August 30, 2024 • 29 mins
Do you feel unproductive?
How can you boost your daily productivity?
Today, Jay talks about how to become productive without feeling burned out. In a world where productivity often leads to burnout, Jay offers practical and transformative strategies to help you achieve more while reducing stress. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by an endless to-do list or struggling to manage your time effectively, this episode provides the tools you need to reclaim your focus and energy.
Jay shares the importance of creating a workspace that fuels productivity and how subtle changes, like scent and sound, can enhance your environment. He also highlights the significance of workplace trust and how identifying whether an issue is people- or system-related can save you time and energy. He wraps up with insights on "monk mode," a method to achieve deep focus in the midst of distractions, and encourages listeners to experiment with these principles to find what works best for them..
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to focus on one task at a time for better productivity
How to identify key drivers of success
How to lean into your momentum for maximum output
How to use a 'to start' list instead of a to-do list
Tune in to discover how to be productive without compromising your well-being, and walk away with actionable tips that you can implement immediately.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
02:29 Burnt Out Already?
04:03 Tip #1: Doing One Thing at a Time
10:10 Tip #2: Clean Your External Space
12:40 Tip #3: Create a To-Start-List
14:17 Tip #4: Give Yourself Positive Validation of Task Completion
18:51 Tip #5: No Email Until 10AM
19:47 Tip #6: Goal of the Day, Goal of the Week
22:03 Tip #7: Know When is Your Most Productive Time
23:41 Tip #8: Create a Space of Workplace Trust
26:21 Tip #9: Focus on What’s Causing Success or Failure
27:42 Tip #10: Lock Into Your Task
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you
that it's a primary focus of on Purpose, but on
a day to day basis, many people don't know where
to turn or which tools can help. Over the past
couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make
mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say,
fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to
(00:24):
help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep,
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bite size options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world,
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my seven minute daily series to help you live more
mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On
(00:45):
Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calmpremium at
Calm dot com Forward slash j that's Calm dot com
forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your Mind,
Change your Life. Sometimes you're productivity is humpered because you're
not solving a people issue and you're trying to solve
(01:05):
a task issue. And sometimes your problem is you're focusing
on people when Actually it's a system issue. So ask yourself,
should I solve the system or do I need to
solve a relationship? The number one health and wellness podcast
send Jay shed Y. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
(01:28):
I'm so excited to welcome you to a new episode.
It is great to have you here. If you're focused
on developing yourself, building your mindset, strengthening your habits, you're
in exactly the right place. I just want to thank
so many of you that I've bumped into recently as
I've been out and about. It means the world to
(01:50):
me when you come up to me and tell me
your stories and share your experiences of listening to the podcast,
it really makes my day. And I love giving you
a big hurt ug saying hello, fist bumping wherever we are.
And I want to thank you for your reviews. I
want to thank you for your stories. I want to
thank you for the clips you make on TikTok. Keep
the energy spreading. Remember when you share an episode of
(02:13):
On Purpose, you could be helping someone else go through
a breakup. You could be helping someone find their passion.
You could be helping someone build a habit that might
change their life, and I'm so grateful that you're a
part of this mission and a part of this movement. Now,
today's episode is a theme that I think we all
(02:35):
struggle with. If you want to be more productive and
less burnt out, this episode is for you. If you
want to achieve more, if you want to build more,
if you want to create more, if you want to
use your time more wisely, this episode is for you.
If you've been wasting time, if you've been feeling like
your priorities keep going to the bottom of the list,
(02:58):
if you feel like, even at this point in the year,
you're so far away from your goals, this episode is
for you. Now, I'm going to share with you some
tips and tricks that have helped me along the way
to have better time management, have better energy management, and
have better stress management in order to be productive but
(03:21):
also be effective. I think for a long time we
went down this toxic productivity route where everyone was stressed,
burnt out, over worked, overwhelmed. And when you end up
in that space, it's really hard to pivot, it's really
hard to figure out how to get out of it,
and you almost feel like what was the point of
being that productive and at the same time, all of
(03:44):
us want to create, we want to build. We're meant
to grow as humans, and if we're not growing, we
feel like things are falling abart. So I want to
share with you some really practical steps that you can
apply starting today that are going to try transform the
way you work, live and love. Now, I want to
start off with probably my favorite principle of all that
(04:09):
has transformed my stress levels, my mindset, and it is
the art of solo tasking or monotasking, doing one thing
at a time. I found that when we do one
thing at a time, whether it's eating, whether it's brushing
(04:30):
our teeth, whether it's talking to someone, whether it's browsing
the internet, whether it's watching a video, when you do
one thing at a time, your stress level drops. When
you do one thing at a time and you're absorbed
and immersed your quality of effectiveness increases. When you do
(04:50):
one thing at a time, you feel a sense of
accomplishment and completion. This is a really interesting thing in
today's day and age. We live in a world where
our lives are constantly incomplete. We have books that we've
read a page of, a couple of and they're incomplete.
We have a show that we started that we even
(05:11):
forgot about, and then when you go back onto it,
you're like, oh, my gosh, I actually started the show.
I was on episode two halfway through, but I forgot
I started it. We live in a world of incompleteness.
So much of what we start never ends. Now I'm
not saying that we have to finish everything we start,
but if we focus on one thing at a time,
chances are our completion rate is going to go up.
(05:34):
Now what does that do? The completion rate going up
makes you feel more successful and accomplished. It makes you
feel you got to the end of something. It makes
you feel like you've got some where you went on
a journey, otherwise an incomplete journeys. Imagine you're like, you
know what, today, I think I'm gonna fly to New York.
I'm gonna actually, you know, halfway on the fly, I'm
(05:55):
gonna decide I actually want to go to Atlanta. Okay,
when I'm on the way to Atlanta, right, So that
income completeness is what creates inconsistency instability in our lives,
and we often don't make that connection of just how
incomplete things have become How many of you have a
task that's been incomplete for three days and you completely
(06:16):
forgot about it, Or how many of you had notes
on your phone and you were writing some notes about
something you got distracted from a message. Then someone sent
you a TikTok link, and then after that someone sent
you a YouTube video, and then after that someone sent
you a link on Amazon, and now you've forgot that note.
