You've got ten minutes between now and your next meeting. You probably can't achieve anything with that time, so you may as well scroll through your social media or do a bit of online shopping. But stop right there, because this short window of time is actually a great opportunity for a micro habit. Most people think that if it's small, it's not worth doing. But Holly Ransom has built an enormous career by intentionally squeezing every second out of her day.
Give Holly ten minutes and she is going to do an energy audit and fill those ten minutes with something productive. And she needs to because for Holly, no two weeks
look the same. As a writer, fulbright scholar, and CEO, Holly has delivered a peace charter to the Dalai Lama was Sir Richard Branson's nominee for Wired Magazine's Smart List of Future Game Changes to Watch, and she was also awarded the US Embassy's Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Leadership Excellence in twenty nineteen, and Holly was also the co chair
of the g twenty Youth Summit in twenty fourteen. Is the youngest director to have been appointed to an AFL Club and was also personally requested by Barack Obama to interview him on stage back in twenty eighteen. She's pretty impressive. So how does Holly use microhabits as a secret weapon, and how has she attracted some of the world's most successful people like Richard Branson to be her mentor? And how does Holly implement phone free Fridays. My name is
doctor Amantha Imbat. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventim. And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. So let's start by hearing about how Holly goes about setting goals for herself.
Oh.
I love it, love when anyone's at the point of thinking about goals. I firstly am so excited anytime anyone talks about it because I think it's such a powerful tool to be able to get whatever it is that we're seeking to try and achieve. And for me, normally I go about an end of year goal setting process, so I'll often spend some time at the end of
the year, which is nice and reflective. Some people do it at the ends of financial years as well, but there's just to reflect on whatever period I've been working to so I'm typically doing a year, and I'll think about what were the highs, what were the lows, what were the things I learned, what are the things, if anything, I'd like to change moving forward, And so that's often I think that reflection is a really important part of the goal setting piece, because if we don't do that,
it's really hard to get clear on or to have goals grounded in some sense of the context of what's just been. So after I've done that, I'll often draft up goals and I typically try to do them in a couple of different facets of my life, so I'm not just thinking about goals professionally. I think about goals in the context ofationships, my health, and fitness, trying to be really well rounded. And that's something that I certainly didn't do as well ten years ago as I've come
to learn the importance of certainly nowadays. And then after I've kind of set those goals and I typically one of the things I definitely used to do is write a lot of goals. I'd be one of those people that would have like a spreadsheet. It's so embarrassing. I sort of cring reflecting back on it even as I tell you this story, and I've come to understand the power of having a few that you focus on, and typically you know a handful of those stretch goals, and
then ones that are more kind of within sight. So I'll often have one or two things that are really pine the sky I'm aiming for if I managed to shoot the lights out that might come true, and then things that I guess conceivable but are still a really great stretch result within things that I'm already working on, no I'm committed to, So that's my process. I then sit and reflect on them, so I typically kind of put them somewhere I see them, And that's one of
the biggest things I'd stressed goal setting. It's not just the power of thinking a goal. It's taking it a step further and writing it down. It's then taking it a step further than that and putting it somewhere you see them every day. And then I think the fourth step that even cements that with more power is sharing it with people that you love and that you care about you in order that they can help you stay
accountable for them. So that framework that we wrap around our goals is actually I think one of the most important parts of making sure goals work for us.
I'd love to hear an example of maybe one of your career goals for this year that we're in twenty twenty one, which we all thought would be such a smooth sailing year with COVID behind us, but no such luck. Like, what's an example of a goal that you set this year? And I'd love to know how that came to be a goal? Like, how did you I even identify that that was something that mattered to you?
Yeah, great question.
So one of the things I'm working at the moment, I've just launched my first book, The Leading Edge, and that book is really regarding a new approach, a new language, a new set of examples on leadership. So it's all about wanting to disrupt the way that we talk about and teach leadership and doing so.
Through sharing these diverse stories.
