If you're a regular listener of this show, you will be very aware of the fact that I wrote a book. It's my third one, and it's called time Wise, and it's out now.
I've had so.
Many questions from listeners and readers about the book. So a couple of weeks ago, I sat down with one of my teammates, fellow organizational psychologist, Charlotte Rush in a live virtual event, where we went through a whole bunch of questions that people submitted. We shouted about the writing process, my favorite tips from the book, and also my favorite tips that didn't make it into the book. My name
is doctor Amanthea Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work.
I know that when you first came up with this idea to write this book, you didn't have the titles in mind, and I think the title really does tell us a lot about the book, but I wouldn't really want to know what is it that you first thought of when you were really thinking about writing this book, and now that you see it in front of you, has what you've created really been an accurate representation of what you originally intended to do.
I think it probably did change because when I thought about the book, and it had been something that i'd like, I'd had in the back of my mind for probably a year or so before I actually wrote the book. Proposal is I we was thinking about the podcast, and a lot of people like podcasts. I think, I don't know, something like thirty percent of Australians listened to a podcast once a month, which is actually not huge when we
think about the total population. But you know, there's so many great tips I hear on how I work, and in order to access all those tips, that's hundreds of hours of your life life just gone. And even if you're listening to the podcast, you might hear a tip and go that's really cool, but then forget about it, as I often do when I'm listening to the podcasts that are in the business and self development kind of genre.
And I just thought, functionally.
That would make a lot of sense if I collected my favorite tips and strategies that I've heard on how I work and put them all in a book like that would just be handy. That would be a resource that I, you know, wish that my favorite podcasts would you know, would create. So that was the idea, and also from a marketing point of view, because the podcast does does well.
It's got a lot of listeners.
I think it's it's it's recently clopped over three and a half million downloads.
From a marketing.
Perspective, that's, you know, that's a that's a good angle for a publisher that there's a successful podcast behind and the book. Because my lesson in the world of publishing. So this is my third book, it's my first through Penguin, and a few years ago I had this other concept for a book, which was kord of in the productivity genre, and I got taken on by this big US agent who was fantastic. Tried to sell the book to US publishers, but couldn't get it over the line because I didn't
have a big enough profile in the US. And what I learned from that process is that for a business book, it's kind of different for fiction, but certainly for a business book. To secure a book deal with a major publisher, and it's about I think four or five major publishers in the world, of which Penguin Random house is won. You need a good idea, like a unique idea, but you also need a big platform sort of and then kind of the multiplier of that is how good it
do you will get? And that was interesting and so I thought about that when I was putting together the book proposal. And for people that are like, what's a book proposal, it's kind of like a business plan for a book. So it goes through what's the premise of the book, what's the structure of the book, what's the competitive landscape, like who, like, what ore the books of these people buying? And why is yours better and different? It goes through a marketing plan and then obviously like
about the author. So I don't know if that answered your question, but that's kind of but it did evolve, Sorry, it did evolve into not just being a straight productivity book with lots of tips and hacks, but it did evolve into going I think that this book is really not about like doing things quicker, better, faster, although there is one chapter about efficiency. It is about how we can think more deliberately, more consciously about.
How we use the hours in the day that we all have the same of.
That's definitely what I got out of reading it. I kind of on the front of the book, it says powerful habits more tigraded joy, And that's the real sentiment that I got from it, is around greater joy and really thinking about being more intentional with how we use our time so that we can get more joy out
of our lives. And I think that was a surprise for me, you know, thinking obviously and being part of that journey as well in kind of seeing the plan at the start and seeing you go through the process. And that was a nice surprise and something that I
really enjoyed about the book. We did have some presmitted questions about the book writing process, and one of them was did you have a detailed outline when you started writing or did you just start with a high level outline and it took shape as you put words to page.
I had an outline because of book proposal needs one, but I.
But I didn't stick to it.
