Performance Scientist: The Ruthless Time Management Habits of High Performers

[MUSIC] We've created this sense of false urgency around all our communication. Overflowing email inboxes, overloaded calendars, all kinds of communication tools, which are trying to draw more from our attention than we can actually give, because there's people to be more stressed than they otherwise would, even though they're often working longer, they feel like they've got less time to get their work done. And so I tried to give people some hope to tell them that your brain is not broken. In fact, you'll build the break through. Productivity isn't just about output. It's about energy, rhythm, and recovery. Dr. James Hewitt spends his career unlocking the science of performance, and he's here to reveal the truth behind pushing your limits without breaking. What have you learned about managing our energy well? It's limited, but it's not as limited as we think it is. So what I'm going to do now is we're going to slide this onto your head, and we're going to be able to measure your cognitive forms relative to some of the well-stop forms, including F-formwork champions. You've got billions of brain cells producing electrical activity, and we're able to use that to get an idea of not only which parts of your brain are working, but also how they're working. [LAUGHS] Leah. All right, Dr. Hewitt. So here we go. Open up this envelope a little bit prior to us starting right here. We did an examination, I'll call it. That's what it felt like. And tell people what's happening inside that envelope. What do you have? Well, you're kind enough to participate in a test and an assessment before we started rolling today. And so the idea is that we're assessing some really basic aspects of your cognitive performance. And the reason this matters is that the things that we measured provide the building blocks for all the types of thinking that we do during an average working day. So your ability to pay attention during a meeting, your ability to switch from paying attention in the meeting to maybe switching off when you get home, which is difficult for many of us. And also how about compares with top athletes like Formula One drivers, but also people in your age range? Oh, boy. So we're going to be able to take a look at this. OK, I'm feeling vulnerable right now, but also excited to learn here. This is great, because you are a human performance scientist. That's why you do this. And people are going to understand why this is so important for all of us if we want to win professionally. So what did you learn? Well, let's take a look. So one of the fundamental things we measured was something called cognitive processing speed. And it's a fancy way of saying how fast did you respond, but also how accurately did you respond? And we looked at those two things separately. So we can see that your response time was 390 milliseconds on average. OK. And so that's pretty good. It says you were fast and 69% of the people in your age band. And overall, if we look at the combination of the speed and the accuracy, you're actually better than 81% of people in your age group. OK, so I go from 69% on just speed, but speed and accuracy. Exactly. And that's because your accuracy score was actually better than 83% of the people. So even though-- That's a good B. Response time was a little bit lower, but still very good. Your accuracy was a bit higher. And it's interesting because you do see this sometimes. I'm feeling better about myself already. Because you know how you were trying to resist those responses? Yes. And you were really paying attention, closely. And some people who are a bit more afraid of making mistakes, they sacrifice a bit of that reaction time to try and bump the accuracy. Interesting. And that's probably one of your tendencies, perhaps. OK. So yes. Well, that's true. Care very much about performance. Interesting. Well, that makes sense. You can see some of that. The other interesting thing is we can look at your performance in terms of your response time relative to an athlete, like a Formula One driver. Oh boy. So your response time was 390 milliseconds. And have you got any idea what a Formula One driver's might be? No. We expect to see about 200 milliseconds. OK. So almost twice as fast. Yeah. Which you don't. You know, if you're a Formula One driver, you work so fastly. Right. Right. And but that cognitive processing speed that we measured, that speed of accuracy of response. Even though it's very simple, it actually provides this building block for general mental ability, all kinds of things that are important. And we've got a second page here. OK. Should we take a look? Yes. So this is the data from all those sensors that you were at the head on your head. OK. And so we're looking at three dimensions here. So you can see attention. OK. Your cognitive stress. Uh-huh. And then also your engagement. OK. And so attention is how well you stay focused. Pretty simple. Cognitive stress was how strange you started to feel. Oh. And then your engagement is how mentally switched on. You were. OK. And so you can see here you've got your baseline. And if you notice, it was all lower at that point. But then as soon as you started the test, you start to see this ramp up. So if you look at this, look at that difference between the orange line there, which is your cognitive stress. Oh, pre. And post. Now, if we overlaid that, for example, on the video of you, I could see you wincing when you made mistakes. Yes. And you can pick that up in the electrical activity. Yes. As well, which you see here. But we can also do a little bit of comparison here. And so you did. You did well. So if you look at that level of engagement, which is that yellow bar, that's you at 72 points. It's a normalised scale up to 100 relative to the average for your age group. It will be 45. OK. And your cognitive stress was actually pretty similar. So most people, your age group, they are similarly stressed to you during that test. Yeah. And then interesting your attention is actually slightly lower. But I've got to say, most people, most of the time you did this test properly, you'd be in a quiet room. There'd be no one else around. Nothing to distract you. You wouldn't have me kind of looking over you shoulder for what I just like. And then all these people and all these cameras. Exactly. And that has an effect. And one of the interesting things about using these headsets, these EEG headsets is it helps us to go beyond what you just get with self-report. Because there's often quite a big difference between what we think it's going on. And what's actually going on inside our brain in terms of what we call the neurophysiology, which you can think about it as the actual stuff that's going on inside your head. But I'd say you've done really well. So on the attention issue. Obviously I was very aware. One of my closest friends in the world is sitting 20 feet away from me and we compete in everything. So I was certainly aware, I'm certainly aware of the cameras and all that. So are you saying that what do we take away from that? That my attention span was actually not as good as it should have been because of that. So what do I learn from that? So this relates to something that I call the attention paradox. Okay. It's something that we see in all aspects of life and work these days. It describes how the people who need to pay attention the most are often the most at risk of distraction. So if you think about this environment we set up here, in that moment you needed to pay attention because you need to beat your france score. But even in that moment where you knew you really needed to pay attention, that was probably one of the most difficult times to pay attention. Because you've got all these competing demands. There's other people, there's cameras, there's pressure to perform. If you think about your average workday, for example, if you're a leader, you know your attention is potentially your most precious resource. Where your attention goes, your energy flows. But the people who really need to exert that clear focus on the highest priority tasks are often the people who feel most pulled in