And case studies and the toolkit of leaders who are out there being the change that they want to see in the world. And I think one of the things that's emerged from not only the process of writing that book, but then being in conversation with people at yourself menthor and others who are passionate about, you know, that development
getting the best out of ourselves individually and collectively. Is that there's support structures that we need to build around that, because it's not just about the ideas, it's how do
we create the environments that support the implementation. And so for me, you know, a new kind of professional goal that's come out of that, and I'm still in the process of kind of calibrating and seeking mentors and kind of advice on is what can I do now that that book is launched, that those ideas are out in the world, what's kind of the business model and the support structures that I can help build for people that can assist with bringing these ideas to life and that
can help us democratize access to leadership development. That's what I'm really passionate about. So that's a new goal at the moment that I'm working on that emerged effectively out of having more questions and observations at the end of the process of actually writing the book.
And do you quantify your goals, like is there a target attached to what you've just described?
There not at the moment.
I mean, sometimes I find targets are really helpful. This is more embryonic at the moment in terms of the way that that's formulating up. I think maybe it's at the moment it's a purpose that's becoming a goal as opposed to being something that I've got a really concrete sense of how to quantify.
And I think that's a really important point.
Like when we get taught smart goals at school, we know that it needs to be specific and measurable and attainable and all that stuff, and often that comes with being able to quantify something. Sometimes it's better to have a landing target, so like a rough area that we're aiming for, as opposed to you know, a yes, no light switch where if we either make the goal or we don't make the goal. So sometimes binary goals can
be a little bit all or nothing. Doesn't mean you don't shoot for them, but it might means you want to have some other ones that you know, there's a you know, that whole notion of if you shoot for the moon, even if you land amongst the stars, that's a great outcome. So for me, that will be something I might quantify up in time and at the moment, like for example, with the book you know, for me,
the goal was writing the book. It was not then about selling X number of copies, because I'm a big believer in focusing your goals on what you can control, and in that instance, I can control writing the best possible book. I can doing as much work to finesse it, to ensure that it's got really rich stories, it's written in a compelling way, you know, putting it through the lens and perspective of friends and colleagues who read it
to offer their feedback and taking that on board. And then once it's down in the world, I cannot control how the world receives it. So I've done my best on writing the product, and the goal was getting out the best possible book can on hard I could release, and now the world will do what the world wants with it.
I think that's really interesting and that's quite helpful for me. I'm midway through, maybe a little bit over midway through or first draft of a book that's been released in July next year, and yeah, and I'm trying to think about the next twelve months and certainly finish the book and submit that on time.
Well, they feel like huge goals, don't they Like, even in of itself.
I know, absolutely, But then it's interesting because I was thinking ahead to mid next year and going, well, what's my goal like when it comes to selling the book and promoting the book through my publisher? And it's interesting, So how have you then thought about that in terms of going, Okay, well, this is in my control. This is not in my control. But you obviously want the book to have impact, otherwise you wouldn't have written it. So how do you then conceptualize goals around that.
One of my goals has been about how do I get like I'm quite focused now on how do I get the community that is sort of already because these juggernauts that come with publishing books and you'll know this all too well, but it's sort of It does a lot of the I guess marketing for you, and I think to some degree people then see that and they self identify as that being a sort of content or topic that they want to engage with or they don't. And you hope that to be as broad a field
as it possibly can be. But I think my goal is then around how do I try and meet those people who are finding the material and wanting to engage and help them take the ideas forward. So one of the things that we've shared what the day of the book released is we're turning the book into an interactive challenge that people who are reading it can sign up
to start on September one. And so a lot of my work at the moment is actually going into taking the content and building it into a model where people can start to experiment and play with the ideas. And so my goal is, now, can I get a small percentage of that population who are reading the book to on the journey of trying to implement the book. And so that's where my thinking is moved to and my
focus area is moved to. And I think the other one is just I mean, and it sounds trite to say it, but I'm sure you'll feel this about your material too.
Every time you get an email or a.
