Passion Struck with John R. Miles - You're Not Losing Time. You're Giving It Away. | Neal Schore – EP 806

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

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Have you ever caught yourself saying, I have to do this before you even started? I know I have. When I sat down with leadership coach Neil Shore, he explained what those little moments matter far more than we realize. They don't just shape our mood. They quietly drain our time, our energy, and our ability to stay present.

Take a listen to this. The aughts are very negatively contagious, and they spread very quickly. and it is absolutely part of what drains time and energy and focus. So it winds up being, oh, I got to go to that meeting or I have to sit with this person again or, oh, man, I really just don't want to go to that event tonight. And that negativity that we forecast and we spread winds up just being a presence that we create, that we can manage, that winds up just being like weights on our shoulder just weighs us down.

It's your friend John, and welcome to Passionstruck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a long-time listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to episode 806 of Passionstruck. I am so glad you're here. Today we're continuing our series, The Adaptive Brain, how your mind learns, changes, and heals. There's a question I hear all the time from this community, whether it's in emails, comments on Substack, or messages on social media. How do I find more time for what matters most? It's a question almost all of us ask. We assume the answer is a better calendar, better habits,

or somehow squeezing more time into the same 24 hours. But what if we've been thinking about time all wrong? That's exactly why I wanted to bring Neil Shore onto the show. Neil is an executive coach, leadership advisor, and the author of the new book The 25th Hour. After spending decades working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and senior leaders, he's discovered something that surprised me. The people who seem to have the most time aren't necessarily better at managing their calendars. They're better at managing themselves. In today's conversation, we explore why emotional self-regulation may be one of the most overlooked leadership

skills of our time. Why, our reactions often cost us more than our responsibilities. How one simple question can completely change difficult conversations and what it really means to become intentional with the hours we've already been given. But here's what stayed with me the most. I expected this to be a conversation about productivity. It wasn't. It was a conversation about attention. Neil challenged me to think less about how I spend my time and more about what questions quietly steals it. That shift alone made me rethink how often I give my focus without even realizing it. I think you're going to feel the same way, so let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Neil Shore. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters.

Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Neil Shore to Passion Struck. Neil, it's so nice to meet you. John, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm going to start out today with the question I haven't asked a guest in a while. We all have moments that define who we become. What's a defining moment for you? There are so many defining moments in my life. One of the top defining moments for me was about 19 years ago when my kids were quite a bit younger. My youngest was two years old. So I had a two-year-old, a six-year-old, and a nine-year-old. And I'm originally from Michigan and Northern Michigan, which is just stunning, beautiful during the summer, was area that I wanted to take my kids.

I had just been beyond excited to do that and over the top, counting on down days. So here we are. We arrive in Northern Michigan and in our first morning there, I wake up to a text from one of my board members who asked for a 15-minute phone call. on a project that I knew would not materialize. So it was a M&A opportunity, and it was something that I knew was outside the zone of anything that we would actually do. So intellectually, I completely understood

it was a waste of time. But instead of responding with a, sorry, I'm not available, and going about my day as I had so excitingly planned, I said, of course, and I accommodated the time and we juggled our schedule. And my kids' first opportunity to put their toes in Lake Michigan, which again had just been like a happy place for me.

I am sitting in a rental car facing the beach and watching them on the beach for this supposed 15-minute waste of time phone call when an hour and 45 minutes later when we finished, I get out of the car and I'm all excited. decided, okay, let's throw frisbees and footballs and let's have our fun and go jump in the water. And they were all like, Dad, we're done. We're pooped. We're out of here. Back to the hotel. And for as simple as that sounds, the defining moment part for me was my fear system got so activated about not being present on that call or disappointing my board member or somehow just not being

included that I sacrificed what was just a really important moment for me. And that became defining of I am not doing that ever again. And so that was a huge pivot opportunity. My kids barely remember it. My older to remember it more. My younger one doesn't remember it at all. But it sits within me as a defining moment and sometimes a haunting moment as well. Yeah, a couple things. One, my father is from Detroit. Both my parents went to University of Michigan. And so as a kid, we would always go up to Potoski to Lake Walloon, where Michigan has an alumni camp.

