Something You Should Know - How to Stay Safe in a Dangerous World & Expert Strategies For Managing Time

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

How does music affect your feelings and emotions? This episode begins by looking at some interesting research that shows how just the right music can influence how you feel. https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/21/mood_music/ Do you feel safe? What would happen if your safety was threatened - would you know what to react? Is your home an easy target for burglars? These are important questions you should ask yourself according to Spencer Coursen. Spencer is a nationally recognized threat management expert and author of the book The Safety Trap: A Security Expert’s Secrets for Staying Safe in a Dangerous World (https://amzn.to/3gtV5pp). Listen as Spencer outlines what you should do to keep you and your family safe and how to react if you are ever threatened.  We all have systems for managing our time. Some of us do it all in our head, others keep lists here and there and others use electronic organizers. While it seems clear that any time management system is better than none, there are ways to optimize how you manage your time and workflow according to Maura Nevel Thomas. She is a speaker and productivity expert and author of the book From To-Do to Done: How to Go from Busy to Productive by Mastering Your To-Do List (https://amzn.to/3wzqYm2). Maura joins me with some great insight into making time management easier and more effective.  How you perform during a job interview is obviously very important but it also turns out that the timing of the interview plays a role in whether or not you get the job offer. Listen as I explain what day and time you should try to schedule your interview. Source: Alan Price, author of Human Resource Management in a Business Context (https://amzn.to/3iHeDs6). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Hims is helping guys be the best version of themselves with licensed medical providers and FDA approved products to help treat hair loss. Go to https://forhims.com/something Save time, money, and stress with Firstleaf – the wine club designed with you in mind! Join today and you’ll get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping! Just go to https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Learn about investment products and more at https://Investor.gov, your unbiased resource for valuable investment information, tools and tips. Before You Invest, https://Investor.gov. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Most people are overconfident. Most people think, well, I have mace so I'm protected. Most of us would love to believe that in a scenario that we would be the hero, that we would rise up, that we would fight back, or we would run away. Most people freeze. Also, if you want to get that new job, the day and time of your interview really matters. And how to better manage your time and work. Because a lot of us aren't very good at it. The way that most people manage their work is a huge waste of time. We write lists, we read the lists, we organize the lists, we put flags in our email,

and then we scroll through our inbox and look at the flag and, oh, what is that? All this today on Something You Should Know. Mama, look at me. Vroom, vroom. I'm going really fast. I just got my license. Can I borrow the car, please, Mom? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time. You'll be relieved they have 24-7 roadside assistance with intact insurance. Mom, can we go to Nana's house tomorrow? I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time, don't they?

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You know, I don't know anybody that doesn't like music. Everybody seems to like music to some extent. I've always been like music. Everybody seems to like music to some extent. I've always been into music. I was a disc jockey on the radio playing music for much of my radio career, and I was in a garage band in high school, and I like to surround myself with music. And I think one of the reasons people like music is because it can have different effects on you.

And one effect it seems to have on people, according to one study, is it can make you feel romantic. Research out of France shows that the right kind of music can put you in a romantic mood. A group of women were put into one of two waiting rooms prior to an unrelated group discussion on food products. In one waiting room, a very popular romantic French song played on the speakers. In the other waiting room, a very neutral, unemotional song was played.

After the focus group, Antoine, the man who led the focus group, met with each of the women alone and asked each of them for their phone number, telling them that he would like to call them to get together for a drink. 52% of the women who had heard the love song gave their number. Only 28% of the ones who heard the neutral song gave their number. The conclusion? Well, it appears music can have a powerful impact on our emotions, and a romantic song seems to make people feel more romantic.

And that is something you should know. How safe are you? When you and the members of your family walk out of your house, or even when you're in your house, are you safe from harm? We all like to think we're safe safe and probably are most of the time. But all of us have been in situations that seemed unsafe or we felt might be unsafe. Little warning bells went off in our head and maybe we listened to those warnings and maybe we didn't. Maybe we didn't want to offend someone so we ignored them.

Personal safety is important and sometimes a little tricky. You don't want to think of everyone you meet and every situation you're in as a potential threat. That would be exhausting. Still, it's important to plan and think about what you would do if things went wrong. Here with some insight and some very practical and sensible advice about personal safety is Spencer Corson. He's a nationally recognized threat management expert, founder of Corson Security Group in Austin, Texas, and author of the book, The Safety Trap, a security expert's secrets for staying safe in a dangerous world. Hi, Spencer. Thanks for joining me today. Michael, thank you so much for having me. A true pleasure to be here.