Bit of feedback, and I've been lucky in the handful of days that's been out for a couple of people who have already generously taken the time to do this. Every time you get an email or a note from someone saying, oh my gosh, this really impacted me, or I just wanted to tell you how much reading this particular chapter has really given me ideas that have challenged the way I'm thinking about the way I'm leading, or the business I'm running, or whatever it is. It truly
emotionally impacts you. And that is why you want this book out in the world, and the hope that one person is able to further empower what they're doing by virtue of something that you've shared and written about. So the goal for me is is hoping it to find those people, but then also helping, i think, mobilize the learning that's in the book into this kind of active community and supporting them on their learning journey because they're the people that are hungry to go and do the work.
They're buying the book, they're resonating with the ideas, and that's where my goals will focus at the moment.
I like that way of framing it, and I'm curious, like the with the emails that you receive from people that your work is having an impact on, Like, I can definitely relate to that, and I get a lot of feedback, particularly from listeners of the podcast, but I feel like I'm very quick to just go, oh, that's so lovely, archive, Like what do you do with those notes, Do you do anything with them, or sit and reflect on them for a while? What's your approach.
It's an interesting comment to think about more broadly, like in terms of just how we take stock of those moments, because I think, particularly in the busyness of the world as it is right now, it's really easy to your point there, to kind of not come up for air
and just keep powering through. I think they always impact me, like in the moment of reading, particularly those that are really specific or where the nature of what someone's written is obviously really heartfelt and really considered, not just hey, great read or.
Something like that.
Don't get me wrong, that's so wonderful to hear too, But I think particularly those where someone has really engaged or it's very clear that an idea or a story has really profoundly had an impact or shaped them, and that's very clear in the way they write the note.
I find them particularly powerful, and you know, putting them in that folder that is kind of not only something that you can go back to as a reminder, but also in those moments where you know it all gets a bit hard, or you're feeling like maybe there's more naysayers than there are supporters.
You know, we all have those moments right.
Where we're challenged or feeling overwhelmed or not quite sure how it's all going to come together next.
I think I use them in those moments. I'm a words person.
So one of the things we talk about in the book is this concept of love languages, and so I am one of those people where of the five definitely words mean the most to me of anything. So it
is really significant to me just in general sense. I know that's not true for everyone who are maybe more about acts of service or gifts or other love languages, but so it does definitely have an impact, and I think they are something I find myself coming back to as a as a way of taking stock and sort of I guess already energizing in those moments where I'm feeling a little bit flatter, a little bit challenged.
So do you file those notes somewhere so you can dip into Yeah you do? Hey, right, that's super cool. It reminds me. I had Professor Scott Sunshine on the show quite a while ago. He co wrote Joy at Work with Murray Kondo, the person that helped many people clean out their homes. Yes, and he talked about having a spark joy folder literally on his desktop, so he would you know, put like, you know, positive feedback from like journal papers that have been reviewed, you know, nice
feedback from students, those sorts of things. So it would be this folder and it would be ever changing. He'd updated quite regularly that he would just go to when he wanted to feel a little bit of joy in his life, like, Yeah, what do you do with this fold? I see it's a digital folder.
Or no.
It's interesting because I mean I'm saying this and I should have you know, said it probably in answer to your first question, but it's probably that example that just made me think about it. You know, I'm sitting talking to you from my office and I've got a little window in my office and along the window so is a row of cards from really important people in my life that have, you know, messages of support and encouragement that mean a lot to me. And every time I
look at the card, I know who it's from. And you know, there's probably a couple times a week where I end up inadvertently reading one or two of them more or intentionally going and picking it up and on my desk looking at me every day is a letter from my partner that just means the world to me. And so that's something that I read every day in terms of taking stock and reminding me why I do
what I do. So they're physical in the way that they impact my environment as much as they are you know in that folder in my email or you know, on the desktop for that matter, in that I can go back to them as a broader archive as well.
So it's a little bit of both.
I actually hadn't thought about the physical piece, but I'm looking around my office going, oh, I've set it up that way too.
That is that is super cool. That's so funny. It's actually it's the opposite of something I did many years ago when I was I was like twenty two or twenty three, and I was in the middle of my PhD and procrastinating.
I love how casually you just roll that out twenty two twenty three doing my PhD.