And my family went there for about 20 plus years in a row. Both my siblings were counselors there. And we actually spread my sister's ashes on Lake Walloon because it was touching to her and our family. So I love that part of the country. And right now, as we're speaking, would be an absolute fabulous time to be there. Fabulous, and this is our first summer in six summers,

not able to get back to northern Michigan. But my happy place is literally one town over from Patoski, and I am intimately familiar with Walloon Lake and where Camp Michigania is, and my older two sons went to Michigan. I went to Michigan State, and it is a special place in the country. It absolutely is that whole,

area. To me, it reminds me a little bit of Maine, but in Michigan. I completely agree. I also understand exactly what you were talking about. I was a senior executive at Lowe's, and one of my responsibilities was running operations. And I remember I rarely had the opportunity to go out and play golf. And I was out playing with my best friend. Lose.com happened to go down, and I spent two and a half hours trying to play golf with a phone next to my ear, completely detached with what was going on with him at the time. So I have experienced this exact sensation myself. And unfortunately, I don't think I learned my lesson until the next job taught me what you learned going to Lake Michigan. Well, it was interesting. So sometimes in crisis, this happens. In my case,

I literally knew that it was a waste of time. And this particular board member who's brilliant and well-intended and did nothing wrong, it was for him just something as a priority. I did not manage it properly because I didn't manage myself. So I teach about you manage you. And what I learned from and the takeaway is I did not manage myself. There was, if I didn't attend that call or if the, call happened without me in any way, shape, or form at any time, the outcome would have been

zero different except for me missing that really special moment with my kids on the beach in Charlevoix, Michigan. I have a sweatshirt I could grab from the closet behind me that actually has the name of that town on it. I love it. You know, what's funny about it as well, John, is when I talk to people about, this story in various forms when I'm speaking publicly or when I am even in small groups and something comes up, people are like, you spend your summers in Michigan? Why would you spend

your summers in Michigan? Like they think of that negative connotation with Detroit during that period of time that it was down and people don't understand the beauty of the state. Well, as probably a lot of people up there would say, let them not discover it so we can live in paradise. It's true. Neil, today we're talking about your brand new upcoming book, The 25th Hour, and one sentence in the introduction really jumped out at me. You write, the real problem isn't external, but internal. And I think that's a really bold statement. Are you saying that most of the obstacles we blame on circumstances are actually failures of emotional self-regulation?

I am. That's exactly correct. Built based upon my own experiences and just over 20 years of working with some of the country's largest, most notable senior leaders. And what the common theme is, regardless of the situation, at hand is that you can control you, but you can't control other people. You can't control circumstances. And the amount of time and energy that we spend trying to manage and control others is extraordinary. It's immeasurable. And by moving this back to the center, to you, it winds up being simpler and easier to see and less emotional. And therefore, we are wildly more productive when we can, when you manage you. I remember after I left Lowe's, I went to Dell and I was a global CIO.

And I have always loved the strategy aspect of the job and really getting my hands dirty and being out with the troops. And I found myself spending about 80% of my time, either dealing with HR issues or trying to manage the senior executive team who had so much infighting in politics that you almost needed a PhD in psychology to keep up with how to deal with the ever-changing environment on a weekly basis. So one thing that I loved when reading the book is you write, we don't lose time to task. we lose time to our reactions. And what I read into that using what I just said as an example is, if our emotional reactions are stealing our time, what I find is that our calendar isn't actually our biggest productivity problem. It's our nervous system reacting to it.

And I think that's in many ways what you're trying to say. That is literally what I am trying to say. It's not actually about extra time. It's about the time that we give away. So what examples of that are attending meetings that are not necessary. So similar to what I did in what I shared in my Lake Michigan story, it was not necessary for me to attend that meeting. It was not an important meeting. I chose to attend that meeting.

I chose to attend it instead of for the initial thing. 15 minutes for an hour and 45 minutes. And I chose then afterwards to be upset, distracted, and really affected by it, which created incremental, what I refer to as swirl around, why did I do that? How come I did that? Why didn't I do? And then we start doubting ourselves. In the aggregate, the hour and 45 minutes plus the incremental swirl, I'm still talking about So it's years and years of time that has lapsed, but yet still in the very forward part of my mind. Now, I use it as what I refer to as a focal point as a way not to mistakes made, lessons learn. But most people that I speak with and that become clients wind up spinning out, swirling,

think about it over and over again. and it's just immeasurable amount of time and productivity loss. All of that controllable by us looking at it, okay, I did that, right? I spent an hour and five minutes. I did that. I'm not going to do that again. And the ordinary, in our ordinary, very difficult to manage. And as I teach this and in my practice, people learn what I refer to as the exceptional

leadership. And that transition is really hard. and we love to blame other people, and we love to, oh, well, what am I supposed to do? Just not show up to the meeting? Well, maybe, but there's ways to handle that and to manage it so that it is less about, oh, I have to go to that meeting or, oh, that person just doesn't know how to run a meeting. And there's awful lot of things that we can do to control it. Finally, the thing that always gets me is when people, I just don't have time, just don't have time.