So what's your sense of how dangerous the world is? I think it's a twofold outlook. One is that if you could be born at any time in the history of mankind, right now is the absolute best time to be alive. We have never been safer. Medical advancements have never been greater. Life expectancy has never been higher. Crime rate has never been lower. Food has never been more plentiful. And the quality of life that one can expect to live right now is far superior to at any other time in our history. Now, when it comes to our physical safety, our actual sense of safety, we sometimes feel that the world is a more dangerous place than it ever was before. And in certain instances, that may be true. The incidences of, let's say, mass violence are now

higher than they have ever been in our history. But also when it comes to, say, things like car crashes or child abduction or sexual assault, those things were always going on. It's just that there wasn't this pervasive promotion of those horrific acts in news stories or the media or what have you. When we see these things on social media, they're happening to other people. So our anxiety about our risk of those things has a tendency to go up. Despite how anxious people get about their security and their safety, it doesn't seem like, you know, except for maybe getting an alarm system for the house and making sure you lock your front door, it doesn't seem like people do a lot to prepare for that because you can't prepare for every possible threat that could occur. So you

tend not to prepare for any threat that could occur. So what do you suggest people do? Audit yourself with honesty. Just really, most people will never be in a plane crash or a terror concern or an active shooter situation or a kidnap for ransom exploit. But all of us need to participate in our own protection. Everyday safety requires the participation of everyone. And the healthy sense of skepticism and a moderate dose of vigilance, kind of having more of a framework of playing chess than of playing checkers, is all most people need to live a happy, healthy, successful, and especially a safe existence. And so what does that mean to have a healthy skepticism? Because you do what?

So let's say everyone, everywhere I go, every speech I give, one of the big topics of conversation always comes down to home security, residential security. How do I keep my home safe? Do I need a gun? Do I need a dog? Do I need a ring camera? Do I need ADT? What do I do to keep myself safe? And for the most part, all most people need to do is lock their front door because 85% of home invasions are the result of someone just walking in through the front door. Bad guys are kind of like lions stalking the gazelles. They don't go after the strongest of the herd. They go after the weakest. I remember hearing some security expert talk about this. And I chuckled when I heard him say this and took his advice to heart that

if you were locked out of your house and you didn't have a key and you had to basically break into your own house, you probably would know how to do it. You probably know where that weak spot is, right? Because now they're thinking, oh, well, you know, my wife hates it when I stink up the downstairs bathroom. So she always cracks the window or the kids who come home from soccer practice and they don't lock the garage door or the doors on the first floor are locked. But I know that I can if I can shimmy up to the second floor deck, I can go in through that door. No problem. Well, all of those ways that you would break into your house are the exact same way that a bad guy would break into your house. So now that you know what those risks are, put the safeguards in place to keep those bad things from happening.

When a criminal targets your home, what's their intention? What are they thinking? Most people who come during the day are coming for your things. Most people who come at night are coming for you. But where most people may have a security plan to keep bad guys from coming in, most people, like the number one vulnerability of most residential security plans that I audit is that they don't have a plan for what to do once someone gets in. So should that actually turn into a home invasion where you are inside the house, what is your plan? Are you going to get out? Do you have a safe room or do you have a fallback

plan? Are the kids going to come to you? Are you going to go to the kids? What is your family reunification plan if everyone's just going to go out different exits? So having like the most, what is the most realistic risk you are most likely to face and then put the safeguards in place to reduce the overall impact of that risk. We can, bottom line is that we can no longer afford to live in a world where we simply hope that nothing will happen and then solely rely on the first responders to save us once something does. What is the most likely safety threat anybody faces? Overconfidence. Overconfidence? Most people are overconfident. Most people think,

well, I have mace, so I'm protected, or I carry a gun, so I'm protected. Most of us would love to believe that in a scenario that we would be the hero, that we would rise up, that we would fight back, or we would run away. Most people freeze. Most people panic. Most people don't understand why they're feeling this way because they never expected to feel that way. And when they're in that situation, they make decisions which are more in line with being a victim than of being a survivor. But if you understand that that is something that might happen to you, you might be the kind of person that has to be more proactive in identifying the exits or the uncommon exits or having a mental projection for what you want your body to perform so that when it is called

