Something You Should Know - How To Innovate Like The Great Innovators & How to Clean Faster and Better Than Ever

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Ever had to wait forever to get a prescription filled? Why does it take so long to take pills out of a big bottle and put them in a little bottle? I start this episode with the answer – and it may surprise you. http://mentalfloss.com/article/79615/12-behind-scenes-secrets-pharmacists When I think of innovators, I think of the champions of innovation – Leonardo DaVinci, Steve Jobs or that guy who invented the wheel. But we all actually innovate. We have to in order to solve the problems in our lives. According to Hal Gregerson, we can all learn to be better at it. Hal is Executive Director of the MIT Leadership Center and Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of the book The Innovators DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (https://amzn.to/2Qz26qm). Listen and discover the secrets of great innovators.  You would think that a sad song would make a sad person even sadder. In fact it can actually cheer them up. Listen as I explain how this works. http://www.wnyc.org/story/why-sad-songs-make-us-happy/ Few people love to clean but since we all have to do it, we might as well do it faster and better. Melissa Maker is a real authority on the topic. She has over a million subscribers to her YouTube Channel called Clean My Space and she is author of the book Clean My Space (https://amzn.to/2K9r7rf). Listen as Melissa joins me to dazzle you with her cleaning advice.  This Week’s Sponsors -Ancestry.For 20% off your Ancestry DNA kit, go to www.Ancestry.com/something -Omax Health. For 50% off OMAX Sleep and Stress Remedy go to www.OmaxHealth.com and use the promo code SYSK -Omax Health. For 20% off your on OMAX CryoFreeze or any purchase sitewide go to www.OmaxHealth.com and use the promo code: something -Purple. To get a free pillow with your mattress purchase text the word “Something” to 79-79-79. -Capital One. What’s in your wallet? www.CapitalOne.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, why does it take so long for a pharmacist to fill a prescription? Then are great innovators born or made? The research around this from five studies of genetically identical twins, basically one-third of their innovation and creative capabilities are genetic, but two-thirds of those are pure nurture. The homes we grew up in, the schools we went to school to, the places we've worked. Plus, why is it that sad songs tend to cheer up people who are already sad? And real expert advice that will make cleaning much faster and far more effective. So anytime there's a dirty surface, let's say a really greasy countertop, rather than just spraying the product on and wiping it off, put the product on the surface

and let it sit, let it marinate. Then you wipe it and that's when you get those commercial results. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes.

Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily.

And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. I have to admit I'm one of those people who sometimes gets impatient waiting for a prescription. You probably don't know too much about how your pharmacist works, but you've probably gone to the drugstore and thought, why is this taking so long? How hard is it to take a few pills out of a big bottle and put them in a little bottle?

Why would you even have to go to school to learn how to do that? Well, according to one pharmacist who sees about 200 prescriptions a day, about 10 to 15% of those prescriptions have errors that could cause trouble or even kill you. Either the dose is wrong or there could be a bad interaction, all of which requires a call to the doctor. Additionally, doctors' handwriting is notoriously horrible, and that often requires a phone call. Now, electronic prescriptions are common today, but this pharmacist claimed

that they don't really cut down on errors, they just make errors more legible. So, maybe give your pharmacist a break. It takes time to make sure they get it right. And they have to get it right. And they have to get it right. And that is something you should know. Innovation is one of those words that when I hear it, I think of Leonardo da Vinci or

Steve Jobs or whoever else you want to fill in the blank with on the list of great innovators. And yet, when you think about it, we all have to innovate sometimes. You have problems and you have to figure out the solution, and that is innovation. It's definitely a subject worth digging into, and here to help is Hal Gregerson. Hal's one of those big thinker guys. He's the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of the book, The Innovator's DNA, Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Hey, Hal, welcome. How are you?

I'm great, and it's good to be with you. Thank you. So explain how you look at this topic of innovation, because like I say, the word, to me, it makes me think of those great innovator guys that invented the wheel or fire or the computer or something. All of us are facing opportunities and challenges every day, and we do not have answers or solutions to them at the moment. And to me, that's an innovation moment. I frankly, Mike, don't care whether we call it creative problem solving or innovation, it doesn't matter. But every moment, not every moment, but throughout every day of our lives, we all are faced with opportunities to ask a better question, to find a better answer about things that matter.