So how that worked is that I to write the book, I spent quite a while thinking what are the like what are the best and most impactful and most novel because I didn't want to include sort of just you know, productivity strategies and time management strategies that you hear everywhere else. I thought, what are the most novel and impactful things that I've heard on How I Work? And I had a whole bunch of those, like probably I cut it down to about one hundred, so it's about a hundred
or so strategies in the book. And then I spent many, many hours, like on my big kitchen table with all the strategies cut out in little sheets of paper, going Okay, thematically, what makes sense here? Because it is really hard structuring a book. And yeah, I remember when I interviewed Dan Pink the first time I had him on How I Work. Yeah, he was talking about like because I read his books, and I'm like, oh my god, he's so good at
structuring books. But I remember with his most recent book, or second most recent book, when I think he said he had like about twenty different structures before he landed on the one that he did. And I feel like I went through that very painful process of literally just kind of playing tetris with all these different strategies and going what.
Are the themes that make sense?
And then you know, you kind of want a theme to be benefit driven, and then you kind of want a roughly equal amount within each section, So the seven sections of the book, you know, for those that have read it or when you do read it, just know that a lot of thought and time went into going how does this all come together?
And there was another question around what are the some of the steps that you need to take to write a great book? And I think you've already shared some of that around especially that inside around having that great platform as well, especially if you want to get some of the great publishers in Australia. Anything else you want to add there in terms of the steps need to take to turn a great idea into a book, like practically or even just like that creative process as well.
Yeah, I think like the other thing, I feel like when I shared this with people, they're like, oh what so authors Like, it's really hard to make a living from being an author. So when you think about the process of writing a book, unless you're I don't know, like Leanne Moriarty or someone like that, not that she's even a business writer, it's not like you can just take a year off work and go I'm just going to be indulgent and.
Write a book, because that's a job that will get me a salary.
It's generally not for for most authors. So, like, the biggest challenge I think when you work in a full time job, although we do a four day week.
Is finding time to write a book.
So the book is I think it's a little over seventy thousand words. I think it ended up being like seventy two thousand words, and that's quite a lot of words to produce, and plus you've contracted to do it in a certain amount of time. Granted, like I chose that amount of time, I'm like six months, that feels fine. I think that was quite short. I ended up getting it done in about five and a half months because I wanted to be on brand and submit early obviously,
which I did. But what I found is just the discipline of having a writing ritual. So it was the very first thing that I would do every morning before I did any other kind of work, and any kind of inventing in work as well. So I would write for typically a couple of hours in the morning, and I I would have and I got this advice from
Greg McEwan, who wrote Essentialism and Effortless. I had like upper and lower bounds, so on, like my lower bound was I had to write at least five hundred words, and my upper bound was about it was three three chapters, so the chapters are quite short. They are about seven hundred words, so an upper bound of about two thousand words. So that I found really helpful in going I hit
my target. And then also I did that thing that Jerry Seinfeld is quite famous for doing where he has a calendar and he writes, he writes every day and he does a cross on his calendar if he does his writing, and then he builds up a streak, and then the longier streak is, the more compelling it is to keep that streak going.
And so I did exactly that. So I had a paper.
Calendar that I printed out and stuck it on the whiteboard, and I'd do a cross, you know, every day that I hit my goal and I didn't want to break the streak, so they were I found those quite useful.
I love the streak. I've got the streak in due Lingo with my Spanish, and so I'm up to like day thirty five. Now. Luckily, if you miss a day, they sometimes freeze your streak, which is quite a nice little thing. If something happens so that you don't lose
your streak, which is nice. Okay, so obviously you have You were already a really productive person before you started this book, but I'm sure you've probably learned a lot more through writing the book and obviously through all your interviews, and I think a lot of people know that you are a very productive person. I think I said to my dad that you had a third book coming out, and he said to me, isamanthis kind of energizer bunny or something like? It was just like, should just get
so much stuff done? But having said that, I'm sure there are days when you feel not your productive self and not particularly time wise. So what does that look like for you? And when you're having those challenging days, what strategies do you use to really pull yourself out of them.
