Productivity can feel like such an icky word. Like even when sort of writing out my
notes for this episode and doing research and figuring out what I wanted to say. It can feel
like the word productivity can feel so icky because you think, but I don't. I'm not on planet
Earth. To maximise optimise, make every minute of every day as productive as possible. So I thought
maybe actually that's the reason why I need to do the episode. Because productivity can mean a
million different things. Like rest is productive. Taking care of yourself is productive. Slowing
down is productive. And so even though the word productivity can feel icky, it's still very
important that we talk about it today. So I run two very successful businesses. I also lead a life
that I just bloom and love. You know, I still find time to prioritise my partner, my friends, my
family. I go to the gym pretty much every single day. I still eat healthy food and I feel like I've
just got it right in terms of time management now. And I don't say that to like, brag. Obviously I'm
not perfect. I've not got everything right. But I think when it comes to time management, it's been
a real journey over the years. I think, um, I thought the wrong things about productivity. I was
very much part of like The hustle broke camp for a long time and have done a whole 183, 60 or
whatever you want to call it on that. And so it's important I talk to you about productivity today.
And before we get into this episode, the biggest disclaimer that I'm going to give is we don't all
have the same 24 hours in a day. Like technically, of course we do. But some people have childcare
responsibilities, some people have caregiver responsibilities, some people are managing grief,
mental health issues, depression. We're working different work schedules. Some people are working
night shifts. Some people are just working the 9 to 5 like me, and so are 24 hours are very
different depending on where you are and what you're doing. That being said, I'm not going to
kind of negate the things I'm going to give you in this in this episode. There still are really
important and I think can apply to everyone. So what I am going to assume throughout this episode,
and I want you to apply this to your life in whatever way works best for you. I am going to
assume we all work a 9 to 5, and we work seven hours a day in those nine to fives. The reason I'm
going to assume that is just because I can't be making those disclaimers over every single point
that I'm about to say. So some of these will be harder for certain people. Some of these will be
easier for certain people. Some of these will just need to be moulded to reflect, you know, that
different type of work that you might do. But I'm just going to, for the sake of this episode, talk
about productivity inside those 35 hours we have at work. And the reason I want to talk about those
is because that's where I think we can have the most impact in making the rest of our living life,
you know, better, productive, more wholesome, more like family, friend orientated, whatever your
version of like wholesome and happy life is. So here's my four biggest productivity hacks. And
these are the Anti Burnout Edition. This has probably been my favourite episode to plan and
scope out because I've gone into like some of the real nitty gritty around my life and work and the
way that I plan it. And I think you'll probably find it's quite different to a lot of business
owners. A lot of business leaders in that I actually work is not my biggest priority. It
really isn't. It's, you know, probably a few, a good few down in my priority list. And so the way that
I view productivity, the way that I see productivity now is how do I optimise my time
within work to make sure that outside of work, I can be as stress free as like fun
loving, caring, nurturing to family, friends, partner as I possibly can be so that I can close my
laptop at 4 or 5 p.m. on a Friday and if I want to, I can have a relaxing weekend, I can walk, I can
be in nature, I can do whatever I want to do. I don't feel anxious about work. That's my version
of productivity is like making these decisions that allow me, outside of that kind of work. He
productive stuff to be who I want to be, to be the best version of myself, to be free, to feel
flexible, etc.. And if that's the way that you want to be productive too, then this episode is for you.