And to me, that's why innovation counts. And it's not just for the famous people. And so how do you, as you sort of just did, but define innovation for me? My simple definition is creating an idea that generates value. And so I'm not interested in idea creation for idea's sake, which is fun and interesting and creative, but I'm interested in generating a new idea that actually delivers value. Now, that value might be monetary, it might be emotional,

but it delivers something value and substantive to ourselves or to the people around us. And there is a process to do that? Or is it divine intervention or aha moments? Or where do the best innovations come from? Well, frankly, I would say all of the above. Maybe there's some divine intervention. Maybe there's some luck.

You know, Steve Jobs being born five years earlier or five years later might have been a whole different story. So there is that element in it all. But I'm going to now step outside of that initial response to a more significant one, hopefully. And that is, we often, if we don't perceive ourselves as innovators, and more than half of the leaders I work with around the world do not see themselves as innovators. They actually don't define themselves that way. They look at, quote-unquote, the innovators, like Steve Jobs or a Mark Benioff at Salesforce or a Diane Greene who founded VMware, they look at those people and they think they're unique, they're different, they were born innovators, that's not me.

And that's a tragic assumption to make about ourselves as human beings because, in fact, the research around this from five studies of genetically identical twins, basically these kids are born, they're separated at birth for unfortunate reasons, grow up in different families, different communities, different schools. They're tested when they become adults. And in fact, one third of their innovation and creative capabilities are genetic. But two thirds of those are pure nurture, their environment, the homes we grew up in, the schools we went to school to, the places we work. And so the point of all of that, Mike, is that innovation is actually a choice. And it's a question of how do we actually go about finding and solving problems that determines the

degree to which we are actually innovative. But don't you think that if you're a great innovator, that you do have something that other people don't? Because lots of people can learn the skills of how to do something, but only a few hit it out of the park. What the research I just described said that one third of this is arguably genetic. Some people are more capable of connecting the unconnected than others from a genetic sort of viewpoint. Some people are more capable of exploring the world in a very experiential way because they have more dopamine-4 in their brain. And so what happens there is that these folks are a little bit more predisposed in their everyday interactions with the world to actively collect passive data from what's going on

around them. So instead of just walking down the street, you know, with eyes, ears, mouth and everything, you know, their sensory system closed off to the world. These folks are actively observing things. They're seeing stuff other people don't see because they watch and they watch carefully. They're actively talking to people to get new ideas. Otherwise, they wouldn't be getting from other people. They're actively experimenting and just trying stuff. And in the middle of all those actions, they're actually constantly asking questions that

challenge the status quo. And so it's really using the skills I just described in an everyday way, in a systematic way, in a habitual way, that enables these famous people to do things that actually, when you lift up the trunk and look underneath and explore the engine and how it really works, the engine is actually a set of behaviors. It's a way of finding and solving problems that anyone can learn. And yes, Mike, maybe a few people have a slight advantage here, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can't make a bigger difference by engaging that same skill set as we operate at work or in life. Do you think that great innovators have something in common that if they're great at innovation, they have that one-third that other people don't have,

does it mean they're not so good at something else? Does that one-third bump come at the expense of something else? Yes, it does. And so what we've got in the Innovators DNA framework, we have discovery skills of the questioning and observing and networking and experimenting and thinking associationally, but there are also delivery skills that are required to simply get things done, not get new ideas. And this is around self-discipline, organizing, planning, convergent analytics, and so on. Those things matter to get things done.

And what we know from data from 20,000 data points of people who have filled out either a SELF or 360 assessment is that, for example, the higher I am on organizing and planning my everyday work and life, the lower the probability I'm going to be able to get new ideas that are valuable because I've just structured out of my schedule the opportunities to do some of these more serendipitous things that just they otherwise wouldn't happen the conversation in the hallway that can matter and make a difference in connecting the unconnected and so so the answer, Mike, is yes. It's not like I can be an incredibly off-the-chart idea creator that generates value and at the same time either go to get it done, fix it person whenever the system goes down. Those are two

very different skill sets and mindsets. But do you think that great innovation is often the result not of a great innovator, but of great innovators, that it is much more likely to be a team effort where this guy's good at one thing and this guy's good at the other thing, and collectively, the sum is greater than the whole of its parts? In two different ways. Absolutely. Individual, you know, innovation is not an individual sport. It's a team sport. Absolutely. And that team diversity and taking advantage of each other's capabilities is crucial. Here at MIT, we actually did a three-year research project around what does it mean to be a leader coming out of MIT,

and what we discovered was they are problem-led, challenge-driven leaders. They choose and step up to be a part of a team that's taking on something that seems impossible at the outset but is worthy of doing. And every person on that team has a specific skill set, mindset, technical capability that at different points of the problem-finding and solving process, they have to step up and step down to make it work. So you're spot on there.

