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Sticky Learning Lunches #5: Finding Your Own Space and Stop Working From the Kitchen Table
Find out what space you need to create when you work from home, to avoid working from the kitchen table. Use your time working from home to become the very best version of yourself. This is a Virtual Classroom of 20-minutes, followed by a 10-minute Q&A.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Wonderful. So welcome everybody to the first of the Sticky Learning lunches. Thanks very much for coming on. I’m gonna get myself so I can just share my video with you guys. Hello everybody. Let’s stop sharing that screen. It says bear with me for two seconds.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s get that full screen. So guys, um, you can see me, I would love to be able to see you as well. So please go over to the right hand side where it says you can you share webcam. Please do absolutely vital. In this day and age right now in the current situation, that we can see people that we can connect even by doing this via video link, we still get the same or certain level of those chemical reactions we get from actually seeing people face to face.
Nathan Simmonds:
So I would love to see you guys in the webcams over here. So please, right hand side, click on the share webcam so we can see who’s on here. And also see your smiling faces ’cause that will help me in these trying times, give people a couple more minutes to get on. Please make sure you’ve got a drink with you. Staying hydrated. Super important. Alright.
Nathan Simmonds:
Just checking time 1 0 1. Good. A couple more people arriving. This is a fairly new experience, especially to me doing this. And gonna move my chat box up to the other side so I can see what chats are coming in. If you have any questions, there will be a q and A at the end, but please write them down, share them in the box, put ’em in the questions box so we can pick them up at the end.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good, it’s 1 0 2. Let’s start with this. So guys, welcome to the first of the Sticky Learning lunches. Fantastic to be here. Fantastic to share with you guys, especially in this day and age. Right now with our experiences, we are making business matter MBM and we are the Homer Sticky Learning and we’re also the soft skills provider to the UK retail and grocery industry.
Nathan Simmonds:
So excited for this opportunity to share this stuff with you guys. And like I say, it’s vitally important that we do this, that we get these moments to learn and we get these moments to expand our thinking while we’ve got time to, while we’re at home, home, um, while we’re working in these different dynamics and different environments. Super important. So before I get into introductions about me, I wanna make sure we’re setting you guys up for success.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the first thing we’re gonna do, get your phones. If you’re not watching this on your phone and you’re watching this on your laptop, get your phones out. Let’s make sure we’re getting absolute attention on what we are doing. First and foremost, get your phones, get ’em onto flight mode. I’m just gonna check my make sure mine is on. Yeah, flight mode. We wanna zero out those distractions and we’re gonna talk about that again a little bit later on in this session.
Nathan Simmonds:
The next thing you wanna do is if you’ve got your email open, if you’ve got Facebook open LinkedIn, close them. The moment you get a ping, a beep, a buzz, your distraction, your attention is gonna go to there rather than actually learning anything here. So we’re gonna do this for 30 to 40 minutes maximum. So I’m full attention to what we’re doing here so that I can help give you some ideas that’s gonna push your thinking, that’s gonna help you get more focused on what you’re doing.
Nathan Simmonds:
And expand your capabilities to work even better in a home working environment in these new environments that we find ourselves in. So kill the distractions before they kill you. Next thing you want to do pens and paper. Let’s make sure you’ve got a pad and some fresh paper available. You’ve got pens, paper, whatever it is you wanna write with.
Nathan Simmonds:
Give yourself a nice blank sheet. You wanna make sure you remove it from any of your other notes so it doesn’t get lost in those. Okay? That way when you go back and read it, you can actually go back with it or you don’t, uh, put it out and throw it away with the actions that you’ve already done, but you keep it there as a fresh reminder to keep this thinking fresh, upfront and moving forward. Good, that’s a little bit of the housekeeping.
Nathan Simmonds:
Who am I? Well, my name’s Nathan Simmons, I’m senior coach, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. Um, I’ve got 20 over 20 years of leadership experience. Been working from home now on and off for quite some time. So I’ve got some, um, already real life experience of doing this. We also opted to homeschool as well. So for you guys out there that have got your children at home at the moment, we’ve been doing that for a while as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
So I’m happy to take questions from that at a later date just to help you move through that. Again, it’s a new experience for a lot of you just wanna say though, you’re doing a great job and you are very capable of doing this, okay? So keep hold of that thought and keep doing what you’re doing. Be curious and help those kids learn and that’s the best thing you can do for yourself and for them. What else?