I can't find a minute in my day to grab lunch and let's look at your calendar. And then you take, how important is that meaning? Well, it's an obligation. And then you just go through it. And all of a sudden, there's at least an hour, hence to the 25th hour. There's at least an hour that people can recapture in their day. And I love to challenge them to not allocate that hour that they get back to work or to sleep. I like for them to do something that is going to get them excited or for their own personal development

that supports them the professional development. Years ago, I read the 5 a.m. Club by Robin Sharma and Hal Elrod's book as well. And I did what Tim Cook does. I found that for me, I could gain an hour by getting up earlier. So I, for years now, have gotten up at 5 a.m. and I just give myself a complete hour to myself that I use for meditation, listening to podcasts, freeing my mind up, but more setting intentions for how I want the day to unfold. And it has made such a profound impact because those affirmations of how I want

to live out my days over time have made it so much more positive and how the outcomes present themselves because of that. So I'm a huge believer in this. And what do you notice about your productivity and the idea of you managing you or the ability for you to manage you when you give yourself that space in the morning to just calibrate and focus on what's important for you for the day? It's made a tremendous impact because I think through mentally, I do a recap of the day before and I send intentions before I go to sleep. But then I use this as kind of a reawakening that these are the things that I need to get done today that are the most important. And I prioritize them to front end my day. And then I realized what can lag. And so by doing that, it's made me much more productive.

It's amazing. And that's a choice, a learned practice. That's you managing you into what makes you the most productive. I'm sure you hear this with many of the people that you meet. both on the podcast and otherwise, where it's just this frenzied, continuous hamster wheel. I can't find time. I don't know how to find time. And so we can do it.

You're now an expert at that. You're exceptional. And this is what I teach people. The slight difference, not everybody appreciates or desires to set the affirmations or sometimes meditation in itself. is difficult for people. I try to introduce this, even in smaller bites, where it's less about going to the wildly uncomfortable for some, and more about just even take a 30-minute meeting

and make it 15 minutes. And the way to do that is quick check-in, so everyone understands the professional vulnerability. I talk about this in the book. Just very quick. One word. In one word, we know exactly how our colleagues. are feeling that day. Could be caffeinated or distracted or it could be energized and enthusiastic.

And so someone that's distracted, you know that the presence is going to be less. Therefore, perhaps we spend less time on them or with them and someone that's energized is going to contribute more. And then the idea of just going straight into the business and having it very organized for that meeting and then getting out. And then with the balance of the time, those that want to, how is your weekend and what are you planning to do with this or whatever it may be, then they can do that on their own. And it's a game changer for as simple as that sounds, just in terms of recapturing hours and time in our day. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Neil Shore. As you're listening today, I'd like you to consider one simple

question. Where is your attention going that your life isn't? One of Neil's most important insights is that we don't simply lose time to meetings, emails, or busy calendars. We lose it to emotional reactions that linger far longer than the moments that created them. We replay conversations, anticipate conflicts that never happen, and spend enormous amounts of energy, trying to control things that were never ours to control in the first place. Those ideas resonate deeply with the research behind my upcoming book, the Mattering Effect, coming October 6. One of the hidden consequences of systemic unmattering is that it constantly pulls our attention toward proving ourselves, protecting ourselves, and performing for others.

The more time we spend caught in those cycles, the less time we have to invest in relationships' purpose and experiences that truly make life meaningful. If you'd like to continue exploring these ideas, every episode of Passionstruck, includes a companion workbook inside my substack at theignitedlife.net. designed to help you turn these conversations into practical changes in your own life. You'll find links to both the book and the ignited life in the show notes. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. You're listening to Passionstruck on the Passionstruck network. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Neil Shore. I've always been a huge fan of the Eisenhower

matrix because once you start using it, it's so easy to think of the quadrants of your life in terms of importance and urgency. And I remember a pastor of mine years ago did a great homily on this when he was talking about we tend to manage our lives by our calendar and our pocketbook, but are those really the most important and urgent things that we should. And I think once you start unpacking that and you start getting the quadrants correct, so many different aspects of your life unfold in much more meaningful ways. It's measurable. Absolutely measurable. And it's not cookie cutter. The program that you designed for yourself that gives you the energy and gives you the positivity that you expressed as it relates to how you manage your day and what you do doesn't have to be the same for someone else.