So our incompleteness and this idea of doing one thing
(06:38):
at a time allows us to feel more accomplished. It
allows us to close the loop in our minds. It
allows us to not have this constant state of distraction. Now,
research shows that when one switches from TASKA to task B,
their one hundred percent attention does not automatically go to
(07:00):
the new task. Some people remain stuck at the original assignment.
This is from the research now. It says that this
is attention residue, and it's strongest if task A was
unbounded or low intensity in nature before a person made
the switch. Even if you complete task A before switching,
(07:23):
part of your attention will remain temporarily on task A.
So what we're saying is that if you don't complete
task A. If you don't finish task A and you
move to task B, you could find that forty percent
of your energy is still trying to solve task A,
and now sixty percent of your energy is going to
(07:43):
task B. Now, let's say you go to task C.
You've left forty percent behind. Now that sixty gets split
up again. You've got forty percent in task A, you've
got thirty percent in task B, and you've got thirty
percent in task C. So you're only giving your left overs.
You're giving the residue to the next task. So your
(08:03):
attention is getting more split and fragmented. Whereas what we
think happens is, oh, I was giving one hundred percent
of my attention to that, Now I'm just going to
move it over. It doesn't work like that. So when
you have lots of tabs open, when you have your email,
your text, your WhatsApp all open on your laptop screen,
(08:24):
and you're able to switch between all of them, it
actually creates this challenge. This research I found from the
great book called Deep Work by cal Newport, and in
the book it says the principle of attention residue works
like this. Every time you switch from task A to
task B. Some of your attention remains in task A.
(08:45):
Concentrating on the new task is harder, so you lose
some productivity. When switching tasks one task at a time,
complete the task, I promise you you will feel like
you have so much more confidence, so much more lawrance,
And when it comes to the end of the day,
you're not looking at your list going that's still incomplete,
(09:06):
that's still incomplete, that's still incomplete. Because the mind always
over amplifies how far you have to go, not how
far you've come, right generally, so we have to switch
our perspective. When you're halfway up a mountain, you could
either look down and think, Wow, I've come a really
long way, or you could look up and go, oh
my gosh, I've got so long to go. And what
(09:28):
we need in this mindset is actually, I may have
a lot more left to do, but I completed a
lot today. I hope that idea of completion really resonates
and sticks with you, because I see the incompleteness in
our minds causing so much stress and anxiety. And that's
what happens, right, if something's left incomplete, if something's left undone.
(09:50):
That's what causes you stress, That's what causes you anxiety.
So the reason why doing one thing at a time
is important is because you can complete it. Now, I'm
not saying this to mean you complete every book if
you're bored by it, or you complete a TV show
if you're bored by it. It's just interesting how much
of our life has become perplexed by incompleteness. Principal number
(10:11):
two cleaning your external space and what does that mean.
I don't mean that everything has to be perfectly tidy.
What I mean is that when you come to your
work desk, you have what you need there. You're not
constantly getting back up and down going Oh I forgot
the posting notes. Oh I forgot the highlighters. Oh I
forgot to download this app. Oh I didn't really have
(10:33):
the latest version of chat jupt. Whatever it is, right,
whether it's analog or digital, it's there. Where's your water bottle?
Is it there? Where's your little snack? Where's your nuts
that you need to nibble on? Now, of course you
can get up and go and get those things, and
it's good to move around during the day, but overall,
is your space set up for success or is the
first thought when you come to your desk, Oh, oh
(10:56):
hate working here, hate being here? The first thing when
you get in your bedroom, oh, it's just too hot
in here. Like set it up for success, right, So
cleaning your external space can have massive impact on your productivity.
One of the things I think we underestimate is scent,
site and sound. When you walk into a space, what
(11:20):
scent makes you feel that way? So when I walk
into my workspace, I want a candle or a diffuser
that has an energizing scent because I know I need
to bring focus. We don't use the sense of smell
enough in order to motivate our mind. Use that. Figure out, diffuser,
figure out a scent that when you smell it, you're like, Okay,
(11:41):
it's time to work. It's time to focus. Now a site,
what's something you want to see? I have this. I
have some art pieces in my office that have phrases, reminders.
I have quotes on my table. I have little quote
books that can just flick through to get motivation. I'm
surrounded by the energy and it's right there so that
(12:01):
I can get do it. I know that if I'm
feeling a certain way, one day, I can pick up
one of my books, I can pick up one of
my affirmation cards. I can read it out to myself
and then sound are use someone who likes to work
in silence, chatter, or music. A lot of us don't
even know that. We don't have the self awareness to
recognize it. I'm a silence worker, or I'm an instrumental
(12:23):
music worker. I like lots of instrumental beats. I'm happy
to have them on the background. It gets me to
lock in. Or I like silence. I really don't like
working when there's chatter or background conversation and background noise.
It doesn't work for me. So figure out yours. Number three.
Don't have a to do list, but have a to
(12:46):
start list. And what I mean by that is a
to do list is a list of everything that you
need to do. A start list is like, well, where's
the most important place to start? Right? So when we
have to do list, Like, for example, I could have
on my to do list write a chapter of my book.
Now that's quite a big thing on my to do list,
(13:08):
But how what's my to start list? Okay, to start
write out what I think the chapter breakdown is going
to be, right, let's say on your to do list
it says to complete a presentation. Okay, but to start,
what do you need to read? So your start list
almost makes it so easy for you that you just
lock in rather than you look at the item on
your to do list. Now, this takes an extra step
(13:29):
when you're planning. When you're planning, you may have to
sit down and think to yourself, Okay, I have this
to do list, Okay, what do I need to start?
