[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Katie: Welcome to another episode of the Focus B show, and today I'm here with another Focus enthusiast, taylor Jackinson, the founder of Focusmate. Taylor, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself and about Focusmate?
[00:46] Taylor: Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Katie. Let's see, the story of me and the story of Focusmate are pretty connected. I've, for a long time been passionate about human potential, and I would say that the reason for that is that I've struggled a lot at various points in my life or really just my whole life, but certainly more acutely at times. And that got me really curious, like, how do I get out of my own way and how do I become the person that I think I could be? And one particularly challenging sort of phase of my career was in 2011, I started working remotely for the first time. And up until that point in my life, I had been a high performer academically, professionally, and I really related to myself that way. It was like an important part of my identity. I started working remotely and overnight I really struggled. I was really unproductive. My particular form of unproductivity looked it was like we talked a little about being focused. For me, it was like I was doing things, but I wasn't doing the right things. I wasn't doing the things that were really valuable. I would spend so much time just answering emails because it sort of felt like productivity, but it's really not right. I think being productive is doing the things that you value.
[02:31] Katie: Yes, absolutely.
[02:36] Taylor: Sort of superficially, I was not doing the things that were in my job description. That was a problem. But more beneath the surface. I was also having this experience of not doing the things that I wanted to be doing. It was like I was out of control. So I was still doing a lot of work. I had a long work day, but I was not feeling good about myself and I was not doing a good job. And in addition to that, I was really isolated, working remotely. So I was like lonely. And then I was ashamed of my productivity and it was just a terrible I really started to feel depressed and that just made things worse. So that eventually led to me leaving that job, but it also led to me just starting to study more intensively about productivity and behavioral change and frankly, spiritual growth and just personal growth holistically and realizing, gosh, this is something that I'm really personally connected to and I'd love to make it my career somehow. And I had no idea how at that time, but that kind of moment in my career was really the genesis of deciding this was really important to me and what I wanted to focus my career on. And then fast forward, where did Focus Mate come from? So since 2011, I've continued to work for myself, work from home 100% of the time, and I eventually became an executive coach, and I was working with people that way, and I had a client and who was also a friend, and we were just kind of lamenting the challenges of working alone. And I guess because of the sort of intimacy of our relationship, I thought, okay, let me just share this kind of wacky idea I have that's basically my fantasy concept of how we could support each other, like, what I would really like in life. And so I said to him his name's Jake. I said to know, let's get on Skype and spend a couple hours together, and let's start our Skype call by sharing exactly what we want to work on. And we'll sort of coach each other to like, hey, what's the most valuable thing that you could do for the next 2 hours? Whatever. And then share that with each other and then get really specific about what we would work on at a task level as well. And then we wrote that down in our Skype Call. Again, this is a few years ago, so people were still using Skype, and then we just kept each other company while we were working. We stayed on the video, and then as we made progress, we would type a little message. Hey, I just finished writing this memo. Now I'm going to move on to whatever doing this piece of research, whatever it was, and we would check in with each other verbally periodically.
[05:47] Katie: Nice.
[05:48] Taylor: Anyways, this format was just profoundly effective for both of us, as both of us were A, really passionate about productivity, and B, very familiar with procrastination. And so it just immediately was this experience where he and I were both like, wow, we just stumbled onto this technique that for sure millions of people would benefit from. And it wasn't like, oh, this is a business idea. It was just like, wow, that was really powerful. And we've tried everything there is, and this was better than anything we've ever tried. So that experience was the spark for Focusmate.
[06:28] Katie: Amazing.
[06:29] Taylor: And I'm happy to tell you more about what Focusmate is today, but that's where it began. Just to put a fine point on it in a simple sense, where focusmate began was, let's just make that experience available to anybody, anywhere. And so we standardized an experience called the Focus Mate Session. It's 50 minutes. You meet your partner on video. We arrange it for you. So it's like a calendar where you book an appointment, we find you a partner, and then you show up and you commit to what you're going to work on, and you keep each other company. And at the end, you reflect and talk about how it went.
[07:09] Katie: Amazing. And so you just described the trigger, the spark moment when you realized how efficient it made you to actually work with someone else on the camera, on your most important task. Do you believe in general that accountability has a very important role in our ability to focus?