Nathan Simmonds:
I also qualified as a leadership coach over almost eight years ago now. I’ve been focusing on leadership development for the last night. Absolutely vital that we learn these skills. So there’s not many people out there teaching this stuff to us. And what I teach and how I teach, it’s uncommon skills, taught in uncommon ways that are gonna help you to be the best version of yourself.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay, today what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna start breaking down a, a pneumonic, an acronym for helping you to work better at home. And we’re gonna do that over the next two weeks. And we’re gonna do one session every day, um, for the next working days over the next two weeks ’cause you’ve got Easter right in the middle. So the first thing we’re gonna be talking about from the mindset model is to manage to manage yourself.
Nathan Simmonds:
In this session we’re gonna cover four key areas of things you can do to help manage your focus, help manage your time and help manage your actions so you can get the best possible results and increase your productivity by maximizing your focus on that. So what’s the first thing we want to cover in our manage model? The first thing we want to cover is our to-do list. Uh, sorry, apologies is the routine. Routine is absolutely vital. There’s so many people at the moment. There’s over 10,000 searches a month done on Google for time management
Nathan Simmonds:
And there’s a demand out there for people wanting to find out how they can manage their time better. But the truth is you can’t actually manage your time ’cause time’s infinite. It’s not something you can grab hold of and deal with. The only thing that you can actually manage is how you focus your attention inside that space to make sure you’re getting the outcome that you want at the end of that space.
Nathan Simmonds:
So routine is absolutely vital. The first thing that we can do when we’re dealing with our routine is we want to book three different times into our day. The first one of those times is our start time. We want to know when we’re actually gonna be doing our work. ’cause it’s easy to get up in the morning and think, oh, I’ve gotta work with this email. Oh, I’ve gotta take this action.
Nathan Simmonds:
And the first thing that we do at 6 37 o’clock, whatever time is it, we jump straight into our social media or we jump straight into a work email and we don’t actually structure out how we’re gonna get there. And next thing we know it’s already 10, 11 o’clock and we, and we found that those actions have run away with us. So the first thing we wanna do is book a start time. That way we know when we’re going to commence our day and we’ve got time before that to prepare ourselves mentally for the day ahead.
Nathan Simmonds:
Breakfast time with family, clearing your head whether you do meditation or journaling in the morning or exercise, making sure you are creating a window for those things before you actually go into your work workspace office. The second space, the second time we want a book is our lunchtime. And it’s absolutely critical that we stop and that we make sure that we are energizing ourselves physically, but also mentally taking ourselves out of whatever work we were doing wherever we were working.
Nathan Simmonds:
And taking that time to have a break, digest, reflect rehydrate, and then come back to that space ready to do even more work and more focus for that afternoon rather than just going through and just knocking actions off that to-do list. The third time is when you’re actually gonna stop. ’cause it’s easy. And I’ve done this recently with some of our clients. I’ve sent an email in the evening at 9 30, 10 o’clock at night, not expecting to get a response until the next morning and I’ll get a response five minutes later.
Nathan Simmonds:
Why? Because they’re sitting at home with their work phone or their laptop nearby. ’cause they haven’t actually got the, uh, the framework of what sort of day they wanna be working. So instead they just keep it on because they think they need to be on call constantly when they’re working from home. But actually it’s super healthy to make sure you’re stopping a a a point in the day so you know when you are working too. ’cause we have Parkinson’s law, we may talk about that a little bit more in a second, but work will fill the time that’s been allotted to it.