We actually once had the chance to explore with a 360 assessment of these discovery skills and the innovators DNA framework of one of the most innovative teams at Microsoft. And what we discovered was that even within these innovation skills, this super innovative team was complementary in their individual skills. So one was off the chart on observing. It was off the chart on networking. It was off the chart on questioning. And they took advantage of those different skill sets fully as they were trying to innovate. And the other part of that, beyond innovation, is actually developing the idea and delivering

results and executing. And so depending on what stage we're in, it can become absolutely crucial. Maybe I'm an innovator like Fadi Gondorio's at a logistics company based out of Jordan in the Middle East. He's a super high-focused innovator. But we actually collected data from his 50 top leaders who are working with him, and they are basically off the chart on delivery execution skills to get things done, which makes perfect sense for a logistics

company. And collectively, they complement each other. Foddy, innovator, gets amazing new ideas, and these other folks, largely executors, delivery-driven, get stuff done. They work with them well to make it happen. I'm speaking with Hal Gregerson. He's co-author of the book, The Innovator's DNA. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

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So Hal, can we run through some of these skills that you're talking about and how people can implement them? The starting point is having a problem or an issue or an opportunity that we actually care enough about to go out of our way to get up and get out of the world to use these skills to make a difference. And so, frankly, Mike, half the people I deal with, leaders and non-leaders, they are operating and working, and for whatever reason, they're in a space where they frankly don't care, and they're not identifying problems that even matter. So that's the first step is like look around, open your eyes, pay attention. What might be done that would make a difference around here either for the people working inside the organization or for the clients or customers

using our products and services? Then once that's kicked in, then it becomes, okay, I'm going to use this very active set of skills, their behavioral and intellectual skills, to find and solve these problems. Starting point can become asking challenging questions that push the status quo. And the starting point there is often just figuring out what is going on here what's the reality what's the territory what's happening what's working these are the questions what's working and what's not working and why those are simple questions but it takes a deep commitment on the part of a leader to create enough trust that people at any level of the organization are going to give them honest answers. And so once we do that, though, then we're able to move to potentially doing

something different. And what I'm talking about here is David Nielman, who founded JetBlue here in the United States and then founded Azul Airlines down in Brazil where he was born. Be it JetBlue or Azul Airlines, he's the founder, CEO of the company. And in spite of all of that, David regularly would be in planes serving snacks and drinks to customers and dealing with their excitement and their complaints. He'd be on those planes after they land, cleaning toilets and vacuuming up. He'd be outside of the planes before they'd take off, tossing luggage into the bottom of those cargo holds. He'd be at the check-in counter

dealing with check-in issues, good and bad. And those moments where David Nielman is actively, and his senior team does the same thing, they're actively out there in the world interacting, engaging, observing, and watching and talking. It builds trust so that when David asks what's working around here and what's not, he actually gets some pretty good answers and he can explore why is that the case. So that's the starting point is to start asking these questions to figure out what's working, what's not, and why. And then have in the back of your mind,

once you figure it out and identify a potential opportunity, it's a whole slew of what if, why not, how might questions that can help push it forward. And then what happens? Well, we also know from this data of 20,000 data points of leaders around the world that if all we do is ask questions, there is no correlation, no relationship between asking questions and actually getting valuable new product, service, process, or business ideas that are valuable. There's no relationship. So all of us probably know people who are, they're just constantly asking questions. I often ask classes or groups of people, what would be the word to use to describe those folks? And the constant sort of response is,

they're just annoying. And this is what I'm talking about, Mike, is that if all we do is ask tough questions, then we are annoying and we're just trying to be clever. And so the next step is be responsible in the questions you're asking. And what I mean by that is be willing to get up, get out, and use one of three behavioral skills to actually start finding some answers to the questions. And that's either you get up and you observe the world like an anthropologist, you just watch things. Or you get up and you talk to people who are not like you