multiple directions. And so that very simple test is one way to illustrate how that challenge that we face in the workday really plays out in a very measurable way, which we can see with devices like the one you tried a few moments ago. Okay, so, tactically, what can leaders do to create an environment where the attention is not divided? Yeah. So I call this engineering your environment for focus. And so the simplest step is to try to find opportunities during your workday where you can block time to work on your highest priority tasks. So have you ever done a sport like cycling or running? I've done running, yes. Have you ever used a heart rate monitor? Yes. Yeah. So you're probably familiar with this idea of heart rate zones. Right. Sure. At one end of the spectrum, you've got this low intensity heart rate zone, like a gentle walk at the other end of the spectrum. You've got high intensity heart rate zones, like an all-out effort. Now, you can imagine that our brain works metaphorically in similar zones. And one of the things I did, you know, I measure people with these devices, but no one's going to wear one of those all day, right? So I came up with this heuristic to help people think about how they can engineer their environment for focus. Okay, great. And so you can imagine that in a similar way that we have heart rate zones for our body, you've got what I call cognitive gears for the brain. Okay. So you think for a moment about at one end of the spectrum, you've got a low cognitive gear, and that's characterized by rest, recovery, reflection. So where you pause, you let your mind wander. At the other end of the spectrum, we've got a high cognitive gear. So that's focused attention, sustained attention on your highest priority tasks. Ideally, completely uninterrupted. And then imagine you've got a middle cognitive gear. This is where you're switching between tasks, where you're feeling that cognitive stress that we measured a moment ago, where often we feel like we're stuck on someone else's schedule, not our own. Now, if you speak to the average leader in organizations from smaller large anywhere in the world, and you say, where do you spend most of your time, most people spend the vast majority of their day stuck in that cognitive middle gear. Feeling pretty stressed, like the runner on us is schedule, with few opportunities for focus, and rarely enough time for rest. So I often share that, that heuristic, that rule of thumb, with leaders with their teams, to give them a shared vocabulary to think about how they're spending their day. And then we look at how can you find ways to increase the efficiency of your working day, so you can reduce the time spent in that middle gear. You're never going to eliminate it, but reduce it. Reinvest some of that in that high cognitive gear, and there's we can talk about some ways that you can do that. And then also maybe free. a bit of time for that low cognitive gear, because that's absolutely crucial, not just for restoring your energy, but also for your creativity. Well, I'm glad you laid it out, 'cause I wanna spend some time on those gears. Let's start with that middle gear, because you've just said, "Hey, this is where most people are." Let's put the leader to the side for a moment, come back to a leader. Let's just the everyday person, and they're going, "James, that's me. I'm in that middle gear." How do I gear up practically? When they may feel, let's talk the emotion here, the emotion is, "I may not have as much control over my day as I might need." This is a long-winded question here, I'm gonna let you take it. Is that true? And to the extent that they do have the agency, the control to be able to do that, give us something tactical that they can start to do, and they'll, if they're gonna see a difference, they can gear up, if you will. Well, you make a really good point about that element of control, 'cause I recognize the fact that, not everyone has got the luxurious position of designing their work day and their time, just as they'd like to. We can talk about maybe what that perfect scenario looks like or for leaders later, but one of the simplest steps that many of us can take is consider the impact of that smart thing. Imagine that I've got an imaginary smart phone here. So the mere presence of your smart phone on a desk can reduce your cognitive performance, why about 10%. Is that like the people in this room? Unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bit like that. Wow. Perhaps even more powerful. Oh, wow. So human beings have got this really weird thing. It's called a novelty bias. So we love new information. And actually, just anticipating a think about, thinking about finding something new, our brain releases this chemical called dopamine. We actually get this sense of reward, it feels good. Just by thinking, I'm gonna find out something new. Now, if you imagine for most of human history, that was really helpful, 'cause if you were living in a little village community, you need to grow, you need more resources, there's gonna be people in that community and they're gonna look up at this mountain range and they're gonna say, I wonder what's on the other side of that mountain range? And just in anticipation of finding something new on the other side of that mountain range, that experience and that sense of reward, it's gonna drive their behavior to go and explore. And so that's been really helpful for humans for all of human history. The problem is we've got this novelty machine. Yes. Right in our pocket now. And part of our brain doesn't really care whether that new information is good or bad, it's always there. And so whenever that phone is in our present, some of our attention is always on standby, waiting for the new information to arrive. So what do we put it? So you put it ideally in a different room when you're in that high cognitive gear period. And one of my top tips is this, just get into the habit of not carrying your phone around with you all the time. Now don't know about you, I'm terrible at this. One of the reasons I'm so interested in this stuff is 'cause I find it really, really hard. Right. Because I work with people all over the world and working an increasing amount here in the US. And you've got to be responsive, I do quite a lot of speaking. And if someone offers you a speaking gig, you probably know this, it's responding quickly. Yes. So they're probably considering several other speakers. So I fall into this bad habit of carrying my phone with me the whole time. And it gets so bad that sometimes I find myself, I'm brewing my coffee, I'm making my coffee and why I've engineered a espresso machine, which I love. I find myself pulling out the phone. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's 30 seconds. Guilty is charged. Yeah. It works up a huge amount of our attention, as you saw. It reduces cognitive performance. It makes us less present. If we try to focus on our work, it can lead us to be distracted. It makes work more stressful. We get less done. It takes us longer. So simply getting to the habit of not carrying that phone around with you in a work context, it's going to boost your cognitive performance by 10%. It's going to help you to get into that high cognitive gear, that focus block. But also outside of that, it will help us to be more present in putting the quality of our interactions. It's probably my top tip for me and many of us. I want to go to leaders on this, but I do want to ask you, what do you see in here as one of the biggest stressors in the work day for professionals? So it comes under this umbrella of what I call always on work. And it's been driven by the fact that we've created this, what I call a sense of false urgency around all our communication. And so when I talk to leaders, it's overflowing email inboxes. It's overloaded calendars. And it's what I call a sense of digital debt, which is like this accumulation that we've got of all kinds of communication tools, which are trying to draw more from our attention than we can actually give hints that the debt that we accumulate. I don't know, you know, all about that. Oh, yeah. So we live in the state of continuous partial attention. Leaders are really struggling with that, being pulled in multiple directions. And it causes stress. It causes people to be more stressed than they otherwise would, giving a task that they're working on. And this feeling like even though they're often working longer, paradoxically, they feel like they've got less time to get their work done. And it all relates to that always on work being stuck in that middle gear. And that's probably the greatest point of leverage that we can target for many leaders. And I've got some tools and some stuff we can talk about. We can be into it. Let's talk about it. Well, before we get to that, I'm going to go to that. But I, to the person who feels like, I'm in, everything you're saying, but they don't feel like they can make the change. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? If they were to sit with you, then you could coach them. And you only got one thing to empower them. I love the phone thing, but speak to their emotion. That is, I think we all have a little bit more, maybe a lot more control than we think we do. Is that true? Absolutely. All right. And so coach and mentally, you gave us a great tactic on the phone. But what do you say to their mindset, their emotion, maybe where they go, OK, I can do this. Well, the first thing I'd say is your brain is not broken. You know, there's-- you'll find online. There's a lot of people talking about similar stuff to mean some ways. They'll talk about dopamine. They'll talk about neurotransmitters. And they'll often give people this idea that this always-on-way of work, this continuous distraction, has broken something fundamental in their physiology. And people talk about cheap dopamine and the dopamine system kind of getting messed up. If you're a healthy adult, that is simply not true. We're not talking about a physiological problem. It's not something wrong with the structure of your brain, or the chemicals in your brain. It's a behavior problem. In fact, you're built for break through. And there are so many ways that we can build new habits. But often, it starts with-- it starts small. And one of the things I've been encouraged people to do is try and do a time-limited experiment. The other challenge that I see people have when they try and crack some of these behaviors is they set their expectation too high and they make perfect the enemy of good enough. And so they think, for example, that I'm going to try the phone thing, or I'm going to try this kind of deep work, high gear thing. And they try it for a couple of days or three days, and then they fall back into all the habits and say, oh, yeah, I failed. That's not failure. That's just very, very human. But these things are never solved completely. But if you say, let's do an experiment for five days, where each day, you're going to try and block 25 minutes for focus work. You're just going to put your phone away. In a different room, ideally, you're going to identify your number one highest priority task. And you're just going to commit to work on that uninterrupted for 25 minutes for five days and see how you get on. And so it's starting with these small steps that gradually build momentum, recognizing that your brain is not broken. You're built for break through. You can develop these new habits, these new ways of working, and accept that that progress isn't going to be linear. That actually setbacks are a completely normal part of life, but don't give up giving up. So if I was working with someone individually, that's probably where I'd start. There's a whole other conversation about how you approach this with teams as well, which in the context of work is also pretty important. Let's talk about it right now. So you got leaders and you go, OK, leaders, this is what we know. What can they do? What should they be doing? So you know, John Maxwell, right? It's a work for him. Yeah. And he had a huge influence on my thinking for a long, long time. And John, there's a great quite from John from like more than 10 years ago, probably way more than that. He said leaders reproduce who they are. Yes. And that really stuck with me. And that is really true for all the challenges that we're talking about now. There's this really fascinating piece of research that Microsoft did. And they were looking at a Fortune 100 company. And they found that every hour that a leader works after hours generates 20 minutes of extra work for all the people who work for them. Oh, now it's interesting because I talk to leaders about this all the time. And the leaders typically they'll say something like, we know just because I work late in the evening, I don't expect my team to do it. And they believe it is true. But even if they say that, that action creates this implicit expectation that other people will be working after hours. Now don't get me wrong. I recognize that sometimes after hours work is necessary. Sometimes you've got to grind. Sometimes you've got to work really hard. Sometimes that means exceptional effort. But the problem is if that way of working becomes the norm. And again, it relates to that challenge that I described as false urgency. If you think back, like 20 years or something, email was this what I call an asynchronous form of communication. Yes. There wasn't this expectation that he respond immediately to every message. But now we treat email kind of like a form of instant messaging. And so what I often say to leaders is model the behavior that you want to see with your team. That might mean doing things like recognizing that you might be completely comfortable writing and sending emails in the evening, but use delay send so that your team doesn't feel that same expectation. So that means the email will get sent out the next working day, for example. And then consider whether you might be able to see start to approach email in a slightly different way. So people, and according to some data, about 84% of people keep their email inbox open in the background at all times. And more than 70% of people check emails and even respond to them within six seconds of receiving them. - It's madness. I work with people, I love them. - Some of them may be in this room, who brag about the fact that their inbox is empty at the end of every day. You should look at my inbox. It's got emails in there from months and months ago. I got over that a long time ago, good friend of mine, Tim Sainter, and said it this way, he said, email. If you feel that pressure to get an email back, he says, you're taking everyone else's urgency and making it your emergency. And he said it's something like that. And I remember going, boy, that really freed me up. But if the organization runs that way, what has to change organizationally for leaders? - So I've encouraged people to do an experiment. So because you get a leader, and they'll generally recognize, yeah, this is a problem, but what can we do about it? And the challenge that people often have is they think you need to do some kind of a whole scale transformation to deal with this. But what I often say to a leader is, start with you and your immediate team. Run an experiment for six weeks. - Love that. - And try three things. Try and tackle the email issue. And so the email issue generally, I say, begin by rethinking your implicit promises to respond to every email rapidly. Now, some emails might need to need rapid responses, but rethink that implicit promise that every email will be really good to wrap. - Can I ask a question in the midst of this? Could they also not rethink sending an email? - In other words, I feel like people communicate better via email than they do in person. And I feel like that's all jacked up. - Yep. True false, push back on that. Now I agree, and if this relates to another kind of experiment that I often encourage people to run around meetings and meeting culture, and we can talk about that. - Oh, please do. - There's some great, so Microsoft is a really interesting company because so many people use Microsoft software that you've got this large scale live experiment going on all the time about how people work and they can gather the data to provide those insights into that. So talk about meetings, for