upon to engage in that act, it is able to do so in a more effective fashion. Most of us, you know, when we put our seatbelts on, it's not that we're expecting to get into an accident. It's that we understand that there's a likelihood of us getting into an accident. So we want to participate in our own protection. The same holds true for anywhere we go. If something was to break bad, where would I go? How would I get out of here? What other than the door that I just walked into, what are the other exits? Or if I get that feeling that something isn't right, to not just argue against your survival instincts, but to actually participate in your own protection and put as much time and distance between you and that threat as possible. So talk about that feeling that something isn't right feeling the elevator door opens and there's that guy and you go, yeah, I don't know. And most of us just suck it up and say, well, I'm just being paranoid and get in the elevator. Right. And then the door is closed and you're stuck in a steel soundproof box with a bad guy. And then you're thinking, oh, why did I do that?

And I think what often drives that decision is you don't want to offend someone. You don't that guy on the elevator may be giving you the creeps, but you don't you that's not who you are. You want to be you don't want to be offensive. Being polite is a courtesy, but protecting ourselves is a priority. But we have, because we live in such a safe society, just sort of assumed that we're being irrational or that we're just being anxious or that we don't want to offend the feelings of someone else. But staying safe is ultimately about trusting that survival instinct because it is that survival instinct that has allowed for the human race to survive and thrive for a millennia. And if we keep negotiating against our own better

interests, the more likely we are, the more our vigilance goes down, the more our risk goes up. And that ultimately means that we are going to be making more and more decisions that will put us into the pitfalls of danger. We're talking about safety, personal safety. And my guest is Spencer Corson. He's author of the book, The Safety Trap, a security expert's secrets for staying safe in a dangerous world. This is an ad for better help. Welcome a dangerous world. come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. 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, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Spencer, what about the situation, and I think everybody's had this situation happen,

where you're somewhere and somebody comes up to you and they start a conversation. It doesn't feel right. It's like this could lead to trouble. It sounds off. What do you do? Walk away. There is absolutely no law that states that just because someone strikes up a conversation with you, that you have to have a conversation with that person or that because you feel a certain way, you have to give them the opportunity to prove you wrong. Anytime you feel like I have clients who will say, well, like, what do I do if I'm, you know, I'm like blindfolded and handcuffed in the back of a trunk. I'm like, well, how did you get there in the first? It's not like you just like woke up one morning, handcuffed and blindfolded in the

back of a trunk. Like you saw the guy three blocks ahead that kind of made you feel weird. And then he got two blocks away and he, and you, and you felt even more weird. And then you noticed the van that was kind of creeping down the street from the other direction. And then the guy got within one block and you're like, man, this just doesn't feel right. And then you see the van getting closer and then the van is right next to you. And the guy is pushing you into the back. You're like, wow, I was right. This wasn't right.

Three blocks away was when you should have made the decision, hey, this isn't right. I'm just going to make a turn here and circle the block. You know, sometimes when we're driving home, it's good to take different routes home. And the reason I talk about that isn't because you need to employ some kind of like James Bond, Ethan Hunt, Carrie Matheson, spy guy route selection to keep you from being a threat. It's because most accidents happen within one mile of our home. And most of those accidents hit another parked car. Because when we are so used to doing something, we allow our subconscious to take over and we are no longer adamant about or present in the moment about the actual decisions we're making. A flip side of that is that if you just start taking different routes home,

you're going to have to be engaged. And a byproduct of that is also that if someone just does happen to be doing surveillance on you or counter surveillance on you, or does want to target your home for, you know, for a home invasion, just that variable could be the decision that basically gets them to transfer their likelihood of success to someone else. Because one of the things that my global experience has proven time and time and time again, is that when we don't expect to see danger, we simply fail to see the warning signs that something bad is about to happen. But the warning signs are always there and staying safe is about being willing to see them. It's kind of like sometimes feeling safe is the most dangerous thing we do. We don't stub our toes on the things we notice. We stub our toes

