Today's episode is a little different because instead of interviewing a guest, I am answering your questions because lately I have been hearing the same frustrations again and again from listeners and also in audiences. In the keynotes that I am giving, I'm constantly hearing things like why do I feel busier than ever that I feel like I'm getting this done? Is AI actually helping anyone get massive productivity gains? And why does every workplace say they care about well
being but everyone still seems exhausted. So, as always, thank you, thank you, thank you for sending in your questions. I absolutely love receiving them, and in this episode I have picked a bunch of them that I'm going to tackle, so things like why AI is making people feel more overwhelmed instead of more productive, and how to stop your calendar being hijacked by meetings, and why most to do
lists don't actually help you prioritize. So, as always, I'm going to be sharing some of my personal habits and also the things that we do at Inventium that have worked for us. So if you've ever finished a week feeling busy but wondering what you actually achieved, this episode is most definitely for you. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Okay, the first question comes from Colleen, and she has said, I start every day with good intentions, but by lunchtime I'm completely derailed by teams, messages and meetings. How do you actually stick to your priorities? Well, Colleen, I don't think you're alone there. I want to address the thing that I reckon. Is I reckon it's one of the bigger, maybe the biggest barrier to productivity in organizations, and that is meeting overload.
As I've said many times on this podcast, so little thought goes into should we have a meeting about this? And little thought goes into how long should this meeting actually be? And instead meetings default to thirty or sixty minutes, when a lot of those meetings could be a lot shorter, like fifteen minutes. And even more still, you probably didn't
need to have a meeting. So what we do would inventim And we've been pretty strict on this since we started the four day week nearly nearly six years ago. Now is that we aim to remove as many meetings from our diary as possible, So this is mostly internal meetings. Obviously, external meetings with clients, sales meetings, briefing calls, all those
sorts of things. We still do those, and you know, I personally think that those things are best done synchronously because often they're about the relationship and about the connection.
But internal meetings we're really strict on those. So something that we default to at Inventium is if we need to share information with someone else, and that information might be from me a CEO, company updates or project updates, given I am across pretty much all of the projects at Inventium, So information updates, information sharing, like if like comprehensive feedback, Like quite often I'll have a teammate I want to get feedback on, say a new program or
workshop that they've been designing, or you know, perhaps I have observed someone run a workshop and you know, and we're going to.
Talk about feedback.
We always default to a synchronous communication and the tools that we use most for this, the main one is LOOM, so loom dot com. And if you haven't come across LOOM, I know some of you probably have and are using it. It's basically software that makes it really easy to record your screen, record audio, and record a video. So it's great for information sharing because you can share your screen.
If you want to share words or images, you can just share a video of yourself, which is far more interesting than in information update in an email.
And if you want to get a little bit fancier.
Another piece of software that we use a lot at Inventium, more so for information sharing externally is software called Teller. So I think the URL is Teller TV that I'll link to all these in the show notes, and Teller is just it's a little bit more fancy, it looks
a little bit more sleek. I personally use Teller for a lot of client communication, Like if I'm putting together a sales proposal for a client, I will put together the written document or proposal, and then I will almost always, i'd say ninety five percent of the time put together an accompanying TeleVideo or essentially I'm presenting the information that I'm sharing. It's to make it a little bit more engaging, because no one needs more things to read, and that
is what we do. So by dramatically reducing meetings, and I'm even I'm just going to pop into my calendar now and just see how many internal meetings do I have. Look. Really, all that looks like this week, and this is pretty typical, is that we will have an all staff meeting on a Monday, and I will have one on ones with all of my team spread across the week, depending on what they're doing is looking like and that is pretty much it. Everything else is asynchronous. Okay, let's move on
to the next question. Linda, I feel busy all day, but at the end of the week, I haven't moved anything important forward. What is going on? Well, it sounds like what is happening, Linda, is that your week is really really reactive. You are responding to what is coming through in your inbox, what coworkers or your manager is asking you to do, and you're perhaps not giving yourself the time to.