So it's an extra step in advance. But then when
you wake up and you look at your to start list,
you know exactly what to get locked into. I think
this has been a game changer for me because so
(13:50):
often you look at your to do list and maybe
a to do list is work on that you know,
got to finish off that project for work, or maybe
the to do list is obviously simple things like laundry
or whatever. That's different. I'm talking about things that you've
kind of been putting off for a while, things that
get stuck on that to do list for too long,
things that are always there. Almost it feels like have
(14:12):
a to start list, not a to do list. This
next one applies to that as well. How many of
you on your to do list cross things off. How
many of you will put a cross next to it
or put a line through it? Now, this is really simple,
and you may be like, Jay, that's not gonna work.
(14:34):
I believe it all works, and I'll tell you why.
It's because you're constantly in communication with yourself and our
body and mind picks up on subtile cues very strongly.
There are subtle things in society that have been so hardwired.
For example, if you see a cross next to something,
(14:56):
you generally think it's wrong. From school, if you see
a C to something, it generally means don't enter, do
not go here, caution. Right. That is a symbol, it's
an emblem for something. Now you may not process that logically.
You can differentiate between a cross on your to do
list and a cross at a you know, at a
at a traffic signal or a sign or you know
(15:18):
when they have those train crossings. You can tell the
difference logically, but subtly, when you're not processing it that intentionally,
you're getting a negative impact. So what I want you
to do is swap your crosses for ticks. Put a
big tick, put a color tick, put a green tick.
Seeing color, seeing a certain symbol, color gives us a
(15:40):
certain emotion, and we devalue how much these things work.
We undervalue how powerful these things can be. Right, we
just think, oh, yeah, it's just you know, this is
just pseudo stuff. It's like, yeah, sure, maybe there isn't
something massively scientific about it. But the idea that you'll
learn to give yourself positive affirmation, a positive validation of completion,
(16:04):
a positive sense of self, I think it will make
a big difference. One of the most well known tools,
which I only recently realized I was lucky to learn
when I was very young, and just how many people
never actually got exposed to it when they were young,
and I wanted to share it with you. And if
(16:25):
you know it, that's great. If you don't know it,
then I really hope that this changes the way you work.
It's called the Eisenhower matrix or the Eisenhower box, and
Eisenhower's strategy for taking action was organizing the inbound of
a task, so on your to do list or a
task that comes through there are four ways of defining them.
(16:49):
According to Eisenhower, the four ways are either urgent and important.
These are things that you will do immediately. There's important
but not urgent. This is stuff that you'll have to
schedule to do it at another time. Then there's urgent
but not important. This is ideally something that someone else
(17:11):
can do. It may require you to do it, but
not with the same amount of intentionality and focus. And fourth,
neither urgent nor important. And these are tasks that you
actually want to get rid of. Now. When you start
doing this, you and I want you to do this.
And again it's it's almost like you'll think, well, why
do I do that? Why don't I just get on
with the task, because you might find when you do
(17:35):
this for the first time, a lot of the tasks
that you're spending time on maybe neither urgent nor important.
I analyze every one of my meetings at work this way.
We often go around the team meeting and my team
will be filling me in on things, and I'm asking
myself how much of this was urgent, and how much
of this was important, and how much of it required me?
(17:58):
And so ask yourself, is what's this urgent and important?
Let me do it immediately, because often what we do
is we trade what is important for what is urgent.
And I think that's one of the biggest misses in
productivity and time management. We get a request that's urgent
for someone else. That's another thing. Not only is it
(18:20):
not important for you, it's not urgent for you, it's
urgent for someone else, and we drop what we're doing
and being able to say, Hey, I'm going to get
back to you in five minutes. I've just got to
finish something off. Hey, I've been working on that. What
time do you need it by? Right? When do you
need it by? And in what condition are you looking
(18:41):
for We're looking for it to be like are you
looking for it to be complete? I think these qualifying
questions help you to plan it out, help you to
factor it out. One of the big ones of this
this is the next principle, But this applies to the
next principle very strongly. No email until ten am. A
lot of us we get to work and the first
(19:01):
thing we do, and I remember I used to do
this as well. Was I used to open my email.
You're starting your day off with a few things. First
of all, it's reactive. You haven't started proactively on what
you need to focus on. You start reactively with what
everyone else wants to focus on. Therefore it's urgent to
someone else even if it's not urgent and important to you.
(19:22):
And thirdly, you get distracted down a rabbit hole and
you focus on things that you don't even know are
of value to what you're trying to do. Set a time,
no email for the first thirty minutes of the day,
no email for the first hour. When I get into work,
I'm going to focus on my projects. So I'm going
to focus on what I need to deliver. I'm going
to focus on what I need to build. That's how
(19:42):
you want to plan your day out right, That's how
you want to focus. One of the next productivity tips
that's made a big difference in my life is something
I called goal of the day and goal of the week.
I knew the goal of my day to day was
to script, research and record to credible solo episodes. This
is one of them, right, That was my goal of
(20:04):
the day. Because I'm traveling for the rest of the
day today, I'm flying to London, and so my goal
of the day is to get to London safely and
do that, and that's it. I have a lunch in
between for work, and but that's my goal. My goal
is simple. It's the podcast, it's the solos, it's being
present with all of you. That's the goal of the day.
No matter what happens, I have won if this goes well.
(20:24):
I think what we often do is we have ten
goals of the day. We have ten goals of each day,
and it's almost impossible. Now, this doesn't mean you don't
do more tasks. I've done more tasks today. I haven't
had the luxury of only doing two episodes. I've got
a lot of other tasks to do today. But I'm
very clearly in my mind saying to myself, this is
(20:46):
the win, because what happens is that every day will
feel like a loss when you look at it and
you look, I didn't get six out of ten things done,
but maybe you've got two of the most important things
done in those four things you got done. We don't
properly weigh things for what their value truly is. We
(21:07):
overvalue something and we undervalue something else, or we give
everything the same value, and no tasks like to me
recording my solos today and doing a bit of housekeeping,
they're not of the same value to my work, They're
not of the same value to my life. They are
of different value, and so the goal of the day
has to be based around what you value. Today. Some days,
(21:29):
the goal of the day will be to get the
dishes done. Tonight some day the goal of the day
will be to get the laundry done, and that's totally fine.
