Focused - 68: Getting Productive with an Unproductive Boss

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

In this episode, David and Mike talk about getting intentional and getting productive with an unproductive boss. Finally, they cover productive Italians.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. How's it going, David? Doing great, Mike. How are you today? I am doing well, and I am excited to record Focused, really excited to dive into some feedback. And we've got some discussion following an email that Amanda sent in about being productive with an unproductive boss. But before we get to all the content for the show, we've got a couple of things that we should follow up on. First, I want to call out that we are both going to be at MacStock this year.

You're going to be recording episode 500 live of MacPower Users, which is going to be a really fun time. So if you're going to be in Mac Stock, definitely come say hi. Yes. Yeah, I had a great time last year at Mac Stock, and I wanted to participate this year. So Stephen and I were talking about episode of 500 of the Mac Power users. I have to admit, there's a little bit of laziness involved, like trying to arrange an event is very complicated, max doc, all the favorite nerds already there. So we just decided to do the show right there and it's going to be a lot of fun.

They were super helpful with us getting this started and I've already heard from a lot of listeners that are, are going to be attending and looking forward to the show. Yeah, it's going to be a good time. I've been there the last, I guess four years now I presented the last couple of years. I submitted another talk, but I haven't heard back yet. I presented the last couple of years. I submitted

another talk, but I haven't heard back yet. So hopefully I will be presenting there as well. But it's definitely a good time. And if you're available and you're able to make it, you should definitely come visit us at Maxstock. We've also got some feedback from the last episode, and I wanted to call out a couple of things that people had chimed in in the focused forum regarding the email episode. Bruce Wilson shared a tip, which is, it seems really simple, but I can totally see where this would be a really handy workflow for people in certain situations where you definitely want to be careful how you set the expectations regarding email. He had mentioned that you should use offline mode for email. And this allows you to go into your email if you really wanted to compose

something on the weekend, for example, but you don't have to send it on a Saturday so no one can see that you were in your email on a Saturday. You can compose it offline when you go back online Monday morning. Then it looks like you're replying and it allows you to kind of get ahead if you really want to. But also, like I said, doesn't set the expectations it allows you to kind of get ahead if you really want to. But also, like I said, doesn't set the expectations as I am the kind of person who is going to deal with email on the weekend. I've had a little bit of a revelation on email since we recorded that episode. You know, one of my big complaints was I felt like iOS apps are just not that strong with email, like Apple Mail is missing a bunch of features. The other ones that have the features are kind of buggy. And after we recorded that episode, I just got thinking, do I really need to do email on my iOS devices? And the more I thought about it,

I realized I really don't. So my solution to email on mobile devices is to, in large part, my solution to email and mobile devices is to, in large part, stop doing it. And then it also kind of helps me manage my time so I don't spend more time on email than I should. I mean, I still have the email apps installed, so if there's a problem, I can open the email app and send an email. Or if someone calls me and says, I just sent you something I need you to read right now, I can do that. But it's just no longer a part of my regular routine on mobile. And I've actually been pretty

happy with that. Nice. Yeah. I think that's one of the bigger hurdles that you can get over. But once you do, it alleviates a lot of stress when you just are able to communicate to the people that you interact with on a regular basis that I am not going to be accessible via email when I am not at my computer. And I don't have the apps installed. I would echo your sentiment that there aren't any good ones. Since we recorded that episode also, there was a bit of a dust up with the email client Newton. It came back to life. And when it did, it had a privacy policy issue, which we don't need to get into all the details,

but it was pretty scary how vaguely worded it was and kind of the liberties that they took with the information that you were going to give them. So I just want to call that out for people who are looking at different third-party email clients. Be careful what you sign up for and make sure you know what the company that you're trusting with your email data is going to be doing with it. Yeah, I mean, that's a real issue. And one reason why I keep finding myself coming back to Apple Mail is Apple is a company that does believe in privacy. And honestly, they can't even get enough people together to add a sharing button to Apple Mail. I don't think they're going to have spent any time trying to invade my privacy with that application

because they can't even get the features I want, you know. Yeah, sometimes those lack of features is a feature. Yeah, exactly. yeah sometimes those those lack of lack of features is a feature yeah exactly but but you know i i don't to me i think it's overkill to delete the apps or not run the apps i know some people like like you mike uh are big into that and uh i i just you know i put the email apps in a folder so they're not on my home screen i don't really think about them unless i need them and i'm good and and honestly even when i'm sending, I still do a lot of it through drafts. So I don't have to, you know, get stuck in the quagmire of the inbox. Yeah, I tend to not do anything halfway. So if I have those on my device, I'm going to be using them. And just removing temptation is something that I

had to do. But we got other feedback from Soto Wan, which kind of illustrated the point that sometimes it's not the tool that's the problem. It's how you use it. They had said that my work primarily uses Slack, which can be worse than email. It's way easier for people to message you and expect a quicker reply. It's a chat plus you get notifications. And it's super easy to goof off in it. I wanted to pull this out because they are totally correct. Just because you have escaped email and you've used a instant chat tool like Slack or HipChat or something like that, that doesn't necessarily mean that everything is going to be solved. You still have to manage the expectations around the tool that you're using.

I forget the specifics, but I heard one time that the Basecamp team uses instant chat. But when they want to communicate to people that I'm not going to be around, they have like a catchphrase that they use, like command Q, and they post it in the chat. And it's just a signal to everybody that, you know, don't interrupt me right now. And a lot of workplaces and organizations, if you've never thought through like those types of levers that you can pull, it can quickly evolve into something that you just can't control. I have to laugh about this feedback because five minutes before we started recording today,

Mike and I were talking about a future guest and I was going to send him an email, but I happened to be on the same Slack with him, one of the Slacks I'm on. And of course, I Slacked him because I knew that he would get a notification. I mean, I'm basically breaking all the rules by sending him a Slack instead of an email. So I am as well guilty of this. And it's true. It is more instantaneous. And it's just one thing that's harder to manage. Another issue I would say with that is, you know, messages and Slack systems. Sometimes it's hard to track that stuff. If it's like you're dealing with clients and you want to keep track of what was said or turn it into tasks, that can add extra challenges as well.

Sometimes forcing it into the email application slows it down and makes it more permanent for you. True. Yeah, the permanence, that's a good point, because I think I don't know what the percentages are, but I every I'm a part of probably 15 different Slack teams. They're probably all using the free version and the free version has a limit on something like 10,000 messages, which depending on how many messages get sent, sometimes that's everything that was ever said. Sometimes it's only the stuff from the last couple of weeks. So if you need the accountability and you need to go back and be able to find something later,

then you have to be aware that Slack's going to auto-delete those things. Well, either way, if you're struggling with email and you are spending a lot of time with it on mobile, give some thought to the idea of trying to back off of time with it on mobile, give some thought to the idea of trying to back off of email a bit on mobile. Now, the reason I could do that is I'm not a mobile-only person.

