We all have rules that kind of govern how we spend our time, and some of this is internalized as a child or as a young adult. Maybe some of that serves you still there could be something that might serve you better.
Today we are diving into part two of my chat with New York Times best selling author Chris Gilibo. In this episode, Chris shares how to break free of the unnecessary subconscious rules that often waste your time and his trick to figuring out what is and isn't a valuable use of your time. Oh and by the way, if you missed part one of this chat, then you might want to check out your feed in How I Work and go listen to part one first.
Like, I was pretty good at the productivity game. At a certain point, I just realized, like, ultimately, I think I'm getting better at doing the wrong things. The way that my life is going to be disrupted is much more likely because I fail to take action. The far greater problem is my own resistance. The way that I address that is like.
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies.
For optimizing your date. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber what have you found, because I imagine you know, you've been doing lots of publicity for the book, which practices seem to have resonated with the most amount of people.
One that people really like. I have been doing a lot of events here in the States, have been in about ten cities so far. I'm doing a couple of stops in Canada in a couple of weeks, hopefully beyond North America as well at some point. One of the things people respond to a lot is this idea of the eighth day of the week. And so it's it's like imagining you have an extra day every week, and what does that look like? And how would you choose
to spend this day which is a recurring day. And so that's the big difference from thinking about like what is your ideal perfect day. That's kind of a classic like thought exercise, and it can be helpful, but it's also maybe there's some pressure involved with that. It's like my perfect day, like my one perfect day, you know, And if you think about what if I had an extra day that came around fifty two times a year, like how would I spend that? And so that's something
that's additive. You could like, there's a lot you could do if you had this extra time that came around every week. You could write a book, you could learn a language, you could learn all kinds of other skills. And so people have found that to be kind of interesting. As they think about like freeing up their time, they're also thinking about how would I choose to spend it, and so those two things can kind of work together. Well,
I'm sure there's some others. That's the first one that comes to mind.
Yeah, I liked a con't rid of the terminology used, but helping people to unpack what are the assumptions that they have around the time. I'm trying to remember the language that you used around that and really challenge those assumptions around oh we do this then, or this is how we spend our time at this point in time. Tell me more about that and help me with the remember the language that you use, because I really liked that thinking about what are the assumptions that I'm off for writing.
By for sure? Yeah, I think I was writing about time rules. Yes, this notion of like we all have rules that kind of govern how we spend our time, and some of this is internalized, like as a child or as a young adult. In some of our primary relationships, this is like how we spend our time, and this is how things work, and this is what time that meal times are at this time, you know, based on when you are a kid typically, and this is how long it's acceptable to go before you call someone back
or message them back. And you know, there are many others, but basically, like how we kind of go about our day and spend our time. Most of us have not actually thought about that very intentionally. It's not something that's ever really brought up about, like, Okay, you're living your life this way because this is what you learned, this
is what your parents did. Maybe some of that serves you still, but maybe you know, you're a different person, it's a different time, it's a different generation xxx, Like there could be something that might serve you better, So it's helpful to maybe consider, like what are the time rules that govern my life and what might be better, you know for me. And these can kind of coincide with, you know, other life hacks or other things that you do just to try to, you know, have a better life.
Like I'm looking at my phone for an hour before bed. Maybe I should try not doing that, you know, or you know, I have this belief that I we were talking about email, that I must respond to every person you know, the same day, or I must respond to them at all. Well maybe that's the case, but maybe maybe not, you know, there could be something else. So
I think it's very freeing. It can be very freeing for people once they understand that a lot of how they spend their time is governed by these kind of assumptions that are kind of baked in, and they can go and perhaps rewrite some of those or create something that serves them better.
What are some of your time rules or time assumptions that you have that you've crushed. You're questioned, crushed is a bit aggressive, Let's go questioned.
Questioned, I mean I like crush depending on the context. So I'm sure you've been familiar with this for a while, but I hadn't really known a lot about a lot of this research about the limited amount of cognitive attention that we have each day and it's only a few hours. And I've also found that shifting a little bit as I get older. I do feel like maybe this is this could be somewhat perception, but I do feel like I used to be able to process or focus a
lot more. And so whether that's my perception or reality, I do feel that focus is more limited for me than it used to be ten years or twenty years ago. And so whatever the case is, I need to be mindful of that. So this idea that we only have maybe three hours a day on average of actual cognitive attention, and it's just true, you know, for prolific people throughout history, and you know Mozart and Beethoven and all these artists and famous writers and everybody else, like they pretty much
got like three hours a day. And so I've tried to be really really careful about what does that time look like for me and how do I spend it? So I've tried to be careful. That's something I've tried to like think a little bit more about.