So here's my four biggest productivity hacks. These are the Anti Burnout Edition. And by the way,
before I get into this, it is so valuable for you guys to like, comment, subscribe and review
everything within this podcast. It really helps. Like I cannot tell you how much it helps us with
things like algorithms pushing it out to more people. It can be tough to get a new podcast off
the ground, but the reception so far has been amazing and I just would love it if you could
review, comment, like even just like absolutely anything. Share it with a friend. All of it really
does help. So productivity hack number one is a word you need to get so much more
comfortable with, and that I have been on a ten year journey. 20 year journey probably with is the
word no. You can invest in the next big like productivity tool
plan, a time blocking framework, blah blah blah. None of it will work. Literally none of it will
work if you have not learned how to say no. And I think we tend to assume that by saying no, we're
going to upset people. We're going to piss people off. I guarantee the better you get to saying no,
the more you value your own time. People start to respect your time more because they know that
when they are with you, when they do get the time with you, if you're saying no to the things you
don't want to do, it means that you are saying yes to the things you do want to do and you can spend
more quality time. And yes, obviously this goes to meetings like if you are in back to back meetings
every day. Obviously that is tragic and so frustrating, and it means you don't get to spend
that time doing the working on work, the really important on work, but something that can just be
really like silently, quietly, quite detrimental is the shorter stuff. So, you know, the kind of
meetings where let's say you're like, okay, I want a time block my day to have a really productive
day. I'm going to do some of the working on the teamwork, the leadership work, you know, the
systematic work, the big project work. So I'm going to keep my day free today. And then someone just
goes, can I just grab half an hour with you at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. or half ten, whatever. All of a
sudden that is your entire morning thrown off because you're going to get into work in the
morning. And instead of hitting the ground running and going right. 9 a.m. let's get the coffee down.
Let's get hit. In that project, you're going to look at your calendar and go, okay, I've got a
meeting at half ten, so I can't really that's only about 90 minutes, maybe like 65 minutes after
we've, I don't know, got a coffee, answered our emails or whatever. So I can't get stuck into
anything big now. And then you finish the meeting. It's 11 a.m. and it's almost lunchtime. You're
like, oh, I've got lunch in an hour, so I know what I'll do. I'll just do these tick box things. I'll
pull together this thing for this client here, and then I'll start that project work after lunch. Can
you see how? And then you maybe get to 2 p.m. after lunch and you're like, oh, I'm just a bit
tired now. Like, my day has been a bit stressful. You know, I've been answering all these questions.
I've been pulled in a million different directions. So just by having 130 minute, can I
quickly grab your brain? Can I pick your brain? Can I? Can we have a quick catch up on this thing? Can
take away an entire day. And the reason that that can be so dismantling to
your like, I guess mental health like to your burnout, to your life, to your burnout, but like to
to how close you could get to burnout is add that up. Imagine if that was just to happen two days a
week, three days a week. You start to just knock on all these projects. I'll do it next week. I'll do
it next week. Then when it's urgent and the thing is due, or like say, let's say for example, you were
meaning to give your team a bit of important feedback. You might not give it in the moment
because you're like, oh, I just, you know, I'm a bit tired today or I've got this quick tick to do or
I've got this meeting to have. So you push it back, you push it back by a week and then you push it
back by another week, and then you don't end up having it. You don't end up doing the thing, and
then next month it becomes urgent. Then it's a fire that you've got to put out. And so just by
saying no to that 30 minute meeting, that quick tick, you know, can I just. Can I just grab your
time? Can I just, just by saying no there and then I know you might think in the moment you feel
like you're unhelpful, you feel like you're not being a villager, you're not helping that person.
You actually are saying yes to having a full day of a really productive ticking off your to do
list, doing the working on the work you're buying back your time in the future. Like you can go home,
feel an accomplished feeling happy, feeling like you've really progressed today. Do you see what I
mean? Like those small no's, they add up, they build and they build and they build. So if you were
coming into this episode, kind of like expecting me to give you some big, you know, I time block or
do this, do this, we're going to get into a little bit of that. But the the biggest thing you can
take away from today is start saying no. So much more time is your only finite resource. It's the
only thing you can't get back. You can technically make more money. You can technically get more
people. You can technically have more friends. You can technically get another job. Time. You can
never get it back. Once it's gone, once that day is gone. That day is gone forever. It's never coming
back ever again. So be so precious and so cautious over your time. This takes me into point two, which
is you need to think about time as though you can buy it back. And this is essentially an investment.
So you want to invest your time. Well, if you think about what a traditional investment is like
thinking in money, it's paying for something. Now that's going to be worth more in the future. So
you buy something for £10, whether it's a stock or a share, whether it's a handbag, whatever, you
invest in it now and in ten years time it's potentially worth like ten x what it is today.