I don't live off my iPad. I spend many, many hours a day at a Mac. So it worked for me. But if that's you, I would give it a try because I started it as an experiment and I'm really liking it. It just simplifies my life a bit. Also, between last episode and this episode, you followed through and had a personal retreat.

So we definitely need to follow up with this. What was your experience? Give us the details. I hesitate to call it a personal retreat. I posted on it. There's a post over Max Barkey called Intentionality. And one of the first feedbacks we got over at the focus group in the forum was, yeah, I really like the way Mike does his retreats because it has structure. And mine notably had almost no structure. I was thinking about this not so much as a

personal retreat because it wasn't know, I was thinking about this not so much as a personal retreat, because it wasn't something where I was going away for multiple days or even a full day, but I just wanted to do some reflection. I always do that on my birthday. I talked to Jason about that last year as well. And each year, I think I take it a little more seriously. So this year I did on my birthday, I went out and we were going to do some family stuff in the evening. So I didn't want to go far away. You know, I used to get in a car and go to the mountains or the beach or somewhere kind of far away. And I didn't want to deal with that this year.

So I went to the local Starbucks where I often go to work. bring iPads and digital stuff. This year, I just brought my notebook, my barren fig and a fancy pen and got some tea and sat down and I had no plan. I know you gave me some ideas for a retreat and I'm going to still do that at some point. But the point here, at least when I started, I was thinking it'd be an hour or two of reflection on you know, on my birthday. And it turned into a six hour process. Nice. Yeah. And I want to call something out here because you're right. I do have a course that I created based on the framework that I use. But my experience started the same as yours, where I just went away and I gave my brain time to unravel some things. And since I've done that fairly regularly, what I've noticed is that there's patterns in the right questions that I ask.

I've kind of figured out what's worth spending time letting my brain noodle on and what's not really worth it. And so I've just put together the questions and the prompts that I use so that for people who are doing this for the very first time, they can kind of shortcut the process. What were your big questions again? Well, the three big questions from the retrospective part of it are, what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? And I think you could apply those to pretty much any context. My wife and I use those actually when we do our family meetings and we have date night, we kind of do a retrospective of the last week from a family perspective and think about what are the adjustments we can make, which are going to make

the family dynamic easier, which when you've got five kids at home, like that's any, any little bit of, of, uh, um, I don't want to say efficiency because that, that makes it seem cold and mechanical improvement. Improvement. There you go. Yeah. So if we can improve the family dynamic at all, we can make bedtime a little bit easier. We can make mealtime a little bit easier. We can make when we're running around to all the different sports on Saturdays a little bit easier, then that brings relief, not just to me, not just to my wife, but to everybody. So it definitely improves everything. And so identifying those things and asking the right questions, that definitely helps. And there's different things that you can do. Part of what I do with my personal retreats now is I kind of think through like the quarterly

goals I want to set, but that's not the place that I would recommend people start. The place you want to start is just letting your brain figure out where are the place that I would recommend people start. The place you want to start is just letting your brain figure out where are the places that I am feeling pain and how can I alleviate those or where are the things that I want to emphasize a little bit more and make a little bit better. Well, I am fully in 10. This process was very beneficial to me. I mean, like I said, I thought I'd take two hours. I took six and it was the best investment of my time in the last month. So I'm going to do more of it. I'm going to try and put more structure onto it going forward.

But I showed up at Starbucks, got my tea without really a plan, except I knew I wanted to write some things down, and I thought going analog might help me kind of, you know, look, be a little more exterior to myself and look at myself a little closer. So I opened up a blank page and I wrote down a question. I said, how am I doing? That was, and I thought, well, okay, I'll take one page to write about how I'm doing. And I didn't know what I was going to do with the second page at that point, but it was my birthday. I was feeling good about myself. So I said, okay, what, how am I doing? And I, and I, I broke it down into areas of my life. I looked at the, you know, kind of from the outside in, I looked at the legal practice side, the Max Sparky stuff, my relationships with

my family and my friends, and then what I called self-care, you know, how am I taking care of myself? And like I said, I thought I'd get all of those topics covered with one page. And I don't know why I had this artificial idea in my head that, oh, I have one page here so I can fill up one page with this. Because as soon as I started writing and giving myself permission just to kind of be honest with myself and let it fly, there was a lot of words coming out of the pen. And very quickly, I was filling up like at least a page with each subject, with each subject area of my life. You know, suddenly I had all this to say, and I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And that took a couple hours

to write all this stuff about answering a simple question of how I'm doing. Yeah, no, that's that's so true. I think what happens is you get so busy with the day to day that your brain is trying to bring these things to the front, but it's constantly being told, shut up and fall in line. And then as soon as you give it space, it's like, okay, finally, here's my chance. And it just unloads everything. And you don't even realize

how much of that stuff is actually there until you have the time to sort through it all. The old Ronald Reagan line, I paid for this mic, I'm going to use it. So anyway, I wrote a lot about, you know, how I'm doing. And then afterwards, So anyway, I wrote a lot about how I'm doing. And then afterwards, I realized I'd been going kind of hard at it. I didn't realize how much I was writing or how much time I was taking. And so I immediately threw the daily block schedule out the window. And there's a nice park near the Starbucks.

So I went and took a walk. And intentionally didn't really kind of delve into what I had just done so much as I just wanted a break. So I took a nice long walk, came back, bought another tea. Starbucks tea, by the way, isn't that good, but either way. And read what I had just written. And then I wrote down another question. How can I get better at this? I wrote down another question. How can I get better at this?

And I took each one of those subjects and just really kind of dove in deep and saying, okay, now I have an appreciation of what I'm doing right and wrong. What steps can I take to be better about it? And I tried to go at this in a positive way. I'm not trying to beat up on myself. But at the same time, I want to be honest and figure out what are the objective steps I could take. Yeah, that's really important. What was your big takeaway from doing all of this? What kind of revelation did you get from the process?

Well, it's interesting because I thought I might be done with that second question. You know, I, I certainly didn't go there with the idea of saying I'm going to have a yearly or quarterly theme or anything like that. But, but I noticed as I was, and I spent, you know, an equal amount of time writing about how I could get better at this stuff. And I noticed that the word that kept coming out as I was writing about what I could do better was the concept of intentionality. That I feel like one of the things I realized about myself is I think I'm good about not getting caught up in emotional stuff.