Nathan Simmonds:
So if you know and say you’re gonna work from nine until half five, you’ll make sure that work is done in that time space rather than from maybe when I wake up to maybe when I go to sleep. You’ll then take longer to do those actions. You’ll stretch it out even longer. You won’t fill the urgency to get that thing done ’cause you haven’t put a bookend on that space you are working into. So the first thing is making sure that we’ve got the three times. The second thing that we want to do when it comes to uh, routine is managing
Nathan Simmonds:
Our breaks. And this is super important. Having regular breaks. You may have found out already from working at home if you are not used to this, that actually you are finding you are more tired than you were previously. In the evenings, you may find that you are getting more tired during the day because you’re spending more time staring at your laptop, which may be a smaller screen than you’re used to or in an uncomfortable position, which is causing you to hunch up and is actually really not good for your thinking, uh, physically or mentally.
Nathan Simmonds:
These regular breaks are absolutely vital again, to get that focus. Couple of things that we can do here to make this work. One, you can use a Pomodoro timer, okay, for maximizing that attention and focus. Have set it to 20, 25 minutes to make sure you are getting up moving, stretching while you’re doing the work.
Nathan Simmonds:
And that way you can just recalibrate the thinking and then go back in. Alternatively, just making sure that you’re getting up every hour going outside and getting some fresh air. This is also, you know, critical. If we suddenly can find ourselves, oh, I’ve gotta be at my desk. Oh, I’ve gotta be at my laptop all the time. I’ve gotta be on call all the time. Actually, you don’t have to be those things all the time unless you’re working in the emergency services right now, you do not have to do that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay? You can get up and go outside, get that fresh air just to help clear the thinking. Now, oxygen is one of the vital things that your brain is required to use, uh, to make sure it’s working. Uh, effectively, this is gonna help you as well get through your day so that when you get to the end of it, you will know what you’re doing. You will know what the, um, the markers are. It’s also important.
Nathan Simmonds:
That we’re also taking the third point of our routine, which is family. The family’s routine. If you haven’t been at home before in this environment with your children, you’ll know right now that the routine of your children is also critical to the success of your or that of your family while you are working at home. Because if they’ve been going to school, they will have a very set routine and a lot of you are doing splendidly at making making sure you are maintaining that routine all the way through so that when they return back to school it won’t be such a bump for them, um, as if there wasn’t that routine.
Nathan Simmonds:
So this is, this is absolutely um, and absolute necessity in this moment as well. But also the routine of you being home with them. Now, if you’ve got younger children, my daughter is seven, they may see you being home in this environment with this regularity as um, something, something novel and exciting.
Nathan Simmonds:
So you may be sat in whatever you call your office right now, um, locked away doing your work and then all of a sudden there’s a, a little tap at the door or you’re in the middle of a meeting and there’s this tiny voice mama and you are thinking, I’m in the middle of the meeting. I can’t not, not now, not now. This is, I’m, I’m in a meeting with no, there’s senior president of some company in Korea.
Nathan Simmonds:
This is not helping, helping me right now. When we give these guys routine as well and they know when your breaks are and they know when your lunches, you can close the door and everyone has a plan of what’s happening, your significant other half can then support you in the work that you are doing because they know and they can tell the children, the family members, well that is gonna be done at at lunchtime at this time. Money’s gonna be available here and then we can work to that as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
This gives ’em a space to work to and that regularity they know how to to manage their own expectations. So this again is super useful. So headlines for our routine, we book three key times to make sure we stop, break or lunch and stop. We make regular breaks through the day and also we have a family routine incorporated in that as well. This is the first stage for helping us manage ourselves better. Number two
Nathan Simmonds:
Is the to-do’s. I’m hoping right now how many people here ha are using a really clear to-do list and put a yes in the comments or show a hand whatever it is that’s gonna work for you guys. How many of you guys are actually using a really clear to-do list right now out? I’m not sure if there’s gonna be a delay for me seeing messages. Sarah, who’s supporting me on this. If you can see these coming through, please let me know.
Nathan Simmonds:
I would hope that you are, many people see there’s a couple of camps with this. Some people say I can just do this from memory or yep, I can write these down. I’m, I’m good. And then there’s a, there’s a third one of yeah kind of. So it’s, we need to be making sure that we’re doing this and there’s a couple of techniques because great everyone’s saying yes it’s fantastic. I thought I was for a long, long time.