example, according to Microsoft data, the number of meeting mutations we receive has increased by about 153% over the last few years. And so we've got this meeting overload. And now to your question about how do you tackle that? Maybe is an email really required? The flip side of that is how many meetings have you and I been part of that could have been replaced with a single well-worded email? - Fair. - So you've got to think about communication methods as a whole. The email tips are really around rethinking that implicit promise to respond to email rapidly. Try batching email. This is an old school technique. People have been talking about this for probably 10 years now. But look at whether you can process email in blocks several times during the day rather than checking email continually. Because the evidence indicates that the more time we spend processing email during a day, the lower our productivity, the higher our stress. So I did a project with a company where we tried a similar thing. We said for six weeks, we're going to do an experiment across your team. First, rethink that promise to respond rapidly, batch email use. So for them, they had four blocks during the day. Where's the generally speaking, unless it's really urgent, we're going to process our email, read and reply four times during the day. And then they reset expectations with colleagues about that using their email signatures, where they explain those checking times and urgent communication alternatives. And the urgent communication alternative was like a phone number, or some people said, come see me in the office because they were co-located and that's possible. So that's a big unlock for many people. And the some evidence indicates that these communication efficiency techniques could save the average knowledge worker 180 hours a year. Wow. It's pretty substantial, isn't it? Yeah. You think about that. You might have your own time. I wonder what it relates to performance. Oh, 100%. High productivity, lowest stress. It's good for your health. It's good for your performance too. In your career and your life, reputation matters. You spent years earning trust, building momentum, and showing up with character and consistency. 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For the average listener viewer that's watching, give me an idea, what's the average length of a pit stop? A good pit stop. Yeah, so the world records 1.8 seconds. Is that four tires? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Four tires off, four tires on. And the crazy thing about that is there are 20 people involved in that pit stop. Yeah, they're just converging. So I think people get that. OK, with that in mind, OK. You're coaching them to help them with optimal performance. How does a leader-- what can they learn from what you have learned in coaching Formula One teams? Because they're practicing during the week. I've had the privilege of going to some NASCAR shops. So I've seen the NASCAR version. Which is not even close. But encourage equipped leaders right now to go, how can I have that kind of level of observation? Communication. I don't know what's happening. Take us behind the scenes for the purposes of giving us something we can do as better leaders. Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's three things, I would say, that a Formula One team is able to perform a pit stop in 1.8 seconds. So the first thing is something that's called conceptual alignment. Everyone's on the same page. Everybody's on the same page. As it relates to expectations, what we must do, why we're doing it, how-- 100% yeah. OK. I'll focus on the same page. OK. Number one. Secondly, there's something called behavioral coordination. OK. Not only is everyone on the same page, everyone knows exactly what their role is. And also how that role relates to the other people. OK. So you'll see if you watch a Formula One pit stop, everyone's got a really clearly assigned role. And they also know how their role fits in with everyone else. And that unlocks a third element, something called mutual perliction. And it's just a really fancy way of saying that when you're all on the same page, everyone's really clear about their role. And other people's roles and how that all fits together, you can work in this super integrated coordinated way. So you can see, for example, in a pit stop, that this person can move in with the new boot, the new tire. Because the next person is seamlessly moving out the way, out the way, just at the right time. And they trust each other. That mutual prediction is also about trust. So I'd say that leaders can look at those three dimensions, but particularly asking that question, are we all on the same page? It's so often we take it for granted. And I've worked with so many leaders who assume everyone knows what we're all trying to achieve together. But maybe it's been articulated. It's been shared. It's been spoken about, but it hasn't been repeated. Because you know what we like as humans? We forget stuff so quick. It needs to be repeated. Secondly, that behavioral coordination, that piece. Does everyone really know not only what they're doing, but how that fits into the big picture and how it relates to other people? And again, it's often something that needs to be reinforced. When was the last time that you just sat down with your team? And you said, are you really clear about your role and how that fits in with everyone else? You might find they say, yeah, absolutely. But often, there's greater clarity to be found. And thirdly, when you've got those two things in place, you can start to move together as a team. You see this synchrony. And the fascinating thing is that they've done some really interesting research on this, using brain monitoring technology, more sophisticated than the thing that we did earlier. And they found that when those three conditions are met, you see this another technical words. They're called interactive neural synchrony. Again, it's just a really technical way. - Think we all want more of that. - Exactly, don't we all. Yeah, I'm going to put it in your Christmas card. But basically, when you measure people's brains, the brain waves, the activity in their brains, syncs up, it synchronizes when those three conditions are met. And it really supports this higher performance. It's greatest psychological safety. It's psychological safety again, get banded about in business and leadership all the time. People sometimes mistake it for niceness. But it's not, it actually means we create an environment where we can have some tough conversations because we know that we're on the same page. We know what we're trying to achieve and what our roles are. And there's a space that's created where we can say, "Ken, you did pretty well in that assessment, but actually your attention was a bit down. What can we do to help you to get better at paying attention?" - Okay, I've got to ask a follow-up on this. Go five years, 10 years, maybe 10 years ago, in Formula One, what was the pit time? Was it the same as? - No, it was significantly longer. I mean, there's earth factors as well. Like there was refuelling and that kind of thing. - Yeah, right, but humor me here, I'm doing it somewhere, I think it is changed like for like, it's got a lot quicker. - Okay. And when you're working with, I mean, where do we stand now, do you think? What are they trying, if we go behind the scenes right now, what are they trying to shave it to? - Yeah, I think it can get a bit quicker. How much? Probably not much, because it's a bit like, you know, when you look at like 100 meter sprinters in the Olympics, the margins of improvement are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. But the key here is, and I think the lesson here for leaders is that the achievement is actually often related to sustained high performance. So the question is, okay, now we know we can do a pit stop in around 1.8 seconds. How do we make sure that we can show up every week, week after week and make every pit stop for both drivers equally fast? And to be honest, that's potentially a bigger challenge because again, as humans, we're often quite good at achieving these peaks, but