I that's a humble brag, isn't it. My god bet, it's just because like I was, you know, not socially cool enough to take a gap year and go traveling. I was just a study nerd. But I was also like I was working as a musician at the time and trying to get a record deal as a really good way to procrastinate from writing a you know, eighty
thousand word thesis. And so I remember I had this goal where I wrote to a bunch of record labels and sent off my demo, and I had this goal that I would want to cover this particular wall in my bedroom in rejection letters before I could even hope to get an acceptance of a record deal. So kind of the opposite, like a rejection wall, like.
Almost a red rad to the bull, though, like in the sense of sort of you know, keeping stock of like everyone like that's a little you know, you read stories and you know, obviously the famous one is JK Rowling, but I was reading one about the I think it was the producer or the writer who wrote the TV show Pose, which has just finished four seasons, where it
took one hundred and twenty nine no's to get it. Yes, for anyone to read the screenplay and think about making it, so I can see the motivational factor of like if I just keep at it, and there's somebody to be said for that, right, Like that whole notion that ninety percent of life is just showing up, like if you just keep at it consistently, and if that's a motivational force, which I think for a lot of people it is, that idea of I'm going to prove you wrong. We'll
see how you feel when I one day get the yes. Yeah, I see the power of that for sure.
But yeah, I also see the power of actually putting positive things around as well. Anyway, Now I know that mentors. You've mentioned mentors, and I know that they have played such a pivotal role in your life and your career. Yeah, and I want to know, like, how do you start those mentor relationships? How have they started for you?
I always feel like this topic needs a disclaimer, right because when we use the word mentor, like I feel like so many people have this baggage associated with that word because it either like it immediately takes us to a really formal notion of what a mentor is, or we all remember that one time, at some point in our life, often in a company where we took our first job or something we got matched in that you know, internal mentoring program and someone just jammed you together with
someone else and like that was meant to work and I think that's why we've often got to reclaim what mentoring is and kind of stuper back and go just don't even think about it like that, or you'll probably never start. But you're right when it comes to kind of the biggest contributions to my growth and development, like absolutely, you know, people who've been willing to give up their time and share from their life lessons have been like
just absolutely fundamental to that. So for me, it always starts from a place of seeking learning, not seeking mentoring, which I think is helpful because it lowers the barrier to entry and it takes some of the pressure off both sides. All you're asking for originally is half an hour or maybe an hour of someone's time, and I think it's so important that you know why you're asking for it and that you can articulate that to someone.
I've got people that I would love to meet, but I still don't have questions worthy of their time, and I won't ask for their time until I've got good enough questions. So I think that's really important for people listening, Like don't go scatter gun, don't just reach out to everyone and anyone saying hey, i'd love you to be my mentor think about what am I working on, you know, relative to what we were talking about earlier.
What are my goals?
What are the gaps maybe in the part of the how I'm going to achieve my goals that I still don't understand. Who can I go and talk to that might be able to help me knit this plan together? Or maybe that I deeply admire because they've gone and done what I kind of want to do, And maybe if I could sit down and learn from them about how they did it, I could help, you know, create the plan for how I go about making my idea or my impact happen as well.
So go and seek that learning.
And it's in that conversation if you've got the right dynamic that I think there's the opportunity to extend it. And what I mean by that is you kind of leave those conversations. You go, oh my gosh, I barely scratch the surface with this person, Like I have ninety more questions I want to ask them. I can't believe
the time has passed already. And you feel this level of connection where they're not patronizing you, there's an openness to sharing, so they're prepared to be quite candid and honest where you turn around and go geez, I'd really get benefit out of a longer or an ongoing conversation
with this person. And I think in that moment, there's the opportunity to go, hey, I would it be possible if after I've taken all the advice that you've given me today and applied it, if I circle back to you with some more question or if I came back and asked for a bit more.
Advice or help. So that would be the way I'd approach it.
To think about learning first and then make sure you've got the right dynamic. And it's also very okay if someone says no. You don't want someone saying yes that then doesn't have the time to be available for you when you need it. So don't be worried about that. You will find those people, but start by focusing on frequently having learning conversations.