So there's a very notable leader that I work with who cannot find a 15 minute slot of time three or four weeks out. There's literally double, triple booked in almost every moment of every day, racing from place to place. And this is a person who manages a significant business. and several side businesses. So in other words, investors in multiple other very visible businesses. And that doesn't allow us any time just to think or to be strategic. And late at night when kids are sleeping and it's quiet in the house and there's a whole list of things to do because there's no time during the day,

allows for less sleep and doesn't let us be in our best. Now, this guy's built this way. So for him, he thinks, I can't change. This is just the way it is. This is the way it's going to be. And so we're slowly making strides to clear some space. And in the short time that I've been working with this particular individual, Neil, how did you know? 15 minutes is a lot of time. And I said five minutes is a lot of time. Especially in your world, five minutes of just stare out the window, notice what a nice day it is, relax your nervous system, have a moment to just think without racing, racing creates incredible thoughts. And this person happens to be wildly creative and it's truly a brilliant leader. but minimizing the contribution to his firm and to the client base that he's working with

because there's no time, totally in his control. Yeah, I had a person on the podcast years ago named Juliette Funt, and she writes about white space. And her whole business model is around talking to companies about creating more white space, especially for their management teams. And it is so important, I found myself for some of it. many years, especially when you're in large corporations, but it doesn't even have to be that way. You just seem to go from task to task, meeting to meeting without giving yourself that space for

reflection, for thought, for just freeing yourself from emotional burden for a few moments. And the more you can do that, it opens up so much creativity and other things as you're just explaining. Amazing. I used to very much live my life just like that. And while building Triton, I was on racing from meeting to airport to next meeting to coach kids baseball teams and juggling. There was no white space.

And I convinced myself that it was the way it was, right? The only way to manage it was just to keep doing that. and try to find a moment on a weekend or an evening. And there was real sacrifices there in terms of time spent with my spouse and the quality of time with kids and even as important, that time that I get to spend with myself. So now when I teach people and take them through exercises that I've developed, there's a lot of talking to ourselves.

There's a lot of in the mirror time. So you eyeballs to eyeballs talking, talking to yourself for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and it becomes very convincing where I use the metaphor of the devil and the angel as our governors. And so our devil, which loves to spend our time, just loves to and loves to activate our fears and the sky is falling and all that becomes our governor. But when the angel can come in and rescue and recalibrate that thinking, not only do we get time back, but the strategy associated with it is incredible. And then if you're managing people,

so if you are at any stage where you are leading people, modeling that behavior increases productivity in measurable ways. And I've done this for now years with people where they can stop trying to tell people about accountability and what they need to do different and how they're doing it wrong, but by taking a minute and modeling it the way that we believe as the leader is the most productive and or the way to get the job done is almost a simple principle of follow the leader. And it's been transformational for countless businesses and clients of mine.

Just again, you manage you and then people pile on and follow. It's fascinating. Oh, it is absolutely fascinating. One of the things, Neil, that people get wrong is they hear the name Passion Struck and they focus really on that this show is all about passion. What the show is really about is human flourishing. It's really about how do we live truly alive? And it's a concept that ties to something that you try to distinguish in this book, the difference between living ordinarily and living exceptionally. And most leadership books teach us what exceptional leaders do.

I felt like your book is asking something different. It's asking, why do ordinary people repeatedly choose ordinary responses even when they know better? Is that a good way to think about it? It's absolutely the way to think about it. And the intent of the way that I describe ordinary and exceptional is not to be judgmental in any way, shape, or form. So when I use the word ordinary, it is intended or by design to mean like, everyone does it that way.

I can't explain why, but this is the way that people respond. And so therefore, it's ordinary or typical. In the exceptional, which becomes the code word or the theme for what leaders that are interested and developing themselves and save a lot of time and be more productive, etc., wind up working on is to simplify all that. And so instead of doing it the way everyone else does it, and we can talk a lot about what the it's are, there's a lot of them, do it differently and just change it. And think about the idea of you don't have to follow that same sequence that we're so programmed in.

and we get programmed from very early in our life. So I write about and I believe and teach every day that, again, I very metaphorical. In my metaphor, it's we become robots. So in our ordinary robots, we're trained at very early ages. I remember going out to kindergarten recess in Michigan on the days that you could actually go outside. It was you, at 1152, you lined up at 1150. you walked out the door at 12.17 at lunch, I had a rotation of three lunches for all of elementary school, same brown bag, and we get programmed. And then it becomes middle school where we get a little

bit more freedom, but the same classes Tuesday, Thursday, versus Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Then we get to high school and we think we have real freedom. And it winds up being, we can have some elective classes, which is great. College is supposed to be all about learning how to be adults, but again, our robots, our programming is very, very defined in most cases. And then when we get into the workforce, it becomes about, well, if you're an analyst in order to become an associate, and then you have to become a director, and then you have to become a vice president in order to then move up the ladder. And you mentioned it even just in lows. It requires structure, and it requires hierarchy for sure, but how we manage ourselves inside of that, we can either

be ordinary, like most robots are programmed, or we can be exceptional. And one of the other key characteristics that I like to, that I like to share is that in general, being ordinary is like being mediocre. So if I use this fake line here as the line of mediocrity, and in my word, in my definition, mediocre is not a negative word. It's actually just ordinary, regular behavior, mediocre. most people sit just below the line. They can get promoted. They can make more money each year. They can get their three or five percent raises. They can live a very happy, productive life. And then there's good, just above the line. That's the person that really stands out. They're not doing anything completely stellar, but they are a little bit higher performer, environmentally or in the

culture. They're great contributors. And then there's a big leap to exceptional. And these are the people that only invite others to meetings that need to be there, no accommodations. They are very clear about the ways that you manage you and they model that behavior. They wind up in not allowing their devil to be their primary governor. The devil doesn't ever go away, as I found. It's always there. But when it does happen, it's that tone where it's like, oh, I just did that. I just wasted 35 minutes spinning out or swirling on this topic.