on the things we don't, but it's not like that Lego on the floor in the kitchen was hiding in wait and then slid out just as we stepped our foot down to ambush us. It was always there. We just weren't expecting to see it. So we didn't feel the need to look. Because most of the time it isn't there. So why look if most of the time it isn't there? You feel pretty comfortable not looking. Which is another thing about safety. There's that old tenet in good leadership, you anticipate the needs of others. Safety is sometimes about anticipating the idiocy of others. Like when we're driving, we're always kind of like at this higher state of readiness because the guy who's like bobbing and weaving out of traffic or who doesn't use the turn

signal to jump in our lane. Like we're aware of the risks. And so we're willing to participate and we're engaged and we're present. We're ready with the countermeasures or to move or to break or to stop. And like I said, it's not about living in fear. It's just a healthy sense of skepticism. Like why is this guy asking me the time when everyone has a watch and an iPhone? Like there's no need for this guy to ask me what time it is.

So what's the ulterior motive? Or yeah, that guy who's just sitting by himself in the hotel lobby and staring at me is creeping me out. So I'm just going to move, or I'm going to not sit by myself, or I'm going to get on the phone, or I'm going to engage the bartender and ask who he is. I'm not just going to just put myself at more of a position of vulnerability because I don't want to engage. We have to engage. But there are ways to engage in a very friendly, very interactive, very socially dynamic and positive way that if we're wrong, we're still safe. But if we're right, we're even safer. Like you said, though, if you don't engage, if you're not looking for danger, you'll fail to see the warning signs. But I also worry, too, that if you're always looking for danger, you're always going to see danger.

And I don't know that I want to live my life that way where I'm always on alert. I'm always looking for trouble. You should live your life like you drive your car. You're not constantly afraid of getting into an accident, but you're cognizant of the risks that surround you while you're driving. And then you're putting the safeguards into place. Your everyday life is exactly the same way. Like you're not afraid to drive, are you?

No. Okay. So then you shouldn't be afraid to go to Starbucks. So you shouldn't be afraid to go to the grocery store. You shouldn't be afraid to go to the mall. But just like when you're on your car driving, if you see someone coming up behind you, you look to see where, do I want to go to the shoulder or do I want to go to the middle lane? Which way am I going to go if this guy keeps coming up behind me? When you go to the movie theater, just look, okay, well, if someone comes in the front, I can go out the back. Or

look, there's a side door here. There's an exit there. I think it's human nature, though, that if you live a life that is relatively safe, seldom does anything dangerous happen to you. Seldom do the people you know have anything dangerous happen to them. It's very hard to stay vigilant against danger. You almost feel foolish being so vigilant when nothing ever really seems to happen. I completely agree. And then here's what happens. We have a tendency, not just as individuals, but as a collective society, to want to live our lives on the fringe of the pendulum swinging between complacency, where we say that nothing's going to happen,

or hypervigilance, where we're like patting down grandma at the ballpark. Like after something bad, like let's say like a school shooting, for example, like there's all these cops out front of the school and like everyone's locked down and they're following the policy and the procedure, like steps one through 10 for access control, the doors are locked and the windows are closed and everyone's on guard and the politicians are out there saying that they're going to get gun reform and the parents are demanding action and the students are marching for peace. And then like a day or two goes by and the news cycle moves on and everything kind of goes back to normal. And well, it's been safe for a week. It's been safe for 10 days. It's been

safe for a month. We go back to the pendulum over to complacency. And then what happens? There's another school shooting and we do the same cycle all over again. That is the safety trap. And that just coming to the middle, that no longer living on the fringe, but just that everyday safety requires the participation of everyone. Framework of understanding is really all of us need to succeed in staying safe. And those very simple components are critical, but also very simple for, and also just a very small prices to pay for the liberties and the freedoms, which flow so freely from peace. But to your point, you're exactly right. When you start just thinking that nothing's going to

happen, your vigilance goes down, your risk goes up. And that is the paradox of the safety trap. When you look at the practices and the procedures that are in place for businesses or schools or whatever, what are the things where you see the weak spots? Where are the problems? Run, hide, fight. has done more disservice to the survivability of those who are in schools or workplaces that are targeted for violence. So here's the problem, is that schools care more about accountability than they do about survivability. And what do I mean by that? The whole premise of Run Hide Fight was a military application. It came from Sears School where pilots and special operators would be trained in what to do if you were ever taken prisoner of war. And basically what that meant was if you got shot down behind enemy lines and you were captured and you were considered a prisoner of war, if you had the