Hello there. We will be back very soon with Holly hearing about how she makes that initial request for a conversation really stand out given that she's reaching out to incredibly busy and high profile people, and we'll also hear about why and how Holly does energy audits of herself. Now, if you're enjoying how I work, you might enjoy something else that I do. So every two weeks, I send, write, and send a newsletter about three things that I'm loving.
So they might be gadgets and software or pieces of research that I've come across, or other things that I'm really loving. So if you would like to receive that in your inbox every couple of weeks, go to howiwork dot co. That's how I work dot co and pop your email in and you'll get something in your inbox shortly. I want to know, though, like, how do you make
that initial kind of request standout? Because I imagine that, like you're someone that's probably inundated with people approaching you to be a mentor, So how do you think about it in the reverse when you're reaching out to someone to make them kind of take notice?
I guess there's two things.
I mean, I definitely do a lot of reach outs where I don't know people, and so it's a cold reach out, but it always helps if someone can make the reach out for you. So if you know someone, and this is where tools like LinkedIn are really handy, and you can work out how your a couple of degrees removed from someone. If someone can make that introduction for you, then it does become a lot easier to
at least open a conversation up with that person. I think the second thing I'm always conscious of is I'm very prepared to wait. I know a lot of the people that I'm reaching out to have extraordinarily busy schedules, and so I'm more than happy to make a time that is six months from now, or to come back in a few months after they've finished a busy work period or writing period or a project's finished and say, hey, just me again, wondering if you might have time available now.
So I also think it's really important to be respectful of the diary of the person that you're reaching out to, and the hustle is absolutely on you to do it politely and appropriately, but there's no expectation of them doing the follow up. You need to be the one that, if you're serious about it, you know you won't drop off the radar. In three months, you'll be back saying hey,
you know, I hope you don't mind me. Just wanted to see how you're going and whether there's an opportunity to get something in the diary in the next month.
Now, micro breaks and micro habits, I know this is something that you think about. Can you talk to me first to about micro breaks, what you're doing there to manage your energy during the day.
Yeah, I've been obsessed for a long time with this idea.
Of managing energy, not managing time.
And at a basic level, I think that starts for people with the idea of doing an energy audit and actually seeing, you know, in a day to day, in a week to week, what is it that energizes you, what is it that trains you, And also just being conscious of your body's natural rhythm. Some of us are naturally mourning people, other of us are absolutely night ours. And then thinking about how you match activity to energy.
So you want to be doing your creative activities or things that really require the best of you at times where you're high energy, you want to be thinking about things that don't require that much energy, maybe getting through all those rapid replies to emails and putting that at points of the day where you don't necessarily have as
much energy because you probably don't need as much. And then on top of that, there's sort of this really encouraging area of science that's sort of saying we have actually the found ability through very small interventions to make
massive changes to our energy. And so one of the people I interview my book, doctor Jamie King, is one of the pioneers of this space in Australia really looking at because I think sometimes the reason we don't manage energy, or the reason it's sometimes hard for us to think about this, is we always think it has to be big to be significant. If I can't go to the gym for an hour, it's not worth doing. If I can't meditate for twenty minutes and get zen, it's not
worth doing. Whereas a lot of the science now is saying, actually, you can stop and you can take ten proper deep breaths and you will see a physiological change. You can get up and you can go for a walk, even just around the floor of the building, go around the block of the house, and you will see a physiological change. You can jump up and out on the spot, you know,
and do jumping jacks and you'll see a change. So for me, some of the things I've been starting to factor into my days is just how do I take some smaller breaks like that. So I absolutely get up multiple times a day and go for a walk around the block and I'll do when I feel myself hitting an energy low, and it's an intervention that takes all of five minutes and I come back more energized and ready to go.
Can you talk about, like how do you do an energy audit, and like what are some other changes that you've made to like how you structure your day and when you do certain tasks.
An energy audit for me is as simple as get a notebook and have a page where you just write some bullet points of things, being curious about your energy and what you observe.
So I know.