Nathan Simmonds:
And what I would find is I’d actually find that I’d have lists all over the place and then I’ll kind of have to calibrate those lists at the end of the week. It’s like, ah, didn’t put that in the right book. Bring together. Okay, tick, tick, tick. Okay, let’s make a new list. Okay, get rid of those ones. And then at the end of doing it’s not useful, but making sure when we’re doing doing these to-do lists, we use a couple of techniques to really focus that um, that intention into how we’re making the best out of our days.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because if we don’t do that, it’s very easy to, we can put all these things on the list and it’s very easy though when we look at that list and we go, oh, what’s quick, fun and easy? So we sit down at a desk and go, what are the easy wins? Okay, I’m gonna grab that, I’ve gotta grab that, I grab that. And then you start getting into it and then all of a sudden again, your days run on and you’ve got into a serious problem in one of these things that were quick fun and easy and then you completely ignored the rest of the stuff that was on your to-do list. Who here has experienced this?
Nathan Simmonds:
I thought that was a good idea to do that. Uh, and actually now it’s home time and I’ve got nothing done that I wanted to achieve. I think that’s a vital lesson. Kind of almost all of hard knocks we go through sometimes when we’re almost looking busy for the sake of looking busy, just gonna check time. Good. So the thing is we wanna make sure we’re looking at the things that are quick, fun and easy and knowing what they are before we get into them and not getting too distracted with them. Couple of techniques we can do to actually make this work.
Nathan Simmonds:
One is bullet journaling. So I’m not gonna go into the full details of how this works. I’m just gonna give you a couple of key ideas that’s gonna help you to focus your thinking in this bullet. Journaling is a really easy technique for creating a to-do list and structuring out what’s going on in your day. And you can do this for the week, the quarter, the half year, and for the year. When we do our to-do list, the first thing that we wanna write down in is our to-dos and our events and how we do that, we use two symbols. A single.is a is an action, a circle
Nathan Simmonds:
Is an event, an appointment, uh, a conversation that you’re due to have. That way you’re starting to create visual representations of things that you need to do on that. The next thing I’m gonna suggest that you put in there as well is your asterisk for your top three things you need to get done. So if you’ve, you’ve all said that you are using to-do list right now, I want you to get your to-do list out right now. Have a look at that and then we’re gonna ratify it against these first two elements. What are the things that were quick, fun and easy and have you dive straight into those immediately just to get some of those things cleared off.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we do it to make ourselves feel better. And then the second thing is having a look there, what your top three actions are that you need to be getting done today or if you’ve got your to-do list for tomorrow, the week, what are the top three things that need to happen right now on that list? And get an asterisk next to ’em so you’ve got that attention into it and you just let me know when that’s done
Nathan Simmonds:
Just to make sure we’re starting to bring this to life a little bit for you guys. Number three on the to-dos is to don’ts. What do we mean by to don’ts? Everybody has a to-do list. You have your actions that you need to complete on a daily basis. It’s also vital you understand what your don’ts are as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
What I don’t do, what I stop doing, what I turn off. ’cause it’s super easy when we’re sitting at a laptop and maybe Facebook is on the side, maybe WhatsApp on on the phone, maybe LinkedIn’s there and I’m doing some work and something that pinging does come in, that distraction does turn up and as a result of that I end up getting into something else or a, a dialogue or a, a social feed for 10, 15, 30 minutes and I don’t even realize where the time’s gone. So it’s also writing out what your top three don’t start.
Nathan Simmonds:
And you know what, this may be different for all of you. So right now an immediate action for you guys is I want you in the next 37 seconds to write down the top three things that you need to stop doing to maximize your self-management and uh, your, your attention and your focus. And you can share those in the, in the comments as well. ’cause you know what, some of the things that you write down may well be some of the other things that other people are actually in denial about. Okay? So share those in the comments as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
What are the top three things that you need to stop doing or don’t do to maximize your, your outcomes? Sarah, feel free if you want to vocalize any of those that are coming through or share them with me on the comments so we can talk about them a little. Okay. A couple of people have come through. Uh, Joe, me as I said, LinkedIn. Yep, it’s a big one. David Bowerman has said TikTok,
Nathan Simmonds:
I haven’t got into TikTok, but apparently tiktoks a social platform that turns everybody into a backing singer. Um, is there a a career path change here potentially going on? What else have we got on there? Uh, Jo has also said email popups and friends WhatsApp group. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we’re gonna talk about a little bit more about these distractions, but these don’t list this, this to don’t list is absolutely critical. The world’s most successful people have their to-do list and they have a to don’t list as well. So it’s important that we understand that what we say no to or what’s the impact of saying no to these things. Now if there’s things that you are meant to be doing, like time with family or having this routine or a project, you are focusing on a meeting you need to be at.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you are saying no to the preparation to do those things, if you are saying no to the time with family, what are you actually saying yes to? And what’s the impact of doing that and what’s the impact of being distracted in those, those momentary blips? How much time is it actually costing you in productivity?