[07:28] Taylor: Well, what's interesting is I was just talking to our head of product about this yesterday. I think that accountability is sort of used as the placeholder for a variety of different effects, behavioral effects that are actually happening. We could talk about, strictly speaking, accountability is just literally measuring something. So you could hold yourself accountable just by having a to do list is a form of accountability. I wrote it down and then I cross it off if I finish it. That's a form of accountability. So I think that we think of accountability as something that involves other people and what have you. But Focus Mate, there is one component of it that is accountability, which is I'm going to actually specify what I'm going to do and then I'm going to say if I did it or not, that's accountability. But then you layer in another person, right? And so there's strictly speaking, that's another effect from a science perspective when you share it with somebody and when you share it in writing, both of those have been studied as things that increase our efficacy, then actually doing it with somebody there, that's a whole other effect, updating somebody on your progress. Again, there's an accountability piece to it, but then when you share it, that's social accountability. In Focus Mate, you also reflect on how you did at the end. That's a completely different phenomenon as well. And it turns out that reflection is an incredibly productive activity. We like to do things that feel really good, like answering emails feels really productive. That's like what you would call an executive task versus a reflective task. A reflective task might be planning your day or reflecting on how the week went or something like that. And we don't like to do those because it doesn't feel like we did anything, but those actually dramatically increase productivity as well. So I'll stop there. But yes, I'm a big fan of accountability, but actually if we're being really honest about it, there's like ten different studied phenomena that are happening at once in Focus Mate. And if you ask me do I believe in the importance of accountability, yes, and there's so many other things that are super valuable as well.
[10:05] Katie: I absolutely love what you said about the reflection aspect. And it's true with something I hadn't considered when looking at focus made. And I've done it already with a friend of mine who's also hyper productive and the fact that we get to discuss beforehand our projects and ambitions for the weeks or months to come and afterwards, as a reflection. It's true. It's not just the accountability behind it, it's also the reflective part. Sometimes it triggers new ideas and concepts and ways forward. So perhaps that part is almost more valuable and the fact like you're saying, because of working alone and that can be sort of hard sometimes. There's also the psychological support somewhere which isn't just accountability, but almost like teamwork, even if you're both working on totally different subjects.
[10:51] Taylor: Yeah, you mentioned a couple of things I think are really important. One is sometimes we just need to have something cause us to stop and do the reflection and to be intentional. And like you mentioned, having these awarenesses. I think it's pretty easy. I know it's pretty easy for me to just wake up and think of 19 things and just start doing them. And occasionally I do that and it's not very productive or effective and it doesn't make me happy, that's for sure. I feel like a hamster on a wheel. So I think it's super valuable to have occasion to interrupt the kind of stream of our mind and to ask what is most valuable or what is my intention for this moment or today? I think that's super helpful. Focusmate. That's one of the things it does is it forces you, but you can do that any way you want to. What was the second thing you said that I thought was really I forget, maybe I'll remember.
[11:57] Katie: I like what you said about working with intention. I think that's what makes the big difference also in terms of performance and productivity, asking yourself these types of questions. And like you said, focusmate is one way of forcing this approach or forcing encouraging it, but another way is also yourself thinking when you do a weekly review, for example, or before planning your day, okay, so what's actually my intention for the day? What are my top three outcomes for today? And not just sort of going like you said, in the hamster wheel or on automatic pilot to try and just sort of do everything, answer the emails to get the dopamine rush, but not actually achieve anything.
[12:35] Taylor: Well, it's funny you mentioned dopamine because I'm not a scientist, but I happen to believe you get more dopamine if you set an intention and then do the thing you intend as opposed to just doing things. My experience of that is like, yes, you did it Taylor, good job. Versus something that just comes into my mind and I do it. It's more of like a frantic feeling of like, oh, I have to do that thing. And then I remember the other thing you said which I thought was really compelling, which is the feeling of team. And one thing that a lot of my early experiences of studying productivity were sort of like learning about a technique and then trying to do it and really struggling. And this might just be my story or my experience, but I feel like there's sort of like a cultural narrative around productivity that wherein we relate to ourselves like machines. And at least in English, there's a lot of idioms that are machine like. So it's like, I'm going to crank this out, is like a way to say I'm going to do this work. And of course, I can't think of any others right now, but there's like dozens. We relate to ourselves like we're machines or there's this ability to just turn it on and it will happen. And we're super the opposite of that. We're very emotional and fickle and kind of I would say fragile or frail kind of. And in particular, we're very social.
[14:19] Katie: Actually.
[14:20] Taylor: This morning, I was just talking to my girlfriend about how one of the reasons that body language is such an important form of communication is that we don't learn to speak until, I don't know, one and a half or two, we start to learn to speak, but we sure as hell got to figure out how to navigate our lives before that. Right. And so all that we can do is pick up on non linguistic cues and there's just like there's so much other evidence and reason that we are really social beings. So it shouldn't be surprising that you have this great experience of doing something with your friend that makes you productive.
[15:08] Katie: Absolutely. I absolutely love that. Especially the part about when we're young, we don't even know how to speak until one or two. I'd never really thought about that. And I think it's really interesting also the fact that being sociable isn't necessarily a hindrance to productivity. On the contrary, it can be a boost to your productivity. And I think that's really nice because that's the difference between us not being machines. And there's this sort of concept about someone being very productive. Sort of blocks all noise and sounds, sits in front of the computer, works 10 hours straight, not being sociable. But I think if I did that for about a couple of weeks or a couple of days, I wouldn't be productive at all. The days I'm the most productive is when I have coaching sessions in between and then my tasks, I really focus. So I always thought, well, maybe that's me because I'm very sociable. But clearly if loads of people follow the concept and process of focus mate, it's obvious that we need sociability in one way, shape or form to boost ourselves. Which is why sometimes open space works quite well. And it's why also working at home can be a challenge.