Proactively step back and think, hmm, what.
Is actually the best use of my time today or this morning, or you know, at any given point during the week. So something that I use, and it's something that we teach in some of our programs that invent him, is what we call the LIPS strategy. So this stands for L is for list or l and a little i P is for prioritize S is for schedule. So how this works is that at the end of every workday, you list out what the three most important things that
I need to get done tomorrow. Then you prioritize those three what is the most important through to the least important. Then schedule them in your diary, I mean time box them. So book an appointment with yourself, a meeting with yourself to get the thing done based on how much time you think it will take. And it is a very very simple strategy, but we have clients get amazing results and it just helps them make sure that by the end of the week you have actually achieved things that
align with your goals. Something else I do is I a couple of experiments. I guess this is sort of new stuff that I've been mucking around with. At the moment, I've got a bunch of analogue index cards at my desk, and I will sometimes when I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed, like I've got many many things that are going on in my brain and I'm like, how am I going to fit all these in? Is? I will write each
time gone an index card. I've then got a whiteboard in my office that's got a canband board, so I'm looking at it now.
So it's got a.
To do column, a doing column, a waiting column, like if I'm waiting on feedback, for example, and then done. And I've also got two rows. I've got it this week row, and I've got a future row. And once I've written all my tasks and unpacked everything in my head onto the index cards, I'll map those index cards onto my canband board and I try to in the doing column never to have more than three cards in the doing column at the one time. So that is really working for me, just to get a lot of
the mental load and stress out of my head. Okay from Brennan. Everyone keeps saying AI will save us time, but most people I know feel busier.
What is going wrong?
That is a great question. I think there are a few things that I see going wrong, certainly with the people that I speak to and the organizations that I that I talk to about this. So one thing where I think people get really wrong is, you know a lot of organizations at this stage are starting to put staff through training or maybe you're an individual, an entrepreneur, freelancer,
and you know, perhaps you've done a course online. Hopefully you've done one of Inventim's courses because they get great results. But you know, perhaps you've watched some LinkedIn learning or some YouTube or you know whatever, and most courses focus on literacy, like here are the features, here are the buttons to press. Here are like some basic ways that you can use AI. And that's good, that is super important. That is the that is absolutely the first and right step.
But where a lot of organizations I see falling down is that they don't move to the next step, which
is leaverage. So it's one thing, for example, to know how to create a GPT or an agent, but it's another to actually go, Okay, how do I unpack the different workflows in my day or the different tasks that are really repetitive, and how then do I apply what I know about AI, because I've got AI literacy to actually leave reage AI and help me automate or certainly make more efficient this particular workflow.
That I do every week or every day. So that's where I see a really big gap.
And what I recommend if you can relate to that is just start with one use case, a one workflow in your life. Like, for example, one workflow that myself and Jam, my assistant have is for the show notes for a podcast.
Isn't an interview like.
What you were listening to now, is that we took the time to develop a skill in Claude that is trained on how to write great show notes based on the transcript of an episode. Will then work with Claude to do that. And you know, typically show notes used to take maybe ten to fifteen minutes to write, and now you know, we can get a really great first draft in thirty seconds and it probably takes you know, all of three minutes of a human edit going through correcting.
A few things.
And you know, and that is a twice weekly task that has to happen because how I work obviously comes out twice a week. So that's a really small example. There are certainly ones that save me a lot more time that I do every week or sometimes every day. So one other thing, actually, I would say on that question Brennan is think about like, you know, because you're saying that I will save us time, but everyone feels
really busy. Is that for the vast majority of people certainly the ones that we have surveyed Inventium and that we've spoken to, the time saved is just filled with more work, doing more work, and what you need to be really deliberate about, and certainly if you're a leader at an organization, you need to overtly say what are your expectations? Like is your expectation that with all the
time that AI is saving us? Although that is not everyone's experience that it is saving people time, but assuming it is, where do you want people to channel that new time? Because most people channeling it to doing more work and that is leading to absolute brain fry, which is something that I will be covering in an upcoming episode,
So that is not great. Ideally, some of that time saved should be put towards just having more balance in your life, particularly if you are working very long hours, you know, more than say a forty hour week, as a lot of us do. Some of that time should be spent on actually getting time for you to recuperate, rejuvenate and rock up next day feeling full of energy. Okay, next question is from Tammy. I know well being is important, but I always sacrifice it when work gets busy.