Nathan Simmonds:
More so for yourself as well. Because often what happens is we catch ourselves in those social feed, we catch ourselves in those and and then we give ourselves a hard time for 30 seconds and switch everything off and go back to the work again.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s critical we understand are we going for the stuff that’s quick, fun and easy? How are we actually strategizing what we’re doing? And when we do these things, when we’ve done the action, that dot becomes a tick and that circle gets a tick in it as well. And understanding what your two don’ts are as well. Good. Number three. Third thing that we need to be doing, I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t draw a proper picture of it, but we’re gonna just tell you what it is. It’s called eating the frog.
Nathan Simmonds:
Bonus points if you’re watching this, um, to tell me what the world’s largest frog is. ’cause I’ve been doing some environmental studies with my daughter. I was quite astounded by this. So please feel free while we’re doing this to put this in the comments, what is the world’s largest frog? Without Googling it, what do we mean by eating the frog? Brian Tracy, time management expert. Millions of copies sold multiple language translations.
Nathan Simmonds:
His phrase was about eating the frog. Why? Because I can’t think of anything actually there’s a couple of things I can think are more repulsive than trying to eat a frog, maybe a slug, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Do the difficult thing first. And this is the idea is when you’ve got your to-do list, what are the actions? What are the events? What are the top three things I need to work on? What is the most difficult? What’s the thing I’m ignoring?
Nathan Simmonds:
Because the thing that you are resisting is the thing that you are meant to be doing. The task you are avoiding is the task that you need to complete. The other one, you know, that talk about, you know what I resist persists. If you are constantly ignoring it and filling it with quick fun and easy, that thing is always gonna be holding you back.
Nathan Simmonds:
And actually the quick fun and easy won’t be that fun because you know you would’ve been ignoring the the priority items that were sitting behind you. So always do your difficult thing first. Do your list for tomorrow, tonight and make sure you’ve got that thing at the top. Easy way to do this
Nathan Simmonds:
Is mark it in green because that’s the normal color of frogs. So when we’ve got the difficult thing, we’ve got our to-do list, we’ve got our top three, let’s ring it in green, get a green pen, a green highlights or whatever it is, and ring it because you know that’s the thing that you need to focus on. And psychologically green is a color that means go, it means going forwards so that when we see that we know that’s number one on the priority and then we can put our attention into doing it.
Nathan Simmonds:
What’s the reason I ask what the world’s biggest frog is? Did anyone, Sarah, just as a bonus point, did anyone actually get the world’s largest frog? No they didn’t. No they didn’t. Okay, it’s called the Goliath toad or Goliath frog. And it weighs in at a whopping 3.3 kilos. Um, and it is about the size of a small cat.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when you hold it up like that, it’s about four and a half foot long. It’s huge. Now the reason I’m sharing this is sometimes when we make this thing or the thing that we think is difficult, we make it bigger in our own head than it actually is. We make it more complicated. We turn the molehill into the mountain and then we start to avoid it. But the thing that makes eating the frog easy, they talk about, no, you’re gonna eat an elephant. You cut it up into small pieces. I don’t suggest eating elephants. So what we do is we want to cut it up into bite-sized chunks.
Nathan Simmonds:
You are not gonna eat three and a half kilos of frog in one mouthful, okay? You need to cut it up into smaller pieces. And by doing that you can start to reduce it down to its lowest denominator. What’s the one smallest action I can take here to create the biggest possible impact? What are the bite-sized chunks that are gonna help me complete the frog? So rather than it being one task, actually maybe we break it down into five individual smaller tasks over the course of the week.
