How are you coping with this whole global pandemic thing. I'm in Melbourne in Lockdown number six and it is pretty tough going. I feel like I'm more reliant on my devices than ever before because they're like a window to the outside world. But I have a feeling that checking ABC News ten times a day isn't very good for my mental health. So in today's show, I have an alternative to share. My name is doctor Amantha Imber.
I'm an organizational psychologist and founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work, a show about how to help you do your best work. I'm trying something different today because Lockdown could be a bit lonely, so I thought it might be fun to have a little catch up with a fellow productivity nerd, my mate, Lisa Leong. Lisa is the host of the top ranking ABC podcast This Working Life, and she is just an all around
awesome person I've known for years. Lisa was keen to know more about some new calendar software I've been using that has changed my life. But we start by having a chat about a ritual that Lisa has been trying lately, called a tech Sabbath.
Yeah, it was something that did emerge out of COVID and when I think it was March last year, we noticed that there was a lack of contextual markers when we all started working from home. And Colin James, who does a lot of work in the communications space, he used this term, and I just think it's fantastic to say, our contextual markers are the things that we did as were commuted to work. For example, it's making a first cup of coffee, it's even putting on your work clothes.
So these are the things that remind us all we're in work mode. Now with all of these disappearing. When we were working from home, we lost all sense of time and work just got over overwhelming. And I definitely found myself in that place, and so I started to look for routines and rituals that would support me in just trying to bring a bit more I guess focus in my life and consciousness. And we came across the work of Kasper to Kyle, who studied at the Harvard
Divinity School. He's actually non denominational. He's just really fascinated in ancient wisdom in religious practices, and in his book he actually focuses on something called the Friday Tech Sabbath, so it's a secular ritual, but it does look at the beautiful ritual of Shabbat and from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. In the secular version, you're just switching off all your devices, so it's mobile phone and laptop predominantly. And you know, so I just tried that.
Like how did it go? What would you remember the very first tech Sabbath that you did, and what that felt.
Like the first time I tried it, I did. I was very strict, so I turned off my phone and I turned off my laptop and I actually put them away. And I noticed that on the Saturday my hand kept on twitching trying to reach for my phone. My body was sort of like it was so weird. So that was the main thing that I noticed. And then I did notice when I switched back my phone that I had actually felt a little bit more refreshed, so all
the noise had sort of dissipated. But definitely at the start, I was feeling anxious because like nobody could contact me, Amanda.
I know, and that's what I was going to ask, like, I mean, did you make any provisions for let's just say there was a family emergency and your phone switched off, Like, how does that work? So the practical things that I had to do was before I switched off my phone on the Friday. You do have to really spend maybe an hour preparing things because on the Saturday, if I was going out to a cafe, I would just let people know who needed to know I'll be at this cafe at that time.
So it's basically going back to a world before your mobile phone. So then I got a bit slack, to be honest, because I was doing it by myself.
So the two point zero version of.
The tex saver As Ritual was enlisting our mutual acquaintance and friend, Pinny Lacasso, so we came up with more of a ritual.
So the ritual was literally.
Light a candle, dance to a song. We had a chant or a mantra which is I am enough, that was enough, and it's time to shut off our devices and let them sleep, and then we would blow out the candle. And it was much more effective doing it with someone else, because I think there is something about mutual accountability knowing that you're not alone in this, and also I do want to cheat because I didn't want her to catch me out.
And now I know that something else that you did is you actually got a song commissioned.
I had come across an amazing singer songwriter called Little Green Amy Nelson, and she sort of just creates just beautiful, really clean, beautiful songs. And she plays all of the instruments, so she has self taught herself seven different instruments. And so I contacted her and just said, Amy, here's a concept. And I just gave her exactly what I gave to you. Just then, this is what it is. And she came up with this incredible song, which is now the song
that we listened to. It dance to when we do Friday Tech.
Seventh amazing, and let's listen to a bit of that song.
Now.
Amount is Friday.
Close your eyes and say goodbye, Tocyer, free your mind. It's Friday. Good night too, oh device. Maybe it was a tough week, maybe it was good, maybe nothing when like you thought it would. But night, it's Friday.