You know, being a lawyer all these years, meditation practice, I'm good at not getting caught up in emotion. I'd like to think I am at least. But, and so I thought, oh, I've got that covered. But then as I considered it more, it's not emotion that I get caught up in, but I do get caught up in distraction, if that makes sense. Like a client can call me and say, hey, I got this new contract and it doesn't have to be done today immediately, but suddenly I'll just throw my plans out the window and drop everything to get that done when I really didn't need to. And I

noticed that I'm not bringing enough intention and sticking to that intention as I work through my days. And that was a common theme in almost every area of my life that I could improve upon. And then, so when I got to the end of writing how I could get better about this, I realized, oh, I do kind of have a little bit of a theme that I want to improve upon. And that's this idea of intentionality. So then I spent a bunch of time writing about what that word means to me and how I can judge myself by intentionality and, you know, just kind of internalizing that this is something that across the board would make me better at what I do for my clients, my Max Barkey customers, my family, and myself if I took that seriously. And to be honest with you, I'm still kind of figuring it out, but I'm making this now a regular part of my reflections as to how intentional am I being? So that was the big result. Nice.

Yeah, I know you had texted me. We're kind of going back and forth as you were working on this. And one of the questions that you had posed to me, which really made me think, was what's the difference between focus and intentionality? And I think that's a really great question. And I forget exactly what I had sent back to you. But as I thought on that for a while, it occurred to me that focus is kind of what you're looking at. Like you said, the things that can distract you, that's an issue that everybody deals with. Something can steal your focus for a moment in time, but that doesn't necessarily have to derail your intentionality,

I think. So focus maybe is where you're looking, but intentionality is kind of where you're going. It's the motion behind what you're doing or the direction that you're moving. And as long as you don't get derailed for a significant period of time, then the intentionality, like that's easier to maintain the momentum. You really can't do anything about a distraction that pops up, but you can make sure that you deal with it and get back on track quickly. And that doesn't have to slow down your progress. Yeah, for me, to use sailor lingo, the intentionality is like the

rudder of the ship, whereas focus is trimming the sails. And they work together and they're closely related, but they're also different. I like that. Well, anyway, I'm doing that. I'll probably talk about it again. I'm still figuring out what the takeaway in terms of action items are for me. You know, I've been journaling. I think that helps a lot. And, you know, I do monthly plans and, you know, you're just slowly poisoning me, Mike, with all this productivity stuff. But yeah, I am definitely going to do a personal retreat. I think this investment of time is absolutely worth it. So I just got to figure out when, maybe after I ship the next big field guide. But I'm trying to now build into my system a way to reflect on this idea of intentionality and keep myself honest on it,

because it's going to be very easy to spend a day navel gazing and feel real good about yourself and write a blog post. But then I think the real work is actually incorporating it into my everyday actions. So I'm still trying to figure out how to keep myself honest on it. But it's a start. And that leads into something that we'll talk about right after this. Everyone likes to save time, but it's especially important when you're a freelancer. Your time is literally money. And our friends at FreshBooks can save you up to 192 hours with their super simple cloud accounting software for freelancers. They make it simple to do tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online. FreshBooks has drastically

reduced the time that it takes for over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. A couple of things I love about FreshBooks. Number one, when you email a client an invoice, FreshBooks can show you whether they've seen it. That puts an end to all the guessing games and the follow-up emails that say, did you see this? Did you not see this? And FreshBooks can also automate those late payment email reminders so you can spend less time following up and chasing those payments and more time doing the things that are important to you and working your magic. Now, if you're listening to this and you're not using FreshBooks yet, now is the time to try it. FreshBooks are offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. There's no credit card required.

All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash focused with one S and enter focused in the how did you hear about us section. That's freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused in the how did you hear about us section. We thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so the whole discussion about the intentionality, I like that. And I think it pertains to this email that Amanda had written in about being productive with an unproductive boss, because there's certain things you can control, certain things you can't control. I really like your definition of intentionality being the rudder because you don't have to make these huge

adjustments in order to make sure that you're still on the right track. But sometimes weather's going to happen. There's going to be things that pop up and there's nothing you can do about them. So let me read a little bit of this email and then we've got a couple things that we want to share in regards to this. So Amanda asks, what do you do when your boss's work style conflicts with your own? I'm a young lawyer and a stereotypical millennial, as well as a productivity podcast enthusiast. I like to do lists, blocking off time for deep work. I hate physical paper and phone calls as opposed to PDFs and emails. In law school, this wasn't a huge problem because I set my own study and work schedules. As an associate attorney, I'm at the whims of my bosses, and I want to pull my hair out every time they leave a post-it on my desk asking me to do

something or wander into my office to ask about a case status when I'm trying to focus on drafting something. I feel like so many productivity texts and podcasts are written by freelancers or people in charge of a team, so I don't know how to modify my behavior to be less frustrated with these aspects of my job. Be miserable until you eventually make partner sounds like a bad strategy. And I would argue that it is. But also, I think part of this has to do with the perspective. And I should share that I can totally sympathize with Amanda's situation because this was totally me when I was working in an office environment. And I used to get really mad, really frustrated whenever stuff like this would happen to me. I think, though, that former guest Chris Bailey puts forth like a really simple framework for

understanding that not all interruptions and distractions are created the same. Yeah. And well, let's talk about Chris. but then I want to talk about Amanda's situation too, as someone who was in a law firm for a long time dealing with those problems. Sure. So Chris has one of those classic two by two grids. You may have seen in like the Eisenhower box where you've got two things on the X axis, two things on the Y axis. So the four types of distractions, the interruptions that he puts here on the x-axis, two things on the y-axis. So the four types of distractions, the interruptions that he puts here on the x-axis, I guess this is on the top, he's got annoying and then fun. And then on the y-axis, you've got control and no control.

So there are things that are annoying that you have no control over. And he says in the graph here, this is from the hyper-focus book, deal with it, get back on track. Okay. And he says in the graph here, this is from the hyper focus book, deal with it, get back on track. Okay. And that's really all you can do in some situations. The one where I always would get tripped up on were the things that were fun and I had no control over. And he says to just enjoy those. These are the things that I used to get frustrated about because I'm supposed to be productive right now. I'm supposed to be doing this thing. And sometimes, you know, you just got to go with the flow. And then there's the things that you can control. And these are the ones that you should deal with ahead of time if you're able to see them coming. But you're not

going to be able to see everything coming. And so just do what you can do, control what you can control. And then once the distraction or the interruption is passed, then you can get back on track. Okay. Yeah, I agree with all of that. But I just want to talk to Amanda for a second. Okay, Amanda, this is just you and me here. 22 years is how long I spent working in a law firm. And I know that you're like, when you finished your statement, you said, just deal with it

until I'm a partner. And then the fact is you're going to be miserable after you're a partner too, because interruptions and lack of appreciation for other people's time is something that lawyers excel at. I don't know if you learn it in law school or what the problem is, but this is an issue. And the other problem is you get a lot of people, not everybody, but there's a lot of people in this law racket who think they know it all. So you get these problems you're up against. At the same time, her question was a good one because I think it applies to more people than just lawyers. question was a good one because I think it applies to more people than just lawyers. It's that,