This is how I want you to think about your time. How are we buying back more of our time with the
time we're using right now? What on earth am I talking about? So what I mean is, let's talk about
some very traditional like management conundrums we find ourselves in delegating, okay. When we
delegate a task, the amount of times I have either said to myself or heard other managers say it'll
just be quicker if I do it myself, it'd just be quick. Oh, it's just quicker. You know, they messed
up before. They're not very good at it. I don't want to risk. I don't want to risk it not being
done. Well I can't be bothered to coach them in it. So I'm just going to do the thing. I'm just going
to do the task. You are essentially not. You're chucking your money away. You're chucking your
time away. Because although yes, that task is urgent and it's been done in the moment and it's
been done to your standard, there is no buyback of time in the future. So when that thing happens
again next month and then the month after that, and then the week after that, you again, you're the
only one who can do it. You're the bottleneck. And now it's even worse because it's got a bit
awkward because you've been doing it so it feels harder to delegate. Whereas if you flip that and
try to buy back your time, try to invest your time better, you would say, okay, I know it's probably
going to take me about 20 minutes to properly delegate this thing to my team member. And when I
say properly, I mean explain the context, explain the why to them. Um, you know, give them
autonomy over the outcome. Ask them what a good deadline is. Be there to coach them if they need
more support. Allow them to make mistakes and then help coach them through those mistakes. All of
that takes a bit of time. But what you're thinking about is the next 12 months of your career and
how now that you have taken the proper time and you've invested that time to delegate that thing
properly. That person forevermore will be able to take this thing away from you. Do you see what I
mean? Another example of buying back time is having difficult conversations is just making
sure that we never ignore a difficult conversation because it just gets worse, it gets
harder to deal with, and it might not take up more time in terms of like you having to have more
conversations, but it takes up more mental space. It takes up more cultural space inside the team.
When everyone's dealing with this negative energy or this person who shouldn't really be in the
team because you've not dealt with it. And now all of a sudden it's a big thing that is reducing
everyone's productivity. And everyone's like how they feel about work. Well, like 1,020% has this
huge knock on impact. Just because you made a bad investment of your time one month or two months
ago. And so it kind of goes back to that age old. Is it an analogy or whatever age old phrase
of like, buy cheap, buy twice? You know, if we buy cheap, we avoid the difficult conversation. If we
buy cheap, we do the tasks that we quicker ourselves, but we buy it twice. We have to buy it
again. It won't just go away, it will come up again in the future, and you're going to have to pay for
that thing again with your own time or with someone else's time. And so really think about
your time as like the most important resource investment you will ever manage and ever deal
with. I said no last month to more things than I have ever said no to in my entire life, and it
blooming hurts sometimes. I got invited to I'll have to name drop it here, because don't make me
feel better about not doing it. But I got invited to a party at Google HQ, which was Google's like
team summer party with some of the like, big C-suite people at Google to go to their London HQ.