So I am enough.
You are enough. We are enough.
I am enough. You are enough. We are enough.
I am enough, you are enough, we are enough.
It's time too West, sweet dreams, beloved laptop night, beloved nimes, give you a break as well as my lobes. Stop the combland screen, stop the binge washing audio. Thanks for the space to frolic in nature, get lost in the street, no GPS to take here.
It's that is such a beautiful song, Lisa.
Oh my gosh, it's.
Like catchy, isn't it?
And it just she has so beautifully captured the whole field. I think of a Friday tech sabbath. Did you notice that I was rappy at the end, like me, Oh my god, would you give it a go?
I would definitely give it a go. Funnily enough, so I don't sleep with my mobile phone in my room, So my mobile phone sleeps downstairs. I sleep upstairs. And a few weeks ago, my parents actually said to me, because I don't have a landline, that would probably be weird to have a landline. But my parents said to me, what if we have an emergency in the middle of the night, how do we contact you? And I said, well,
there's no way of actually contacting me. And so my dad had a spare phone and he has now brought that over. He bought a sim card for it. And so I do have this phone like it's an iPhone that sleeps next to me, but literally the only function it has because every call is blocked except for calls from my mom or my dad's mobile, so it sleeps next to me if there's an emergency. So that would be the one thing that I would worry about, like if there was an emergency with my daughter or with
my parents, how would people contact me? But that could actually be overcome by how I've overcome that. I'm not contactable pretty much between the hours of nine pm at night and say six or seven am in the morning.
I call that my burner phone.
As so I do actually have a really old school Nokia and you've just reminded me which I sometimes had put my SIM card in if I was like, you know what, I probably do need to be contactable, but I don't actually want to have a phone that reminds me of work. It's just that when I was trying to use it, because it is so old school, it's really hard to use, the client of gave up on it.
But I did try that for a little while, and I wonder whether that would be you know, as you say, a really good option is just a really you know, one of those really old phones, so you can't be tempted at all.
A nockier was it like.
Sixty one or something like ring and everything.
I sort of felt vaguely cool until I was so frustrated that I cor news and anyone.
Now, something that I'm excited about is new software that I've been using to manage my to do list and calendar workflow.
Oh I love your hacks, so describe this one.
Okay, See this software is called Motion, but just to make it super confusing, there's actually two software solutions for calendars called Motion. So the one that I am talking about is motion dot io. That is the website and
I will link to that in the show notes. And I actually I got recommended to it by John Zuratsky, who was a guest on the show quite a while ago, and he's quite well known for co writing Sprint, which is the book about Google ventures design Sprint process with Jack Napp, and also with Jack Napp wrote the book Make Time, which is a brilliant book around productivity and
tax and things like that. So John said that something he's been using he's been playing around with your calendar software, and so that's how I got into Motion and what I love like So prior to Motion, my workflow is I would use things as my to do list software, and I would have a list for deep work tasks that I need to get done, so things that typically going to require at least an hour of my time and deep concentration, and then a shallow work list things
that are quick and easy and simple to do or don't require a lot of brain power. And then what I would have to do is I would, you know, if I'm planning my week, and I time box my diary, so I essentially set meetings with myself to complete deep work tasks, and then I also have reminders for like quick things that I need to do within Google Calendar, I'd sort of be, you know, checking my to do list every now and then and then time boxing and
then I'd have my reminders. But some reminders would sort of carry on over for several days before I got to them, and it was all like a bit messy and imperfect. And what I love about Motion, and I've never seen this before in calendar software, is that it combines both of those software, if you like, into the one.