I owe myself 35 minutes back. It's the Debits and Credit system I like to talk about. And they do it with that lighter tone. And that winds up being exceptional. So we can't expect ourselves to be perfect. And my definition, the perfect doesn't exist. So it's literally, if you like chocolate and I like vanilla ice cream, well, then there's no perfect flavor, right?

So it's a word that I think gets purged from our minds and the dictionary and instead just really try to model and showcase what exceptional looks like. I really liked it because I use an analogy quite frequently. You use robot. I say people end up living a pinball life. We end up being the ball instead of playing the game. And what I was trying to bring to life with the analogy was the work of Danny Caneman, the Nobel laureate behavioral. because I'm trying to help people distinguish between using system one thinking fast versus system two thinking slow and how they approach their days and the tasks that they have in front

of them and their interactions. I want to talk about another thing. When I was at Lowe's, those of us who were deemed to be high potential were forced to go through this evaluation process where they brought this search firm in Corn Ferry, which I thought was an interesting exercise, but they brought in organizational psychologists to meet with us and evaluate us. And I remember when I was doing my last session with this organizational psychologist, she handed me Marshall Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You to Where You Want to Go. And she said to me this question, John, you need to start asking yourself,

what's the intent? What's their intent of the people you're working with? And so when I saw this in your book, it brought back 20 years of memories because what she was really getting at to me is I was getting triggered by a lot of my peers' emotional reactions. And it would cause me to spiral back then. And she was telling me that if I keep allowing myself to spiral when I hear criticism, disrespect, rejection, it's going to be career limiting to me. So she got me to start really thinking about, you've got to start thinking more about intentions. And that's a reason why I bring intentionality on this show so much. Can you talk about this concept a little bit more and why it's so important? Absolutely.

It is a cornerstone of the work that I do. And first, it's interesting. I have been through that corn fairy process that you described. and I have seen it firsthand. There's many similar type of evaluation processes out there, all of which I find very ordinary. So the interesting part about it is you can evaluate and put quadrants and boxes and all of that. And for some firms, especially larger firms, they love that because it's a data set that they can then evaluate and believe that they're going to hire certain type of people. In my view, that is the extension of the robots. So even in that exercise,

I look and say, what's the intent? Oh, the intent is just data. It's actually, the intent is typically much simpler than what it appears on the surface. So I'll give you a couple examples. I have one executive that I work with. One of her biggest issues is there's just a line out the door of people that want her time. So unscheduled time. And she is very generous about giving time. And so therefore people come back and take the time. So I asked her to just realize that it's,

the beginning of these unscripted discussions, what's the intent of the person there? And she at the beginning would say, oh, well, they needed help with something for the accounting team or they needed something for help with the sales team or whatever it may be. And I would say, no, that's not it. Try again. And then she would come back and go, okay, I nailed it this time. So I had five people just in the last two days and here's their intent. And I said, no, that's not it at all.

And finally, out of deep frustration, Neil, you just need to tell me what's the intent. Well, the intent is you're one of the senior leaders in the company, and they want visibility. They just want visibility with you. And you're willing to give it to them. So therefore, when I was a younger professional in my 20s, when my boss was willing to spend time with me and I could showcase, I would have talked for 45 minutes. and I have a great sidebar conversation about that. I'll tell you just a second. But it was unbelievable.

So when she learned to manage that and understood the intent was simply about someone looking for affirmation or quick feedback, the conversation instead of being 15 minutes became three minutes or instead of five minutes became one minute. She wound up having a lot more boundary around what she was doing and therefore the intent was clear. The other thing where I love intent comes in is when people feel insulted. Oh, this person said that they didn't like the idea that I came up with. Okay. So what was their intent? Well, I don't know, but I don't like the way they said it. Okay, well, what was their intent? Let's put all that, take your devil and calm the devil down for a second.

Let's go to your other governor or the angel. What was their intent? Well, they wanted to just provide feedback. Well, feedback is. your friend, right? Yes. Okay, so we take the feedback. How it's delivered and all that is about you manage you, right? You're not going to be able to manage how someone speaks to you. So if their intent was just to provide you feedback, why are you so twisted about it? And the simplicity of this, taking all that noise and complication that a lot of it, we manufacture, where it's insulting and how could they do that and they treat people this way, which takes hours and hours of capacity in our head, the swirl. And we just redirect it through what's the intent. And there's many other angles as well.