But know your value. Set a goal of the day,
and set a goal of the week, and pursue that.
Don't pursue this endless feeling of I just want to
check everything off my list. I just need to get
(21:50):
everything done, because you could get everything done and ten
more things are going to appear. But if you've done
the big things, if you've done the big goals, goal
of the day, the goal of the week, you're going
to feel a sense of accomplishment. The next principle is
know your best time to be productive and put the
most important activity at that time. This is another self
(22:12):
awareness tip. If you know when you're most powerful, lean
into that. I know that I might my best energy
in the morning, I'm far better all the way up
into one or two pm. That is my golden time,
that is my most impactful time. So I'm going to
place one of my most important activities in that nine
(22:32):
am to one to two pm slot, then other things
I'm going to add later on in the day. What
I find is a lot of us will find our
best stuff. We're doing it at the hardest times. So
many of us are trying to do our best work
at the worst time during the day for us. So
get a sense of it. Observe yourself, Audit yourself over
(22:53):
the next week, and ask yourself, what time of day
was I most productive? What tasks do I find easiest
to my confidence? Am I better when I start with
the hardest thing of the beginning of the day or
the easiest thing at the start of the day, Know
your best time and schedule accordingly. And this applies to
the next rule, which is lean into beast mode. You
(23:15):
have to follow momentum. Sometimes I'm on a streak where
I'm just writing it. It's really flowing, and I've realized
to myself, that's the wind of the day. I'm going
to switch some of my tasks and focus on that.
Sometimes I'm in a recording mode and I can tell
I've really locked in, and I'm like, all right, let
me just lean into this right. And I think a
lot of us don't follow our momentum we don't follow
(23:35):
that desire and energy when it's flowing, it's flowing, go
with it and lean into it. Now, if you work
in a workplace with other people, the biggest block out
of productivity people think is chatter or noise, and that
is there. There's some truth in that, because one of
the principles that I'll talk about later actually refers to that.
(23:55):
But the one I want to talk about right now
is actually one of the big causes of inefficiency at
work is a lack of trust. When people have a
lack of trust, you have to ask them three times
for that document. When people have a lack of trust,
you have to navigate a meeting so carefully that you're
de energized after the meeting. When people have a lack
(24:18):
of trust and chemistry, there's likelihood of being more conflict
or competitiveness. We have to try in our workplaces to
create a space of workplace trust. And what that is
is to make sure people don't feel intimidated and you
don't feel intimidated. And I know this is so hard
(24:39):
because sadly you're around people who have their ego up,
their barrier up, their boundary up. You've kind of got
into the same place now, So what do you do?
And I've been there before as well. I remember being
in workplaces where I really felt that it was backs
up against the wall and I really didn't feel like
people were right, not just to me, to each other.
(25:01):
Sometimes people are warm to me and not to other people,
and that made me uncomfortable. So what do you do?
I can honestly say that leading with integrity, leading with respect,
leading with your best self, communicating effectively, always going higher,
no matter how hard it is, will ultimately win the
trust of the right people. It's always better. Don't get
(25:25):
stuck in office politics, don't get brought down by it,
don't get trapped by it, don't get ruined by it.
And the way you do that is by constantly engaging
with on purpose. You know, reading books that inspire you,
being around people maybe outside of work or people at work.
You do move you and motivate you. But recognize that
(25:45):
sometimes you're trying to solve tasks and everything else, but
it's a people issue. Know what's a people issue and
know what's a task issue. This is a huge rule
for productivity. Sometimes your productivity is hampered because you're not
solving a people issue, and you're trying to solve a
task issue, and sometimes your problem is you're focusing on
people when actually it's a system issue. So ask yourself,
(26:09):
should I solve the system or do I need to
solve a relationship and figure that out, and that will
save you so much time, money, and energy. I've only
got a couple more that I want to share with you.
This next one is called the Pareto principle, and it's
a concept that's based on this idea that eighty percent
(26:31):
of your business success is actually based on twenty percent
of business. Right, So it's almost like saying that eighty
percent of your revenue is based on twenty percent of
your clients. Eighty percent of your success is based on
the twenty percent of people you actually know at work,
not the other way around. What we often do is
(26:52):
we often get lost focusing on the eighty percent as
opposed to the twenty percent. In essence, we don't focus
on the root of our success and failure. We get distracted,
and so it's a reminder that figure out what is
really causing success or failure and focus on that. So
ask yourself, what is your twenty percent? Here are four
(27:14):
questions I want you to reflect on number one, what
is your twenty percent? What is the thing that actually
drives the eighty percent? Then what's your eighty percent? What
are you focused on eighty percent of the time and
is it really leading to anything? Third question, where are
you spending your time? In fourth? How can you reprioritize?
How can you recognize that you want to focus on
(27:35):
the twenty percent that is life changing, that is building,
and not get lost in the eighty percent. Now, the
last method I want to share with you is monk mode.
I remember so much of our meditation training during my
time as a monk was about finding that silence and
that stillness and going inward and in the workspace. This
(27:57):
monk mode is this idea that how can you find
that feeling of being locked in? How can you find
that feeling of being so focused that you're not distracted
by everything else around you? And research shows that in
person conversations ranked as the top source of distraction at
(28:17):
work forty seven percent, followed by phone calls twenty percent
and chat platforms fifteen percent. One of my team members
does this, and I see it work wonders for her
when we're all chatting away. She wears headphones, right, she
wears headphones and they're noise canceling, and she's locked in
doing her work. And I see the amount of focus
(28:38):
she has and how productive she is because of that.