So on the left hand side of my screen that is my task list, and so I can create new tasks within my calendar software, I can allocate how much time I think they will take me, and then I can drag and drop those tasks into my calendar, which takes up the rest of the screen. So the majority of the screen is my calendar, like the view that you would see on Google Calendar, but there's a column down the left hand side that is my task list, and so it will drag and I'll drag and drop
those into my days, so I can timebox effectively. And then what I also love because with timeboxing, the time passes, you finish your task and it's like okay, good, done that, onto the next but you don't get that beautiful dopamine hit of ticking something off the list if you timebox in the traditional way. But with motion there's a little box, a little white box that you tick when you've done the task, and then it does like a little animation, and then it's marked off as done and it becomes
kind of grayed out. And then the other thing that I really love is that if I'm ahead of schedule, if I've basically overestimated how much time my task will take. I can look sort of to further in the day and go, oh, I think I might try to tackle this thing, but I'd plan for the afternoon and then I tick it off and then it moves itself to the morning once it's done, and then I've got some free time. So it is gold. It has completely changed my workflow around how I manage my calendar.
So in terms of the task list, I think it's really important to understand how big are the task that you're putting in your task list on the left hand side, and what would you define as being a task?
So it is all sorts of things. So it might be like, for example, today, I've got a two hour task that I've time blocked for when we stop talking Lisa, and that is I have a keynote coming up that I feel like I need about two hours to kind of iterate a current keynote to turn into this final keynote that I'm delivering in about a week's time. So that's a two hour time block. But then I'll also have quick five minute tasks like I had to make a couple of phone calls today for example.
And then are you putting together your task list the night before or a week in advance, or.
No, it's ongoing. So whenever a task comes into my mind, I put it on the task list, and then when I'm at my computer, my desktop, I then allocate time to it. So essentially I'm running task list zero, kind of like inbox zero where you've cleaned out your inbox, but it's taskless zero because every task that you have now has time allocated to it in the diary, which I think is very very powerful, Like psychologically, that feels really good.
And then my final question is because I've also been timeboxing for quite a while and I find it really helpful. But sometimes I look at my diary and I'm quite frightened because every it looks like everything is accountable. I mean it looks like wall to wall meetings, even though I know it's not. How do you feel about looking at a calendar which you know, pretty much at first glance looks very full.
Well, I don't do that, so I don't fill up my calendar. I don't book myself at one hundred percent. So I got that tip actually from Darren Murph, who is the head of remote at git Lab, who I had on how I work quite a while ago now, and one of his big things was he never books himself at one hundred percent because it doesn't allow for things going wrong, emergency is happening, things running over time.
And also I heard this echoed from Nicky Sparshot, who heads up Unilever for Australia and New Zealand, and she tries to put ninety minutes of buffer time in her diary every day. So for me, I generally have some buffer time. I'll always block out lunch so I will have a lunch break. But you know, look that's also contingency if something goes wrong and I need to actually do a bit of work there. But also I tend not to book anything after about three point thirty or four o'clock in the afternoon.
So that's actually blank.
Yeah, it's just blank.
So near aile.
Who both of us who have spoken to and who is you know, sort of has his own approach to time boxing. So he accounts for all time and that includes downtime. So in his calendar it'll say, say, from three point thirty do nothing time. But even so that
is blocked out. And so what I was playing around with is like I'll put in some health things first, so it might be my morning routine or my lunch break or but it is all accounted for, so I think I am playing around with or if I put that in my diary, I know it's definitely accounted for. But unless it's a different color, it can sometimes look scarier than it is in reality.
I'd say definitely. I think color coding diary like it's just a good hack, so visually it's not overwhelming.
But I like maybe going blank, although people can then like put in invites, whereas if I block it out, then at least you know, I've got a little note that sort of says, actually that's blocked out for you know, afternoon sleep.
I just I just block it out and write do not book in capital letters in a really aggressive kind of So, Lisa, it has been great chatting with you. We have to do this again sometime. I love chatting to fellow productivity nerds.
I know it's so great, And good luck with the motion trial and I'll report back as we go on as well.
I hope the Today's Show gave you some useful tips that you might want to try out. And if you are not connected with me on the socials. I'd love you to do that because I post quite a bit of content through my various social media channels. So search me for me on LinkedIn search amount to inmba. I think I'm the only amount the inba on there, and I'm also on Twitter at Amantha and on Instagram at amantha I. How I Work is produced by Inventingum with
production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix and makes everything sound fantastic. See you next time.