you know, it's really great that I can sit here and say, oh, I'm a special snowflake on my birthday. I'm going to go spend six hours in Starbucks writing my thoughts, you know. But most people don't have a job where they can do that. A lot of people don't even have a job where they can decide where they're going to deal with email. But you do have ways to exert control. And I think when I was in the firm and dealing with other people, I faced this exact same problem. And this is how I dealt with it. I mean, the first thing is I was waking up to this stuff as well when I was an associate and people,

most people didn't care about this stuff. You go back 15 years and it's even worse. when I was an associate and people, most people didn't care about this stuff. You know, you go back 15 years and it's even worse. Um, uh, and what I realized, like when I was reading David Allen's book, for instance, um, I had all these great ideas about getting things done and ways that I could be more efficient, but I was working with, um, support staff that could care less. And I was working with people above me that could also care less. And they had done things this goofy, broken way all these years,

and they felt like there's no reason to change it. So what I did, Amanda, was I just started looking in the little areas where I had some control. I mean, the way you do your own work, you have a lot more control in that than you do in any other way. And then to the extent you start working with any kind of direct reports, or even if you have a paralegal or people that are doing work for you, the way you can set expectations for the way you want that work done that are

consistent with the way that you want to produce. You can go into a meeting with an agenda. Like if someone calls you to a meeting and you have anything to do with it, send an agenda out the day before. And as the meeting ends, say, okay, just so we're clear, the action items from this meeting are the following five things. I'm going to do one, two, three, and Mary's going to do four and five. You know, all of a sudden you just start living up to the stuff that you're reading about. And I understand nobody else in the firm is going to do it, but I can tell you, they will start taking notice if you do that. And, uh, an example I used to deal with when the,

the seat and the gray hair lawyers would come in my office and bug me about some case while I was trying to get work done. If I was working when they walked in, I would literally hold up a finger and just say, just one moment. Because I was sitting there typing on a computer or writing on a piece of paper, and I would finish what I was doing. Even if I was at an excellent breaking point where I could have stopped, I always did that to them. And I would sit there and work for 30 more seconds, and then I'd say, okay, you have my attention now. You just do that a few times. And they realize that when they come into your office, they're not going to get the dopamine hit of your instant, you know, submission. And then they go somewhere else after a while. It works, you know. So, but what you've got to do is declare your own territory.

You know, find the area that you can control and work in there. And then the areas that you can control will gradually grow out. And people will notice. And they'll change the way that they deal with you. I mean, when I was a young lawyer, I had a judge call me and say, hey, I just sent you an email. How come you didn't reply? And I said, well, judge, you sent the email at 10 o'clock and I don't read email till 12. I may read the email when I come in.

I read it at lunch and I read it in the afternoon. So I didn't know. And he didn't get mad at me. He's like, oh, okay. And then that was kind of solved the problem where for a young lawyer, that could be terrifying to have a judge call you and say, why didn't you read my email? So you just got to kind of find, be confident in yourself. Don't be a jerk about it, but be confident and insistent. And you're onto something here with these productivity podcasts and the thoughts you're having, it's going to make you a better lawyer and a better person. So don't surrender just because

the people around you don't care. Yeah, that's good. It kind of comes back to what you were just talking about, managing expectations, which can be scary to stand up and say, no, I'm not going to do it that way. I'm going to insert a 30-second margin before I talk to my boss. I'm going to insert a 30 second margin before I talk to my boss. But those opportunities are there. And I can't speak directly to the legal aspect of this, but I do want to piggyback on something else that you mentioned, which was like the visual cues. And you mentioned if you do that enough, eventually they won't come bother you because it's more friction for them to do it.

They're going to go to somebody else. And I knew a guy at one point who worked in an open office environment and had this happening to him all the time. People tapping him on the shoulder. Hey, can you help me with this? So what he did is he bought great big pink over ear headphones. And he told me one time that he didn't even listen to anything in the headphones. It was just a visual reminder to everybody else around him that he was working on something. And when people would come and tap him on the shoulder or whatever, try to get his attention, they want to help him with something. He would pretend to ignore them for a little while because he had these big pink headphones on and everybody thought he was listening to music and

he was focused and he was in the zone. And eventually, people stopped going to him to solve their issues. They would go straight to somebody else. And ultimately, I mean, the conditions of the place that you work, that's not ideal. But sometimes, like you said, control what you can control. You got to do what you got to do. Another thing I would do, a piece of advice I'd give Amanda is show the same respect to those partners that you're demanding of them so as a young lawyer you're or young whatever business you're in when you're getting started you're going to have lots of questions and something I would do in that regard because I didn't want them interrupting me I didn't feel like I could just walk in their office anytime and interrupt them so I would make a list like I could just walk in their office anytime and interrupt them. So I would make a list,

like I would have a running list of questions for, you know, John or Mary. And then what I would do is reach out to them, whether through email or the next time we're in the coffee room together. And I'd say, Hey, I've got a list of like seven or eight things that I just need to go over with you. When is a convenient time that we can schedule to sit down and do that? And then quite often, and after a while with some of the people that I worked for, we would agree that like, I think it was like Wednesday afternoon, I would have a standing meeting with them. And like four o'clock I'd show up with my list. And as opposed to the other young attorneys that are showing up every five minutes with a question, I would take, you know, half hour of their time, get through all the questions, hopefully for the week, and then get back to work. And I think they appreciated it. And it did change

the way they thought about me. And it did change the way they would dump stuff on me as well. I know I'm kind of unloading on this, but man, I live this. I know I'm kind of unloading on this but man I live this yeah no it's good stuff and you're speaking directly to the situation I can speak about some of the specific strategies you can use even if you aren't a lawyer but I mean you're speaking right to Amanda's situation so that's great yeah and I'd like to think this would apply no matter what business you're in.

It does, totally, which is why I want to call out one other thing that you mentioned regarding taking control at the end of the meetings and making sure that everybody has their clear action items. Because if you're not the boss, you're not in a management position, you're not the one running the meeting, the default can kind of be to just go with the flow. And then you've got to deal with the fallout from that for the next week, month, whatever. But you can assume responsibility and say those things. And no one's going to think less of that. You're not domineering or wresting control away from the person who's leading the meeting, but you are

making sure that what they just talked about gets implemented. Instead of being a combatant, you're an ally. You're helping them get the project done. And should you be the one that has to do that? No, maybe not. But if you step up and just do it anyways, it can make your life a whole lot easier down the road. Another thing I would suggest is, just reading over her email again, she talked about how she'd be working on an important project and someone would come in and say, oh, I need you to deal with this. Something I did was I would print out at the beginning of the month a blank monthly calendar, you know, just on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. And I'd take a highlighter and I'd say like,