It's so funny because I don't see myself as an energizer bunny, and I don't see myself as someone who's like, like, I'd say, yes, I'm above average productivity because I think about it and I write about it a lot, and I apply the strategies. But I like, yeah, I feel like probably maybe people's perception of how I work is quite different from the reality, I feel like I'm like relatively normal, maybe a bit above above average.
Maybe. So what do I do if I'm having a bad day?
I you know what I'm tending to do at the moment if I'm finding myself quite unfocused and I'm quite aware of when I'm feeling that pool to check email too many times a day or do something that you know, like I don't know. Because I was doing this campaign for LinkedIn for the last nine months, I've been much more active on social media than I used to be. And also with the book out now, my agent has
said you need to be on Instagram more. So I've got bloody Instagram on my phone again, and I feel like I have to.
I don't like having.
It on my phone, but it's really tedious and annoying to post like from your desktop, which I sometimes do when I'm doing content for social media.
But I would say.
I will just go, okay, I'm either going to take a break and I'm going to be easy on myself, or I will just make some progress on shallow work, like work that is fairly easy to do that I can just kind of do in bursts of five or ten minutes and kind of feel like I'm making some progress on not shallow work that doesn't matter, but shallow work that actually does need to get done. But I sort of feel like I can at least mentally feel like I'm having an okay day if I can tick off a.
Few things that do actually need to get done but don't require too much brain power and just go easy on myself.
One of the presummitted questions someone sent through was they wanted to know what are the kind of behaviors that you found most challenging to change, Like what's like your kryptonide or something that you've just tried to change but keep coming back to.
Definitely my email.
I feel like my inbox still is a struggle for me. It's not a struggle in the morning, but it's a struggle I would say after I'm out of doing deep work, which is typically about eleven am thereabout. Sometimes I'll start quite early, so it's more like ten am or sometimes earlier.
But but that's still a struggle.
And there are a few strategies about email, and one of the most useful ones I have received, and this was from Laura may Martin, who you mentioned before.
Google's executive Productivity Advisor.
And she I feel like she told me this on like she was I invited her back on the show recently, so that episode maybe was from a couple of months ago, and.
She said, just make sure you close your.
Email a couple of times a day, because most productivity people will say keep like, only check your email three times a day. And for most people, but particularly most people that have requests being made on them by different different people in their company or clients or wherever, they
they said, that's just that's not realistic. And I totally get that, but I I find it hard to just check email three times a day, even though I know that leads to greater happiness and greater productivity according to research.
So I find though.
I use Superhuman as my email client, which is so it's different software, so it's not like Gmail, where you're typically opening a new tab on your browser, and most
people have their browser open all day. But I like the idea of just closing software for at least a couple of hours during the day and then I'm out of it because it's annoying to have to click on Superhuman, wait a few seconds for it to open, wait a few more for a few more seconds for emails to load, and you know that's not quite instant gratification because you're waiting probably ten seconds for that hit.
So that helps me a lot.
Now. One thing that, as I said at started really surprising about the book was the real focus on happiness and joy and finding more meaning in your life. So it's not just a book about getting more stuff done. It's really about enjoying the process of life and finding more joy as well. And one thing that I particularly enjoyed reading was the chapter about reminding yourself that you will die. So what do you knew that is that
are curious about that? Amantha? Can you share this strategy and also anything else that really stood out for you as strategies to really improve the quality of your life and finding more joy both at work but also not at work.
So the death strategy.
So this came from a couple of people, actually, so it came from French Besta, who is a big tech entrepreneur, and also Ci who's a maid of mind, Cyan Taid, who's co founder of Invato, which is a unicorn, a billion dollar tech company, and both of them said the same thing.
They both have reminders that they will die.
SI stopped hers though, so she download did an app and I think the names of the apps in the book that there, I think death clock might be one maybe, And Sy said her app reminded her that she was going to die five times a day, and basically, why you would do that is so that you can be more grateful and appreciative and present, knowing that you know our time is short. Life can be short, and so it sort of just reminded her to stay present.