on some very different dimension. Their technical training, their background, their industry, their generational age, their gender, fill in the blank. They see the world differently. Or you experiment and you just try small, fast, cheap experiments that often require nobody's permission. You take a piece of that idea and just start trying it. And so what we know from the data is that if I ask provocative, challenging questions and observe, I'm likely to get new ideas, otherwise I wouldn't. If I'm asking those tough questions and talking to very different people, I'll get new ideas, otherwise I wouldn't. If I'm asking those tough questions and talking to very different people, I'll get new ideas that are valuable. And if I

ask those tough questions and network for new ideas and experiment and try stuff, I'll get the same thing. So it's questioning and that makes all the difference. Yeah, because at some point you have to do something. You can't just... Exactly. Yeah, because at some point you have to do something. You can't just talk about it. How many times have you met and talked with people who, you know, everything's in process, but nobody ever does anything. It's always meetings and discussions and questions and surveys. But now, shouldn't we be trying something? Well, and this is where, you know, if you walk into Amazon, there's a working backwards process there. The effectively anybody at any level can notice something that would make the organization better or create a new customer opportunity. And whenever they get that idea, they do a working backwards document. They literally write it up and it's often with their team. And that first part of the document is,

here is the press release five years from now. If we do what we're proposing, this is what would be in the newspapers and on social media around the world in order for us to make a difference out there. And then they have six pages of Q&A, like here's the questions about this issue, here are answers to it.

They take that document and they present it to their superior, the direct boss, and others come into the room who've never seen it. They read that document quietly for 15 or 20 minutes. Then it's an all-out, intense debate and conversation where the expectation is you get all your perspectives, all your data, all your feedback, positive and negative, all your tough questions out into the room. We talk about it. We debate it. And more than half the time at the end of those conversations, they make a go-no-go decision about, we're going to do something about this idea.

And if they do, they appoint a single-th decision about, we're going to do something about this idea. And if they do, they appoint a single thread leader, one person who's fundamentally responsible for making it happen. And then they go out and do exactly what I said all over again. They observe, they network, they experiment, they think associationally, they connect the unconnected. This is exactly how we got Prime now. Instead of Prime being delivered two or three days down the road at Amazon, somebody had the idea, what if we delivered it now, today? Did a working backwards document. It was a go. Let's make it happen. A single thread leader was appointed. 111 days later, it was live and running throughout Amazon. They move it fast. They make it happen because everybody there is expected to have this problem-finding, problem-solving mindset

and to use these skills to be able to make it happen. Can you tell me just really quickly one or two other great innovation out-of-the-park stories like that that just whet people's appetite? Take Mark Benioff at Salesforce.com. Mark works for Oracle for a decade on the sales front. He's on the edge of the organization. He's constantly dealing with customers. He's constantly with them. He's constantly asking them questions. He's constantly getting feedback, good and bad, about Oracle software. He then takes a break for 6 to 12 months because he's somewhat burned out, but he's also wrestling with the issue of how could medium or even small-sized enterprises

take full advantage of large-scale enterprise software because currently they can't. It's too expensive. So Mark, instead of sitting around in his behind, he gets up up he gets out he gets into the world he goes on listening tours he talks to hundreds if not thousands of different people

in order to get new insights new angles on this issue of how to middle and small enterprises use large enterprise software and all of that leads to the question what if we sold enterprise level software like Amazon sells books which today sounds like well, but 20 years ago was like, you're an idiot, Mark Benioff. Nobody would put their data up on the cloud, quote-unquote, the Internet.

But he came to that conclusion with this very active discovery skill set of observing, networking, experimenting, and questioning, he came to that conclusion doing that, and it actually gave him conviction that the idea would work, and as you well know, it did. Well, I like your stories, and I like the way you look at the whole topic of innovation. Hal Gregerson has been my guest. He's the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, and he's co-author of the book, The Innovator's DNA, Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes for this episode.

Thank you, Hal. Thanks for being here. You're very welcome. Have a good day. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest.

Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy,

it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me,

But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. What could be more simple and basic than keeping your home clean? Everybody has to do it, and we all have our own ways of doing it, but have you ever stopped to think,

is there a better way or a faster way or a more efficient way to do all those household chores and keep your home clean? Well, that's what Melissa Maker is all about. Melissa is a YouTube sensation with her Clean My Space YouTube channel that has well over a million subscribers, and she's author of the book, Clean My Space, The Secret to Cleaning Better, Faster, and Loving Your Home Every Day. Hi, Melissa. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So before we get into the dirt and grime of cleaning, first, what's your philosophy? What's your approach to cleaning? So I have this three-step method that I call the maker method. The first part is identifying your MIAs or your most important areas and focusing on

those only because a lot of us feel guilty and stressed about not cleaning our whole homes and we feel that we're not keeping up with the Joneses if we can't live in this perfectly clean house. And I tell people, forget that mentality. Just focus on what really matters to you, what's most important to you. But to really answer your question, the second step in my maker method is called what I call PTTs, products, tools, and techniques. And the way to save time with cleaning and the thing that we are not taught anymore is

the proper products, tools, and techniques that we need to get a job done properly. So obviously when home ec was taught years and years ago, people knew how to do this. These days, that is something that is no longer taught and we're kind of left to our own devices to figure out cleaning. Well, if no one's ever explained to you how to properly clean a toilet, you'll watch a TV commercial and think you know what to do. You'll dump a bunch of product into a toilet, scrub it because you've seen it in a movie or something. This is where we learn. And you won't get the results you want. So the way to save time is to understand those products, tools, and techniques.

And once you know that foundation, you can clean just about anything very quickly and very efficiently. So give me some of those products, tools, and techniques in the specific examples that people might not be aware of or that you find that people screw up? Sure. So I want to focus on a couple of techniques because these are things that I think are super important. The first one is what I call the S pattern. And if you can imagine someone cleaning in that circular kind of wax on wax off motion or like a Charlie Chaplin character cleaning a window. They just keep working in a circle. This is a visual I've used with a lot of people and they really get it and they say, oh yeah, that's how I clean too. But the truth of the matter is, if you're cleaning in a circular motion, you're not actually doing anything to affect cleaning

on that surface. In fact, what you're doing is you're taking an otherwise clean cloth and now you're redepositing dirt back onto a surface that you have just cleaned because you're using this circular motion. So the S pattern teaches us that we just spray a surface, whether it's a window or a table or anything in between, with product. Then we take a cloth. We start at the top left corner of the surface, we sweep our way all the way to the right, and then we kind of zigzag our way down to the bottom of that surface using an S or a figure eight or a zigzag pattern,

whatever you choose to call it. And that's what you do. Just work your way from top to bottom in a very methodical, slow manner. It's easier on your arm and it also gets the surface clean without leaving any streaks behind. So it's less work for you and you get better results. That is a great tip. That's perfect. So give me some more of that because I never heard that. I've never heard that. Right. And this is the thing, like nobody would tell you about this because who's talking about cleaning before YouTube came out? It's just, it's not interesting enough. It's not exciting enough. But on YouTube, people are willing to talk about and share just about anything. So our niche has really been cleaning. So I'll tell you another thing that I learned because of course, I knew nothing about cleaning. I knew I hated it, but I didn't actually know how to do it professionally.

So another thing that I've learned over the years and something I talk about and people really love is what I call dwell time. When you watch a TV commercial, you see somebody spray a product on and wipe it off immediately and get perfect results. We've all been there. And then we bring that product home and we do the same thing and we're like, hello, why didn't I get those great results that I saw on the commercial? But here's the thing, commercials are 30 seconds and they can't in 30 seconds convey to you the proper usage of the product. That's what the instructions on the back of the package are there for. So dwell time is one of these things that I like to explain to people as, you know, a chicken breast, for example, tastes a lot better when you marinate it than when you just sort of brush it with something and throw it on the grill. And marinating is kind of what dwell time is.