I'm going to be working on this motion for these two days, or I'm in depositions these days or whatever it was, I would have that, um, visible in my office. And actually if I had it to do over again, I would have bought a big ass whiteboard and hung it on the wall or a big piece of, you know, those big 3M makes that massive size sticking out that's like three foot square. I would get as big a piece of paper or whiteboard I could. So when people came in my office, they would see how I'd blocked away days already. And the idea is when they come in and try and dump more stuff on you, you say, okay, well, here's my priorities right now. And the idea is when they come in and try and dump more stuff on you, you say, okay, well, here's my priorities right now. And you take them, I would show them the calendar, but I'd take

them over to my big wall. And I'd say, these are the things I have priorities. And now you want me to do this thing that's going to take three days. Which one of these do you want me to move? You know, and bring them in on it. Because, you know, as a young lawyer, young, whatever business you're doing, it's easy for the boss to just dump work on you and ruin your life. And part of the reason we make this show is we don't think you should have your life ruined. And when you put that emotional baggage on them, a lot of times they're less likely to just throw all this work at you without consideration. Yep, definitely. Another principle I think you could tease out here is that you can get frustrated when these things happen to you because it's taking away the time that you could be

doing something else. But there's something that we should talk about here. And that's kind of the myth of the eight-hour workday. Now, we're kind of in privileged positions here, David, because I guess you would call us like knowledge workers. We're not doing physical labor for eight hours a day. So maybe in certain situations, this doesn't apply. But according to one study that I found on Inc.com, they calculated the average time that the worker spends working during an eight-hour day, and it was two hours and 53 minutes. So less than three hours out of an eight-hour workday, you are actually doing work. And when you view that as you're not going to be able to get eight hours of work done anyways, then the interruptions, even if you have a bunch of them to deal with, they're kind of not that big a deal. And this is something that they deal with. It's like, oh, I was only able to write for a couple hours a day. But that's because that's all you're physically able to do.

If I write for a couple hours a day, I'm exhausted. By the time I get done recording a podcast, I'm exhausted. And that sounds, again, like a very privileged position. But it's a totally different kind of work. And recognizing that your mental energy is different than your physical energy and recognizing that you're maybe not going to get eight hours worth of this focused work done anyways, that can alleviate the guilt from having to spend a half an hour or an hour or even a couple hours during your day dealing with

somebody else's emergency, even if you wouldn't do it if you had a choice and you just kind of have to deal with it. Yeah, agreed. I mean, and I'd like to think our listeners are out above that average. I mean, if you're listening to the show, you're thinking about this stuff and trying to be more focused, more intentional. See how I did that? Yep. But the real underlying problem of Amanda's email, which, you know, I did kind of go crazy here for the last 20 minutes, but is that you often will find yourself, whether working with superiors at a place of business, whether you're dealing with, you know, an educational situation and your teachers or even at home where everybody doesn't buy into what you're trying to do. And I think that the

answer isn't to try and change them so much as really get on top of your game, figure out where you can make it work best for you and just let them see the results in you. Because, you know, the end of that story for that GTD thing, which I was doing, I don't know, was it 20 years ago now, is after I started implementing it without ever explaining to people what was going on, is people started to say, wow, David is really good at getting stuff done.

And he does what he says, and he means what he says. And suddenly people started coming to me and saying, hey, I noticed that you've got these folders at your desk, and you've got these calendars. And what are you doing? Can you help me out with that? And without preaching it, people would come to me and ask for help. And I would obviously turn them on to the resources that got me started. So you never know what can result from that.

But I think the real answer is just to make a difference yourself and find out those areas where you can control these things and take positive steps in that direction. Yep, definitely. So control what you can control. And then I would also add, don't feel bad about not being able to be more quote unquote productive, but just make the most of the time that you have. Make the most of the time that you can control, that you can delegate and whatever else happens, you know, go back to those four types of distractions. And if you've got to just deal with it and get back on track, don't beat yourself up

over that. Yeah. And I'd love, I hope Amanda reports back in at the forums, how it's going for her. I'd love to hear how it, how it all turns out. This episode of focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. Maybe you want to create an online store or a portfolio. Maybe you want to create a blog, even launch a podcast.

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award-winning templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas. I helped a friend build a Squarespace site to promote their idea, and they decided after the fact they wanted to add an online store. Well, with Squarespace, it was no problem. I was able to click a button and add the functionality that he needed, and even though he's not tech savvy, he was able to completely manage all of the inventory for everything that he needed to do after the fact, and I didn't have to support it anymore, which is great. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can start a trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash focused with one S. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code focused to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the Focus podcast. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash FOCUSED and the code FOCUSED to get 10% off your first purchase.

We thank Squarespace for their support. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. for their support. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So Mike, I was, the other day I was reading about the Pareto principle and the 80-20 rule,

which we've all heard about, but we haven't really addressed it much here. And then you responded to me saying, yeah, let's talk about the crazy Italians. I'm sorry, the productive Italians. The productive Italians. Yeah. I hope I didn't get everybody mad at me in Italy. This kind of pertains back to Amanda's email. There's a couple different tactics I would say that you could probably implement. And the first one would be that Pareto principle. This is something that I am maybe weirdly passionate about. Just a little bit of

introduction to the concept for those who don't know what this is. It was named after an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who noticed that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the population. And so that kind of became known as the 80-20 rule. And this gets applied all over the place now, where 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. But the bottom line is that not all of your tasks are created equal. So if you find yourself in a situation like Amanda, where you can't get everything that you want to get done, done, then the Pareto principle can help you get the most important thing done. Yeah. I mean, and it just applies everywhere. I was looking through my client list and not only does the 80-20 rule work with respect to the people who pay me, that like 20% are paying like 80% of the work,

I started looking at the ones that, you know, I didn't take my advice and weren't really great clients for me. They weren't the right fit for whatever reason. And the 80-20 rule worked there as well. Yeah, definitely. You can apply this just about anywhere. And where it gets really exciting, to me anyways, is that you can 80-20 the 80-20. So eventually you can boil this down and you can ask yourself, what is the one thing that I could do right now? The one thing that by doing it makes everything else easier or unnecessary. That's the thing that you should be worried about. And the rest of this stuff, if you can't get it done, you can't get it done. But the further down this road that you go, 80-20 into 80-20, the sharper your ax becomes. So the 80-20 to 80-20, just as an example, is 64% of the effects that come from 8% of

the causes. So if you keep doing that, eventually you're going to land on that one thing that is going to make the most significant impact in your current situation in whatever sphere you happen to be applying this, whether that be work, whether that be personal. You can literally apply this anywhere, but ultimately what you want to get to is that one thing that you should be doing or you could be doing that's most effective right now, the right thing at the right time. Agreed. So I've been trying to use this with respect, you know, I guess we're straggling into free agents territory a little bit where with the year end and kind of the turnaround at the birthday and everything, I'm looking at getting rid of some of those clients that, you know, that they fall outside the 80-20, if that makes any sense.