But then I think one of her kids.
Saw the death app and they were like, Mom, why why are you reminding yourself you'll die? And then she just thought, I think I just need to delete this app. It's not it's not a parent friendly app. In terms of joy.
Oh gosh, there's some hot.
This is something I do try to think about because I feel like often I will feel like I'm in a rush, and I really really hate being late, even one or two minutes. Running one or two minutes late for something, whether that be a virtual meeting or a face to face meeting, makes me feel disproportionately stressed.
I'm sure that we could link that back to my childhood somehow, but I really like the advice that I got from Michelle Laurie.
The comedian, and this is Buddhist thinking, and something she reminds herself to do is to let others go first. And she lives her day with that in mind, you know, not every minute of the day, but she tries to remember that just as a general principle, let others go first. So, you know, if you're stuck in traffic is probably where I think about it most, because I feel like when I'm in traffic, I feel like I'm racing against Google Maps to see if i can outdo the time that it's predicted.
To to get me too the location, which is terrible. It's so bad. I shouldn't be doing this. But then I remember let others go first, which might be if someone wants to get in front of me, you know, in a lane, then just let them go first. It doesn't matter. So I find that I do. Actually, I think about that definitely on a weekly basis.
Now, for anyone that's done writing, like whether you are someone that writes articles, maybe you're someone that has written the book, you probably know that writing is a separate process to editing. And I can only imagine that when most kind of we're writing, is Amantha, You probably had to go through a lot of editing, and even when you were kind of putting all the strategy down on the table, I'm sure there were lots that you had to check out because you know, you could only put
a hundred strategies in this book. But I guess I want to know which one is like one of your favorite strategies that you knew you absolutely had to include in the book. But also if you can't this, potentially was there anything that you didn't include that was still super valuable that you could share with the audience who's with us now live as well?
You know what, maybe if I just share a couple that weren't in the book. And it's like one of my pet hates actually when I hear authors being interviewed is that they only talk about the stuff that's in the book. And even when I'm interviewing authors on how I work, I'm desperately trying to find a way in to get them to talk about things that are not in the book, because that's what they're talking about in.
Every other interview. So I feel like I'll be more useful if I talk about some that are not in the book.
I'm so glad because I didn't want to put the pressure on you know, you know, because if everyone's listening. We didn't pre plan these questions. Amantha didn't know what I'll ask you her, So I didn't want to set her up for failure. So I kind of wanted to give her an out, like, if you can give us something that's not in the book.
Yes, So something that I loved.
And often the things that didn't make the book were things.
That I learned low after.
I think October last year was when I submitted so the like the first draft and and it's it's not really super cool to put new content in after that, and unless you know your editors, like there's like because I did.
I did.
Actually, I remember when I sent it to my editors is He and Clive. I said, hey, you know, here's my first draft. It's over the word count because with the contract, you're contracted to write a certain amount of words. So I was contracted to write sixty to seventy thousand words.
And I said, look, it's a bit over the word count, so there's buffer for you to cut any strategies that you think are just not all that good and they and so that's where I had a few backups, but they said, no, we want to keep them all.
They're all great.
So from October, I've learned so much on the podcast, and it's either way, it's kind of it's frustrating because it's like, oh, I wish I could have included that tip and that tip anyway to answer your question. One tip that I really loved came from Phil Libbon, who's the co founder of ever note, which is very popular note taking software, and also co founder of presentation software that we use it Inventium where you can superimpose yourself sort of on top of the slides, which is a
good visual effect for presentations. And he was talking about decision making and something that he differentiates between is when he's got a big decision to make, like a decision that feels really hard, he asks them himself, does this decision feel hard because it's actually a complex decision, or does it feel hard because it's an unpleasant decision? So, you know, an unpleasant decision sample might be you know, leaving a marriage, or if you're a manager, like having
to fire someone for poor performance. So like those are examples of very unpleasant decisions, but you know what the right way forward is. Whereas complex decisions, they're tricky, they're like, you know, there's lots to think about. There's no sort of straightforward, simple solution or decision, if you like. But where people get stuck is that they allocate similar amounts
of time to both types of decisions. But Phil says, if upfront you can just figure out is this an unpleasant decision or is this a complex decision, you will spend your time much more wisely, essentially because you don't need to spend time thinking about the unpleasant decisions. Yes, you need to manage your emotions, but you know what the right way forward is whereas allocate your time to
the complex decisions. And that really stuck with me. You know, I can think of so many times where I've had to make unpleasant decisions and I've just I've stewed on them. I've spent so much time thinking about them, but only because I was scared to do the thing that I knew I had to do.
