Are We More Productive?

different things when it comes to time blocking. One thing to note is I am twenty five years old, and the group that I am coordinating typically are our superiors. Sometimes you get out of the time block and it feels a little bit like you've already You're already behind. I am curious to hear what you have for group coordination and accountability. Thanks much, I have a good day. Bye bye. A lot of you have problems that you're

trying to solve at the office. So today, on the final episode of Works for Me this season, we're going to look back at everything we've done and figure out whether solving work problems even works. Welcome to Works for Me, the show where we try to solve all of our work problems using productivity hacks to see if they'll work for you. I'm Francesco Leafy and I'm back at Greenfield. So this week is the last show of our season, so sad, sad, So we're going to do something a

little different. We are going to look back at all the experiments we did and see if the hacks really did work for us. Let's get started for our very first episode, Becca, you decided to make a bullet journal. This is a hand drawn journal that you customize with to do lists, calendars and trackers and kind of whatever else you want to put in it. And a lot of people get very serious about decorating it because it really doesn't matter if it's not parfect, because you're the

one who wants to look at it every day. I'm just like so nervous to mess up that it comes out looking kind of dumb. Oh my god, is ugly. I'm really messing up basically, like I'm getting black pen and places it shouldn't be the how did that happen? I don't love this pen. Oh god, that's ugly. As we just heard you, maybe we're not that great at

like the beautiful aspect of it. Because it has this Instagram quality of people making all these decorations and putting pretty flowers and illustrations in the borders and using calligraphy and stuff. But you did find some use from it. So I want to know, first of all, are you still bullets turning? Yes, I still have a bullet journal. It's sitting right here in front of me right now,

and I do still use the to do lists. So I never kept to do list before the bullet journal, which I know what was I thinking, um, But now I write it to do list every day when I get to work, and I'm pretty strict about writing it, and I'm pretty strict about crossing things off every day, and I that is a habit I picked up totally from this. So I don't do a lot of the other bullet journal things, but at the very least I

do to do list. Yeah, because you learned how to do like calendars and activity trackers and all these other special features. And you're saying, like you mostly it's mostly just a book of to do list to do list book. I do a couple other things. I keep a wind's page, which is very popular in the bullet journal world, where you write down your winds, which is really good for people who um have low self esteem or impostors and

worn't get really down about their work yourself. Yeah, and I did try this other a couple other things, but mostly to do list journal. But you did. Also. One of your takeaways from doing the bullet journal in the first place was that, like, you can kind of pick and choose the parts of it that work for you. Yeah, and the big takeaway was that writing things down can

help reveal things about yourself. I'm not as good at that part, but I did try something called a good time journal, where you write down all your tasks throughout the day and you categorize them in a special way to figure out what you most like about your job. So that falls into the category of writing things down to reveal a deeper truth. Maybe I should try that. Yeah, it's cool. After hearing me go through bullet journaling, did you take anything from the experiment and apply it to

your work life? You know, while you were doing the bullet journal, even though originally I thought it was kind of silly and over the top, like just how much time people spend on it in the bullet journal world and how fussy it seemed, but secretly I was actually kind of catching some of the fever. And at the time, I think I even bought some jail pens and like maybe I'd didn't get as far as buying a bullet journal, but I thought maybe I'd start doing it, but I

couldn't really bring myself to do it. But what I did instead was I started using a physical journal again. I have like a date book that has blank pages in it. I was keeping to do lists in like lots of different places electronically, and now my to do list in my appointments are all analog and they're all in the same place. Yeah, that's great. That's That's exactly what I use mine for. And I'm proud of you. Week number two, you were trying to fix your mornings,

which had become a mess according to you. So you did the rise Up method, which was a six step method to make the most out of the early hours. So on day one, after making it out of bed, I did my level best to follow along with the yoga video I found on YouTube hold your blank three and then going side to side, did you want at a time working away signing with are you still doing this rise Up method? I kept up with it for months. I was like a dedicated riser, didn't touch the snooze button.

That had been my big challenge in the episode was like training myself to stop pressing snooze and just face my demons and get right out of bed and get started, no matter how tired I felt. And then the other my other big takeaway was how good it felt to find time to exercise, to do a little yoga routine

first thing in the morning, every morning. So I was doing it every day, five days a week for months and months, and then I got pregnant and I took a break because I stopped, I think, but I'm looking forward to going back to it. I think that of all of the experiments we've done, it probably had like the most holistic impact on my whole the whole rest of my life. Like I felt fitter. I started my day feeling like I was kind of taking control of it.