Yep. And I probably need to spend a little bit more time thinking the other direction is, you know, along the lines of the title of the show. You know, how can I focus more and find the positive end of that 80-20 and put more into it? Yeah, definitely. I do this when I fill out my daily planning sheets because I have on the left side of my sheet the hours from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and then I time block my entire day. Again, it doesn't always go according to plan. Stuff's going to come up. I'm going to deal with distractions and interruptions just like everybody else. interruptions just like everybody else. And really the making of the plan is not, the value from it doesn't come from executing exactly what I wrote down, but from the intentionality behind the hours that I have available to me. In my experience, what it does is it alleviates that sense of panic where I've got so much to do and I can't decide what to do next because I take a couple of minutes and I kind of outline, this is the mode I'm going to be in. This is where I'm going to be. You know, you can

kind of fill it out however you want. But on the right side of that, I've got the area for my most important tasks and I limit it to five. OK, so that's my version of the 80-20 for how I plan my day because you can go into your task manager and you can take a look at all of the things that are available for you to do. And I've been in those situations where it's like, okay, should I do this? Or should I do that? Or should I do that? Or should I do this other thing? And the answer is yes. So you have to force yourself to choose which is the one that is the most important or if you can only get in, I've got space on my sheet for five things. That's kind of the limit I've found for myself in terms of the number of tasks I can get done in a day. So if I've got more than five things, I've got to pick one that I'm going to punt until tomorrow. And just building in

systems and frameworks that force you to think that way can help you make the most of the time that you do have, which kind of leads into the next point on the Pomodoro method. Mike, just for a minute, let's just stick with this. Now, when do you do your time blocking? I fill that out actually the night before. So you could do it the morning of, you know, as part of your morning routine. I've experimented with that. But the thing that makes it easiest for me when I get up and do my morning routine and I've experimented with that. But the thing that makes it easiest for me when I get up and do my morning routine and then to slip into work mode and be productive is to spend just a couple of minutes thinking that through the night before. I do it on my

iPad Pro. I actually pulled in the PDF version of my sheet into GoodNotes. And so I just have to swipe to create a new page and it's the blank template. I fill it out. I do my journaling and then I go to bed and that allows me to hit the ground running. Yeah, I would agree with this because I do it the same way. I'm a little different than Mike where my morning routine, the first thing I do is I actually knock off one of my big things for the day. I mean, because I work from home so often, I don't even get dressed or shower. I mean, I get out of bed and go into my home office and I take the thing that I was, you know, I eat the frog, you know, and then after that I do the workout, the meditation

and the morning stuff. But planning the night before is what makes it all happen for me. Yeah. And I think that's kind of personal preference. You can experiment for yourself what works best. For me, though, it definitely works best doing it the night before. And really, the key is to do it before you sit down to work because it's going to, in my experience anyways, exponentially increase the effectiveness of what you're going to do when you sit down to work. Yeah. I also find that I'm just unrealistic in the morning. If I do it at night, I'm more realistic about how much time I actually have for the next day. Now, the other thing I want to talk about this for you a little bit is your workflow. So you've created a form that you like. And so

you have a digital PDF version and you're using it with the GoodNotes app. GoodNotes does an excellent job of digital ink. So if you've got an iPad with a pencil, you're going to love it. And it does let you import forms. And the reason I ask about it is because I've experimented like this for the last week.

I made my own kind of daily tracker which is something i've been doing anyway with pen and paper every day and the funny thing is after doing it for a week i don't think i'm going to stick with it i i'm going to go back to my notebook i i just like having the physical paper and it's in a book and it just works for me better that way although i would say digital is better in almost every way. Like with a digital version, you can save it as an image to day one, if you want to track your productivity as a journal type thing. With an image, you can search it. GoodNotes lets you search the handwritten notes. It's cleaner. You can zoom up the page. There's just a whole lot

I like about it better. But for some reason, after a week, I went back and looked at my notebook and I really missed it and felt like, oh no, you know what this, I get more, um, I guess I'm not sure pleasure's the right word, but more satisfaction out of doing it with pen and paper, which is really weird coming from a guy who wrote a book called paperless. Yeah, no, there's a lot to be said about the analog system. And if all it did was give you the feels, then it's still worth it because you're connecting with the work that you're going to do and the plan that you're making on another level. And so pick whatever tool works for you. I started mine paper pencil. I actually printed them, went to Kinko's, got them

glued into a tablet and I would just fill one out and then rip it off and throw it away at the end of the day when I was done with it. That seemed like a waste to me. So then I started looking for ways that I could do it digitally and GoodNotes was the thing that worked for me. Yeah. The other thing I would say is I like the idea of limiting it to five, but that doesn't work for everybody. It doesn't work for me because between the law job and the Max Barkey job, there are more than five things every day. And some days for me lean more heavily on one career versus the other, and that's fine. But use omni focus for that and i've got a system you know if you follow the stuff i make you know i've got a video course on it but

the um but there isn't one way to do all this stuff but i think having that put together and grounding it in something like the 80 20 role where if you put that filter on as you're making the list for the day and blocking the time can really help you get to the most important work. Yeah, no, definitely. So you can figure out the mechanics of your own system, but the principle to take away and the mindset to have regarding the work that you're going to do is to force yourself to filter in terms of priority. What are the things that you're going to do? And not everything can be a priority. That question, actually, the one thing that by

doing it makes everything else easier or unnecessary, that comes from a really great book that I read called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. And they communicate the effectiveness of doing that one thing well every day because they basically recognize that not everybody has control over their entire day. But you can control what you can control and you can identify the thing that is most important for your goals and you can make time or take time for that one thing, regardless of what that is. And so if you continually prioritize that one thing, that triggers the compound effect and they tell us the story about the dominoes and the domino can knock over a domino that's actually 50 percent larger than itself so if you start with that one two inch domino and then you knock over one that's

50 percent larger and that momentum knocks over the next one which is 50 percent larger it doesn't take very long before you're knocking over some pretty big dominoes and you're achieving some pretty big goals. But we don't think that what we're doing by selecting that one thing is all that important because all we can see at the beginning is that two-inch domino. And I would argue that almost all of us have more work than we can do. We all have too much work. So the ones of us that are going to be happiest and succeed the most are the ones of us that are going to be happiest and succeed the most are the ones of us that are willing to stop and figure out of all this stuff where we have to do, you know, what is the most important thing to stop and do right now? And which brings us right back to the 80-20 rule. Yep. And then the other thing that I want to call out here is that sometimes, you know,

there's stuff you control, stuff you can't control. So how do you find time to do what you want to do, the things that you can control? How do you find time or make time to do that one thing, whatever area of life that pertains to? One of the best systems that I've found for that is the Pomodoro method, which is so simple that a lot of people will write this off. But this is just for people who aren't familiar with this. It's a time management method, which was again developed by an Italian, Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. It's named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that he used as a student. And actually Pomodoro, I don't speak Italian, so I'm taking his word for this, but Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato.