And I see a couple of my team members actually
doing this, and so I recommend it. If you're struggling
to disconnect, it's great to have them on. It's not rude,
it's not antisocial. You can always join into conversations, and
people actually admire it because people can see how locked
in you are. So I want to know which principles
(28:58):
you're going to test, which ones you're going to try.
I hope that this helps you be more productive and
effective and also lowers your stress levels. And I'm sending
you so much love and positive energy. Remember I'm always
in your corner and I'm forever rooting for you. Thanks
for listening on purpose. I'll see you soon. Thank you
so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it,
(29:19):
you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort
is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking
your hidden potential. If you know you want to be
more and achieve more, this year. Go check it out
right now. You set a goal today, you achieve it
in six months, and then by the time it happens,
it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose.
(29:41):
You sort of expected it, and you would have been
disappointed if it didn't happen.
Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you
that it's a primary focus of on Purpose, but on
a day to day basis, many people don't know where
to turn or which tools can help. Over the past
couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make
mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say,
fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to
(00:24):
help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep,
and generally feel better in your daily life. So many
bite size options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world,
along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out
my seven minute daily series to help you live more
mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On
(00:45):
Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calmpremium at
Calm dot com Forward slash j that's Calm dot com
forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your Mind,
Change your Life. Sometimes you're productivity is humpered because you're
not solving a people issue and you're trying to solve
(01:05):
a task issue. And sometimes your problem is you're focusing
on people when Actually it's a system issue. So ask yourself,
should I solve the system or do I need to
solve a relationship? The number one health and wellness podcast
send Jay shed Y. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
(01:28):
I'm so excited to welcome you to a new episode.
It is great to have you here. If you're focused
on developing yourself, building your mindset, strengthening your habits, you're
in exactly the right place. I just want to thank
so many of you that I've bumped into recently as
I've been out and about. It means the world to
(01:50):
me when you come up to me and tell me
your stories and share your experiences of listening to the podcast,
it really makes my day. And I love giving you
a big hurt ug saying hello, fist bumping wherever we are.
And I want to thank you for your reviews. I
want to thank you for your stories. I want to
thank you for the clips you make on TikTok. Keep
the energy spreading. Remember when you share an episode of
(02:13):
On Purpose, you could be helping someone else go through
a breakup. You could be helping someone find their passion.
You could be helping someone build a habit that might
change their life, and I'm so grateful that you're a
part of this mission and a part of this movement. Now,
today's episode is a theme that I think we all
(02:35):
struggle with. If you want to be more productive and
less burnt out, this episode is for you. If you
want to achieve more, if you want to build more,
if you want to create more, if you want to
use your time more wisely, this episode is for you.
If you've been wasting time, if you've been feeling like
your priorities keep going to the bottom of the list,
(02:58):
if you feel like, even at this point in the year,
you're so far away from your goals, this episode is
for you. Now, I'm going to share with you some
tips and tricks that have helped me along the way
to have better time management, have better energy management, and
have better stress management in order to be productive but
(03:21):
also be effective. I think for a long time we
went down this toxic productivity route where everyone was stressed,
burnt out, over worked, overwhelmed. And when you end up
in that space, it's really hard to pivot, it's really
hard to figure out how to get out of it,
and you almost feel like what was the point of
being that productive and at the same time, all of
(03:44):
us want to create, we want to build. We're meant
to grow as humans, and if we're not growing, we
feel like things are falling abart. So I want to
share with you some really practical steps that you can
apply starting today that are going to try transform the
way you work, live and love. Now, I want to
start off with probably my favorite principle of all that
(04:09):
has transformed my stress levels, my mindset, and it is
the art of solo tasking or monotasking, doing one thing
at a time. I found that when we do one
thing at a time, whether it's eating, whether it's brushing
(04:30):
our teeth, whether it's talking to someone, whether it's browsing
the internet, whether it's watching a video, when you do
one thing at a time, your stress level drops. When
you do one thing at a time and you're absorbed
and immersed your quality of effectiveness increases. When you do
(04:50):
one thing at a time, you feel a sense of
accomplishment and completion. This is a really interesting thing in
today's day and age. We live in a world where
our lives are constantly incomplete. We have books that we've
read a page of, a couple of and they're incomplete.
We have a show that we started that we even
(05:11):
forgot about, and then when you go back onto it,
you're like, oh, my gosh, I actually started the show.
I was on episode two halfway through, but I forgot
I started it. We live in a world of incompleteness.
So much of what we start never ends. Now I'm
not saying that we have to finish everything we start,
but if we focus on one thing at a time,
chances are our completion rate is going to go up.
(05:34):
Now what does that do? The completion rate going up
makes you feel more successful and accomplished. It makes you
feel you got to the end of something. It makes
you feel like you've got some where you went on
a journey, otherwise an incomplete journeys. Imagine you're like, you
know what, today, I think I'm gonna fly to New York.
I'm gonna actually, you know, halfway on the fly, I'm
(05:55):
gonna decide I actually want to go to Atlanta. Okay,
when I'm on the way to Atlanta, right, So that
income completeness is what creates inconsistency instability in our lives,
and we often don't make that connection of just how
incomplete things have become How many of you have a
task that's been incomplete for three days and you completely
(06:16):
forgot about it, Or how many of you had notes
on your phone and you were writing some notes about
something you got distracted from a message. Then someone sent
you a TikTok link, and then after that someone sent
you a YouTube video, and then after that someone sent
you a link on Amazon, and now you've forgot that note.
So our incompleteness and this idea of doing one thing
(06:38):
at a time allows us to feel more accomplished. It
allows us to close the loop in our minds. It
allows us to not have this constant state of distraction. Now,
research shows that when one switches from TASKA to task B,
their one hundred percent attention does not automatically go to
(07:00):
the new task. Some people remain stuck at the original assignment.
This is from the research now. It says that this
is attention residue, and it's strongest if task A was
unbounded or low intensity in nature before a person made
the switch. Even if you complete task A before switching,
(07:23):
part of your attention will remain temporarily on task A.