How do you protect your.
Energy without falling behind. Okay, I love this question, Tammy, because for the last year and a half I have been immersed in the world of energy and energy management.
So there's so much that I could say here.
And obviously, my new book, The Energy Game is coming out in July. July seven is the date, and a couple of things I think are really important here. So firstly, you can't time manage your way out of exhaustion, like if you are exhausted, but you're thinking that like Trello boards or you know, Cambin boards like I've described, and just good prioritization is gonna help you get more energy and you know, manage your way out of chronic depletion.
Then you are hitting yourself. I have tried that strategy. I certainly tried it for most of twenty twenty four and it failed spectacularly. So you need to manage your energy overthinking about managing your time.
That is the first thing.
The second thing I would say, it's so much more, but I'll just keep it too, is think about your energy not just as this big blanket thing like oh I'm tired, I've got no energy. Instead, think about it in three different buckets because there's three types of ways that we can think about the different kinds of energy that we have. We've got our physical energy, so what are we feeling in our body? We have got our cognitive energy or our mental energy, so how sharp are
we feeling or are we feeling really brain foggy. And there's our emotional energy, so are we feeling, you know, happy and full of beans and super resilient, or are we crying at the drop of a hat, which is a sign that your emotional bucket is running very low. So once you start to think about your energy in these three buckets, and I do recommend tracking each of those in the energy game, I refer to them as
energy accounts. So actually tracking like what does the balance feel like in those three energy accounts, you then can start to hone in on strategies that are going to improve that specific account, like you would use a really different strategy to improve your physical energy versus your mental energy or your emotional energy.
So that is all I'll say on that for now.
Hopefully that helps. We are going to take a short break, but don't go away because coming up after the break, I have more interesting questions.
And I'm going to answer. I'm going to be.
Answering the question of what's the biggest productivity mistake you see smart people making and also on the topic of mistakes, what's the biggest mistake companies are making when introducing AI. We're also going to talk about how to switch off after a really stressful work day and how do you handle days when your motivation is completely gone? Okay, keeping on the theme of energy question from Ruth, my company offers a lot of well being initiatives, but people are
still burnt out. What actually makes a difference, Well, Ruth, I would say absolutely seeing energy management trump's time management. I mean that is just an absolute truth. I do think that what happens with a lot of wellbeing initiatives, like if you, I don't know, you've been given a subscription to a meditation app or maybe you've got some lunchtime yoga, is that often the problem is systemic. You know, it might come from leaders that have you know, maybe
unrealistic expectations of the work that can get done. It maybe comes from problematic cultural norms where people, you know, dis the laws. In Australia, people still always feel the
need to respond to messages at all hours. You know, a problem that I see some companies making is going, well, We're going to have some you know, productivity training, you know, which is great, like people will absolutely be able to do their work in less time, but also make sure that you are addressing those systemic issues of you know, often what is the case is workload issues, and of course AI complicates things more because we are simply expected to do more work when we use AI. Okay, next
question is from Alana. How to high performers stop themselves from over committing is a very good question. That is also something I've thought about a lot when writing The Energy Game. Again, there's many different tools that I could give you here, I will say one that I find particularly useful for decision making because ultimately, you know, everything that you commit to is a decision. And here's the thing. I call it takeaway seven. I can't remember where I
first heard it, but it's very very useful. Where if you are being asked to commit to a new project, or do you want to be involved in this thing, or do you want to I don't know, donate your time to you know, this committee or whatever the case is, rate that decision in terms of how excited you're feeling about that decision out of ten, Like, is this opportunity a nine out of ten? Is it a six out
of ten? Is it an eight out of ten? And take away seven involves taking away the option of seven as an answer, because often you know, like seven is just kind of a lukewarm yes, if something is a seven out of ten, you're like, yeah, I think so maybe, But certainly, like in net promoter score research, seven is passive, So you should not be committing to things that are
only a seven out of ten. So what I want you to do the next time you've got a decision to make, like this is take away seven as an option, right, because if something's an eight out of ten, that's sounding pretty positive, it's something is a six out of ten that is sounding not that good. I'm certainly not going to be committing to opportunities that are a six out of ten. And if you take away seven out of ten as an option, it forces you into going yeah, nah or yeah, I think.