And so there's a simple six-step process to this, which allows you to take some action on the thing that is most important to you. And I thought this would be worth going through real quickly. Actually, I just looked it up. Pomodoro actually means nerdy productivity egghead. That's what it means. Maybe I'm a Pomodoro then. You and me both, brother. All right. So the six steps to the Pomodoro method. Number one, again, decide on the tasks to be done. Not five different tasks to be done. One task to be done.

The one thing. And then step two, you set your Pomodoro timer, which traditionally is 25 minutes. But once you understand how the Pomodoro method works, you can kind of tweak this to fit the way that you work. Then you work on the task for that 25 minute timer. And because it's only 25 minutes, it's a lot easier for people when they start doing this to focus on that one thing and not be distracted by something like email because you can take a break after that. In fact, that is the fourth step. When the timer rings, you stop working. And then fifth step, you take a short break, which is three to five minutes. And then after that, you go back and you do another Pomodoro. After you've done four Pomodoros,

you take a little bit longer break, and then you just keep repeating. So this really, if you were to boil this down, it's work on one thing for 25 minutes and then take a five-minute break. Okay, you don't have to do 12 different Pomodoros in order to say, okay, I've had a productive day. If you're in Amanda's situation, maybe just squeezing out one or two Pomodoros for the thing that is most important for you, that would be a successful workday. Yeah, I played with this concept and they quickly grew to me. I was using a 45-minute Pomodoro, which was fine.

I'm lucky enough that the stuff I do work on, whether it be legal or Max Barkey, I'm passionate about, so time goes pretty quickly when I start working. But for me, the block timing, the hyper-scheduling stuff, has kind of replaced Pomodoro in the sense that I put alarms on all my blocks. Like Mike, I set blocks of time to get work done, and I put a 15-minute alarm before each next block, if that makes sense.

And most of my blocks are at least an hour, usually more like two or three. So when the timer goes off, I will get, I'll play the saxophone or I'll go work in the garden for, you know, I take a little break with that alarm and I kind of get the same effect. Yep. Yeah. That's, that's a totally legitimate way to implement this. I would argue. And like you said, you don't have to stop at 25 minutes, although 25 minutes is the place that I would recommend that people start. Because regardless of your work situation, you can probably find at least one spot on your schedule where you can work for 25 minutes without interruption. And so the Pomodoro method is

a great framework for people who have to deal with those frequent interruptions. It's a great place to start. But then, like you said, you can grow up from there. I know Bodhi Quirk in the Focus Forum mentioned in the thread that he uses 30-minute sessions. Aaron Antcliffe uses a 40-minute session and then takes a 10-minute break. So the length really isn't that important. It's the fact that your attention is focused on a single task. That's really the thing that makes this work. Yeah. And I think it's that contract you're making saying, I'm going to do this for a set amount of time, but then I'm going to give myself the piece of

candy at the end, the reward that allows you to do it. And setting the timer for whatever reason, it helps your brain stay with the one thing. And there's lots of different ways, different tools that you can use for that timer. And we'll talk about those right after this ad break. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Timing, the app that tracks your time automatically instead of manually. Let's talk about why you should be tracking your time. For anyone billing their hours, this might seem a little obvious. But even if you are employed or billing per project, you need an estimate of how long it takes a specific task to get going and to get done. Time tracking helps you stay on track with those estimates

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so you know how to improve your productivity. Timing's functionality is similar to iOS 12's screen time, but for Mac, and honestly, better. And manual tracking and adjustments are still possible with Timing's automated approach. Plus, it has a gorgeous new dark mode. But you know work doesn't just happen on your Mac. That's why the timeline automatically makes suggestions

for filling gaps in your timeline. That way, you'll never again forget to enter a meeting. And with the automatic sync feature, your track time will magically appear across all of your Macs. So even when you work on the go with your MacBook, you'll have the full picture on your iMac once you get home. If you want to stay focused, having a good idea of where you're spending your time is super important. I've been using timing for over a year now, and I love it because it's just always in my menu bar and always running. I can go up and check on it. I can even set certain tasks as more productive than others. I just feel like having an automatic solution gets me better data, and that's what

Timing does. Timing is so confident that you'll love their fuss-free approach, they offer a totally free trial. Download the free 14-day trial today by going to timingapp.com slash focused and save 10% off when you purchase. Once again, that's timingapp.com slash focused to get 10% off. Stop guessing how you spend your time and instead focus on doing what you're good at. We thank Timing for all of their support of the show. All right, so Mike, one of the easiest ways to do this is just use the timer on your Apple Watch or your iPhone. You know, you can even tell Siri, you know, set a timer for 25 minutes and you're done. Yep. That would be the way that pretty much everybody who's listening to this could do it without any additional equipment. equipment. The one caveat with that, obviously, if you're using your phone, is that every time you go to your phone, you open the door to potential distractions, whether they be email

notifications or social media notifications. And so for some people, and I think myself included, I need to stay away from my phone when I set Pomodoros. I actually use this thing. It's called an Essington timer. It's like this big glass hourglass and it has what they call steel nano beads inside. So when you flip it over, it kind of looks like an hourglass with sand dripping through it. But the steel beads make this soothing,

like white noise sort of a thing that's supposed to help you focus. I don't know if it helps you focus or not. I just think it looks really cool. So I have one of these on my desk. And then when I flip it over to start the work, and that's really all I need to get going, I will frequently find that the timer runs out and I'm still working, but that's okay. It's the act of flipping over the timer that gets me into work mode. But the way it's designed, the beads are going to drip for 25 minutes. And then when it's empty, you take a break. Yeah, it is cool looking. So how often do you use it? You say Pomodoro timer?

I don't use it a ton anymore. Because like I said, I've got the planning my day. And that has kind of taken the place of it. But I do whenever I know I need to get a test done, like right now I'm working on a bunch of scripts for a video project. And sitting down to work on those scripts can be intimidating when I think about how many I have to do. So I just at that point, I'll turn over the Pomodoro and I'm okay, I'm just going to do one Pomodoro, you know, and then three hours later, I've written a whole bunch of video scripts. So I use it kind of as an activator, not as a way to track the amount of work that I do anymore. Yeah. And I also think the Pomodoro technique is an excellent thing. If you just feel like you're out of control, you know, if, if you're having a real hard time getting focused or,

or getting work done, um, anybody can commit to say, okay, for 25 minutes, I'm going to work on this problem. You're chopping it into a small enough bite-sized piece that you'll feel comfortable doing it. And so often, it's just getting yourself started. And maybe you'll promise yourself you're going to work on it for 25 minutes, and it turns out you'll work on it for four hours because you got past that initial resistance. Yeah, that resistance. We could do a whole episode on the resistance. I think we will.

There's a great Steven Pressfield book on that. The War of Art, I believe. He talks a lot about the resistance. But that's a very real thing. There's some other apps too. The gang over at Sweet Setup wrote up BeFocused Pro as their favorite Pomodoro app. Yeah, I actually wrote that one. Oh, did you?