So what we're saying is that if you don't complete
task A. If you don't finish task A and you
move to task B, you could find that forty percent
of your energy is still trying to solve task A,
and now sixty percent of your energy is going to
(07:43):
task B. Now, let's say you go to task C.
You've left forty percent behind. Now that sixty gets split
up again. You've got forty percent in task A, you've
got thirty percent in task B, and you've got thirty
percent in task C. So you're only giving your left overs.
You're giving the residue to the next task. So your
(08:03):
attention is getting more split and fragmented. Whereas what we
think happens is, oh, I was giving one hundred percent
of my attention to that, Now I'm just going to
move it over. It doesn't work like that. So when
you have lots of tabs open, when you have your email,
your text, your WhatsApp all open on your laptop screen,
(08:24):
and you're able to switch between all of them, it
actually creates this challenge. This research I found from the
great book called Deep Work by cal Newport, and in
the book it says the principle of attention residue works
like this. Every time you switch from task A to
task B. Some of your attention remains in task A.
(08:45):
Concentrating on the new task is harder, so you lose
some productivity. When switching tasks one task at a time,
complete the task, I promise you you will feel like
you have so much more confidence, so much more lawrance,
And when it comes to the end of the day,
you're not looking at your list going that's still incomplete,
(09:06):
that's still incomplete, that's still incomplete. Because the mind always
over amplifies how far you have to go, not how
far you've come, right generally, so we have to switch
our perspective. When you're halfway up a mountain, you could
either look down and think, Wow, I've come a really
long way, or you could look up and go, oh
my gosh, I've got so long to go. And what
(09:28):
we need in this mindset is actually, I may have
a lot more left to do, but I completed a
lot today. I hope that idea of completion really resonates
and sticks with you, because I see the incompleteness in
our minds causing so much stress and anxiety. And that's
what happens, right, if something's left incomplete, if something's left undone.
(09:50):
That's what causes you stress, That's what causes you anxiety.
So the reason why doing one thing at a time
is important is because you can complete it. Now, I'm
not saying this to mean you complete every book if
you're bored by it, or you complete a TV show
if you're bored by it. It's just interesting how much
of our life has become perplexed by incompleteness. Principal number
(10:11):
two cleaning your external space and what does that mean.
I don't mean that everything has to be perfectly tidy.
What I mean is that when you come to your
work desk, you have what you need there. You're not
constantly getting back up and down going Oh I forgot
the posting notes. Oh I forgot the highlighters. Oh I
forgot to download this app. Oh I didn't really have
(10:33):
the latest version of chat jupt. Whatever it is, right,
whether it's analog or digital, it's there. Where's your water bottle?
Is it there? Where's your little snack? Where's your nuts
that you need to nibble on? Now, of course you
can get up and go and get those things, and
it's good to move around during the day, but overall,
is your space set up for success or is the
first thought when you come to your desk, Oh, oh
(10:56):
hate working here, hate being here? The first thing when
you get in your bedroom, oh, it's just too hot
in here. Like set it up for success, right, So
cleaning your external space can have massive impact on your productivity.
One of the things I think we underestimate is scent,
site and sound. When you walk into a space, what
(11:20):
scent makes you feel that way? So when I walk
into my workspace, I want a candle or a diffuser
that has an energizing scent because I know I need
to bring focus. We don't use the sense of smell
enough in order to motivate our mind. Use that. Figure out, diffuser,
figure out a scent that when you smell it, you're like, Okay,
(11:41):
it's time to work. It's time to focus. Now a site,
what's something you want to see? I have this. I
have some art pieces in my office that have phrases, reminders.
I have quotes on my table. I have little quote
books that can just flick through to get motivation. I'm
surrounded by the energy and it's right there so that
(12:01):
I can get do it. I know that if I'm
feeling a certain way, one day, I can pick up
one of my books, I can pick up one of
my affirmation cards. I can read it out to myself
and then sound are use someone who likes to work
in silence, chatter, or music. A lot of us don't
even know that. We don't have the self awareness to
recognize it. I'm a silence worker, or I'm an instrumental
(12:23):
music worker. I like lots of instrumental beats. I'm happy
to have them on the background. It gets me to
lock in. Or I like silence. I really don't like
working when there's chatter or background conversation and background noise.
It doesn't work for me. So figure out yours. Number three.
Don't have a to do list, but have a to
(12:46):
start list. And what I mean by that is a
to do list is a list of everything that you
need to do. A start list is like, well, where's
the most important place to start? Right? So when we
have to do list, Like, for example, I could have
on my to do list write a chapter of my book.
Now that's quite a big thing on my to do list,
(13:08):
But how what's my to start list? Okay, to start
write out what I think the chapter breakdown is going
to be, right, let's say on your to do list
it says to complete a presentation. Okay, but to start,
what do you need to read? So your start list
almost makes it so easy for you that you just
lock in rather than you look at the item on
your to do list. Now, this takes an extra step
(13:29):
when you're planning. When you're planning, you may have to
sit down and think to yourself, Okay, I have this
to do list, Okay, what do I need to start?
So it's an extra step in advance. But then when
you wake up and you look at your to start list,
you know exactly what to get locked into. I think
this has been a game changer for me because so
(13:50):
often you look at your to do list and maybe
a to do list is work on that you know,
got to finish off that project for work, or maybe
the to do list is obviously simple things like laundry
or whatever. That's different. I'm talking about things that you've
kind of been putting off for a while, things that
get stuck on that to do list for too long,
things that are always there. Almost it feels like have
(14:12):
a to start list, not a to do list. This
next one applies to that as well. How many of
you on your to do list cross things off. How
many of you will put a cross next to it
or put a line through it? Now, this is really simple,
and you may be like, Jay, that's not gonna work.
(14:34):
I believe it all works, and I'll tell you why.
It's because you're constantly in communication with yourself and our
body and mind picks up on subtile cues very strongly.