Nathan Simmonds:
That actually means by the end of Friday we’ve completed what we said we would do on Monday, rather than getting to Friday and going, that was too much. I couldn’t do it. It was overwhelming and complaining about the overwhelm. We’re in critical that we do this as well. Get some clarity about your thinking. What are you putting all your energy into that’s holding you back? What are you stopping yourself doing by making things more difficult in your own head space?
Nathan Simmonds:
So eating the frog, it’s difficult and you’re ignoring it. You need to do that first. Get a green ring around it. Make sure it’s clear to you what it is you’re working on and what the thing is you need to focus on. And then the third piece, if it’s too big and it’s too overwhelming and you are feeling that overwhelm, cut it up into bite-sized chunks.
Nathan Simmonds:
Break it down into tangible actions that you can take on a daily basis to make it happen. Number four, cabbage butterflies. Darren and I, Darren is the founder of MBM. Darren and I were talking about a story which he shared, um, about how his father was, uh, or is an avid vegetable grower. And when he was little, he used to go down the vegetable plot with his dad, uh, and his dad was stand there grumbling about the butterflies, leaping from cabbage to cabbage, eating the butterflies.
Nathan Simmonds:
And Darren’s analogy to this, which I love is, you know, if, if the butterfly didn’t keep going from one cabbage to another, it would be absolutely huge because it would’ve eaten the whole cabbage. And often we work like because the butterfly, we don’t, you know, we’re not completer finishes, we nibble a bit here we go over here, we nibble a bit there, then we go over there and, and then we come back over here maybe a couple of days and then, and then we go through the cycle again.
Nathan Simmonds:
But we never get the sensation of completing anything ’cause we’ve only ever taken the bite-sized chunks. Who here’s guilty of this. Let’s see some yeses from hands up for this. Keep posted. What’s coming through Sarah, who’s guilty of having things on their to-do list and only doing a bit of it and then getting distracted backing your, your, your distractions, your don’ts or actually being even more, even still being fatigued before you even get to the end of data actually. ’cause your brain’s not firing in the right possible way.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now here’s the interesting thing. The butterfly isn’t the problem. The problem is is what the butterfly actually leaves behind before it goes to the next cabbage. So when Darren and I were talking about this is all the while that his dad was focusing on the butterflies, which are truly the distractions that we had. If he’d been looking at the cabbages, he would’ve seen that the butterfly was laying eggs on the cabbage, which was then turning into caterpillars, which were eating his cabbages all the time.
Nathan Simmonds:
He spent looking at the butterflies, he was never paying attention to the real thing that needed to be looked after, which was the actual, uh, the crops he was growing and wanted to, to to collect at the end of the harvest. What happens is if we see these shiny new objects, oh, there’s another project. Oh there’s another email.
Nathan Simmonds:
Oh that’s really interesting. Oh that person, da da. And we just get caught up and that’s why I talk about turning the phone off again, those don’ts. We have to focus on the elements we need to complete in that moment and be aware what the shy distractions are. Social media is designed to be social. It’s designed to keep you in there. The algorithms are designed in such a way that you’ll spend more time in that.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, when you put messages up and it says typing, most of the time no one is typing. They’re just doing that to keep you interested, to see what’s actually gonna come up after that. So when we start to realize actually what the critical things are, the cabbages and what are the butterflies we can make, we can discern, we can make a discerned, um, decision about the thing we wanna focus on. And actually, if you want to look at butterflies, that’s what you’ve got breaks for.
Nathan Simmonds:
That’s when you know when your, your shift, you know, your, your time at work has stopped and you can go and spend time looking at that butterfly. That’s okay. Sometimes there’s new ideas and there’s um, new concepts that come out of that distraction. It is good at the right time. So it is about focusing on the butterfly, on on the cabbages, not the butterflies. Some of the key things I wrote down here, bullet journaling part two,
Nathan Simmonds:
When you’ve done your to-do list and you get to the end of the day, it’s, you need to review that to make sure, have I done good work? Have I made progress on the elements I was looking at today? The first thing is we can tick those things off that we have done. That’s absolutely the right thing to do. It feels good. That’s why to-do list so addictive actually when you tick them off, you get a little hit of dopamine.