Thank you so much for going into that, Neil. I thought it was one of the most profound aspects of the book that I took away because it was something I've been working on, like I said, for decades to do better. I think all listeners have experienced frustration, irritation, irritation, disappointment, discouragement. You refer to these as Ux, if I have it correct. And I think what you were trying to say, and it's a recurring theme that I saw through the different stories that you had with CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, is that emotional maturity isn't about never spiraling. It's about learning how to recover faster. Why is that so important to a leader's success? The a aughts are very negatively contagious, and they spread very quickly.

And it is absolutely part of what drains time and energy and focus. So it winds up being, oh, I got to go to that meeting or I have to sit with this person again or, oh, man, I really just don't want to go to that event tonight. And that negativity that we forecast and we spread winds up just being a presence that we create, that we can manage, that winds up just being like weights on our shoulder, just weighs us down. And when we figure out that, huh, okay, so I don't love the person that I'm sitting next to at this event, but they had this interesting article they published last week. I'd like to learn more about that. Or we just understand that I'll only be sitting there for 15

minutes and we can manage behavior, manage ourselves again, away from this, ah, heaviness, and just lighten it up. It changes everything. One of the things, and I like to say the tools really do tie together. And so I had one of my favorite personal situations was I had a, I was 25-year-old manager at Interrep. And there was a woman who was about 10 years older than me, who came up to me after one of my very first meetings. So I was holding a team meeting, and she said, Neil, you're really powerful. And then she walked away.

And John, no exaggeration. I spent three months trying not to be powerful because I was so insulted by her calling me powerful. And so I tried to be more of the team and let's have a bowling night and let's try everything to be powerful, not powerful. And it wasn't until about three months later that it was literally eating me up. And I pulled her aside and I said, hey, if you don't mind, what did you mean by I'm really powerful?

That's easy. You sit tall in your chair. You explain things really clearly. And there's just this patience that you exhibit, which is just, it's so empowering. It's so powerful. And I said, thank you. and then I felt like the biggest fool ever that I had wasted three months. It's somewhat embarrassing to talk about, but now it's just professional vulnerability

and sharing experiences. Had I just simply paused, gotten curious, what's the intent of her asking, saying I'm powerful, and then said, hey, do you mind explaining that? I would have saved myself three months of time. and the modification behavior and all of that. So we really are powerful, all of us. Students the same. So if you're a student and you're trying to get time with your professor,

no different than the teacher, no different than the boss to employee type of situation that we talked about, there's so many ways to do it simply and to make your mark and to really connect with and then not think about it afterwards. did I get a B on this paper instead of an A or an A minus? And I'm not a good writer. The narrative we tell ourselves, clearly I can't be a journalist. I shouldn't go into journalism because I got a bad grade.

Of course, not a bad grade, but it's not what we expect of ourselves. Or you can just go and ask the question. I'd love to know how I could get an egg. What could I do to do that? Help me understand and be open to the feedback. reading the book you have experienced a lot of situations that that can become tense and I think I've experienced this many times I'm sure other listeners have and oftentimes we get into this he said she said blah blah blah blah type of thing which really gets down to trust and oftentimes

it's self-trust oftentimes it's not trusting the other person but I found during my time that one of the things that can be difficult to do at times, but I think has saved myself a lot of grief, is just apologizing. Sometimes for things I didn't even do, but sometimes it salvaged a situation and allowed me to get through something much quicker than trying to continue staying in this thick of war that I was experiencing. And this whole idea of apology is something that you've brought up in the book as well. Can you go into that a little bit? Of course. I don't love or recommend people to apologize for something that they didn't actually do. I do love the idea of simplifying it and apologizing for perhaps not being connected. So for example, if you accused me of doing something

that I didn't do, and let's keep it in the business context, nothing that is criminal or anything bad, The idea of very simply going, oh, I'm really sorry that didn't land for you. And let's take one minute and let me explain what my intent was. Or the idea of saying, wow, I really appreciate you sharing with me that my tone was insulting. I promise you that was not my intent. And I'm really sorry for that. It's not only diffusing, but it saves. an enormous amount of negative energy and it avoids the ox right so next time that person's approaching

you you're like oh i got to deal with this person again and when that comes through which for as simple as it sounds to actually do people don't like to apologize don't like to take responsibility for and wind up getting wildly defensive in almost every case well that that's not what i meant and i didn't even say it that way you heard it wrong this happens all the time and then it becomes combative or some sort of debate. And oftentimes, and I love this, I work with a young professional who shared a similar situation just last week with me. And then I redirected the conversation away from the ox and this real negativity. And I said, hey, tell me what you were arguing about. And she paused for a second. She said, I don't remember. So why are you continuing to argue about it? Well, it's the