There are subtle things in society that have been so hardwired.
For example, if you see a cross next to something,
(14:56):
you generally think it's wrong. From school, if you see
a C to something, it generally means don't enter, do
not go here, caution. Right. That is a symbol, it's
an emblem for something. Now you may not process that logically.
You can differentiate between a cross on your to do
list and a cross at a you know, at a
at a traffic signal or a sign or you know
(15:18):
when they have those train crossings. You can tell the
difference logically, but subtly, when you're not processing it that intentionally,
you're getting a negative impact. So what I want you
to do is swap your crosses for ticks. Put a
big tick, put a color tick, put a green tick.
Seeing color, seeing a certain symbol, color gives us a
(15:40):
certain emotion, and we devalue how much these things work.
We undervalue how powerful these things can be. Right, we
just think, oh, yeah, it's just you know, this is
just pseudo stuff. It's like, yeah, sure, maybe there isn't
something massively scientific about it. But the idea that you'll
learn to give yourself positive affirmation, a positive validation of completion,
(16:04):
a positive sense of self, I think it will make
a big difference. One of the most well known tools,
which I only recently realized I was lucky to learn
when I was very young, and just how many people
never actually got exposed to it when they were young,
and I wanted to share it with you. And if
(16:25):
you know it, that's great. If you don't know it,
then I really hope that this changes the way you work.
It's called the Eisenhower matrix or the Eisenhower box, and
Eisenhower's strategy for taking action was organizing the inbound of
a task, so on your to do list or a
task that comes through there are four ways of defining them.
(16:49):
According to Eisenhower, the four ways are either urgent and important.
These are things that you will do immediately. There's important
but not urgent. This is stuff that you'll have to
schedule to do it at another time. Then there's urgent
but not important. This is ideally something that someone else
(17:11):
can do. It may require you to do it, but
not with the same amount of intentionality and focus. And fourth,
neither urgent nor important. And these are tasks that you
actually want to get rid of. Now. When you start
doing this, you and I want you to do this.
And again it's it's almost like you'll think, well, why
do I do that? Why don't I just get on
with the task, because you might find when you do
(17:35):
this for the first time, a lot of the tasks
that you're spending time on maybe neither urgent nor important.
I analyze every one of my meetings at work this way.
We often go around the team meeting and my team
will be filling me in on things, and I'm asking
myself how much of this was urgent, and how much
of this was important, and how much of it required me?
(17:58):
And so ask yourself, is what's this urgent and important?
Let me do it immediately, because often what we do
is we trade what is important for what is urgent.
And I think that's one of the biggest misses in
productivity and time management. We get a request that's urgent
for someone else. That's another thing. Not only is it
(18:20):
not important for you, it's not urgent for you, it's
urgent for someone else, and we drop what we're doing
and being able to say, Hey, I'm going to get
back to you in five minutes. I've just got to
finish something off. Hey, I've been working on that. What
time do you need it by? Right? When do you
need it by? And in what condition are you looking
(18:41):
for We're looking for it to be like are you
looking for it to be complete? I think these qualifying
questions help you to plan it out, help you to
factor it out. One of the big ones of this
this is the next principle, But this applies to the
next principle very strongly. No email until ten am. A
lot of us we get to work and the first
(19:01):
thing we do, and I remember I used to do
this as well. Was I used to open my email.
You're starting your day off with a few things. First
of all, it's reactive. You haven't started proactively on what
you need to focus on. You start reactively with what
everyone else wants to focus on. Therefore it's urgent to
someone else even if it's not urgent and important to you.
(19:22):
And thirdly, you get distracted down a rabbit hole and
you focus on things that you don't even know are
of value to what you're trying to do. Set a time,
no email for the first thirty minutes of the day,
no email for the first hour. When I get into work,
I'm going to focus on my projects. So I'm going
to focus on what I need to deliver. I'm going
to focus on what I need to build. That's how
(19:42):
you want to plan your day out right, That's how
you want to focus. One of the next productivity tips
that's made a big difference in my life is something
I called goal of the day and goal of the week.
I knew the goal of my day to day was
to script, research and record to credible solo episodes. This
is one of them, right, That was my goal of
(20:04):
the day. Because I'm traveling for the rest of the
day today, I'm flying to London, and so my goal
of the day is to get to London safely and
do that, and that's it. I have a lunch in
between for work, and but that's my goal. My goal
is simple. It's the podcast, it's the solos, it's being
present with all of you. That's the goal of the day.
No matter what happens, I have won if this goes well.
(20:24):
I think what we often do is we have ten
goals of the day. We have ten goals of each day,
and it's almost impossible. Now, this doesn't mean you don't
do more tasks. I've done more tasks today. I haven't
had the luxury of only doing two episodes. I've got
a lot of other tasks to do today. But I'm
very clearly in my mind saying to myself, this is
(20:46):
the win, because what happens is that every day will
feel like a loss when you look at it and
you look, I didn't get six out of ten things done,
but maybe you've got two of the most important things
done in those four things you got done. We don't
properly weigh things for what their value truly is. We
(21:07):
overvalue something and we undervalue something else, or we give
everything the same value, and no tasks like to me
recording my solos today and doing a bit of housekeeping,
they're not of the same value to my work, They're
not of the same value to my life. They are
of different value, and so the goal of the day
has to be based around what you value. Today. Some days,
(21:29):
the goal of the day will be to get the
dishes done. Tonight some day the goal of the day
will be to get the laundry done, and that's totally fine.
But know your value. Set a goal of the day,
and set a goal of the week, and pursue that.
