one. LR. Yeah. Yeah. And the capsule is sometimes it's something creative and sometimes it's something administrative and sometimes it's cleaning something and sometimes it's nice for you and it changes all the time. But when you listen very well to your intuition, it chooses exactly the right capsule at the right moment. Well, I can tell you, Paul, I've been someone who for a long time has professed strict time blocking, and your book has changed me in some ways, you know, because I am finding myself now letting intuition drive the actions through the day. And it's been a wonderful experiment.

And I don't know what it means for me going forward, but this has changed the way I think about time. Yeah, thank you. Great. Yeah, that's what I hope that the more and the more people discover, because it frees, it makes you free from all this kind of must-do and I have not done enough. Where I started at the beginning, is huge lists from everything you have to do

before you can appreciate what you're doing. You have to do such a much before you, when type serving you start to appreciate immediately. Well, I've always been a big believer in the subconscious and that power of it. And it just had never occurred to me to harness it in this way. And it is really powerful.

So tell us, at the beginning of the show, you talked about you gave up on your lists. How are you incorporating this in your daily life? Are you still listless? What I propose now when I give workshops to people and what I propose and I use it myself also is on days when you have a lot of time for yourself that you can yourself manage your time, make a wish list. A wish list. And I call it a wish list, not a have-to list, a to-do list.

To-do list is a have-to list. A wish list. Wish lists that are propositions, that are desires, that are wishes. So, and make this wish list before you open your email. Because at the moment you open your email, everything will start and you are in your day. So, with a black screen and a piece of paper or make it, you can also do it digitally, you just write on a white sheet of paper, what do I want to do today and you will see that your subconsciousness knows exactly what you want to do today. You very quickly write oh yes I want to do this, oh I would like to do this, oh I want to phone this person, oh yes that's what I want to do and each time you note something on the paper, you also make a visualization of it.

And from this visualization, don't make a big problem of it. You just let it enter into your system. That's the only thing you need to do. So you see yourself doing it. It takes maybe one or two or three seconds to make a visualization from what you want to do. It's not a huge thing. Just take yourself serious, create a relationship with what you want to do. Oh yes, this is what I want to do. Oh, that is what I need and it will be there. And maybe I want to do it at this moment, but I'm not sure about it. And that's enough. And then

the next thing. And so you have made your list and when your wish list is ready you turn it around. You don't look at it anymore. In fact what you did do is you nourished your subconsciousness. You feed it your intuition. You said to your intuition this is what I want to. I give it to you but this is what I want to. And then you make a cup of tea and you choose the first action you want to do. And you say to yourself, I want to do this big task. I will start with this. And when you have defined your first big task, then you open your email. You open your email because mostly the email is something so dominating. So you open your email and you answer these two emails that are urgent.

You answer them and the other emails that are not urgent, you read them, but you're not going to answer them. You just read them and then you close your email again. So that whole process took 10 minutes for your email then you close your email and you start your first big task and That's the way I propose and then from that moment on you take briefers you decide in briefers What you are going to do next etc, etc And when you have fear about from didn't about from, don't I forget something important?

Then you turn around your list, you look at your list and you think, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. And you turn it, again, you turn it around because you can't see it anymore and you continue with your intuition. That's what I propose to people. And I'm not sure we made it clear when we talked about the breathers, but that's one of the big positive benefits of taking breathers is it gives your subconscious mind to figure out what gumball drops out of the machine next for you. Yes, exactly.

It gives you good ideas, but it gives also the best capsule for next moment, the best capsule for next moment, the best item, the best task for next moment, which fits the best to this moment of time. And one of the little joys I've had experimenting with your ideas is going through the day and taking a breather and not knowing what I'm gonna be doing in 20 minutes when I come back, but being delighted to find out what 20 minutes when I come back, but being delighted to find

out what it is when I get there. Yeah. Yeah, that's so nice. It gives you a feeling of freedom. Well, the book is called I've Got Time by Paul Lumens. We're going to put links in the show notes for it, gang. It's just a very interesting approach to time management. It's such an unusual book and I think it's full of excellent ideas, as you can tell, and our enthusiasm today. Paul, thank you so much for coming in. Where should people go if they want to learn more about you?

I know you have an excellent newsletter. Where should people go to sign up for this stuff? I have a website, it's called timesurfing.uk and in this website you have links to the books and you have also a link to a video course I made about time surfing with 12 lessons to learn time surfing with small videos of each 10 minutes. And you can also subscribe to my newsletter. In the Netherlands, I publish it each week, this newsletter. But when the newsletter is going about time, I translate it into English and I send it to all the people who subscribe to the English newsletter. And we are the Focus Podcast.

You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors today, Indeed and ZockDoc, and we'll see you next time.