I wasn't controlled by like whenever my son decides to wake up and make noise and demand things. I was just like doing my thing, and I was, you know, notching a little win the first thing in the morning. That is amazing considering where you started from. Which was, Yeah, just like kind of total chaos and really pushing that snooze button a lot. And I think it is impressive to do anything in the morning, So I think that's cool. What about you. Did you have any takeaways from my

morning routine? I was sincerely impressed with you doing exercise in the morning. I did not change my morning routine one bit. I know there's so much room for improvement, but I just can't do it right now. I'm just I'm not motivated enough. But it's good to know that that options there the morning exists for me to take one day. There you go, just not right now. In episode three, you wanted to work on your concentration and your ability to really focus deeply on tasks at work.

So you try a method where you built up to thirty minute sessions of totally uninterrupted focus on one thing. And I feel so freaking good, Like it's just doing thirty minutes of writing where you just get through it, you focus. I feel like a queen. Are you still a queen? Do you still feel like a queen? Do you still feel like a focused ruler? You had gotten like addicted to doing these focus sessions. Are you still doing them. I have back slot a tiny bit, but

I do still do focus sessions. I would say that for me, this episode had the biggest impact on my day to day work life. I when I need to get work done, I put on my playlist. In fact, my Spotify Discover has now learned that that's the type of music that I listened to most often. And I put a time around for thirty minutes, and I try it really hard to get through it, and it still works.

I yeah, I'm still into it. I think I haven't tried to increase the time more and I'm not as consistent about it, But just knowing that I have that in my back pocket can make me feel a little better when I'm feeling a little overwhelmed about a task I have to do. You told me you've got a lot of responses to this particular episode. What kind of feedback were you getting from listeners. Yeah, a lot of

people want to try the focus session. I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with, and they were excited to have a pretty concrete, easy thing to do. I did get some questions from people. They asked how often I was doing it or how often they should be doing it in a given day. And my response was, just as often as you think you need to do it for me in a given day, I'll do it

anywhere from zero to four times thirty minute sessions. Obviously, four time means I have a lot of work going on in that day, so I think you can customize it for however works for you. Did you ever try a focus session? Once again, impressionable me. I was influenced

by you, and I totally did. I haven't done it recently, but basically, any time I've had deep work to do, like something thoughtful to write, like a script, I have I expand to the full screen so I can't see any of the apps, I try to snooze any notifications,

and yeah, I'll do that. I'll do I usually try to do twenty minutes or thirty minutes, and if I go longer, that's great, because sometimes you pick it up and you just get into it and you lose track of the time, and then you focus for longer than you intended to, which isn't bad. But I have found it to be you feel so accomplished, Like you can hear it in that tape where you're like on top

of the world. I feel great because you get so much done so quickly, and I think we're used to like seeing time just disappear without feeling that great about what we've done in that time. So when you've passed twenty minutes and you've like written a couple of pages of something, it's like it feels so compressed and you feel like a hero. So because you've been telling yourself for so long that you can't, Yeah, but you can, but you can. And then I guess the danger is

which you got at in your episode. And I noticed also that you can then be like we've done that, like no need to do anything else for the day. Yeah, I think I do. Think there's another episode on procrastination to be done next season. An episode for you tried to reign in a meeting that you thought had gone off the rails, and you used a bunch of different techniques for meeting experts to try to get more out

of your meetings. Hello, welcome to the team meeting. Please help yourself to some rude or doubta enjoy beling with some of these NINDS enhancing toys. If you need something to do with your hands, are you still using any of the techniques to hold meetings like that that the meeting experts told you about. This is the experiment that

I have fallen off the most on. Some of the techniques that I learned were, like, make an agenda ahead of time that you involve everybody else in the meeting in so that they contribute items and you all collectively own the discussion. Keep a timed agenda so that things stay on track and no one person is dominating the conversation, are talking too much, and like try to keep people engaged with food on the table and toys and other kinds of things. And I I pretty much do none

of that when I have this weekly meeting. I think what I did retain from it was that the other people in the meeting also rely on it, rely on it to be a source of information that they can't really get anywhere else. And so when I'm in the meeting, I think I do kind of take it more seriously and I try to make it a little more structured

than it was. But I was run out of time to prepare for the meeting, and so it's really hard to make a weekly meeting something that you feel like you kind of think about a bunch the day before or even like the hour before. So I don't know. I think I still have a lot of work to do in this area. Did you learn anything from my meetings adventures? Not really. I don't have the same meeting problem as you. I think it's so specific, so I

don't know. I think that's fair. I've heard a lot from listeners that a lot of people have issues with meetings, but none of them are really the same issues. Some people have too many meetings and they just want to know how to have fewer, or some people have meetings where they never get a chance to talk. So you can't solve everybody's meeting problems in one episode. This this episode really felt like the one where it's like the big existential problem everybody has, just like meetings are on

everybody's minds, but for different reasons. We also learned that like canceling all meetings is not the answer either, because meetings do serve a purpose. So I don't know, man meetings crack that NT yet. Yeah. In episode five, you wanted to address the fact that you didn't feel like you had anyone to talk to about your long term career goals, so you went out mentor hunting. You used a four step method to find somebody who could be a sort of official career mentor for you. Hi, Arian