Nathan Simmonds:
Um, the the um, chemical of addictions, you often get this when we drink or we smoke or we gamble, all those things ’cause there’s a dopamine hit. How many people here, and this is the running joke with this, how many people have got a to-do list and they’ve ticking things off and then they’ve done something they haven’t got on the to-do list and they write it on there just so they can cross it off. How many people have done that?
Nathan Simmonds:
And I bet everyone on this current conversation says, yes, I know I have and I still do it even though I know I’m why I’m doing it. The first thing we wanna do is tick the stuff off, tick. The second thing that we want to do is if we haven’t done it and we know it’s critical for the next day, we just turn our dot into an arrow. So anything that we put a dot, any action up there, if we haven’t done it where it was a dot, it now becomes an arrow and you make sure it goes on.
Nathan Simmonds:
Tomorrow’s to-do list when you are work, when you’re doing, doing your reconciliation process at the end of the day. That way you’re never losing actions that way you don’t end up like me five years ago with three different lists written on the back of an envelope, back of a notepad, front of a notepad, wherever it’s consolidated and focused, constantly calibrating and constantly reconciled to make sure you’re getting the best possible outcome.
Nathan Simmonds:
Second thing I wrote down here, headphones, couple of, I’m gonna add a couple of things into this one. Headphones, earbuds over the ear, whatever it is to block out the noise. If you’ve got sound canceling headphones, they are phenomenal. Okay, I’ve got my earbuds from my laptop. I’ve got an overhead just in case. And what I’m doing is I’m just running different sounds in there now, depending now I can’t have music on because I find music is too distracting, it draws me in and I start singing along or humming along or whatever.
Nathan Simmonds:
I can’t keep track of what I’m doing, so I have to have nature sounds. I know this sounds ridiculous to some people. You know, I have the sounds of birds singing. Yeah, or in or, uh, sound of a string. I can happily share the link for this lady and the sound of a stream, like it’s forest noise, it’s for eight hours in my headphones so it helps to cancel out the background noise.
Nathan Simmonds:
Why? Because my daughter is downstairs doing a Joe Wicks workout or an Otti Mabu dance class and I’ve got Mary Poppins, um, or George Ezra playing in the background, distracts me from what I’m doing or I’ve got John next door loving to bits. He’s at home because he’s a builder. He’s at home because he’s um, not able to work but he’s rebuilding his kitchen. So 40 minutes ago I had to ask him to stop sanding the floor so I could do this recording with you.
Nathan Simmonds:
There’s a lot of noises going on here, children coming in and um, you know, your partner doing whatever. It’s easy to get distracted. And so we put the headphones on, cancel out the background noise and just get calming sounds in there. I also use bin neural beats. Some people know about Ural beats. Please let’s have a count up and see who uses binal beats.
Nathan Simmonds:
So yes, if you’re using binal beats for concentration or meditation, I’d love to see what the, uh, the count count is. Binal beats are phenomenal. Again, they just help to cancel out the background noise, help to keep you calm, help you keep you thinking, help to keep you focused. So we’ve got nature noises and just to help with that. The second one again,
Nathan Simmonds:
Or sorry, the third one is, again, family. Coming back to this point here, you having this routine, making sure that you’ve got a closed off space to zero out the distraction, making sure that you’ve got, you know, your daughters or children aren’t constantly coming in to make that distraction with you. Make sure you’ve got a closed space, you can close the door. Headphones on working with your routine. So what do we covered? Four key elements from the managing yourself.
Nathan Simmonds:
First one is routine booking in three times, making sure you’ve got breaks and making sure you’ve got a family routine as well. Number two, to-dos. Are you just doing the stuff that’s quick, fun and easy bullet journaling, making sure you’ve got your actions and events in making sure you know what your don’ts are as well. Number three is eating the frog, making sure you’re doing the difficult thing first.