opportunity to escape, you ran as far as you can trying to get to friendly forces. Now, if you had the opportunity to escape, you ran as far as you can, trying to get to friendly forces. Now, if you got to the point where you were so tired, you couldn't move anymore, you would hide. You would camouflage yourself until you got your energy back. And then you would keep running. And if you were to be confronted by the enemy, you would fight like your life depended on it because it absolutely did. Now, Sandy Hook happens, Columbine happens, all of these tragedy things. And this cottage industry stops popping up about active shooter drills and what are you going to do and this, that, and the other thing. And run, hide, fight basically got reduced to

run to your hiding spot. But here's the problem. A fire in a building is just as dangerous and as unpredictable as an active shooter, but we wouldn't hide from a fire and hope it wouldn't find us. We would run because running puts as much time and distance between you and the threat as possible, which is harder to hit the kid crying in the corner in a classroom or the kid who's running and putting time and distance away from the bad guy with each step they take. So what we should really be doing is telling these students, these teachers, these families, these friends, that if you are ever in a situation where violence is being enacted, do not hide. Run. Put as much time and distance between you and the threat as possible. Well, I think the thinking is, though, that you could run out of the classroom or run out of your workplace and run right into the guy with a gun, that you're better off hiding. He can't see you, so he's less likely to shoot you. You don't have to see someone to shoot someone. Schools are not

fortified hard rooms. They're plywood doors with glass. Bullets travel through doors and windows with ease. Watch any John Wick movie. So just being behind a red line in a classroom because that's the line where the student can't see through the glass. You don't think that student knows the layout of the classroom? They absolutely do. And guess what? They can just shoot through the door. So which would you want your student to be? Putting as much time and distance between them and the threat as possible, or hiding in the corner and hoping they don't get hurt. I know that I'm teaching my kids to run. I hope you do the same.

But there are situations, I think, where, you know, there's conflicting advice of, you know, if somebody asks for your wallet, just give it to them because then you're going to avoid. But there are other times where you don't comply because if you're getting put into- And here's the thing. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. If someone is going to give you, if someone asks for your wallet, give them your wallet, but don't give them your wallet, throw it behind them because they care about your wallet. They don't care about you. So give them your wallet, but throw it behind them. As soon as they turn around, run,

because they're not going to chase you because they got what they want. But there is no point in handing it to them. So now you're giving them an opportunity to get more from you. Well, it makes sense. And that's advice I hope I never have to use. Spencer Corson has been my guest. He is a nationally recognized threat management expert. And the name of his book is The Safety Trap, a security expert's secrets for staying safe in a dangerous world.

And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Spencer. Thanks for being here. Thank you, sir. 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

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check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Do you feel that you're really good at managing your time? You have a system and it keeps track of everything so that you feel productive and in control? Or are you one of those people who has post-it notes all over the place and wish you could really get a better handle on the tasks and the time and all the things that life throws at you? Or maybe you're somewhere in the middle.

Well, here with some very practical help so that we can all get better control of our time and our lives is Maura Neville-Thomas. She's a productivity expert who speaks and writes on this subject, and her latest book is called From Due to Done, How to Go from Busy to Productive by Mastering Your To-Do List. Hi, Maura. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much, Mike. Happy to be here. So is it your sense that most of us are not particularly good at managing our time and managing our days? I think that most people don't have a way to manage their lives. Most people show up at work and do whatever happens to them.

We sit down at our desks, we open our email, and we do whatever happens to them. We sit down at our desks, we open our email, and we do whatever happens to us. That results in living a life of reaction in most cases because your email is full of other people's priorities for the most part. And then we get chats and text messages and voicemails and we have to go to meetings. And we spend our lives being much more reactive than proactive. But as I like to tell my clients, you can only be productive when you can be proactive, and you can only be proactive when you're not being reactive. So having a workflow management system enables you to have a plan for your days. Now, plans change, no question about it. But having a plan for your days helps you get more done what's important to you. Well, I understand the desire to be proactive

and less reactive. I get that. But my experience is, and I think for a lot of people, the interruptions that cause you to be reactive often require you to be reactive. Somebody needs something from you. People aren't interrupting me a whole lot during the day unless they really need something from me. And so there does need to be time to react to those things. And sometimes a good part of the day you have to be reactive to those things, don't you? Yeah, I think I have two things to say about that. The first is that I know that everybody believes that the world has these high expectations,