principal of it. How much time have you spent on the principal at this point? Well, I've gone to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it and I then share with it. Well, be honest with me. So you're in the kitchen at the office and another one of your colleagues walks by and you roll your eyes about when you're doing. And right, you're doing that, right? How do you know that? I'm like, let's just just say. Yeah. I'm doing it. And then you have the little sidebar because you bump into someone in the bathroom. So just calculate the time. And we calculated that based upon this one situation, which she doesn't actually remember the event that happened, had eroded something like 41 hours of measurable spinning

time. And that was her plus at least three other people that she can remember that she was spreading the negativity with. That's the negative contagious I like to talk about. Where had she just gone back and been like, oh, hey, that was insulting to me. And the other person most likely would say, hey, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean it that way. Or to clarify it, no different than the powerful comment, saves us enormous amount of time. But then we not only stop being in the ordinary, do it the way everyone else does, we are in our exceptional. And then we just feel better. And then we're more productive and we get more done. And then our bosses recognize us. And then we get promoted quicker. And then all these good things happen when we manage our

yourselves that way. You would Yeah, go ahead. You had mentioned the word trust as well. I wanted to talk about that. So I do believe that the apology does build trust. I also believe that we are generally non-trusting. So I do try to encourage people to assume the positive intent or clarify the intent.

And most always, when it's clarified, trust can build quicker because what appears on the surface, that jabby comment or that what feels like an insult or the embarrassment, oh, you asked me that question in a whole room of people. And you were just calling me out to showcase something that I didn't do as opposed to the 10 things I did do. Chances are that's not actually what the intent was. And therefore, it builds a lot of trust when you can go to that person and say, hey, you asked me that question in the room. Were you concerned about what I was doing? My instinct was

to tell you everything I was doing, but I'd love to know exactly what the intent of the question was. Massive amount of trust get built just by asking clarifying questions. Thank you for sharing that. One of my favorite chapters was actually your final chapter. Years ago, I interviewed this Australian who somehow got the domain, the bucket list guy. And what I really enjoyed about our conversation wasn't actually the idea of the bucket list. He brought up this concept that I often talk about called the reverse bucket list. And he said that so many people are focused on not being able to achieve their bucket list that they forget about their reverse bucket list. And what he's really talking about is all the things that you thought you never would have been able to do in your life that you've already achieved.

So you refer to this similar concept as a graduation speech. Why do you think so many people never stop long enough to acknowledge who they've become, which is, I think, really what a reverse bucket list or your graduation speech is really about? That is interesting and awesome to hear the way you drew the parallel from the reverse bucket list into the graduation. And thematically, I agree with you very similar. I love the graduation because it acknowledges the work that we've done. So when we can walk across that stage and we get the diploma in one hand and we're shaking hands with whomever is handing us the diploma in the other, there's something really

euphoric about it. It's an achievement. It is an accomplishment. And that graduation element, whether it's high school or college or graduate school at any form is always positive. It just represents the success that we've had, no matter what the journey to success was. And because I'm metaphorical and because I like to teach in my practice, just a simpler way of doing things, taking the complicated and simplifying it to the best of our ability, I came up with the graduation concept, just.

just because the person that when it popped in my head had done such incredible work, like transformational work as a leader. And over the course of time, she had been promoted, our meaning our time together, she had been promoted several times into exactly the position that she wanted. And she was thriving. And she was using her tools as well as any person I've ever taught them to. and it just dawned on me that we can culminate, right? We can celebrate the successes that we have.

And cap and gown in the mirror again, eyeball to eyeball, given herself a speech. So she was the valedictorian. And she will speak today about how powerful, literally powerful, that experience was. And when she slips back into ordinary behavior, as we all do, she is reminded about that graduation day. And she keeps her tasseled that she bought online very clearly on her desk as a focal pointer as a reminder. And she is just prompted by being in that incredibly productive place.

And so I love the idea of having the goals and the goals. the focus to try to achieve things, but I also believe that it's critically important that we acknowledge our own success. You saw that in the Cookies chapter as well, but the idea of just really acknowledging, I did this, right? I did this, whether it's getting the different job, whether it's putting yourself in a happier place, whether it's achieving a goal, financial, or otherwise, it's, I did this and it ties closely to you manage you, where instead of of relying on other people for that feedback and for that continuous affirmation, which we all crave, we learn how to be independent and to provide ourselves that affirmation as the graduation exercise

supports as well as other tools that I love so that we get our nutrition from ourselves as opposed to needing so much nutrition from others. Neil, what I learned the most from reading the book is that we don't become more intentional by finding more time. We've become more intentional. By reclaiming the time, we've been unconsciously surrendering to fear, resentment, ego, perfectionism, and emotional reactivity is how I would sum up the book in a lot of our discussion. If someone was listening to this and they're struggling on where to start, what would you recommend to them? I would recommend, in addition to reading the book, I have been told just even an advanced early reader,

copies that it is hugely impactful, which is fantastic considering that's the goal. The idea is to really help people. The simple way to start is just pause. Just pause. Take a second, figure out what's happening. Relax your nervous system. Did that person mean to insult me? Do I need to be in that meeting?