So that really stuck with me.
And a recent one that I think you will have heard this from me already, Shah, but it's stuck with me,
and I love it so much. I recently interviewed Richard Wiseman, who's a psychology professor in the UK, and I've just been such a fan of his for about a decade, and he was telling we're talking about like presentations, and he was telling me about a friend of his that is a magician, famous magician, and Richard is also a magician as well, and he was talking to his magician friend about like how he designs his shows, and he says, look, I think about what I want people to say to
me at the end of a performance.
And a lot of performers and probably a lot of people, you know, just normal people to give presentations want people to come up to them at the end and go, you were great, you were amazing, you were fantastic. But this magician is like, I don't want that.
I want to create an experience so people, And so I actually designed a performance thinking that I want people to come up to me at the end and say thank you, like thank you for what you've given me and for me like now that you know, I've been working on designing this keynote off the back of the time Wise book. I use that as my starting point, and I found that really helpful. Thinking what do I want people to say to me at the end and knowing where I want to get to in such specific
terms helped make it a lot easier to design. And I think, I mean you can use that for micro things like a meeting, like what do you want people to say at the end of a meet or at the end of a workshop that you're designing, or you know, most people give presentations as part of their job, what do you want people to say at the end of that presentation.
I just I love that tip so much. It really resonated.
We will be back soon talking about how to work out what your priorities at work should be. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I Work dot co.
How often should we take breaks for optimal productivity?
Well, we should take breaks.
According to one research study from the University of Colorado, they looked at people taking one thirty minute break where they went on a walk, versus six five minute breaks where they went on short walks, and they found that the group that went on the fairly regular but shorter walk so six five minute walks spread throughout the day felt significantly better in the afternoon in terms of more energy,
more resilience. And so look, according to that study, take regular breaks and try to move during your break, and also schedule lunch.
In your diary.
I just think that's really important. I tried to do that myself, or make sure that there's at least a half hour block where I can do that. But something I've also started doing is I used to be a first thing in the morning exerciser, and now I found that late morning my performance is a bit better and
it's also a nice break. So I'll typically take quite a significant break an hour late morning, like typically at around eleven am, and that breaks up my day and I find gives me quite a lot of energy for the next few hours, whereas a lot of people struggle with energy in that sort of one to three pm phase. So that's that's my vice on breaks.
I think it's important because that's the whole point of taking a break, right is to boost your energy after you take the break, and so often we get so caught up in you know, you're in flow, you're doing really great work, and see like I'm just gonna keep going and to push through and so just remembering actually, no, it's better off you just take a you know, just a short five minute break and then get back into it. It's going to help you later today, like the afternoon
as well. Okay, so what about prioritization? How do you prioritize when everything is urgent? And how do you prioritize projects in a role that also requires almost instantaneous responses to queries?
Hmmm?
So yeah, how do you prioritize when everything is urgent? I feel like that's one where you sort of you need to get to the root cause, which I suspect is what your individual goals are in your organization, because if everything feels urgent, it probably means that you don't have clear goals and a clear priority of those goals. So, for example, at Inventium, we use okayrs objectives and key Results, which was made famous by Google and Intel, and read measure what Matters by John Dora.
If you want to learn more about.