So how do you then, like protect those precious focus hours? I don't know, like, do you have new rules in place or ways that you think about your day that have helped served you.
I feel like more than protecting them from anybody else, I am the problem. Like it's me, I'm the problem. I feel like the way that my life is going to be disrupted is much more likely because I fail to take action, I fail to plan or actually like use that time. Well, you know, there's nobody else that's going to take that time away from me. It will only be taken away from me, you know, if I agree to do things in certain hours that I shouldn't do them or whatever. You know, Like, the far greater
problem is my own resistance. And so I think the way that I address that is, like, like I always say, the greatest productivity hack is to love what you do. I know that probably sounds very basic and reductive, but if you actually love what you do, it's going to be so much easier to get up and go and do that thing, versus, Oh, I have to do this thing. How can I psych myself up? How can I manufacture motivation to do this thing that I have to do?
And you know, it's theoretically possible to do that for a certain amount amount of time, But wouldn't it be so much better to like craft a life or craft at least some projects some parts of our life around those things that we're really excited about, And then you know, you feel a lot less resistance to you know, diving into them and working and they're still resistance. There's still problems, but honestly, I feel like that solves like eighty percent of the motivation problem.
We will be back with Chris soon and when we writ down we'll discuss why he stopped trying to use and follow productivity hacks and his trick to figuring out what is and isn't a valuable use of your time. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way you work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.
That's Amantha dot com. It's funny, like when I think about time rules actually, and again, when I was reading the book, I was reflecting on this a lot, and not to bring it back to email, but it's my achilles heel. And interestingly, I find that for a lot of the you know, the productivity folk that I have on the podcast, Like I think of Jake Napp, for example, who I've had on a few times, and I feel like, yeah, email was his achilles heel, and there have been others.
And one of the things that I've been catching myself thinking is that generally, like ninety percent of the time, my phone does not have email on it, So don't have my email app on my phone, which I think
in and of itself is quite unusual. And I do that so that I can't just mindlessly check email whenever I want when I'm on the go, but sometimes I'll need it on my phone, whether it's there's a link to tickets that I've bought for a show, and so I'm just like, I'll just get email on my phone so I can do that easily and frictionlessly, and then it'll stay on my phone for a few days because I'll forget to delete it, and I will experience this sense of stress when I see an email come through,
because my brain whenever it reads an email, and I'm sure this is how most people's brains work, is that they go, I need to respond to that, and then the stress starts because there's something that is on how to do list that is not yet done, and I think about what if I haven't seen that email for two days, I wouldn't have had that thought, and I would have responded at some stage in the future, and that worry wouldn't have been there, or that task taking
up space in my mind wouldn't have been there. Just these self imposed deadlines and assumptions cause us a lot of stress, whereas if we just didn't see the thing, the stress wouldn't be there. And just how artificial it is? Can you relate to any of this, Chris No.
One hundred percent. I think it's interesting. Two things. One, it's you know, even if you decide I'm not going to respond until later, that thing is already like in your brain, like you've already taken it in, so you're going to be it's going to be like you're going to be thinking about it, or even if you're not thinking about it, you're not thinking about thinking about it,
and you are thinking about it. Right. But also the second thing is is like, is it just the notification that's the problem, right, Because if you have the email app on your phone but you don't have the notifications turned on, then you don't actually see when the new messages are coming in. Right, it's accessible to you if you need to go get the tickets for the show or whatever else. But it sounds like in that case, maybe the notification is the problem.
I don't have my notification switched on for email, This is me.
How do you know that the email has come through.
Because I check it? Because I don't really have social media on my phone. My phone is quite boring, and so when email is on it, it's like, well, that's an exciting thing that's going to possibly give me a dope for meat hit. If there's like a good email in there, it's entirely my own doing, which is why, as many productivity people say, don't rely on willpower. Set up your systems so that you're not relying on willpower
to not do the thing. And so if email is not on my phone, I don't think about email and I don't check my email.