What's the intent of what's happening here? and when we can train ourselves that uncomfortable pause, right? Very few of us do it. No one likes dead air. It's, I'm going to start speaking before you've even finished answering the question. The idea is just take a beat, take a second, collect your thoughts, use your tools, and then go. So what I would tell them is pause, sort out the intent, figure out the intent really quick. and the more you rehearse this, it happens in seconds.

It's not 20 seconds. It happens in two to three or three to five seconds. And then ask a question. So it would look like, huh. So, John, I think the intent of what you said to me before was a compliment. Could you clarify for me what you meant by calling me powerful? And that had I done that in the moment. when that woman called me powerful, I not only would have been fortified by the compliment she was

paying me, but I would have avoided all that negative swirl three months worth of what I viewed as an insult and misinterpreted and she's this and she's that and I was changing my own behavior and all of that. And although that could be an extreme example, just pausing, sorting out the intent very quickly, and then ask a clarifying question. the most powerful combination of tools that I can teach to the beginners. I will also say for as simple as it sounds, it's really hard, right? Because we want to just, you said what to me? And this is the way I heard it. And in our ordinary, we respond the way our robots are trained. And so therefore, if you can just take a second, I don't think this person really meant it that way. Let's figure

it out what they want and just ask a question. Neil, where can people learn more about you, this book and all of your coaching? You can learn more about the company at 25hourgroup.com. Our website is under development. There's a temporary site up. The book is available for pre-order now out August 11th. And that is on every major bookseller is carrying it. but there's also a link on the website.

And then my website, neelshore.com, everyone always spells it wrong. So it's N-E-L-S-C-H-O-R-E.com, is also coming live shortly in about six weeks. And there'll be lots of information about me and my practice and the experiences that I've had. I love using my own experiences, as well as the experiences of my clients

to showcase not only how, it can be transformational, but also that it's hard and that it takes work. But if you're willing to invest the time and energy into the work for yourself, just like anything else you get out of it, what you put into it, and it becomes transformational in your life. Neil, it was awesome to have you today. Such an honor. Congratulations on the new book.

And thank you for helping the audience to become more passion struck. Amazing. Thank you, John. Thank you for having me. I love all the work that you do, and I also love the parallel, the way that we come at so many similar concepts from a slightly different angle, which is fantastic, and thank you for having me. I hope today's conversation with Neil Shore leaves you thinking differently about one simple truth. Becoming more intentional isn't about squeezing more time into your day. It's about becoming more deliberate about where your attention goes, because attention becomes time,

Time becomes habit, habits become identity. And over time, identity becomes the life that we live. Neil reminds us that we don't have to control every circumstance around us. We don't have to eliminate every difficult conversation or every demanding day. What we can control is how we respond. Every time we pause instead of react, every time we become curious instead of defensive, and every time we choose intention over impulse, we're reclaiming moments that we're we're that would have otherwise been lost.

If today's conversation resonates with you, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Share it with me on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. And if you know someone who constantly feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day, please send them this episode. You never know how one conversation

might help someone else reclaim not just their schedule, but the way they experience their life. And if you haven't already, be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcast or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. Next week, I'll be joined by New York Times number one bestselling author, Mark Manson. Together, we explore one of the defining questions of modern life. In a world that's constantly competing for our attention,

how do we decide what's actually worth caring about? We'll discuss why chasing certainty often leaves us more anxious, why discomfort isn't something to eliminate, but something to understand, and how choosing better values leads to a more meaningful life. If Neil challenged us to reclaim our time, Mark challenges us to reclaim our choices. I think you're going to love that conversation. For a human to actually be different than they were before, it requires you to do one of two things. It requires you to behave in ways that are new and uncomfortable.

Or it requires you to let go of beliefs and perceptions. you had about yourself, which is also not fun because that's a form of grief. By definition, change requires either destruction of former behavior or former identity. Both of those things suck. If you're smiling about it, it probably didn't really change your life. Until then, remember this. Every moment of awareness is an opportunity to respond with greater intention. And sometimes the life we're searching for isn't found by adding more hours to our day,

It's found by becoming fully present in the ones we already have. I'm John Miles, and as always, stay curious, stay intentional, and stay passion-struck.