can you achieve that peak again and again? Okay, so here's the question, and I'm learning with the context of the Formula One pit stop and what you just described so beautifully, it feels like the simplicity of the goal is the key to driving phenomenal performance. Is that what I'm learning? Absolutely, because you got the helps, doesn't it? It helps, because now I know that businesses can't be that simple, but teams can. I agree. I think there's something to learn there, because it's very easy, isn't it? So I use quite a lot of metaphors and stories from high performance sport. You know, I've had the preparation working for me, the one professional cycling, Alpine skiing, and there's always, kind of a smart, we call them in the England smart Alex. There's always a smart Alex in the audience. And they're like, "Well, we're not Olympic athletes, so we don't have the luxury of measurability, and they just want to say there's nothing to learn." But I think you're on to something, and there is something to learn about the clarity with which a team understands and what's the better word. I said simplicity, clearly is the better word. It's 1.8 seconds. Exactly. We got to hit. It's very good. 1.8. Yeah. And it goes back to that first point that we need to achieve, whether you're a Formula One track side team or you're a business person, a leader with a team, is that you need to make sure that you're all on the same page. And to make sure you're all on the same page means you need to have a really clear goal. You are really good at coaching people on managing their energy. So I want to go into that. We have a certain amount of energy. During the day, there's the priority things, all the things where humans beyond professionals, right? What have you learned that we need to know about managing our energy well? It's energy such a fascinating topic because in one sense, as you described, it's limited. But in another sense, it's not as limited as we think it is. Okay, that's good news. And I'll give you an example of that. And you see it with kids, for example. So my wife and I've got two kids and 11 and 14 now. Two boys. All right. And anyone who's got kind of like teens pre-teen kids, or kind of knows them, you know, knows that energy is an interesting phenomenon. Because you know, they get home from the end of day at school and they're exhausted and you know, they don't want to do their homework. They're too tired. They're, "Dah, duh, I can't do my homework. I'm too tired to do my homework." Okay. But then their friend comes around and says, "Oh, you want to come do something?" Suddenly the energy is restored. But it's not just kids. It's adults. It's to me. I could be sitting in my living room. Yeah. Really feel tired. I get a text from a buddy who want to play pickleball. I'm a 10-year-old. Exactly. I'm getting dressed. I'm out the door playing for two hours. What's happening? Yeah. Constantly behind the scenes in our brain, we're always doing calculations about the investment that we've got to make and the payoff that we might get. And for whatever reason, you know, my son who can't be bothered to do his homework or an evening, his brain behind the scenes has made this calculation where that investment of time and energy isn't worth the payoff. He's right, by the way. Probably. Yeah. Ever at the time. I've seen some of his homework. But we do that too, kind of subconsciously. And so one of the things I've been saying to people is, what do you really care about? What is the driver, the purpose behind the behavior that maybe you're trying to change or the thing that you're trying to do? Because we see this in the workplace. If people have incredibly high demands, but they feel that what they're doing is purposeful, and particularly they feel a sense of control. They feel that they're doing this because it's purposeful. It matters to them and they want to. They can cope with exceptionally high demands. And their health doesn't just sustain. It actually gets better. Yes. Now, the flip side is, you could have someone who's experiencing 50% of those demands. But if they don't know what the point is, there isn't that conceptual alignment. They're not on the same page. Or they feel that they're not in control. They don't know what they're doing. People keep asking them to do things. They get pulled in multiple directions. 50% of those demands, then actually it predicts really negative health outcomes, even cardiovascular disease that does some really good data and some studies on this. So when I'm talking to people and say, how do you manage your energy? It actually starts with what's going on in our mindset. It's going on in terms of how we perceive the world as much as it is about the practical things we do. And I've got tons of ideas for practical things we can do. But if you're not starting off with the software, what's actually going on in our brain and how it works, then sometimes we're just adding on behaviors without really addressing some of the drivers that might be causing the problem. Okay. Give us something practical that we can do too. Because sometimes we've got a situation where it's that work that we describe. I would describe it as I have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it comes along with all this. I get paid to do this. This is stupid. Yeah. All right. I'm having the time of my life. Right. Let me tell you this. You just put a contraption on my head. You know, everybody's like, good job, Ken. Good work. That's pretty amazing. But there are things that I have to do that my energy could so take us there, practically in the half-tos. Yeah. So my recommendation to people to myself, because I really struggle with this as well, is to try and find ways to gamify that work. Okay. And it sounds really superficial. It sounds a bit silly. But you can do things like set a timer and challenge yourself to do that stuff that you can't be bothered to do that you don't really want to do within a specific amount of time and make it a bit of a stretch. But couple that with a reward. So make the decision that you're going to reward yourself at the end of that block of time with something that you're going to look forward to. So you're manufacturing the investment. Exactly. When we all go to that, like your son, the example. Yep. But if we can manufacture a positive ROI. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Because then suddenly that kind of the investment and what you expect to get out of it, that equation starts to shift in favor of getting the thing done. And so the energy then just takes care of itself. Is that what I'm hearing? Exactly. Yeah. And then also related to that under the surface, try and link that work with something that you care about. Now, sometimes it doesn't really work like that. Sometimes you've got to gamify it. Sometimes you just got to gritty teeth and just get through the thing. Correct. And actually, setting the timer can help. So it doesn't leak into the whole day. But if you can find a way to link that stuff you've got to do with something that you care about with that sense of purpose, then it can help. We all have to do tax returns. Maybe we've got people to help us with it. But there's probably some administrative tasks that you have to do related to your finances. There's much better than I do can. But is there a way that you can remind yourself when you're going through that boring admin? This is actually a reflection that you've been able to gather and build resources. They're going to be useful to you, to your family, to your business, maybe. It's amazing how linking it with that sense of purpose again starts to reframe that equation where that investment of energy somehow feels really worth it. Rothen and just being a super boring task that you've got to get through. That's very practical. Good stuff. All right. You talk about the need for us to train for stress rather than escape from the stress. I saw that and I said, okay, that needs to be talked about. Why do we do that? I think I can understand that. But then more importantly, how do we train ourselves for stress instead of trying to escape it all the time? So I mean, this relates to that look