Naturally I'm a really very much high energy in the morning. I absolutely hit a wall in the kind of mid to late afternoon. I'm just a no go between about like three thirty and five or three and five, like it's a really dead zone for me, and then I have this incredible burst of energy and kind of the mid evening again as well. And so it's changed the way that I think about structuring my days because, for example, I try to make sure I never get up and
get straight on an email. And that was something I learned from you know Stephen Covey seven Habits of highly effective people. You know that learning that difference between urgent and important and making sure that the urgent doesn't take the place of the important. So when I get up and I've got energy to go, I want to be putting into things that are important. They're going to be stuff that are to do with my goals, that are going to help me step towards things that really matter
to me. They're things that I've got to put a lot of thought into. Maybe it's a proposal for a new idea. Maybe it's thinking through how I could structure up a collaboration with someone I'm really excited about working with. But it's not going to be sitting through my emails, or it's not going to be choosing to audit my expenses.
Or something like that.
You know, they're going to be things I know I have to do them absolutely, but I'm going to try and do them at points in the day where I've got a natural kind of energy low, or I'm not needing as much of kind of the energy I bring to bear on other topics or need to bring to bear.
On other topics.
I think the other thing I've noticed is, you know, and this is true of what we've learned for some time about attention spans and stuff like that. Like I do see that I'm at the end of ninety minutes often needing just a little bit of a perk up and a reboot. So that's where I've started inserting these micro brakes, whether it is as simple as I'm going to do ten jump squads, like literally in the room I'm still in, just to re energize and shake my
body awake. Sometimes if it's been a particularly you know, intense like cerebral meeting, or I'm just feeling a little bit drained mentally, I'll sit there and I'll do ten deep breaths, you know where one of those Apple watches where it can do them for you, or it can guide you through them in terms of the ease of doing that. So just finding those little ways of intervening in those moments, because all of us have got things in the day.
That do drainers. We can't avoid any of that.
It's about how we strategize and put these things around that so that we can re energize ourselves and come out of those loves and we don't need red bulls, and you know, the three point thirty eightis snacks and things like that to do it, because oftently, all we're doing there is is kind of numbing a sensation our body is trying to tell us and using kind of an artificial way of kind of pushing through it. So thinking about how to actually start to be the energy
for ourselves. It's just been a really profound way that I've shifted managing my day and week in the last six years probably, and I couldn't be more happy with the results, and I couldn't be a bigger believer in this idea.
Now when I think of you, Holly, I'm like, it's hard to imagine you having these low energy periods because I feel like you're such a high energy, high achieving person. But what do you do to switch off or relax? Do you have rituals or practices around that?
Yeah, definitely, And it's something I have historically. Like I say, this is something that I've learned in my more recent history,
so the last five or so years. It's definitely not something I was all that good add in my sort of early twenties, So it's been a learned habit and something I've come to understand that if you don't look after yourself and you don't really properly recharge that productive downtime where you're actually allowing yourself to restore, you're very hard to do anything at any timekind of intensity, for
any serious length of time. And I guess as well as a stats on what we see about burnout probably suggest a lot of us are struggling with the same thing. You know, For me switching off, I've become a lot better at it, and I think it's the great intervention of my partner.
We're really good about.
Not letting work blur into the evenings and really safeguarding our weekends, and I think that's been really good, the discipline and the accountability we give each other in that it doesn't mean every now and again something urgently pops up, sure, but on the whole weekends, a weekends weekends of a quality time there for friends, there for being active, there for getting out and being part of whether it's sport
or cultural events. We try and make sure that their time out so that when we start Monday again, we're really hitting the ground running with the energy that we
need for that week ahead. I think one of the other things we've been playing with this year that I've found really beneficial is phone free Friday nights, which sounds so silly, but that idea of the discipline of switching off from a week, putting the phone down at five o'clock and not turning it on till Saturday morning, and just that absence of notification, that ability to properly switch off because the work week isn't continuing to linger into
your Friday night and then you know, spill over into the weekend. I've just really enjoyed that complete disconnect from tech. You know, it's only for what it would it be, I guess eighteen hours or something like that we really turn.
It off for. But that's been fantastic.
So I encourage people to find little ways of putting tech breaks into because we've just found that to be really beneficial and you just realize how how connected.
You out of the thing the rest of the time.
So that ability to properly disconnect has been a great one.