I kept trying to get better and better at doing these things, and this is part of why I wrote the book, as like I tried to follow all these rules right, and these habits about like I shouldn't have this app on my phone, and this is how my notifications need to be set up. And there's a thousand other things right, like we've all read them in like all the books and so on, And I guess I was pretty good at it, Like I was pretty good at the productivity game. And at a certain point I
just realized what am I actually getting better at? Like, ultimately I think I'm getting better at doing the wrong things, or even if some of those things can be helpful, like the more I do them, the more things that will come back. And are these things really making it, you know, measurable difference in my life or some of them actually stressing me out? You know. It's like the number of questions I get about even from people who've read the book, because I'm like, the system doesn't matter.
You should probably have some kind of list making system and task things. It's fine, but it doesn't really matter what it is. You should do what's best for you. But still I'm going on book tour and people are like, tell me a little bit about your productivity setup and your stack and like what apps you use. I'm like, I'm fine to talk. I don't mind talking about that. But I guess for me again, that was the problem.
Like I thought those things were going to help me or like remedy the distress I felt, and really they did not. And so honestly, the more simple the solution you can find, the better. Or if there's some productivity tool that requires a lot of learning, then I don't think that's a helpful tool, you know, if you're learning to edit film, if you're learning to code, Like, these are things in which you need to go and like spend hours maybe watching some courses or YouTube and such,
because there is like higher knowledge required there. But for learning like these various systems and such, you know, keeping up a task, it should be very simple. So all that to say, like learning these things and trying to apply all these tools was not helpful to me.
Ultimately, Oh gosh, it's funny. I'm amused by that question because I feel like it mildly misses the point of the book. But then also part of my mind is going, hmm, what software does Chrissy use what it is told? And it's got me thinking, But that would just be totally beside the point. I like some of the practices in the book that are more around get around, like that deeper reflection. And I think one of the questions that you recommend people ask is what is special about this day?
Can you tell me more about like when should we ask that question? And what is the impact of doing sorry, what.
Is special about this day? I think I came to that practice out of the belief or the concept that when we think about life, people tend to think about big moments. They tend to think like these milestones of like here's this thing that happened in my life. It
was like a one off kind of thing. But really our lives consist much more of like ordinary moments and just the day to day, and a lot of that is, you know, unmemorable or maybe in some ways like to make it more active, forgettable, but yet at the same time, like every day has something at least one thing, probably
more than one thing that is special. And for me, I've tried to work on being more present, on noticing, more on mindfulness, but I also had to come to it from a different perspective because I'm not really good at meditation, and I've tried some of those practices and they don't work super well for me. But to get to the same place, like noticing what is special about this day, the ordinary moments that make up our life, and there are things we can do to like inspire
that specialness. There are things we can do to like make days special, whether it's a change in routine or just doing something a little bit different or asking what matters right now? I also like this one about did today matter? So you ask this question at the end of the day, like looking back, and it's really interesting because it's not like asking was it a good day
or a bad day? You know, like sometimes you can actually have a bad day, but you feel like you made some progress in something, you spent time with people that you loved, like you actually felt alive even though the day was kind of stressful for whatever reason. Or you can have days in which everything was kind of fine, but you look back and you're like, today, I'm not
really going to ever think about again. And so if you think about did today matter and being able to answer yes, today mattered because of AB and C and those answers might be different for each person, that's helpful because the next day you want to do more of those things and you know, hopefully like build up this
streak of days that matter to you. So I think all of those things together, it's like pointing towards mindfulness, but maybe a way that's a little bit different from how other people have gotten there.
It's an interesting question did today matter? I feel like and I'm going to try this asking myself that question certainly at the end of today and hopefully for a few days. But I feel like I would answer that, well, of course it did, and I would look for the meaning, which would ultimately be a good thing to reflect on. Well, what did matter about today? Because I think as humans, you know, we don't want to go I've just wasted a day, even though I think a lot of people
have that thought. At the end of the day, today felt like I wasted it. I messed around, I you know, I spent too much time on social media or whatever.
Sure, sure, okay, that's a good point. Yeah, you could like look back and find the meaning in it and find what was special. But maybe here's another way to think of it. Then, So if we think about that pressure, another question is like how valuable were my last forty minutes? And so this is a much shorter time period, and I do think if most people ask that question, there are lots of times during the day that we will say the last forty minutes, I don't know that they
were that valuable. And so value can also mean productivity, It can mean like satisfaction, enjoyment, learning. You know, there's lots of different ways for your time to be valuable. But if you say, at any point during the day, actually the last forty minutes not that valuable. Then you can make a little shift and be like, oh, what do I want to do differently for the next forty minutes, And so it's not that long of a time that you have wasted, and it gives you a little chance to reset. Perhaps.