I think that's a good opportunity.
So try taking away seven. Okay from Anita, what's the biggest productivity mistake you see smart people making? And I mean, look, this is the I A would say the biggest productivity mistake I see most people making is just constant context switching. And this is worse with AI because when you're asking AI to do a task, it is taking time to think, particularly if you've got one of the thinking models that you're using, it takes more time than the models that
are not thinking things through in as much detail. So what typically happens, and what I observe people doing is that they will they will old tab to another screen or another tab in their browser. And like, the context switching has just gotten a whole lot worse, like it used to be bad, where we'll you know, maybe be working on writing a report and then we'll feel a bit stuck, and then we'll go into our inbox and then we'll remember, hang on, I've got this reporter right,
and then we'll go back to the report. But now we're also, you know, we've got AI in the picture and we're asking AI to do the thing, but it's not doing it instantly. So I'm like, ah, might just maybe I'll open up another tab with chat chapute and ask it something else. While I'm waiting for the first response to do its thing or you know or copilot depending on what you're using.
And this is.
Messing with your brain massively. Certainly, we know from research into multitasking versus monotasking, when we multitask or context switch our way through a day, things take about forty percent longer to do. So that is absolutely the biggest mistake I see people making.
And you know, I also think that people don't.
Do enough to really design their work environment to avoid having to use willpower to stay focused. So, for example, a really easy hack to try today is don't have your mobile phone within arm's reach, which I know sounds crazy because for the majority of most days our phone is within arm's reach. But if it is not, just it's a physical barrier in the way for you checking your phone or being distracted by your phone. So that's
just one little hack to try it today. Okay, what do you do to switch off your brain after a stressful work day? That comes from Robin? Okay, so one thing I found that works really well for me. So at Inventum are a remote first organization, which means we do not we do not have an office, although we are a member of the Commons, which is a wonderful coworking space, or that they've got many spaces, which I
highly recommend. But we all work from home and it can be really hard to have boundaries and stop work at the end of the day. So the thing that I found works best for me very very simple. I leave my laptop in my home office. And yes, I'm like fortunate enough to have a separate room that is my office and recording studio where I'm sitting right now, but if I leave my laptop there, I find that it's so much easier to switch my brain off. So
I don't know what the equivalent is for you. And you know, look, if you're like most people, you do spend some days working from home. But I do find just having that physical distance and leaving my work device, which is my laptop, in a room that is separate from where I'm going to relax, that is by far
the best hack that I've found. I also think that having planned activities in the evening is also great, because a lot of us, at the end of the workday, the instinct is just to collapse after you know, eating dinner.
Maybe you know we're a parent and we're.
Putting kids to bed and all that sort of stuff and then just like you, just collapse in front of Netflix. That is pretty common, but I find a little hack around that. It is very simple. It's just planning activities. If I have got something planned in the diary, I am far more likely to switch my brain off in a you know, more fulfilling way than just collapsing in
front of the couch. Or it might even just be an intention, like you know, my husband and I might set the intention that, Okay, after dinner tonight, we're actually going to play a board game instead of just you know, watching TV. So intentions and planned activities very very helpful, highly recommend. Okay, two more questions, firstly from Marissa, how do you handle days when your motivation is completely gone? That is a great question. I've certainly had many of
those days. And some research that I find very very helpful. Here is research into the impact of taking a whole pass.