and in many cases that might be true, that every time someone somewhere sends us some sort of communication, then we must respond immediately. But especially when it comes to email, what I tell my clients is if you're using email in that way for urgent or time-sensitive communication, you're doing it wrong because email is really an asynchronous communication tool, meaning there should be a delay between when somebody reaches out and when you respond. And most routine requests, while we might believe that everybody wants an immediate response, most requests can wait some reasonable amount of time. And that brings me to my kind of second part of this answer, which is that I'm not suggesting

that you ignore your communication. In fact, I think you should check your communication as often as you feel like you need to, but my recommendation is that you do it in between other things, not during other things. So you're away from your communication channels for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, maybe on occasion an hour, 75 minutes, but that's all. And if something can't wait, most people, there's 17 other ways to reach you, and most people will use all of them. Right. I find sometimes I don't really make a plan for my day except in my head,

because I know this is what I need to do today. And sometimes I do write it down. Here's what I'm going to do between 9 and 11. I'm going to shut everything off and focus on this. And I find that when I write it down, it tends to get done better and more productively than when I just have it floating in my head. I'm not surprised at all. I tell my clients, you can only manage what you can see,

and you can only see what is outside your head. So it's really difficult to keep straight all the stuff that we have to do with all the competing thoughts floating around in our brain. So writing it down for sure is a great start. And when you write it down, how should you write it down? Great question. A lot of people keep all the stuff that they need to do in a variety of places. Sticky notes, legal pads, flags in their email, appointments with themselves on their calendar, dry erase board in their office, some sort of electronic document or spreadsheet, maybe some apps and software. But when you try to manage your life, when you have all of the stuff that you need to do scattered in all of those different places, it's a little bit like trying to do a puzzle when all the pieces are scattered all over the house. And if you think about why isn't it useful to do a puzzle with all the pieces scattered all over the house, it becomes very clear, right?

It takes you way longer. It's more frustrating. So the first step that I recommend is pick a place, every single thing in one place. And that's just the beginning. And so what would that look like? What's the recommendation of how you and where you keep that all in one place? Yeah, I always recommend electronic tools over paper because your electronic tool never runs out of space like a piece of paper does. And you can prioritize easily in your electronic tool. You can sort of slice and dice and see things in different ways. You can group it by project. You can group it by due date. You can group it by priority and view it in all kinds of different ways. Your paper can't remind you of things. You can't back up your paper unless you want to make a photocopy of all your notebooks, which isn't really useful. It's hard to see

the big picture when things are written on paper. It's hard to track what you have completed when things are written on paper. So electronics just have so many advantages. So an electronic tool, and then next I would say an electronic tool that was specifically made for managing your to-do list. There are so many to choose from. A lot of people say, well, I just do this on a document or on a spreadsheet. Isn't that okay? Well, it is, but those tools were not made to do all the things that I just said, right? To set reminders and slice and dice in all kinds of different ways. Can you make those tools do those things? Maybe, but why not get one that was built for it already? So my favorite personally is called Todoist, T-O-D-O-I-S-T. That's the one that I, the task manager that I love,

but I train my clients using the task list in Microsoft Outlook, which syncs with Microsoft To Do for those, you know, Microsoft shops. If you're already using some sort of project management software, odds are you can keep your personal tasks in there as well, whether that's Basecamp or Asana or Trello or Smartsheet. If you already are using something, that's probably fine. Yeah, because I mean, you might like electronics, but if people are kind of averse to that, paper might work better for them. It can. I managed my life on paper for years, but I just found that I gained so much efficiency when I moved to electronics. And you're right.

A lot of people tell me, well, I'm just uncomfortable using paper. It's what I'm used to. Well, of course, right? Habits are hard to change. I think you could really skyrocket your efficiency and your productivity if you embrace an electronic tool that has so many more advantages. One problem I know I have and I'm sure other people have is you could have your day pretty well planned out and you've really thought it through and you're going to do this.