That's nice thing you've got someone to keep you accountable. I like that idea, and like, what are you doing with tech? Like are you literally shutting it down and locking it away or how do you resist the temptation to just go oh, I really wouldn't mind just taking a quick chick of email or something like that.
Yeah, so I mean we' we'd allow ourselves to watch TV because that can be part of you know, Friday night zone out. But we don't use laptop or phones or anything like that. So for me, I just put it on airplayed mode, turn it off, and you know it, put it or put it on its charger in a different rooms. I put it downstairs in the house, disconnected from it. Honestly, it's one of those funny things too, I actually have found and it's a really interesting thing.
To be curious about yourself. For people who are up.
For trying this, I actually find it quite a relief. I'm quite happy to turn it off on a Friday night, so I don't ever feel this compulsion to go oh, I might want to check that. I think I'm like, oh, thank gosh, I get to I get the excuse almost or I have the discipline of having to put that away because I've made a commitment to myself and my
partner that's what we're doing. So it's an interesting one as well, because I think sometimes we don't actually realize how much of a great joy or just kind of freedom it is to be disconnected for a period of time. I mean, Matith, I know you've come for space, like you know, that whole community, and that intentional idea of you know, disconnecting in order to connect is really quite powerful,
and we don't often have space for it. I mean, how many of us sit in meetings during you know, the week where and now it's all happening on Zoom. But even on Zoom, you're watching people clearly writing emails while they're in a Zoom meeting, or they're on their phone texting, and they're not actually present in anything. We're so connected, we're pulled in every different way, and I don't think many of us have actually experienced for some time the joy that it is to be fully present,
because it's so hard. Our world is geared for us not to be now without our intentional discipline to do it another way.
So true, Gosh, I was on a Zoom call this morning with three other people, and it's just so frustrating and obvious when people are not focused on the meeting and they're doing something else. What do you do in those situations? Out of interest? Do you call people on it? Or like, what do you do?
It's interesting, Like one of the things I had not paid all that much attention to until I went back to school to do my masters two years ago, where there was a really big culture around setting group norms, was I hadn't actually thought about how important it is to set the norms.
So I guess the rules of the group.
Up front, because just because you know, when you start seeing that behavior, people aren't really sure necessarily where the line of acceptability is. And if you haven't actually clarified that it's not okay for people to sit on email or to be inattentive, or to turn the camera off when they want to go eat lunch or something like that, you know, it becomes really hard to create a sense of group culture. And you'd be so much better place
with your work to talk about this than me. But I think one of the really powerful things I've come to realize is certainly, you know, every time you shift context, and you know, in the instance of all of us being thrust online and being stuck in this virtual space, it's so important to create rules and also to explore what that looks like for people because if we're going to say okay, you can't be turning your camera off
to go and you know, get yourself lunch. It's so important that we understand that not everyone can sit through five hours on Zoom NonStop. So we've got to have rules about how long different bits of content go, or how regular we take little breaks so people can reenergize and go have a comfort break or whatever they need.
Now, speaking of settings, something that has always impressed me about you, Holly is just how kind of like effortless you are. It seems effortless when I see you at events talking to people having meaningful conversations, Like it just seems so confident and you know what to say, and I want to know, like what's going through your head? Like what do you feel you do differently from other people in those kind of event and conference sort of situations.
Well, thank you.
Firstly, that's very generous.
I don't know that I.
Do anything all that differently. I think I'm always interested when people come together and we get the good fortune to be at some really interesting events with different confidences and things that we speak at. It's such an incredible learning opportunity. You know, you're so often I feel this all the time, like so lucky to be in the room, be it virtual or in person, with people that just
have these really interesting areas of study and application. And I always, I think, just come from this disposition of curiosity, Like I'm always eager to understand what people are working on, why they pick the work that they do, And so I think I always just see it as like what a smaller is board, you know, I get this opportunity to go and connect and ask questions. So I think it comes from that framing. I think so much of life is about how we frame things to ourselves and
the story that we tell ourselves. And I always tell myself the story of what incredible opportunity to be curious and to learn, and that's the way that I try.
And approach those events.