Nathan Simmonds:
Circling it in green so you know it’s there for your attention. And if it’s too big, cut it up into bite-sized chunks. Number four, closing off your day with your bullet bullet. Journaling the ticks and your arrows, used headphones and also making sure your family knows where you are. Close the door, do your work and move on. Guys, that was, that was the key elements of the manage from the the the m from mindset.
Nathan Simmonds:
What questions have you got? I’m aware that we’re kind of, we’re cutting close to the time. What questions have you got right now that you need to ask me to help you manage yourself and manage your time better? Please fire them in. Sarah when they come in, just happily shout them out and then we’ll go through those. Nothing coming in at the moment
Nathan Simmonds:
Guys. Bring the questions also at the same time. Let me know what’s been useful out of this training session. What are the top takeaways you’re taking away from this session? What have you written down that is is useful for you right now? George, pick your in. He said eat the frog. Eat the frog. Definitely, definitely. George, what is your frog? If you are happy to share, what is your current frog that you need to eat? George has said finishing a newsletter.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah. How long would it take you George? Honestly, if you gave your absolute 100% focus to that newsletter, how long would it actually take you to finish it? Start to finish? Eight hours. Eight hours? How can you break that down into manageable chunks so that you can have that completed in the next 48 hours? George has wrote, get got a webinar tomorrow but can do by the end of the week.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. So what gets scheduled gets done. Making sure you’re taking those chunks of time at whatever the best time is your brain’s working. It might be morning, it might be afternoon. Book that into your calendar between here and there. And also add or two ways to do it. You either add 10% of extra time to the time slots that you are allotting for it. So rather than an hour, you add an hour and 10 minutes.
Nathan Simmonds:
So you’ve got a little bit of room to play with or you make sure that your finish point is Thursday, not Friday. So that you work to Thursday. And if there’s anything you need to tweak and adjust, you’ve got Friday to make the tweaks and adjust not to complete it. And then actually you’ve run out of time. What else has been useful for you guys? Joe Meers has said building a better to-do list cat categorizing and turning off distractions
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely too. It’s super easy to get distracted in these things. Joe, do your to-do list. Make sure that you are reconciling it tonight, what you need to do tomorrow. That way you haven’t got a waste of time getting today. You can get into the day, look at it. Go as a result of doing that, you know what your top three things are. You know what your frog is and you can get those things done. So it’s actually easy to go and do the quick fun and easy things and they become quick fun and easy. Good, Joe, one more. What else has been, say that again? There’s nothing else come through.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay guys, I hope this has been useful. If you have more questions, please you’ve just emailed them into us, we’ll pick those up and we’ll help you. Wanna let you know that tomorrow there is another training, we’re gonna do another sticky learning lunch tomorrow at one o’clock. We’re gonna keep doing this. These as long as you need us too, as long as we’re at home, we’ll keep doing this content to keep building you guys up.
Nathan Simmonds:
A couple of things that are gonna happen. One, you’re gonna get an email about that. I would love to get your feedback about how I presented the content that I presented, um, in this space. I want your feedback. I wanna know how it’s helping you. I wanna know what you’ve taken away from it and what you’re doing to, to to move forward. And also what you are gonna share out this, what one thing here would you share with one of your colleagues to help them improve the way that they’re focusing.
Nathan Simmonds:
You’re gonna get an email that’s gonna ask those questions. I would love to hear that. The second thing is we’ve also released a coaching card deck as well. It’s a new deck of coaching cards with some of the great questions that I ask people to help them shift their thinking. And you can pick this up from the website as well. We’re gonna be sending you a link this, if this is useful for you as a leader, please click on the link, go and have a look and see how it’s gonna help you to get better results and help you impact the people you work with and the, and the work that you are doing.
Nathan Simmonds:
Lemme know what you think of those and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow In the next section when we’re gonna be looking at the eye from the mindset model, which is about isolation. Something that we’re all feeling a lot of right now in different ways, shapes and forms. And I’m gonna share some of the personal experiences from a mental health first aider point of view, from a leadership coach point of view, and from someone in the midst of it with the rest of you guys as well. So I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thanks very much for your time. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
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