That, so we've all got very specific goals like typically sort of three to five kind of focus areas, if you like, per per six to twelve months. So you know, I will often and like I'll often look at mine and kind of look at the week and go, what am I doing this week that is not really moving me closer.
Or kind of getting thanks Gabs for linking.
To that book, or yeah, like what's what is not going to be a good return on my time investment? And so I feel like I'm not overly scared of canceling things, whereas I feel like other people will just sort of say yes, and once they've said yes, they
feel like they can't say no and undo that. Yes, obviously that's not my ideal of just say no in the first place, but yeah, I think it probably comes back to looking at what are your goals, and if you've got too many goals and too many goals that compete with each other, then I said, it's a conversation with your manager, I reckon. But I know you've thought heaps about prioritization Shart, Like, what advice do you find resonates most when you've run workshops on.
This, well, even when you were just saying the whole
you know, saying no things. I think something that's really resonated with me is that whole like to don't list or you know, would you be happy to if it was next Tuesday, for example, Like we say yes to all these things because we're like, oh that's future self like and that'll be fine in the future, and something, you know, we we do the four day week, and I do coaching on Fridays, and I've found that I've kind of reached that point where I'm like, I know
now the level at which I can't do more coaching. Like I really I wrote down in my diary this week, I don't do more than four coaching sessions on Fridays because I realized I was saying yesterday's people who would then email me and be like, oh, can I book you in this Friday, And I'd be like, oh, yes, of course, because you know, I want to help. But then I'd get to Friday and I'd have like six sessions and I just felt like exhausted at the end, or I felt like I was going into those coaching
sessions in the best mindset. So just even saying like I don't do that or I created this kind of thing in my diary of that's something that I'm just going to say no to in advance. Kind of helped me get really clear on like my priorities for Fridays. And that's also a strategy in the book as well, is to create a to don't list, Isn't.
It it is? It is, yeah, from Rachel Batsman, and it reminds me.
I heard this other strategy that is not in the book that I do love from Katie Milkman, who's a Wharton professor and wrote How to Change, which is a book that we both love, How to Change, and she she was reading research by Linda Babcock from Kinnegie Mellon University that had found that women are more likely to say yes to non promotable tasks. And so non promotable tasks are things that you do because they're good citizenship,
but they're not really that. They're not likely to get your promotion or progress you in your career, like you know, taking minutes at a meeting or sitting on a volunteer committee or organizing the office Christmas party or something like that. And then Katie learned that Linda.
Had started a no club with a couple of other women at business schools, and so whenever they get an opportunity that they're like, oh, should I say yes or no, they will run it by their no club and for a.
More objective point of view. And then Katie started her own no club. So I really like that, Like, if you are someone and you don't just have to be a woman to use this strategy, but if.
You're someone that does struggle to say no.
And maybe you've got a bit of people pleaser in you, I feel like a no club could be a really practical thing to start with a couple of peers.
And ultimately you're I mean, if you bring this back to the work context, your manager, your leader, they are responsible for kind of clarifying your priorities, and ultimately your priorities should flow from the top down. So even thinking about could you have this conversation with your manager your leader where you're like, hey, can we have these regular conversations about what I'm taking on and can you be my closically can you help me work out what I
should be saying no to? That's certainly I mean, we don't have bosses that invented, but that's certainly how I use mish our ceo going to me like is this actually something that I should be spending my time on and coming back to our goals and okay ours all right everyone, I do want to turn to the chat box because I've only got like ten minutes left, so I need to make sure I get to the group that I hear, and so please do open up the chat box and send through any questions you have for
a member. It can be about the podcast, about the book, about anything productivity related. Kim already submitted a question and that was what is your favorite podcast?
My favorite podcast?
My favorite one, which I think I I shared on the episode I did this, I love Mama Mia out Loud. Like for me podcasts, if I only listen to podcasts that were like of the self development learning business kind of genre, I I'd probably go insane. For me podcasts, I would say the primary purpose is to kind of just like pure bliss and enjoyment. I guess kind of
in the way that people watch TV. Maybe I use podcasts for that purpose also learning, but that's probably only sort of a third of my podcast airtime.