Rooftop barbecue DJ's the coolest thing in the world, right? For Google to showcase new products. I
just I just know it's not a good use of my time. As much as it sounds brilliant, as much as
there'll be some great people there for me to, like, network with, whatever. It's just not a good
use of my time and I could try and convince myself it is. But getting a train down to London,
staying overnight, it's a whole like 24 hours. That 24 hours I could be working with my team to build
some brilliant innovation inside custard. Like we could be building out a new feature. We could be
creating more content to help our audience. Like, is it really helpful for me to go and have a few
drinks on Google's rooftop? I don't think so. Things like South by Southwest, the festival I got
invited to go there. Amazing again full of incredible humans Speaking on panels like it's
great to just be seen there and take photos there. But again, it's like nearly a whole week out of my
life and I get invited to these things and it's so hard to say no. Like, trust me, there are some of
the hardest nos I've ever known. And yet I just know that when the time comes for those things to
be happening, I'm going to be annoyed at myself that I said yes. And so I trust me. If someone has
got like, just invest, say no and invest your time, this is where we're at. Then the third
productivity hack, and this is one I learned a while ago called the Eisenhower Matrix. So this I
guess technically is like one of the productivity hack tool things that you hear about. But this is
the only one that's ever, like stuck with me and being important, which is tasks will fall into
four camps, but for all intents and purposes, to simplify it, they will either be urgent or
important. Now, an urgent task is the stuff that we tend to just fall into all the time. It's things
like doing our emails, ticking off whatever, like short, quick tick to do lists you've got to do,
replying to our team on slack, responding to clients. It's basically like that. Things you have
to keep up with every single day within the business. Then you've got important. Important is
the stuff that it isn't urgent right now. Like if you don't do it today, no one's going to come
knocking to say, why hasn't this thing been done? Urgent is like the bigger project work. But the
problem with important is if you don't force it to be urgent, it will just get more and more
urgent, and it will get more urgent to the point where eventually it's going to stress you out
because you've been meaning to do this project for so long, you've never forced out the time to
do it. And now you go on holiday next week and it's due. And so it's Friday at 4 p.m. and you've
still got six hours of work to do. You lose your weekend, you're stressed, you're anxious, you're
starting to feel those feelings of burnout because we've been prioritising the urgent things
all the time. Now. People usually say to me here, like, but you've got to do the urgent thing. You
know, I've got to answer my emails. I've got to go to the meetings. I've got to like, do these quick
tick tasks. So what I always say about the urgent, of course, we're always going to be there. Like
we're never going to be able to fully remove ourselves from those quick ticks. How can we? So
your urgent tasks are things that you should be constantly looking at to think, how can I delegate?
How can I automate, how can I systemise? Or how can I just get rid of or do less of? So like inbox for
example, I guarantee you do not need to spend as much time in your inbox as you think you do. When
you respond to an email, people just reply back. I always say this to the team and I'm like, I'll,
I'll get maybe once every like four months. I'll have an amazing thing where I manage to get my
entire inbox down to zero, and I'm so proud of myself. I'm like, whoa, we've done it! Then give it
an hour and I'll have 17 emails again, because your inbox is just a list of someone else's
priorities. Like they are not your priorities. It's just someone waiting for you to get some
information to them. And this is when we risk becoming the type of manager who's just like a I
think they call it like a pedal pusher. You're just moving information around. Those type of
managers are the types. Sorry to be a bit fear mongering here. They will get made redundant by AI
eventually. Like if you're just moving information around, that's the layer that doesn't matter
anymore. It's going to get less and less important. You need to be part of the layer, the valuable
layer where you are improving your systemising you're working on innovating and experimenting
and you know you've got your KPIs, whatever they may be. How do we test out new things with the
team? How do we and you know what these are. They've been on your to do list forever. I don't
need to tell you what they are. You have to force I'm going to use that word, force out the
time to move away from the urgent and into the important, even if it's just like, I don't know,
blocking out a full day to do it. And you say to yourself, right from the hours of nine till 12. I'm
deleting slack. I'm getting rid of teams turning off all notifications, which you should have off,
by the way guys, because notifications just steal your focus away. I have no notifications, nothing. I
have like three people on my phone that I allow through for notifications, which is literally my
partner and my parents. That's it. No one else is getting a reply from me. And do you know what's
crazy? People still think I'm like a fast responder. Like a fast reply I have no
notifications on because you will still look at him. Trust me, you won't miss anything. I guarantee
even if you don't look at your phone for two hours which hit like who? Who does that? If you do,
if you don't look at your phone for hours on end, amazing go you. But we all just do. So it's like
turn off notifications. You don't need your emails pinging up in the corner of your laptop while
you're working. It's just going to distract you because you see it and you think, oh, I can just
quickly reply to that. I can tick it off my list quickly and it's safe. It's like this dopamine hit
of urgency. You don't need to, like, carve out an hour at the end of every day to do the quick tick
stuff. Quickly respond to everyone on email. Get them the information that they need. Delegate some
stuff. Automate some stuff. Other than that, spend as much time as possible in that important
category. Okay, for your fourth hack, I'm gonna expose your calendar. I'm going to expose you a
little bit. So I want you to go and take a look at your calendar. Don't do it if you drive in or if
you are, in fact, don't do it right now. But write this down. I want you to go and look at your
calendar. I when you look at that calendar, I want you to think if you if someone had like a gun to
your head right now and said you have to reduce 50% of these meetings. So you've
either got to get them down by 30 by half or removed them, cancel them completely. Which
ones would you cancel? And don't do it yet. This is just an audit for now. Which ones would it be?