that catchphrase I had earlier that we built for breakthrough. Because fundamentally, I believe that human beings have got this incredible capacity not just to cope and survive when we experience challenge, but actually to grow through it to get stronger through it. And you can see all kinds of examples of this. You see it in your body when we stress ourselves through training, through physical activity, you working out in the gym, your muscles get stronger and bigger, maybe. Why don't you get into it now? But so there's this fundamental principle, physiological, but it's true psychological equity. And there's a really fascinating phenomena that describes how the stress that we learn to endure through physical training actually translates to being able to tolerate more stress psychological equity too. So one of the ways that we can increase our stress tolerance, our ability to cope with the stress of life, the psychological stress of work and life and all the stuff that we're dealing with is actually to invest time in physical fitness because that hard run that you go on or that pickle ball game where you're in the rally and you're getting tired and you've got to stay in it, you're actually training your brain to cope better with the stress that you might experience when you get back to well. So that's one way. There's other ways as well. I've got there's a really great frame, a kind of mindset technique I could share, but give it. Yeah, so the one related to mindset is again, there's a really interesting body of research out of Stanford related to this and it describes a simple process that we can use to reframe our mindset as it relates to stress. And it's been proven to not only improve our performance under pressure, but even reduces what you call your body's stress response. So you've probably heard things like cortisol, which is like a stress signaling chemical and that reduces when people practice this technique. So the first step is when you experience stress, you encounter something stressful. The first step is to acknowledge that stress, rather than trying to ignore it. Now, I don't know about you, but I often fall into this trap of just ignoring the stress in my life. I'm really good at taking it into a little ball. and pushing it down deep inside. - Yes. - And sometimes it works, only up to a point. So we can retrain ourselves to avoid doing that and start by acknowledging the stress. Second step, when you're back knowledge to it, you said, "You know what, I'm stressed, I'm stressed Ken, this thing is worrying me." The second step is to reframe the experience we're having as a signal that something that we value is at stake. Now it's interesting because often when we experience stress, we get this feeling that something's wrong. So I'm like, "I'm worried, you know, I'm worried about this meeting." And does that mean that I'm not prepared? Does that mean something's wrong with me? Probably not, but what it is definitely, it's a signal that I care about that meeting. And so I reframe stress now as this signal that something I value is at stake. The third step is then to use that experience of stress, the activation. When we start to feel heart rates increasing a little bit, we feel a little bit warmer, we feel a little bit more edgy. Use that as a signal that you've got energy to reinvest, to tackle that challenge that's causing the stress in the first place. So the practical example for me is imagine we've got a really important meeting. And I feel a bit nervous about it. I notice this stress. I recognize that it's a signal that that meeting matters to me. But I use that sense of energy. I'm not feeling sleepy. To say, "You know what, I'm going to spend 15 minutes just sitting down, I'm just going to write a plan for that meeting. I'm just going to write the three key points that I want to share during that meeting. So I've got this sense of preparation because it matters to me. And it will completely change my stress response. Not only will I perform better, I'll also have a less harmful stress response in my body as a result of that. And so, you know, those techniques, if you're investing in physical activity, to train your body and your brain, and start to develop these really simple techniques, acknowledge, reframe, and finally use that energy, it can have a remarkable effect for people. If you want to do work that matters this year, start with better rest. Folks, it's harder to lead, think, and create when your body's running on fumes. That's why I love avocado green mattress. Avocado mattress is help you rest well, so you can live well. They're hand-crafted from certified, organic, non-toxic materials. No junk, no chemicals, just comfort and support. So you wake up clear, focused, and ready to give your best at work and at home. That's the power of starting every day refreshed. When you sleep well, you think better. You lead better, you parent better. And speaking of parenting, avocado also offers kids mattresses and crib mattresses to protect your little sleepers with real safe materials and support their growing bodies the right way. Visit avocadogreen mattress.com/cenn to find your next mattress today, and get an extra $50 off adult mattresses with the code front row seat. That's avocadogreen mattress.com/cenn. - Okay, I have to ask you this because there was a six month study done, I wanna say two years ago, not too long ago, in England, about the four day work week. And I referenced it a lot. For the positive benefits, 'cause there were some positive benefits. I just want your take on that. What about that four day work week created all the positive results? We did see some higher productivity. Profitability didn't really move a whole lot, but it didn't go down. Those are kind of your big takeaways. - There's thoughts on that. I'm a cynic, I'm afraid to say, because my view is that that just highlighted how inefficient so much about work is. - Yes, 'cause the reality is, there's a single Parkinson's law right. It generally a task will expand to fill the time that you give it. And if you look at those underlying data related to that four day work week, what you find is if you look at stress, for example, people's stress response, while some people did experience lower stress, most people either saw no change in their stress or even an increase in that stress. So if you look at the body of people that they researched, you're basically saying that most people, the vast majority of people, in terms of stress levels, either had no effect or a worse effect. - And why is that? - Well, some people ended up getting stressed because they experienced what's called work compression. They basically just did the same work and they tried to fit it in four days. I mean, you've got some people who are just not working as efficiently as they should. - Right, right. - If we're really honest, you know that. I see it myself. There are days when I sit in my office, I get to it under the day and I'm like, I was not efficient, even though I talk about it all the time. And so I know there's other people that are in the world who are like me. But then there are some people who may be not quite like me, who are super diligent. And they've got a big list of things to do. And their work basically, well, we've got a wonderful idea. We're going to the four day work week, Ken. And they go, oh my goodness, how am I going to fit that work into four days? And they end up having to compress it all into four days. My view on the four day work week is, it could be a great idea for some people. But the underlying principle that I'd like us to really think about is how can we provide people with a greater sense of autonomy to structure their working time in a way that fits them better? - So well said. That's my, that's my idea. - How do we do that? What is the key for a leader to go, okay, James, how can I create that autonomous team? - So we'll start with establishing the non-negotiables for your business. Because if you're a surgeon doing critical surgery on somebody, I don't want, if one of my loved ones needs their skills for them to turn around and say to me, I'm very sorry, James. We're doing a four day work week trial. I'm