And, you know, within the first 10 minutes, everything starts to fall apart because interruptions or a phone call or some problem or your computer blows up. And correcting the course as the day progresses is always difficult for me to readjust that schedule because it's not going the way I'd hoped. You're exactly right. But I believe it was Eisenhower who said, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. What my clients find, and I find personally, is that it's so much easier to absorb the new responsibilities

into an existing plan and shuffle things around and sort of make changes than to have no plan at all and just to have all this stuff just coming at you and coming at you and coming at you. And a lot of people's strategy for handling that is I'll just do it as it comes, but it just comes faster than you can do it. And so then the stuff starts to pile up, but it's piling up in all kinds of different places. And so then you're back to the puzzle analogy. It's ever, you know, all of my actions are everywhere and I've just lost track of it. And so as you amend your plan, that's when things, at least for me, they get kind of messy and And then it starts to take a lot of time. And now you're wasting time trying to fix your plan.

And is there like a simple way to, when things start to go off schedule, to correct the schedule, get it back on track without spending 20 minutes doing that and then losing another 20 minutes because you've just now had to readjust your schedule? Yeah, what you're saying is such a common question, and I completely understand where you're coming from. What I suggest to people when they bring this up to me, though, is you use the term, I have to waste 20 minutes. Most people I talk to have very full, very busy, very kind of complex lives. And to expect that it shouldn't take any time or effort to manage and stay on top of all the details of that busy, complex life, I think is a wonderful wish, but I think it sadly isn't the reality for most of us. We have so much going on that it takes

a little bit of time and effort. But what I find is that the time, not only is it not wasted, the time is actually invested. When you work your system, it's an investment of time that saves you later because you are on top of all of those responsibilities. I tell people to prioritize by due date as a very easy way to get started. Then you can absorb all the new stuff that comes at you and then you can understand, okay, whoa, now I have 12 things for tomorrow and they're probably not going to get done. Can I push any or do I need to renegotiate some deadlines or do I need to reach out to some people and say, hey, you know, I know I told you tomorrow, but would Friday be okay? Now you still have a handle, and it's not getting away from you because you had that plan.

Something I see a lot of people do, and I do it myself too, is you're having a discussion with somebody, something comes up, and you'll make a note. You'll write something down because we've all been told it's better to write it down than try to remember it in our head. And it's better to write it down somewhere, anywhere, than to not write it down. What do you say? So every time we sort of write something on a sticky note or write something on our list, most people say that they write things down to help them remember. And it's absolutely true. When we write things down, it does help us remember.

But every time you write something down, you tell your brain, okay, remember this. Or more importantly, don't forget this. Don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget. And so every time you write something down, you tell your brain don't forget. And your brain doesn't know the appropriate time to remind you of something. So it reminds you all the time, right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's Saturday.

It doesn't matter if it's three in the morning. It doesn't matter if you're trying to have dinner. It doesn't matter if you're going to the movies. Your brain is like, how about now? How about now? Don't forget that thing. Don't forget that thing. And that is stressful.

And we only have a certain amount of mental capacity available to cognitive capacity available to us at any moment. And if a whole bunch of that is taken up by the don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, then we have less available to be creative and innovative and solve problems and think and daydream and be our wonderful selves, be present in our moments, because our brain is distracting us with the don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget. You mentioned a little while ago that you recommend people schedule things by due date, but I have things that I want to do that don't have a due date. You know, there are things I'd like to do, things I'm hoping to do, but there's no due date to them. Yeah, so you can use, one of the great things about electronic tools

is that you can use tags or categories so that you can assign things with a category like future. To me, the definition of a future item is I definitely want to do this but not right now. And then there's also the option of a someday, right? This kind of seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure if I'm really going to pursue it or not. But the truth is, we don't always have our best ideas at exactly the right moment to implement that idea, but it doesn't make it a bad idea. So that someday list is a place to capture those things.

And so you can sort of capture those and have them in your electronic task manager, but in a place that's out of the way where it will show up for you when you need it or you can review it at a future date. What's wrong with just taking your calendar, especially for someone like me, who I don't know that I'm good at managing systems to manage my time.

I think I would rather take a calendar, write down from 9 to 10 I'm doing this, from 10 to 10.30 I'm doing that, and then just do the best I can to stick to that schedule for that day. Easy peasy, just get it done. But I know you don't like that idea, so explain why. Because the first person you will break an appointment with is yourself. And so then we end up dragging things, right? Oh, I thought I was going to do it at 9, but now it's 9.30. Okay, I'll do it at 11.