Maybe write them down like have a bit of a list for yourself on a piece of paper. When you look at
your calendar, Which ones aren't really that crucial. Or you could get down to 15 minutes.
What are they? And then I need you to go and do it. Like I need you to start making a routine
of every Friday. Sometimes I do this on a Sunday, but if you don't want to work on a Sunday, then do
it on a Friday. Sometimes I do this on a Friday whereby sorry on Sunday, but do it on a Friday
whereby you look at your calendar for the next week and you just play a game. I used to do this
at sage a lot, and I think it used to piss a lot of people off, but I don't care how many meetings
can I cancel? How many can I cancel? Honestly, generally, people actually are glad because they
get their time back too. And don't push it out to the next week that just pushed it down the line.
That just means you're spending more time thinking about the thing. Remove. Say to someone if
you don't use loom. By the way, loom is a really great Chrome extension that we use where you can
screen records. So you can generally like get if you want to show someone something, you can be
like, let me just send you a screen recording and then you can just come back to the screen
recording. So using tools like that like looms really great. Try to avoid meetings at all costs.
Just do this audit I'm going to call it the 4 p.m. Friday audit. Cancel cancel cancel cancel. And
don't make up bullshit excuses. This is what people fall into the trap of. Like, don't. Then go
back to those people and be like, I'm sorry. I've just, you know, I'm really sorry. I've just I'm a
bit I've been overwhelmed. It's no bullshit excuse, but I mean, people tend to like, fluff it up a bit,
you know what I mean? And they'll be like, um, sorry, but I. I've got too much on next week. Can we move
it to another time or, you know, make up a lie about the project not being whatever? Just be so
transparent and direct with that person. I don't even think you need an apology. Like, just say, hey,
just letting you know my priorities for next week are here, here and here. I'm going to send over a
loom video instead of doing this meeting because I think I can save us both half an hour. Then if
you just come back to me and if we still need a meeting after that, we can discuss and decide that
together. And it's like by cancelling a meeting, I think you need to realise you're actually the
unsung hero. No one wants more meetings. There's no one out there that wants more meetings. So it's
like, don't you know if someone messaged me to say they're cancelling a meeting, I'm buzzing. I'm like,
great, I've got half an hour or an hour back of my day and it's like, take control. I think that's
what I'm trying to say. You can build respect by taking control of being the one who's like, I am
not going to put up with this crappy meeting culture anymore. My mom was telling me about
something brilliant she did in her team the other week. So she runs a furniture e-commerce business,
and they have actually restricted their meeting time to nine hours a week. So everyone in the team,
they work 35 hours a week. That only allowed nine hours of meetings in any given week. And so
think about it like that. Like what is your upper limit? Nine hours, let's say. How do we get it down
to nine? Be ruthless. You can cancel meetings to your boss. I promise your boss will respect you
more if you value your own time enough to cancel their precious meeting. Because burn out guys is
quite often cause. And I've felt burnout. By the way, I don't think I've quite, like, gone over the
precipice of having burnout, but I have. I remember back in it was May 2024. I was I didn't have any
team inside the business. It was just me. And I just got back from travelling, and it was the
first month that I was like properly getting the systems of the business set up, and we were
launching Fresh Start. I was launching Fresh Start, I should say, for the very first time. So I'd
filmed a fresh start as a six week boot camp for new managers, which, by the way, we are opening up
again in September. So if you want to join, we've not opened it up in over seven months. I think it
will be, um, it's just incredible. So I'll put the link to join the waitlist below. I would love you
to be one of the 150 cohort in September, but when I was launching Fresh Start, um, for the very first
time, I was filming the video modules, figuring out like how on earth to even set up like a course
platform, you know, how to build a community, how to make it as powerful as possible, as impactful as
possible. Because courses can be a bit shit. And I wanted to make sure that it was actually stuff
that people could implement and that they felt challenged by, and they could go put in place day
to day and would actually have this like real impact. And I put so much pressure on myself to
make it amazing from day one. And I remember it was like the week leading up to our first ever
launch. I was just on death's door like I couldn't sleep. I was riddled with I don't think it was
anxiety. I think it was just such high cortisol from the stress levels. And I was like, fearful
about, you know, what? If no one wants to buy it? What if I've completely missed the mark? What if
this is crap? Like, what if I've done it wrong and you know everything? And at the time I was just
doing so much. I was also working with clients, doing workshops, doing coaching. I was just doing
so much. I was probably working like 12, 14 hour days, seven days a week. And that was I was kind of
like flirting, let's say, with burnout. I was very close to that precipice of this is far too much.