Yes, I love that question, and I'm curious how often do you ask yourself that question?
A lot of these kind of activities and practices I kind of cycle between, and I'll be doing one for a while and then I'll do something else for a while. For a long time, I was really into the five goals thing. Do you know that whole model of like you can only have five things, and you make a list of your top twenty five, and then you choose like the top five and then the other twenty or not.
Things you do on the side. There are things that you absolutely must not do because they're keeping you from your five. That's a whole like other rubric. I was into that for a while, and so every day for like six months, I would have like a paper journal and I would write down like one, two, three, four, five, like did I do that? You know? But this is not like a lifelong practice It's something that helped me for a little while, and then I kind of moved on.
So when you say, like this particular one, how often am I doing it? I think I'm probably doing it a couple times a day. But it's not like I have like an alarm setup, you know, on my phone, and it's not like I have a journal that It's like, that's the old old Chris would would have like systematized it and had it, like I don't know, built some spreadsheet or something for it. And thankfully I don't do things like that now.
What other practices like, because I always love knowing, like, particularly when you've written a book, and I mean you would have submitted this manuscript twelve months ago or something like that. I imagine like one of the things I'm so curious about. And I feel like I've experienced when I'm doing publicity for the books that I've written, it's like, oh gosh, I've either moved on from that or I'm only using a subset of what I wrote about. What
are those things like right now? You know in the last few weeks that you're like, yeah, I'm doing that a lot.
Actually, Well, at the beginning of this conversation. I think we touched on legacy versus living well. That is something that I think about a lot. I try to think about what is living well look like for me at this season. I am very like project focused and like goal oriented, and I'm always going to be that way. Like I haven't given that up. I think I said that too, but I'm often going back to, like, Okay, what should I be doing right now? You know things
I could be doing. And then also I wrote a good bit about choice and about how life ultimately is about choice and choosing and there are more things that we want to do then we'll be able to do. Desire is limitless, and there's actually joy in selecting and choosing and making decisions. And so I started writing the book because I felt like, IRE's not enough time. I've missed my I've already pequked and I've missed my chance or whatever, and like now I'm like, there's still time.
There's still time for things that I can do new things. You know, I can change, I can adjust and adapt. And so I think that is something that is very much with me. I know that sounds kind of a big picture, but it actually really doesn't form like my day to day and think about what is it that I want to work on. I just put on a new event a couple of months ago in Austin, Texas for the neurodivergent community. And like I used to produce
another annual event. I did it for ten years with David Fugate, our mutual friend and literary agent, and you know, we built that event up year after year and then it came to a natural end. So I wanted to start this new event, and so to make a long story short, I did it and it went really well, and it was for a relatively small number of people. There were just like a couple hundred people there, and
it took several months of like full time work. So on the scale of like you know, like from like a hard business and analysis like is this the best thing for me to be doing? Maybe somebody would say no, but I'm like, this is absolutely what I should be doing. Like it was totally the right thing. I'm excited about, you know, building it more for a year or two. So maybe just thinking about what really matters and how do I apply that is something that I try to do.
Have you changed, you know since writing time? Anxiety like your process of thinking about what projects you do take on versus what you say no to or get left on the cutting room floor.
I don't know if the process has changed so much as I no longer feel bad or not as bad about the things I'm not doing or the things that I'm not great at. I have a lot of friends who are really good at social media, and they're just crushing that, and they're all these profiles and like new videos and reels every day. It's just so so great to watch. And you know, I used to feel very envious of it, and now I just feel like, I mean, maybe I feel like ten percent envious of it, but
it's more just like, that's what they do. They're really good at that. That's not me. You know, There's other things I'm going to do. So I don't know if it's the process that's changed, it's more of the FOMO has decreased. So that's good, that's awesome.
Well, Chris, how useful has the last forty minutes been for you? Has it been a good use of your time? Longer than forty minutes we're recorded for though.
I really love this conversation. You have asked some really smart questions. You actually read the book, I can tell, and you are someone who's worked in this field for years. I have a lot of respect for you. It has been a wonderful conversation and a wonderful use of forty plus minutes.
I hope you love the second part of this chat with Chris as much as I did. I am definitely going to be trying that forty minute reflection tip. I personally think that is just gold. Now. If you want to learn more about Chris, I highly recommend checking out his new book, Time Anxiety. You'll find a link to that in the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure you gid 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