So I love Mama Mea out Loud.
I recently got to interview Mia Jesse and Holly and that was quite a highlight. But look, if we're talking about work focus things, it's hard to go past Work.
Life by Adam Grant. I do love it. It's so well researched.
I mean, like, the amount of hours that go into producing like a forty minute episode of work Life is quite substantial.
You can just tell. It's such a well produced, well researched podcast, and I deeply appreciate it.
I love it as well. Sentimental in the City as well.
Oh my god, don't get me sounded so good.
So many of you are not familiar. It's a podcast that kind of goes through the seasons of sex and City with this like social cultural commentary from very intelligent women. Now Natalie has asked, Amantha, do you use any outlining software tools for organizing your thoughts for and book writing?
I do Scrivener.
Scrivener is software that I would say the vast majority of writers use.
Yeah, definitely nonfiction, but even.
Like Sally Hepworth, for example, I know that she uses it as well, and she writes fiction, so yeah, awesome.
What about most effective way to manage a to do list?
I love Motion for this, So I think usemotion dot Io is the correct link, because there are.
Two calendar software things called motion.
How motion works is you've got your calendar view on one side like you would see in traditional calendar software, and then you've got a task list in like the left hand column. Because I've got a high self for you on I don't know whether I'm doing the things in the right way because I've got like mirror view anyway, whatever.
So you have it combined to your task list and your calendar, and with your tasks, you can allocate how long you think the task will take, and then you can sort of drag and drop it into your calendar.
So then it appears as a meeting with yourself. And so I use time blocking where I book meetings with myself to do deep work. I find it it was a game changer for me.
So that's like my to do list for work. I use things for my personal to do list. But yeah, that in combining the calendar game changer.
What about your favorite productivity app?
I love Superhuman that would be the one that I used most often.
Superhuman for my email.
I do love for calendar, and I think email and calendar are the two things that we use most often, so they would be my two go to and look I do for podcast editing and if you're editing any kind of sound or video file, if you have to do that in your work, or maybe you want to descript. Descript is amazing software where it transcribes the recording and it's like you're editing a word document to edit a
sound file or video file. So like if you want to delete a phrase, like let's just say I've said um a lot, and then I put this audio file or video file into descript, I can then just highlight those words and delete them I think command X, and then they're gone from the video and audio.
It's quite magical. So I do love that.
I love that. I mean, I'm not an editor, but I can in my mind. I'm always like you would have to be listening to it and then have to kind of take out the spot your word. That sounds amazing. Carolyn's question, what is a good approach to take if you're working on good tools for your own personal productivity, but working in a context constrained by traditional work approaches.
It is really challenging.
I think when you're working in an organization that doesn't want to try to challenge work habits and processes that are not serving you.
It can be really, really hard.
I think awareness is the first step, like bringing that to maybe your boss's awareness, to go, hey, we're doing this, but it's causing this and maybe we.
Should therefore rethink this.
We're always happy to come in to have a chat because some people just don't know that there is another way of doing things when they've been stuck doing things the same way for a very long time.
But I would say probably awareness is a good place to start.
I want to ask you one final question, Amantha, and this comes back back to what you've already shared from Richard Wiseman, the psychology professor and magician. So what do you want people to say to you after reading the book reading time Wise? What would you ideally like people to say to you.
I would love them to say, thank you. You've really helped me learn ways to use my time on this planet more wisely.
That's what I would love. So there you have it.
I hope that that gave you a bit of insight into the process that I went through for writing time Wise, and some of my personal favorite strategies at the moment now.
If you haven't got a copy of time Wise, you can get your hands on one where all good books are sold. And thank you to everybody who has posted about their copy of time Wise on social media and given.
The book a review wherever you bought it from. I am deeply, deeply grateful.
How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan.
And thank you to mat Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise.
See you next time.