So anytime there's a dirty surface, let's say a really grimy bathtub or a greasy countertop or something like that, rather than just spraying the product on and wiping it off, put the product on the surface, apply it liberally and wiping it off, put the product on the surface, apply it liberally and let it sit, let it marinate, let it dwell. And you let it do it for, let's say between two minutes to five minutes, or if it's really bad, you can do it for up to 10 minutes. Then you take your cleaning cloth or your sponge, then you wipe it. And that's when you get those easy commercial results. I like to teach people how to be the laziest cleaner they can be and this dwell time thing is like a hidden secret that

nobody talks about with cleaning but once you figure it out and master how to let your products work for you, you have such an easier time with your cleaning. Do you think that when you're just doing basic cleaning, you're wiping the counters and whatnot, it really matters, is one product really so much better than the other, or is it really more the technique? So I think that's a great question. There are so many cleaning products that are out there today, and I think the basic cleaning products are things that we can probably create ourselves. I talk a lot about DIY recipes in the book and on the YouTube channel and on our blog. I just like to teach people how to make your own stuff for less. But I think there's also a time and a place for specialty products. For example,

a stain remover. You might want to use something like a Carbona. If you have a situation where you need to use something that's antibacterial, you might want to find an antibacterial product like Glysol or something along those lines. When you can use a specialty product for a certain purpose, I think it makes sense. But for the basic cleaning jobs, if you're just cleaning your counter every day, typically what I'll use is just water and a squirt of dish soap and a spray bottle, maybe some essential oils if I feel fancy. Make laundry easy for me. So this is something I've been asked many times. We are making some good advancements in AI,

but we have yet to have a laundry robot that's going to do all of our work for us. So what I tell people to do is this, sort your clothes immediately. When you take them off, I have like a tri-sorter. So it's basically a laundry bin divided in three sections, darks, colors, lights. I put my stuff in there. I don't have to worry about sorting my clothes on laundry day anymore. So that's super simple. I also always tell people to keep your towels and your linen separate. Why is this important? Because the fabric weight, so your towels, if they rub against your clothing, will end up making them pill, which is getting those little balls on your clothes and it kind of makes them look aged and tired and worn. So that in and of itself, a lot of people get excited about because they're like, yeah,

I could never figure out why my clothes weren't coming out looking amazing. The second thing I would say, laundry is much less overwhelming if you can just build it into your schedule and find other things to do. So on your way to your laundry room, pick up a basket, throw a load of laundry in, and then continue on with what you were doing. Instead of saying, oh my God, I have five loads of laundry to do. What I do is I just grab a load of laundry. When I leave my bedroom, I walk it right to my washing machine and then I go on and do whatever else I have to do. So rather than like making

specific time for laundry, I've just found ways to build laundry into my routine. When it comes to folding, I sit in front of the television and I fold or I listen to a podcast and I fold or I catch up with a friend on the phone and I fold. I never set time aside to do it specifically because it's far too mind numbing and boring and my time is too important. So I just find ways to double it up.

Using the right detergent is really important. Using the right amount of detergent is really important. When we overdose detergent, we detergent is really important. When we overdose detergent, we get dingy looking clothes. When we underdose, they don't come out clean enough. So again, it's all about following those package instructions. Pre-treating for stains is a great thing to do. A lot of us don't do it and then we get upset that our clothes come out with stains, but pre-treaters are readily available at big box stores and grocery stores. It's just a matter of like spraying it on, putting it in the wash and you're done. And then finally, what I

would say is just have some sort of rule where you don't let your laundry build up to the point where it's overwhelming. Because if you have like Mount Washmore, like 10 loads of laundry, you're going to be really annoyed because that's a whole day. So I would just say laundry is not a laundry day. It's just, you don't have a separate day for it. You just build it into your life. So it's not a big deal. I like Mount Washmore. It would seem that an important part of keeping your house clean is keeping the dirt out in the first place, because then you wouldn't have to clean it if it never gets in. At the end of the day, none of us can live in a perfectly clean space all the time. If you open your door and you wear shoes, or you have a pet, or you have

children, like your house is going to get dirty. So the thing that's important is to remember not to freak out when that dirt comes in, rather just figure out ways to be proactive. So something as simple as having a taking off your shoes at the front door rule. Do you know that 80% of the dirt that comes into our homes comes in from our shoes? It's a really interesting fact. And if you wear your shoes in the home, your home's likely to get much dustier, dirtier, and smellier quicker because that dirt is being trapped in and around the house. So there are some really simple, easy things that you can do to be proactive from the get-go to reduce the amount of dirt that you have. And then I would just say keeping on top of your cleaning instead of letting it all build up so you have like one big cleaning marathon once

a month, which to me is like misery. I would rather just stay on top of my cleaning, do a little bit here and there, and then, you know, schedule in, okay, today I'm going to do my bathroom, but my bathroom is not going to be a disaster because I haven't let it go for a month. It's just doing some of the more detailed stuff and then I can get it done much quicker. So what are those things you do to keep the dirt out? There's daily maintenance that you have to do. And the third part of my book, the third part of the maker method is just called routines and schedules. So I think it's really important to set a couple of little routines for yourself so that you can stay on top of things.