Don't pursue this endless feeling of I just want to
check everything off my list. I just need to get
(21:50):
everything done, because you could get everything done and ten
more things are going to appear. But if you've done
the big things, if you've done the big goals, goal
of the day, the goal of the week, you're going
to feel a sense of accomplishment. The next principle is
know your best time to be productive and put the
most important activity at that time. This is another self
(22:12):
awareness tip. If you know when you're most powerful, lean
into that. I know that I might my best energy
in the morning, I'm far better all the way up
into one or two pm. That is my golden time,
that is my most impactful time. So I'm going to
place one of my most important activities in that nine
(22:32):
am to one to two pm slot, then other things
I'm going to add later on in the day. What
I find is a lot of us will find our
best stuff. We're doing it at the hardest times. So
many of us are trying to do our best work
at the worst time during the day for us. So
get a sense of it. Observe yourself, Audit yourself over
(22:53):
the next week, and ask yourself, what time of day
was I most productive? What tasks do I find easiest
to my confidence? Am I better when I start with
the hardest thing of the beginning of the day or
the easiest thing at the start of the day, Know
your best time and schedule accordingly. And this applies to
the next rule, which is lean into beast mode. You
(23:15):
have to follow momentum. Sometimes I'm on a streak where
I'm just writing it. It's really flowing, and I've realized
to myself, that's the wind of the day. I'm going
to switch some of my tasks and focus on that.
Sometimes I'm in a recording mode and I can tell
I've really locked in, and I'm like, all right, let
me just lean into this right. And I think a
lot of us don't follow our momentum we don't follow
(23:35):
that desire and energy when it's flowing, it's flowing, go
with it and lean into it. Now, if you work
in a workplace with other people, the biggest block out
of productivity people think is chatter or noise, and that
is there. There's some truth in that, because one of
the principles that I'll talk about later actually refers to that.
(23:55):
But the one I want to talk about right now
is actually one of the big causes of inefficiency at
work is a lack of trust. When people have a
lack of trust, you have to ask them three times
for that document. When people have a lack of trust,
you have to navigate a meeting so carefully that you're
de energized after the meeting. When people have a lack
(24:18):
of trust and chemistry, there's likelihood of being more conflict
or competitiveness. We have to try in our workplaces to
create a space of workplace trust. And what that is
is to make sure people don't feel intimidated and you
don't feel intimidated. And I know this is so hard
(24:39):
because sadly you're around people who have their ego up,
their barrier up, their boundary up. You've kind of got
into the same place now, So what do you do?
And I've been there before as well. I remember being
in workplaces where I really felt that it was backs
up against the wall and I really didn't feel like
people were right, not just to me, to each other.
(25:01):
Sometimes people are warm to me and not to other people,
and that made me uncomfortable. So what do you do?
I can honestly say that leading with integrity, leading with respect,
leading with your best self, communicating effectively, always going higher,
no matter how hard it is, will ultimately win the
trust of the right people. It's always better. Don't get
(25:25):
stuck in office politics, don't get brought down by it,
don't get trapped by it, don't get ruined by it.
And the way you do that is by constantly engaging
with on purpose. You know, reading books that inspire you,
being around people maybe outside of work or people at work.
You do move you and motivate you. But recognize that
(25:45):
sometimes you're trying to solve tasks and everything else, but
it's a people issue. Know what's a people issue and
know what's a task issue. This is a huge rule
for productivity. Sometimes your productivity is hampered because you're not
solving a people issue, and you're trying to solve a
task issue, and sometimes your problem is you're focusing on
people when actually it's a system issue. So ask yourself,
(26:09):
should I solve the system or do I need to
solve a relationship and figure that out, and that will
save you so much time, money, and energy. I've only
got a couple more that I want to share with you.
This next one is called the Pareto principle, and it's
a concept that's based on this idea that eighty percent
(26:31):
of your business success is actually based on twenty percent
of business. Right, So it's almost like saying that eighty
percent of your revenue is based on twenty percent of
your clients. Eighty percent of your success is based on
the twenty percent of people you actually know at work,
not the other way around. What we often do is
(26:52):
we often get lost focusing on the eighty percent as
opposed to the twenty percent. In essence, we don't focus
on the root of our success and failure. We get distracted,
and so it's a reminder that figure out what is
really causing success or failure and focus on that. So
ask yourself, what is your twenty percent? Here are four
(27:14):
questions I want you to reflect on number one, what
is your twenty percent? What is the thing that actually
drives the eighty percent? Then what's your eighty percent? What
are you focused on eighty percent of the time and
is it really leading to anything? Third question, where are
you spending your time? In fourth? How can you reprioritize?
How can you recognize that you want to focus on
(27:35):
the twenty percent that is life changing, that is building,
and not get lost in the eighty percent. Now, the
last method I want to share with you is monk mode.
I remember so much of our meditation training during my
time as a monk was about finding that silence and
that stillness and going inward and in the workspace. This
(27:57):
monk mode is this idea that how can you find
that feeling of being locked in? How can you find
that feeling of being so focused that you're not distracted
by everything else around you? And research shows that in
person conversations ranked as the top source of distraction at
(28:17):
work forty seven percent, followed by phone calls twenty percent
and chat platforms fifteen percent. One of my team members
does this, and I see it work wonders for her
when we're all chatting away. She wears headphones, right, she
wears headphones and they're noise canceling, and she's locked in
doing her work. And I see the amount of focus
(28:38):
she has and how productive she is because of that.
And I see a couple of my team members actually
doing this, and so I recommend it. If you're struggling
to disconnect, it's great to have them on. It's not rude,
it's not antisocial. You can always join into conversations, and
people actually admire it because people can see how locked
in you are. So I want to know which principles
(28:58):
you're going to test, which ones you're going to try.
I hope that this helps you be more productive and
effective and also lowers your stress levels. And I'm sending
you so much love and positive energy. Remember I'm always
in your corner and I'm forever rooting for you. Thanks
for listening on purpose. I'll see you soon. Thank you
so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it,
(29:19):
you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort
is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking
your hidden potential. If you know you want to be
more and achieve more, this year. Go check it out
right now. You set a goal today, you achieve it
in six months, and then by the time it happens,
it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose.
(29:41):
You sort of expected it, and you would have been
disappointed if it didn't happen.
Host
Jay Shetty
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