So a hall pass is like a get out of jail free card.
I feel like it maybe gets used mostly in relation to people in marriages being able to take a whole pass when they want to have a night of freedom, but it's really useful when it comes to new habits. So when you you know, say with work, you're trying to have like really productive days every single day, they can sometimes be unrealistic. And then if you don't have a productive day or your motivations low, you can just
beat yourself up and just feel really crap. Hall past research suggests that if you deliberately give yourself one or two Hall passes a week to just go, you know, today, I'm just not going to be working at my best, and that's totally fine.
It The research suggests that.
We will come back far more motivated and far more likely to do the thing that we're trying to do and in this case, have a you know, productive, motivated day far more likely than if we.
Don't use that strategy.
Where where that research was born from was into habits into health and well being. So one of the studies, and I talk about this study in my last book, The Health Habit, where they had a group of people that had a daily walking goal, so a certain number of steps per day, and everyone was split into two groups.
One group they just had to hit their step count every day, which was a little bit more challenging than what they were currently doing, was about twenty percent more and the second group were given this whole past strategy where they said, look, two days out of every week for this month, it's totally fine if you don't hit your goal. What they found is that the whole pass group actually hit their step count goal more regularly, and
when they didn't hit it. On days that they didn't hit it, they were far more likely to hit it the following day because they weren't feeding themselves up, they weren't feeling bad. So I do love the whole past strategy when you're trying to do something every single day. Okay, final question today is from Ian what is the biggest mistake companies are making when introducing AI.
Ian.
There's so many, but here are a handful. So firstly, giving people the software without the training like that to me is just mental. You just encounter so many problems when you give people Copilot without telling them, Hey, this is how to get the most out of it, this is how it applies to your role, this is how you can think about your workflows and integrating AI into it to save you a whole lot of time and also augment your thinking. So that is a massive, massive problem.
When I think about the amount of money that people are spending on licenses. Alternatively, I also see a lot of very substandard training happening. There is a lot of cheap and free training in AI, and I know that this is ineffective because so often our phone rings an inventium or our email inbox bings with organizations that have gone for the cheap or free option, and it's either turned people off the AI or it just they've actually
seen no productivity gains, so invest in training people. And certainly, perhaps I'm biased, but Inventium dot ai is a good place to start. Another mistake, which I alluded to earlier, is just stopping at literacy like it's one thing to go. Here's how the AI works, Here's what AI is. Here are some base sequays to use it to rewrite your emails. Literacy is important, but you need to continue onto part two,
which is leaverage. How do you actually leaveage that knowledge about how AI works into the specific workflows that you do every day or every week. Super super important. Again, drop me a line if you need help with this.
And final mistake that I see companies and specifically leaders making is not communicating what are people expected to do with the time they are saving, which is really important because what people will either think and either things are problematic is that, well, we just need to do it.
We just need to fill that time with more work and more intense work because the AI is doing the more menial or repetitive or monotonous work, or they think that that time will be filled by them losing their job. So leaders need to proactively communicate what should you be
doing with the time you are saving? And yes, some of that will be around productivity, but a lot of it should be, you know, put into innovation and how can we get better and where are new opportunities we you know, we could move into as a company, or that you know I could do to improve my part
of the business. It should be learning, learning, new skills, learning and development, you know, it should be you know, certainly put into well, how do I think about actually redesigning my job now that AI is helping you know, potentially with a small to large amount of it. And finally, how can I use that time to actually live a balanced life and not be at work a crazy amount of hours every week? So that brings us to the
end of this ask Me Anything episode. I hope that you have gained one or two or maybe more useful little techniques or ideas that you can put into practice today or maybe take back to your workplace. As always, dropped me a note with any questions that you have for the next Ask Me Anything episode. I tend to record them about once a quarter. And there is also a link if you want to be super awesome and
create an audio question where, which is really simple. You just pop on the site that is in the show notes and you can record a question for me. That is it for today and I will see you next time. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded.
On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of the Cool and Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber for doing the sound mix.