Hayman Nush Hi Jodi, Hi Rebecca. My name is Becca green My name is Becca Greenfield. I'm a reporter. I'm on the Race, Class and Gender in the Right Place team here, I admired. So have you continued your mentor hunt or are you still talking to Manus Samaroti, who was the woman who end up kind of meeting your mentor needs in that episode. I have not tried to

find a different mentor yet. Um. The process is a lot, and I think it's it's emotionally exhausting to just reach out to people all the time and networking and being social and all that. I've tried some of the tricks that the mentor expert Ellen and Shirt told me to keeping up my relationship with Manuche, which is, you know, reaching out to her about other things. Um. I sent her that episode when it came out. She was really

nice and put it in her newsletter. So I think the relationship is slowly continuing and building, but it's still not to level in my fantasy mind of us gabbing all the time about my my career stuff. What was your what's your unrealistic fantasy that you would meet once a month and have like, yeah, a two hour dinner. Yeah that sounds great. I feel okay about that. I think it's a really big goal, and so I'm just happy that I even tried to chip away at it

in an episode. Have you tried to fend a mentor? And I inspire you? I have not gone out looking for a mentor, but I was impressed by your journey, and I think what I took away from it was that you should always go after bigger, bigger things, and also just like bigger people than you, then you think you're entitled to because you got the encouraging thing with

a lot of people wrote you back. So it just kind of reminded me that, like, we're always a little people always have a tiny bit more time for us than we expect them to. Yeah, people are nice. In episode six, we worked on our problem together. We sought out a management coach to help us with our teamwork. Obviously, the two of you really like each other, you really

respect each other, and which is great. What we're going to move into now is I'm gonna ask you about some things that have been challenges between the two of you, and I'm going to let either of you start. I can start, okay, since Becka started with the nice things, so he gave us some tips for working better together, things like talking to each other in person rather than

over chat. Um, not making every situation into or not feeling like every single situation is an emergency and urgent it has to be dealt with right away, and phrasing requests in a way that showed how we individually feel about them, not like their demands. Um. Do you feel like you're still using these tips now? I think the one that's stuck with me the most is trying to realize that not everything is an emergency all the time. I don't think I've particularly tried to talk in person more.

I noted a time where I did the thing that he said we weren't supposed to do, which was, instead of leading with my emotions, lead with you need to do X thing in this time. But I remember looking back and thinking, oh, I probably should have done the emotions thing. So it's a mixed bag, how about you. I also haven't been doing a great job of keeping

up with talking in person. I think we talk in person a lot, but I've definitely noticed a couple of times when I've expressed my displeasure with how something was handled over chat and then I've been like, should I pick this up in real life? But then by then it's kind of like past and it doesn't feel like a big enough deal to keep going with it, and we don't have a podcast that we're recording that is

an incentive to like have a sit down conversation. I do think when we talk in person, and we do talk in person a lot, we always get more out of it than when we try to like sort through a problem over chat um. But I haven't increased I

haven't increased my I r L time. I One of the things I've tried to do more that he also recommended to us was kind of giving more context for why when I have to triage or when I have to change the way we're doing something, um, like what else is going on with my workload that I might want to make and then offer a solution. And I've as a result, I felt a little less bad about doing it because my issue was, like I was kind of getting I was having a lot of guilt about things,

and then I just wasn't talking about them. I also thought the upshot of our whole session was good, like we came away from it feeling like we do work pretty well together and that the problems that we had to solve were relatively minor unsolvable, And so I think that that left a good like halo on our whole collaboration. In episode seven, you tried in Box zero to tackle your unruly in box. You know what, I'm just I just gotta do it. This is crazy. I have thousands

of emails in here. Oh my god, this is nerve wracking. Okay, am I really doing this? Okay, here we go shift, click, delete, delete, delete. So in the course of the episode, you really transformed yourself and it went from someone who ignored emails to someone who ignored everyone else to answer her emails. Are you still that person? Yes, I'm still I'm still fully in box zero. I make sure by the end of the day that when I leave the office there's nothing

in my inbox. I've either deleted it or filed into folders. And as for what has had the biggest effect on my workplace productivity, it's had some downsides like, yes, I do. Sometimes I'm distracted in meetings because I'm checking emails, and sometimes I spend too much time on email. But it's had more upsides because I am incentivized to react to things really quickly because I want so badly to get