not going to be able to do a surgery today. There's some context, and that's a bit of an extreme, maybe silly example, but there's some businesses where there's not going to be the same autonomy available. There's going to, you're going to have to respond to what's going on in the world. First responders, some financial context, some professional services context. However, don't let that be an excuse for not creating any autonomy for your team. So establish what's non-negotiable, what you really can't move, and then say, what things can we do as a team to experience a bit more of that sense of control? And so a really simple thing that I've seen work very well in some organizations is to say we can't let people structure all their time. However they want every day of the week. But how about one day per week, we give people the freedom to come into work and end work at a time that better suits their natural rhythm? So are you more of a morning type or an evening type? Traditionally, it would be an evening guy. You see that distribution in teams often. You probably find 25% more morning type, 25% more evening type, every now and then, somewhere in between. And so some teams I'll say, could you give people freedom one day a week to try and structure their day in line with that natural tendency? So for you, that would be one day a week, you come in a bit later, you end a bit later. For other people, there might be super early birds. And but it's a way to just start to experiment as a team, whether it's going to be possible for different people to start to structure their time and their work in a slightly different way. Because the problem is if you suddenly say, okay, everybody, you just do whatever you want. It's absolute chaos. And you see this in remote working and hybrid working. So there's some really interesting data around hybrid working where you mix time in the office, this is time at home. And some data indicate it can be a really good thing, but only if it's well organized. What they found for a lot of organizations is they said, okay, we did hybrid strategy. So everyone can basically come in whenever they want. Some people say go once at the further and say, you've got to be in one day a week. But it's just chaos. Because you don't take advantage of the in person time because no one's in person together, no one really knows what's expected. So the key is if you're going to try and find ways to foster that sense of autonomy, give people a sense of freedom, start with some small steps, with some real clarity. And make sure again, everyone's on the same page. Why are we trying to do this? Behavioral coordination. What's your role in this? What are the expectations? And then that prediction piece, you start to be able to get a sense of, when you're in, when I'm in, what's happening? So you can work together. You can mention body clock very briefly. Yeah, I know you got some great stuff on that. How important is it? And is there a way to measure it? Is there a tool? So I wonder if it would be great for leaders to know. All right, I got 10 people on my team. These four, this is their body clock. I think that would be valuable information, yes? Yeah, it's a great experiment to do as a team. I mean, you can do some sophisticated stuff to measure that tendency to morningness or eveningness. The simplest way is just to ask people a question. Who feels that they're best in the morning? In a show of hands, who feels that the best in the evening? Who's somewhere in between? You can go one step further, there's some really simple survey tools. It's not going to be possible for us to all structure our time, correct in relation to that. But the bottom line is, that tendency towards morningness or eveningness is biological. You know, it's despite what the 5am club influence is set. That's right. Sustained high performance is less about the specific hours on the clock. Yeah. It's more about alignment with your body clock. Yeah. Because your cognitive performance varies by that 20% or in the average day. And actually, there can be three, four hour difference in someone's body clock timing. So imagine I'm more of a morning type. Generally prefer mornings, you're more of a late type. So that 5am wake up for me could be like you waking up at 2am. Yeah. In terms of the level of mental health. It is on physical stuff. Yeah. I'll be a guinea pig here for you. So if I'm getting up at 5am, it is that I've got to be somewhere early. And now I get up at 6. But I enjoy my morning time for reflection and calm. Because I tend to be on and high energy the rest of the day. And I enjoy working out in the evening. 5.36 o'clock. I'm done at 7. I enjoy that. I just morphed into that. But I could think that's my body clock. I just knew that without knowing it. Yeah. It's intuitive. And I think the unlock for many teams is recognizing how they as individuals within that team are similar or different to others. Yeah. Because what I've seen quite consistently is you'll find there's a leader with a particular tendency, maybe a morning type. and assumes that that's the best thing for everyone. because it is for them. There's this other kind of weird phenomena and it's called chronotype bias. Yes. And you might have come across it, but just in studying you, it's on my note here. I'm terrified to say it. It's a very, very scary phrase there. What does that mean? Look for people. It describes how, and we have a tendency to associate really positive qualities with morning types. Yeah. We call virtuous qualities. We assume they're more conscientious. We also assume they're higher performing. And they've done some great studies where they demonstrate that, and even if you've got two people who objectively in their work performance are equally high performance, people consistently rate the early type, the more the early bird as a higher performer. Of course. You're on top of things. You're getting after the other was our losers. They're a little lazy. Yeah. And you know, the challenge is is that maybe sometimes they're right. You know, maybe there are people, well, there's a reason why the stereotype sticks. Exactly. Exactly. And, but I think a lot of it is probably driven by, and you know, our, and more agricultural background, in terms of our history, where, you know, getting up really early before the sun came up, before we got hot, was probably really useful, really helpful. But we live in a very different time now. Now, I'm not going to say that, you know, getting early is a bad thing. But just recognize that early, for me and early for you, you look quite different. Well, at least you're my next question, because that early, it's got to be relative to rest. Yeah. And you have a lot to say about recovery. I love how you frame it. And again, the formula one sports organizations, you know, but we are just seeing in America that people don't know how to recover. Yeah. And the weekend isn't doing it. I want you to give us your thoughts on how do we recover well? Yeah. Well, I mean, this is what I talk about in that low cognitive gear. Yes. In that metaphor. And there's different ways we can think about this. But I would first start with a mindset shift. And that's to recognize that rest is not a reward. It's what makes great work possible. Because so often we view rest as this thing that we'll get to and we'll treat ourselves with rather than seeing rest as the enabler as the same nation. Now, if you go and speak to an athlete, a top athlete, they know this really, really well. They know that they only get stronger when they rest that the training provides this signal for their body to grow, but they are serious about their recovery. But somehow we think is like what I call knowledge work as people we think for a living or people in different types of non sporting roles that and you rest as something we tag on at the end when we've kind of got everything else done. And so it starts with the mindset shift. I think the second thing is recognizing that you don't need to rest for long if the rest is quality. Now, I'm not talking about sleep here. That's a different part of the story. But when we're talking about resting while we're awake, 10, 15 