Yep. A couple of years ago, but that's a pretty solid app. And it has a whole bunch of features for tracking tasks, which I think are a little bit overkill. I don't really like to track tasks inside of a Pomodoro app, but this is a great menu bar application. It syncs all the data to your iPhone as well. And if you just want something digitally, which is going to give you a history basically of the Pomodoros that you've run, then this is a great little app. Plus it's part of the Setapp subscription. So if you have Setapp already, you've got this for your Mac anyway. At some point I had downloaded an app on

my iPhone and I'm looking for the name now, I had downloaded an app on my iPhone, and I'm looking for the name now, I can't find it, but it turned, it created like a grove of trees. Like every time you finished a Pomodoro session, it was like a tree was planted. That's forest. Forest. And then, you know, and that's kind of a way to gamify it, make you feel a little better about, you know,

continuing to hammer away at this stuff. You know, as helpful as Pomodoro is though, like I said, I feel like, well, I guess I'm using kind of a modified Pomodoro with my block timing. But the, so I, I, none of them have really stuck with me. And, but if I do need to really just dial in and I'm having resistance. The result, the technology I use is the Apple Watch because it's an easy thing to set an Apple Watch timer with Siri and it doesn't get you the usual distractions you get with the phone. Right, right. Yeah, that's a good point. I would argue ultimately with these Pomodoro apps and the Pomodoro method is doing is ultimately the same thing you're doing when you plan out your day and you're, I guess you might call it hyper scheduling is that you are time blocking your

time for a specific task. And the time block almost doesn't matter. Pomodoro, like I said, is generally 25 minutes. There's another app for the Mac, which I think it's on iOS too, but a vitamin R, which I picked up a long time ago when it was on sale for a couple of bucks. But this is kind of like a Pomodoro timer on steroids, and it's a really great tool for time blocking. It'll integrate with your task manager like OmniFocus or things even. So you can say, I'm going to work on this task for this amount of time, and then it'll put all of that stuff into your task manager as well. But you definitely don't need to go all in with the apps in order to do this. Yeah.

One other thing I wanted to point out is the Siri shortcut here, which I found original credit for this goes to Federico, which sets a timer on your phone, puts your phone on do not disturb, and starts a timer in toggle. So if you wanted to use Pomodoro to track your time for a specific project or a specific client, you could use time blocking or the Pomodoro method to do that as well. Yeah, I've got that also in the version 1.1 of the Siri shortcut field guide as how I made a Pomodoro Siri shortcut as well. Although I haven't seen Federico's, I'm going to have to go look at it.

But I didn't put a toggle timer in, but I did install a do not disturb feature, which is, I think, kind of helpful because one of the ideas of the Pomodoro is to really dial in and not get yourself distracted. You don't need a shortcut for that as well, though. I mean, you could obviously turn on do not disturb. I guess my point is you don't need to make this more complex than it needs to be. At the end of the day, it's as simple as turning over a glass timer on Mike's desk. And I think that's the way you should approach this, especially if you're having trouble getting started because the last thing you need to do

is get fiddly about your Pomodoro timer. Yeah, exactly. We gave you a whole bunch of examples here just so you can find what works for you. But just because something has more features doesn't mean that it's the best solution for you. So if I were to summarize all of this advice and bring it back to that original email that Amanda wrote, I think you could probably say that the advice would be control what you can control. Don't spend time stressing out about stuff that is outside

your control, but just make the most of the uninterrupted time that you do have. And the way to do that, at least initially, is identify the one thing that is most important to get done during your workday. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, think about when you're in an environment where there are other people and good ideas you have aren't going to be adopted by everyone. Find out the little areas of your life where you can use those good ideas and don't preach about it to everyone. Just do it and let them see how successful you are at it. And then they'll be more willing to let you go further down that road. Yep. Do what you can. Make the most of what you've got.

Use the Pomodoro method if you want, but don't get frustrated by what you consider a lack of productivity. Don't try to hold yourself to an impossible standard. Just try to make constant progress. Beat yesterday. Get a little bit better,

a little bit more refined. And if you have that mindset, I think that's going to pay off regardless of the context that you would apply it to. not as forward thinking about it is don't be a jerk about it. It's very easy to feel like you're one upping everybody as you go through this stuff. And my goal was to always quietly be productive about these things and not try to like jam it down anybody's throat. And like I said earlier in the show, if you're successful at it,

people will approach you and explain to them until the cows come home when they ask you. But don't try and say, well, I have this thing that's better. I read this book or I've got this, I heard this thing on this podcast and I think we should all do it. Just quietly implement it for yourself and let the results speak for themselves. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. You're not going to convert anybody unless they're looking to change their situation. When pain is sufficient, change will come, but not before that. Or it's not even pain.

I think if they see changes in you after you start using some of these tools and they realize that, you know, hey, this person is being successful and they're doing something different than they want to know about it. Yep. Yeah.

They got to be in the right frame of mind, though, in order to receive any sort of advice. You can't just go around saying, hey, I read this book. It's awesome. Everybody should read it because no one's going to read it. Even if they do, they're not going to get the same thing out of it that you did because you were in the right mindset. It was the right thing at the right time. Doesn't necessarily mean it's the right place, right time for somebody else.

Well, Mike, I feel like we had a pretty good show today. Yeah, I'm happy with this one. I'm still in a little bit of a buzz from this whole birthday reflection thing. And I know the show isn't going to publish till almost a month after I did all this, but I would recommend anybody out there that's thinking about stuff like this to make a little time for introspection. And this is something Mike's been telling me, of course, for months, even before he joined the podcast. And everybody who does it knows it already, but making time for this stuff is a valuable investment. I hope you

all consider it. Yep. Have that focus on intentionality. That's a pretty big thing. I'm sure we're going to revisit that theme. If you do go through your own personal retreat, we'd love to hear about it in the Focus Forum. And also, we mentioned in the last episode with the productive woman, we talked a little bit about the masterminds. And I saw a couple of people in there asking about that already. So just a reminder that if you listen to that episode and you like the idea of masterminds, then focus listeners are great people to connect with regarding implementing those online. Yeah. I have to admit, I was a little hesitant to make the post about the intentionality and

the idea that I'm going to try and take this on more. I know that now every time I drop the ball in show prep, I'm going to hear about that from Mike or anybody in the world, you know, now that I posted to the internet. But I also think keeping myself honest isn't a bad idea. Anyway, thanks to our sponsors today, FreshBooks, Timing, and Squarespace. We are the Focused podcast. You can find us over relay.fm slash focused. Mike, anything exciting going on in your life these days? No, but if you want to connect with me, Twitter might be the best place to do that. I'm at bobbleheadjoe there. My personal site, mikeschmitz.me for everything else. Okay. I'm Max Barkey over on Twitter and we will see you in a few weeks.