them out of my inbox. So like little dumb, annoying tasks that I might have previously ignored, I just do them right away. The converse of that is that for the bigger tasks, the things that I get emails about that I previously might have avoided because they were too daunting and scary, Now I have a whole system for dealing with them, and I know exactly what's on my plate because I'm not worried that there's like three dozen emails buried at the bottom of a list of spam

that I'm forgetting about. Emails are like a debt. It's like what you owe to other people. And in the past I just wasn't balancing my checkbook. And now I know what I owe and so I can deal with my expenses as they come in. So I think the benefits are worth the distraction that email is to you now, because I think that is the biggest criticism of being into email. Yeah, I mean I think that the ongoing challenge is limiting the amount of emails that I get

so that it isn't a huge distraction. As I've been going along, I've been trying as many new methods as I can to get fewer emails. Like I act really proactive if I'm on an email thread that I shouldn't be on, or I make new folders and filters as I realize they're necessary, And so when I sit back down at my desk, it's not like thirty new emails. It's like ten new emails and eight or ane of them I can delete right away. So I don't think it's sucking up as much time as it was right

after I started doing it. What about you? Did you take any email tips away from my experience? No, there are so many things I want to do that you did, Like color coding recipients I think would be really helpful, um making folders. Don't have any of those. I just have not been proactive. But I I don't feel like I have the same angs about email as you did going into the experiment. I my system kind of works.

I don't think people I don't know maybe if I pulled my colleagues, I would say I'm terrible at email, but I am pretty responsive, um, and I don't care about spam piling up in my inbox. So that's what I'm gonna tell myself. No, I think if it works for you, there's no reason to change it. And I think that that's like a big I think that's a valid criticism of inbox zero is not everybody needs to

do it. I think if if, if it's not a psychic drain on you to have that number of emails in your inbox and it's not actively disrupting your work life the way it was with me. Absolutely everybody doesn't need to be an inbox zero person. Now that we've done all these experiments on ourselves and wondering what you think about this whole industry where we've convinced ourselves that we need to constantly be optimizing ourselves for work. Probably not great for us that we think about this stuff

all the time. It's probably like, you know, we're just cogs in the capitalist machine and just making our employers

very happy by you know, trying to constantly improve ourselves. However, I do think that there's a reason that all of these productivity experts have cropped up, like why that is a job you can have and why it's an industry that's thriving because we haven't adapted well enough, I think, to all of the new technologies we work with and the new systems that we work with in a modern office, and so it just creates I think it creates more

strife than in the past. So a lot of people are coming at that problem and like, whether they're solutions work or whether they're just snake oil salesman is kind of what we're trying to find out. What do you think? Yeah, I'm of two minds. One thing, it's like the fact that we even feel like we need to be the most productive people in the world is sissiffician. You know, you can always get better and better and is that

the point of life and work? But then the other thing is practical, and it's like we are at work all day and we want to feel good and be efficient and do the best that we can so that we can't have lives outside of work and we're not anxious all the time. And I think that some of these hacks do help with that, and that's that's good. I don't want to I don't want to downplay the

importance of that. On the other hand, like you said, some of it is complete snake oil that's kind of feeding into these pathologies that people have where it's like I gotta be better for what. Yeah. I think that one of the things we wanted to do with the show was kind of like expose some of the silliness of some of these solutions. But also we were really committed to the idea that we only wanted to try to solve problems we were really having, Like we weren't

just doing stunts for the sake of it. We actually wanted to take stuff that was specific to what we were going through at work and see if we could fix it. And I think that's probably the key, is that it's nice to know that there are solutions out there and that if you commit yourself to a problem you're having at work, you can solve it. But it's wrong, I think, to think that you need to solve all of these problems or that everybody needs to be approaching

all of these kind of tasks the same way. Like you just said, you have a stuff over stuffed inbox. It doesn't really make your job any harder, and you don't really care, so you don't have to fix it. And I think that that's great. I think that's a perfectly good insight you have. And some of these problems are not for us to fix. Yeah, and that's it for this season of works for Me. Thank you so much to our listeners who listened and subscribed and rated

and reviewed. We really appreciated all of the feedback you've given us. If you have more, you can still leave us a voicemail at two one to six one seven zero one six that might end up in the next season of our show, and stay subscribed so that we can stay in your fees and keep you up to date about what's coming next. The show was produced by Tofur Foreheads and hosted by Me Rebecca Greenfield and Me. Francisca Levi and Francisca Leivie is Bloomberg's head of podcast. Thanks for listening. Bye,