minutes doing something really deliberate that recharges you is way better than 60 minutes kind of scrolling on your phone or just doing something just right. What would it be for you? That deliberate thing that's just, so for me it's making a coffee. So when I'm at home, I've got this overengineered espresso machine. I was going to say if it's 10 to 15 minutes, that's the machine. That's drinking it as well. Okay, I got you. But that process for me is a mechanical machine. And so you have to grind the beans. You've got to distribute them. You've got to kind of tamp it down. You've got to put it in. There's a whole process that I'm sure many of you listeners have familiar with. But I find it and it grinds me in the physical because so much of my work is very abstract. It's in the digital world. If it's emails calls, obviously when I'm on stage doing a keynote, it's physical, but so much to work around that when I'm talking to Bureau agents. And I'm writing blogs or whatever is all abstract. But this process, 50 minutes of connecting with this machine and making this thing and sitting and just drinking it. That in my mind wonder, looking outside, looking out the window and helps me recover better than 60 minutes of saying, what can I do to recharge? I'll get my phone out of my house. And the average professional can do something like that in their work. Yeah, absolutely. They're called micro breaks. Okay. I'd often say that if you've got time for a micro break, it only needs to be 10 minutes long. Set a little checklist for yourself and try and tick off at least one or two of the following characteristics for that micro break. So one, try and make it relaxing. Super intuitive, right? But try and do something where your physical and cognitive load decreases. So in your micro break, don't be checking your emails. Don't be pacing around. Try and let your body and brain relax. Secondly, in contrast to that, maybe integrate that relaxing component at the end of it with a bit of activity. Could be a walk around the office. Could be a walk outside, even better. So active. Third thing, can you get a little bit of a dose of social connection? So it could be a simple sending a text to someone you like, somebody you care about. Or even just deliberately bring to mind someone who cares for you who's meaningful in your life. There's this really interesting piece of research related to something called the social facilitation effect. And it describes how if you even bring to mind a supported person, it can make subsequent challenges. So the challenges that come afterwards feel about 30% easier. So the third component, social and the final component relates to that thing. I said about looking at the window, try and do something where you get some natural exposure. And by that, I mean, you see something like leaves on a tree, clouds in the sky. Because when we see these natural patterns, they're called fractal patterns. And you see this unique pattern of brain activity, something that you could measure with a headset like you tried, which we feel as increased feelings of comfort and reduced stress. So if you've got five, 10 minutes, make it relaxing active social natural. And you'd be amazed at the transformation that you can experience in even that 10 minute block. And people will feel it. Absolutely. I mean, this is not something they have to do 30 times. Totally. Yeah. Interesting. If you could change modern work, you know, from a lead, and you go anywhere you want to go with this, from a leadership perspective to a amount of hours, the efficiency, whatever, what would be some of the big changes that you would make? Yeah. So I'd focus on three things. The first thing I'd try and tackle, what I call the efficiency and the effectiveness problem, because so much of what we do in work, unfortunately, is what I describe as productivity theatre. We spend way too much time trying to look busy rather than being productive for a whole manner of different reasons. Yes. And it's not even necessarily external pressure. We do it to ourselves. I do it. I sit at my computer and I know I'm a bit tired and I still can tapping out emails and stuff. And really, I should just say, look, this isn't productive. I don't need to trick myself that I'm working. I'm just going to step away, walk away from this, because if I come back to this task, I'll probably get it done in 10% of the time. So tackle the efficiency and effectiveness problem in the workplace. You know, we see, for example, that knowledge workers lose hundreds of hours every year to that. Next, tackle the decisiveness and focus problem. So almost half of knowledge workers in the US say that they don't have enough focus time during the average work today. It's a critical problem. People don't have that time to pay attention and focus on the highest priority tasks. They did a really interesting piece of research. They looked at five sectors in the US economy. And they estimated that providing those knowledge workers with dedicated periods of focus, what I call high cognitive gear, could provide a boost to those sectors equivalent to $468 billion every year. So number two, decisive, and so focus three, how do we help people to re-energise by getting well rested? And so for that, I look at how people were sleeping. And I'll also look at trying to get people to schedule micro breaks in the day with the same level of discipline and frequency that they schedule meetings. Why schedule everything in my calendar? But still, I have to prompt myself to block in a 10 minute break. And anyone who's got an assistant or works when this isn't known, they will often believe that packing your calendar back to back is a measure of success. Yes. I say, okay, well, you can do that. But make sure some of those things that are blocked in are breaks, schedule those breaks. So yeah, those three things would be my redesign of the workplace. I think you've just laid out in three points, a competitive advantage for even a small business. 100%. Somebody who's or a manager who wants to excel, I think to the audience, we need to revisit those three points. Those are all things that a leader can facilitate. Wow, really good. Okay, audience, what'd you learn today? What are you going to do with it? That's why we do these conversations. And I got to lead the way so much that I learned. But I will tell you that I really took away the challenge. So I'm going to do it 25 minutes for five straight days of just locked in work. And I made a mental note, James, I was thinking back on the history nut. So I'm a challenge. Some of you all think about what focused work looked like for Benjamin Franklin, about 630 on a January evening back in the late 1700s. It's dark. There's no entertainment. He's probably at the house. There's no distractions. It's just the opportunity to really do deep work. And so I've got to find that. How can I do that five times or five days, just 25 minutes, put the phone in another room and really lock in. I'm really excited about that one. I'm going to try it. I challenge you to do something. But more importantly, I know you'll learn something from Dr. Hewitt today. So I want you to not just learn, but do. And if you're enjoying the show, of course, do all the things. The likes, the subscribe share. And if you'd like to join us sometime to be in our live audience from time to time, a link is in the show notes. And we'd love to see you. James, I got to tell you, this was delightful. And I could go on and on and on. And I think you've really given so much tactical stuff for our audience to win their work day. And for that, I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Have you been driving hard after your goals? And are you ready for a get-off? away. The live like no one else cruise is a seven day experience in the Western Caribbean with me Dave Ramsey and the Ramsey personalities. This isn't just a vacation, it's intentional time to step away, reset your perspective and celebrate milestones in your financial journey. Cabins are filling up fast and I want you, my audience, to have a front row seat to this experience. Go to RamseySolutions.com/events or click the link in the show notes. [MUSIC]