Now, we've we've gone off the cliff. And I believe the reason that I caused that for myself
was caring about the wrong things like I was. So I put so much like control freak
energy. And this is just me personally on like making sure that my inbox was always at zero,
making sure that every single client got a response within one hour, making sure that like, I
don't know, just so many things that was that urgent work that actually if I'd have just said
to myself, you know what? Today I'm just focussed on creating, tomorrow I'll do the more urgent
stuff and make sure everyone's responded to. And I feel like it was this. I was I was focusing on the
work about the work, like the meetings I was having with people, like the all the, the different
things that I'm not sure were actually that helpful. And I'm convinced that in me that burnout
was really caused by me focusing on the wrong things instead of the things that are like buying
me my own time back in the long run. And I had a good friend at the time who was running a
business, and I was working with her, and she'd ended up in hospital because of stress and
burnout. And it's like, I it's just it is such an important topic, an issue that we addressed. And I
think we have to get so good at using that. No, because it as much as I would love
workplaces and businesses to take ownership over burnout and stuff in people,
ultimately we have to take personal ownership over it ourself. And so yes, we'll keep pushing for
the workplaces to do it. But just from a personal stance, like we have to make sure that, you know, we
are saying no, that we are pushing back on the things that are urgent and not important. So to
conclude, productivity, like the real big productivity hack, is not to like,
squeeze as much as possible into your day to be as efficient at the highest output, blah blah blah
blah. It's two. Delete. Decline. Push back on as much as humanly possible.
That doesn't move the needle. And I think as well. And as well. Let's talk about what the needle is.
Make sure that you know what your Northstar is. You know what your success measures are. You know
what moves the needle in your job, because then you know how to focus on it and just delete
decline. Say no to all those things that aren't moving that needle like go into the Google party.
Google I would have loved to go, but it's not going to move the needle for me. I could make a
small argument that it might win that networking, but I know it isn't deep down. And so I've got to
say no. And that's how I kind of buy back that evening. Now I get to spend that evening with my
partner. I get to spend that evening chatting to my best friend on the phone, like I get to
continue to nurture the relationships that mean things to me. I get to have my eight hours sleep
because I'm not up and down on a train two days. I get to keep, you know, realistically, going down to
London for one trip is £500 out of the business at least because it's a train, it's a hotel, it's
food, it's whatever. And it's like that money, you know, we're a bootstrapped custard as a
bootstrapped business. Think what? I could spend that £500 on inside custard. Like I could spend it
on so many more powerful things that would help grow the business. And so it's also just thinking
about that opportunity cost, like every single yes comes with a no to something else. And just be so
aware you can't just say yes to everything. We have to be so aware at what we're saying no to. Um,
and what are the right knows what are the right yeses. Thank you for tuning in for another week of
the boardroom. This is the podcast where we open the doors on all the conversations that, you know,
historically, have been hidden, hidden away in the boardrooms across the globe, kept deep, deep in
those vaults, the information that we never really get access to. So thank you for listening. Thanks
for tuning in. We'll be back 8:00 again next Wednesday morning. Make sure you are subscribing,
liking, commenting and drop any feedback you've got in the comments of the post.