Oh, darn it, now it's 12.15. Okay, I'll do it at 2. Oh, shoot, now it's 3 o'clock. And so you drag it and drag it and drag it, and really that's a waste of time. And then the day comes that you didn't drag it and you also didn't do it, and that's called flipping through the cracks. And so I do think that time blocking has its place, but my recommendation is to keep only the meetings on

your calendar, things that have what I call a strong relationship to time. If it has to happen on a day or if it is happening on a day, other people are involved, right? A meeting, an appointment, somebody's birthday makes perfect sense to keep those things on your calendar. But other than that, manage your activities that have what I call a weak relationship to time. Like, you know, I just need to do it sometime soon. Manage those things on your task list. Assign a due date on your task list and sort by due date if you want to, but don't make appointments with yourself on your calendar with a few exceptions.

I call it time blocking, right? There are times when, you know, you have a huge project due tomorrow, makes perfect sense to block out an hour or two today so that you'm much more likely to, well, you know, I could do a couple of things. Well, I could do this. Well, maybe I'll go do this. Or maybe I'll go, you know, wash some dishes. Like, putting it on the calendar gives me some self-imposed pressure to do it. Sure. In that case, what I would suggest is that you make an appointment with yourself,

but not to do a specific thing. I would recommend just calling it proactive time. So block out the time on your calendar, call it proactive time. This is when I'm going to get my work done. And when that time rolls around, go to your task list and choose what you think the most pressing thing to do in that moment is based on your other priorities. I just think I'm one of those people, and I think there's a lot of us, that worry that the process of managing your time takes too much time, that we really need to get to the work. We pretty much know what we need to do, and we need to just go do it. It's a very common feeling, but the truth is, most people, the way that most people quote-unquote manage their work is a huge waste of time. We write lists, we read the lists, we reread the lists, we organize the lists, we reread the lists. We organize the lists.

We reorganize the lists. The paper is now a mess, so I've got to copy over the list. We put flags in our email, and then we scroll through our inbox and look at the flag. Oh, what is that? Oh, yeah, that's that thing. Yeah, I'm not going to do that now. Okay. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Oh, here's another flag. What's that? Oh, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that now. So we read the same emails over and over and over again. Most people waste a whole lot of time in their day trying to figure out what to do next. We're all taking time to manage our lives in some way, whether it's writing and rewriting your lists and flagging your emails and reading them over again, or using something more efficient. And I believe that the more efficient way takes all that time and channels it into an investment that pays you dividends later. Don't you think, though, you have to kind of mold the system to the personality that we're all

different and that what works for you might not work for me? The way I describe personal productivity, and a lot of people ask me, you know, how do you have a one size fits all, everybody's different. And the way I describe it is like a dance lesson. If you went to a dance studio and you wanted to learn how to do the tango, the dance teacher would not say to you, why don't you show me how you wanted to learn how to do the tango. The dance teacher would not say to you, why don't you show me how you like to dance? And I will customize my tango lesson to the way that you like to dance. They wouldn't do that. They would say, I'm going to teach you how to do the tango. And now once everybody in the class is doing the tango, some people might want to put

the symbols on their fingers and the rows in their teeth, and you might want to embellish your tango and make it your own, and by all means, you should. But first, you've got to do the tango. Well, that's some really good advice. You know, I've always felt that I could do better in terms of how I manage my time and my day, and you've given me and everyone else some really good tools to help. Maura Neville-Th Thomas has been my guest. She's a productivity expert who speaks and writes on this subject a lot. Her latest book is called From Do to Done,

How to Go from Busy to Productive by Mastering Your To-Do List. And there is a link to her book and to her website in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Maura. Thanks for coming on. Thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate it. If you're interviewing for a new job and there's a choice of time slots for the interview, you should ask for the last available one. Research shows employers remember the last applicants they interview more clearly. And there's a significant difference when it comes to who gets the job. According to one survey, the first applicants were hired 17% of the time,

while the last ones interviewed landed the job 55% of the time. So, ask what days the interviews are being conducted and take the last slot on the last day possible. And that is something you should know. There is no better way to show your support for this podcast than to simply tell someone you know about it and ask them to listen, because that helps us grow our audience. I'm Micah Ruthers. 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

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