For an example, like after dinner, my evening routine looks like we sweep our floor because our daughter, we have a 14 month old daughter, throws food all over the floor. And that's just the way she is. She doesn't care if the floor is clean or dirty, but of course we do. So after the cat finds all of the meat that she wants to eat, it's then our job to clean up after that so that we don't live in an uncomfortable space. So part of that routine is sweeping up the floor every day so that we don't live in an uncomfortable space. So part of that routine is sweeping up the floor every day so that there's nothing left behind on the floor, wiping surfaces on a regular basis that have been used.

Our occasional surfaces, like we have a side table with a plant on it, I don't care about that table. When we do our bigger cleans, sure, we'll dust it, but I don't care about that table on a regular basis. The things that are most important to keep on top of daily are floors, kitchens, and bathrooms, which would include kitchen, would include dishes, also your garbage, and then to an extent, laundry, as we talked about earlier. But those are the things I would say you got to stay on top of on a regular basis. And then the other stuff is more infrequent, but you can still build it into your schedule.

Do you take your shoes off when you come in the house and make everybody else? Well, I do take my shoes off. It's just something that we've always done. I won't cry if somebody wears their shoes in the house for whatever reason. I'm not one of those people. But we do have nice cozy slippers that we leave at the front door so that as soon as we come home, we can just easily slip into the slippers. And I have slippers for guests as well, just as a nice way to encourage them to get comfy and take their shoes off. Because they track in dirt. As you said, 80% of the dirt comes in on your shoes. That's right. Well, that's horrible.

Yeah, it is. It is. Talk a little bit about the tools because I know there are so many times where I wish, God, I wish I had an old dirty toothbrush to clean this and I don't. And things like that that people really should have around that we don't think about until we need it and then it's too late to have to go out and buy it? Yeah. So building a little cleaning kit is super easy to do. I'm a big proponent of reusing things. So old toothbrushes are great to just chuck in your cleaning kit for the next time that you have that big job to do. I have one under my kitchen sink. I have one in my laundry room and I

have one in the bathroom in a different drawer. So I know definitely not to use that one for actually brushing my teeth, but I have a few of them around the house and they get used for a variety of different things. Another thing that I think is great, some people talk about it, but it's sort of underrated is the squeegee. If you have a glass shower, or even if you have tiles in your shower, if you can squeegee the walls after each shower that you take, you'll never have a buildup of hard water, mildew, or soap scum, which is a lot of work to clean. So we recently moved into a new home. we have a large glass panel in the master bathroom we have a squeegee in there i've timed myself it takes 30 seconds and that piece of glass you can see through it there's no water spots and it's just because of that simple maintenance microfiber

cloths are another really important cleaning tool as i said we have our own line of them they're called makers clean uh They can hold up to eight times their weight in water. They're reusable, so you don't have to use paper towel. You can launder them, so they're very easy to clean and take care of. They pick up dust. They have an electrostatic charge, so they very much attract dust, and they make cleaning much easier. They leave no streaks behind, unlike cotton or another type of cleaning cloth that can leave streaks or lint behind. These are lint-free cloths. So they really, when I started using them years ago in my cleaning business,

it saved me so much time. And then I started talking about them in our videos and then people were asking, where do you buy them? And I was getting these great cloths from a commercial supplier, which no one could just access on a regular shopping day, which is why we ended up making our own line of them. And I know that when people start using them, they're like, yes, this really revolutionizes the way I clean. So I love, love, love microfiber cloths. Really good quality sponges and a good quality vacuum cleaner. Two things that are very important. Sponges, oh my gosh, you can't just go to the dollar store and get cheap sponges. You need good quality sponges.