And I think when you come from that disposition, I guess you know, your question was sort of talking about confidence, and I guess the only connection I can draw to that idea of confidence is because you're coming from a place of curiosity, You're not coming from a place of comparison.
I think it's interesting because I feel like so many people are inwardly focused in terms of their self talk at events and conferences and things like that, and worried about what people think. But I like what you've described in terms of it's very external or other focus, which I feel is a great way just to remove the nerves.
Yeah.
And I remember once when I did an improv class, the instructor said, nerves are selfish and I was like, Ooh, that's like a really hard to wrap your head around idea when you know, certainly at that point of my life, you know, got nervous quite a bit, or there are certainly a lot of environments I get nervous in. And his point was that when we are nervous, we're focused on ourselves, when we're actually focused on who we're delivering
for or who we're showing up for. And having tried and applied this thought quite actively for many years now, I can see what he means. When we're focused on who we're serving and who we're trying to show up for. Be therefore, it really does change the nervous piece. Like I've found that it is far less a part of my day, and when I do see myself getting nervous, I've in some way started to think about myself again.
I have a couple of other questions for you, Holly. Now I know that you are a voracious reader. I'd love to know, like, what have been in two or three books that have had the biggest influence on how you think about work and career working career?
Okay, I think definitely one I already mentioned Stephen Covey.
It's a classic, But Seven.
Habits is just a foundational book that I think everyone should read. I really have enjoyed from a leadership standpoint, there's an amazing she does the US presidents, but the way that she writes about them, I think she's the best sort of leadership biographer out there. Actually, there's maybe two of them. Walt Isaacson, who wrote a brilliant one on da Vinci that's worth reading, and then Doris Kerns Goodwin.
Her book on leadership where she chronicles the lives of four different presidents through four different periods, is brilliant and as a number of her individual ones.
So I think for those who want.
To kind of historical read on leadership and to think deeply about people like Lincoln and like, that's a really good one. The other one that I've really enjoyed and it's top of mind, probably because it's the one I read most recently. Is Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Really different to those books I've just described previously, but very interesting in its vulnerability, and she has such a powerful way with language. She is a kind of delicious turn of
phrase with the way she writes. It's such an easy read, but it's also just so about that idea of letting go of the shackles of what other people might tell you to be, want you to be, and that notion of really stepping out after yourself. And I think for anyone in particular who's listening that might be at a decision point or an inflection point in their life and think about what's next.
It's a really powerful book through her own personal.
Journey that provides some really interesting flodder for kind of personal reflection.
So that's probably a third.
Now my final question for you, Holly, for people that want to consume more of what you're doing and get their hands on a copy of The Leading Age, your new book, what is the best way for people to do that?
Well, yeah, thank you.
I mean you can get a copy of Leading Edge of probably booked Topi is your best bet. Or Amazon, or you can check out bookstores too, but certainly I imagine people listening this through a device, so that might be easiest. And then if you want to connect, I'd love to reach out on any social media platform. I'm on all of them, and also you can subscribe on my website Hollyransom dot com. We've got two newsletters we
send out twice a week. One Love Mondays, which is like a positive way of punctuating your Monday mornings, just a three minute shortshot read to help you energize for the week, and then Easy Tiger on a Friday to kind of change up the way that we use our weekends and think about what productive downtime can mean. So we'd love for you to sign up to those as well and be a part of the and ongoing conversation.
Amazing, Holly, I'm so glad we finally got to have this chat. You have not disappointed. You're just like so full of interesting ideas and energy. I personally got so much out of it, So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate everything that you're doing with this podcast and in your world to work too, and it was awesome to finally get to have this chat, and I look forward to connecting in person sometime soon.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got some useful stuff out of my chat with Holly. I know I definitely did. She's just such a powerhouse. Now, if you are not currently a subscriber to How I Work, you might want to hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this from, because next week I have Jamila Risby on the show, whose work I've been found of for a long time, and we're going to be talking about how you can become more resilient when times are tough.
How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Jenna Coder, and thank you to Martin Nimba, who does the audio mix for everything to do with How I Work and makes everything sound awesome. See you next time.