Because I would rather have the product do the heavy lifting for me as opposed to me having to do all of the hard scrubbing and the hard work. And the crappy sponges, that's what ends up happening with them. And same for vacuums. If a vacuum is built well and it's built to last and it's maintained properly, it's going to keep your home healthier, your air fresher, less allergens will be floating around in the home, and ultimately less work for you.

So I would say those are some of the really important cleaning tools to have. Do you find that people, that there are cleaning myths, that people do things that really are either counterproductive or don't do much or there's a better way to do it? Sure. I mean, I think one of the things that really frustrates me online from a cleaning myth standpoint is when people will talk about cleaning hacks that aren't really cleaning hacks. You know, like they'll say, clean your bicycle with Coca-Cola. Like, why would I do that if I could just use dish soap and, you know, get better results in less time? So I think some of the myths and some of the quote-unquote cleaning hacks that wrong places. So for example, some people will say to use car wax on their glass shower doors, and that way you'll just have the water bead off

your doors the way that a car would bead water off after it's been polished or waxed. Well, the last time I checked, that stuff was not approved for use in a shower in a small enclosed space. So I don't like advising that kind of stuff. But sure, it sounds easy and quick. And oh my gosh, I'll never have to clean my shower glass again if I just use car wax in the shower. Sounds cool, but also sounds really unhealthy to me. So I would say sometimes those things that pop up online can be a little bit concerning because if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So when you see stuff like that, corroborating it with reputable sites and reputable sources, I would say would be something that's really important to do. I remember talking to somebody and I was asking them, so how do you, he was a professional cleaner. And I said, so what do you think is the best way to clean windows? And he said, well, we were talking about hacks and stuff. And he said, this idea of using

newspaper to clean, he said, have you ever seen a professional window cleaner ever clean a window with newspaper? And I said, no, because it doesn't work. That's right. A squeegee works. That's right. It's a big myth. So that's something that was used years and years ago. There's been advancements in cleaning technologies, if you will. There are better ways to do it. So to me, cleaning a window with a double-sided squeegee takes seconds. Use a little bit of dish soap, a little in a bucket of seconds. Use a little bit of dish soap,

in a bucket of hot water, a little bit of vinegar. Your windows will come out cleaner than you could ever imagine. And the amount of time you would spend doing that would probably clock in at under one minute from A to Z. Give me one more thing that people say, oh my God, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. This one's kind of funny. Again, you got to pardon the gross factor, but here we go. Toilet bowl brushes can tend to get really disgusting when they sit back in their little container once you're done using them. And the reason they kind of get gross is because they're wet.

So they've just done their business, and we all know what their business is. We all know how hard their jobs are. And then they just sit wet in this container and they're given no opportunity to dry out. So there's this little tip that we came up with and we share and people absolutely love. And after you finish scrubbing your toilet, here's all you do. You take your toilet seat. You take your toilet brush. You hold your toilet brush over the bowl, you clamp the seat down over the wand of the toilet bowl brush,

and you just let it drip dry. And you can leave it there for hours. And then by the time you have to use the toilet again, you just take the brush, you put it back in its container, it's bone dry, and you don't have to worry about odors, bacteria, and any of that soppy stuff sitting on the brush still. Oh, I feel so smart because I do that. I don't know where I learned. Do you? I don't know where I learned to do that, but I heard about that. I don't know where, but I always do that. I always clamp the seat down on the brush and let it dry. Not that I clean the toilet all that often. Hey, but you're doing it and you're doing the proper thing with the brush and I've reinforced how great you are at cleaning. It would make my

mother very happy to hear you say that. Melissa Maker has been my guest. Check out her YouTube channel. It's called Clean My Space and she is author of the book, Clean My Space, The Secret to Cleaning Better, Faster, and Loving Your Home Every Day. There's a link to her YouTube channel and to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Melissa. It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Music has an effect on you. It probably has lots of effects on you, and it's one of the reasons we like it so much. But some of the effects music have may seem counterintuitive. For example, a study in the psychology of music found that

sad people instantly felt better as soon as they heard a sad song that they liked. Songs perceived as gloomy or tragic were the most effective. And the reason it works is because sad songs allow us to wallow in the lyrics and the melody and provide something immediate for us to react to. They let us anticipate and participate and feel the sadness and then move on. Real-life sadness is much less satisfying. And that is something you should know.

If you haven't already, subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely

partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth

that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.