[16:21] Taylor: Totally. Yeah. And I think there's kind of a misconception that if you're introverted, that means you don't value those interactions. I think my experience is more like and I skew slightly on the introverted side or sort of in the middle. I feel like sometimes I'm introverted, sometimes I'm extroverted. But even when I am feeling introverted or acting introverted, I find it can feel really good just to be near somebody else. Especially if that's somebody that makes me feel safe and I think that just recognizing that really basic human need. I happen to really struggle in noisy environments. I could never work in an open office. Like, it's just way too overstimulating for me. But I do really like to be around people.
[17:17] Katie: There's like a fine balance between sort of open space where there's constant noise and distractions and a lot of people and also total isolation is what you're saying is still having people around, but not to the extent where it's too distracting. Another interesting point I find with focus in general is how it relates to productivity. So how do you feel that, for example, being focused makes you achieve more or get the right things done?
[17:46] Taylor: I think that for some jobs, for some endeavors, doing a kind of work that you could call it deep work, some kind of work that really requires us to think hard or be creative or kind of integrate a bunch of different things, a sort of complex kind of thinking. It's just number one. Those are probably the sort of highest value economically kind of tasks that we do. They're certainly not better than other kind of it's not a better, worse thing. But if you kind of deconstruct all of the work that you do in a given day as a knowledge worker, at least I think that's sort of the like it's the if you're an author, you might spend some of your time giving talks and writing blog posts and tweeting and giving press interviews and all this other stuff, but that's really extraneous. And what makes you a successful author is that actually you did a lot of research and you really thought hard about assimilating that into a package, into a core message and sharing that in a way that something that's very complex, in a way that's very compelling and adds value to society and to your reader. That kind of work just can't I don't think it can be done in a sort of five minutes here and there. I think it really requires a kind of intentionality and a kind of spaciousness to just allow your mind and your body to go through the process that it needs to go through and that can't be forced into a certain amount of time, in my opinion. So, yeah, I think that the relationship between focus and productivity is if you want to do those kind of high value tasks, which to me is a lot of what being productive is, or it's one very important form of productivity, then you need to create the conditions that allow you to do that kind of deep, focused work.
[20:10] Katie: Nice creating the conditions. I also like the different terms you use for focus, sort of intentionality and making that space. They're all sort of different ways of looking at the same thing, which I think is particularly nice. What advice do you tend to give to people who are, for example, struggling to stay focused or get distracted very easily. Aside from of course, join, save you and help you tremendously in everything you want to achieve. Aside from that, what extra advice do you give to people?
[20:39] Taylor: Yeah, I think number one is be really kind to yourself. I think we need to let ourselves off the hook for whatever sort of shame stories we have about how we are and that we're bad because of that. I think that number one. I would guess that most of those sort of challenging experiences are extremely normal. For one, they're like part of the human experience. And we talked about that. We're not machines. So I would just start from this point of really validating whatever each of us is experiencing as a challenge or as a challenge to our productivity is almost certainly caused by something that is really actually natural. In some sense. It's like part of being human. And I think I'm not an ADHD expert, but I think of conditions like ADHD as quite possibly quite likely like a reaction to an environment that's just really we operate in an environment that we just didn't evolve to operate in. Going through a schooling system that really values our ability to be linear and to get things done in a sort of linear fashion and to listen in a certain way and to respond in a certain way. It doesn't work for everybody. So I think there's a lot of norming in society that conditions us to think that we are wrong in some way and that I think a much more helpful lens is like being curious about the way that you are. I wonder why I'm having this experience. Not from a place of wrong, but what is there to discover about myself and sort of just inquiring of ourselves? What are the conditions that are optimal for me, that make me happy, that make me feel good? I think feeling safe is a thing I'm learning about recently is transformative for all aspects of sort of human prowess. So yeah, that's probably the most important thing. And then from that place, just even anything that you would consume as a piece of advice or technique or whatever, if you can digest it through that place of kind of self love, self acceptance, curiosity about what works for you, I think that's a great place to come from.
[23:26] Katie: That's really beautiful. It makes such a difference with all the sort of everyday tips of use time slots and use distractions. I say these things so I may be guilty of it firsthand, but it's really interesting to sort of first look at acceptance first. Like you said, be kind, be aware that it's our tendency to function. Also, a really interesting point you mentioned was that it doesn't necessarily fit everyone to work in a linear way like you said at school. And maybe also understanding that that some people might not function that well in the straight boxed conventional ways and some of these people tend to turn out to be geniuses and do extraordinary things because they think outside the box. So it's a wonderful thing, 100%.
[24:14] Taylor: And actually, I don't know, genius is just a concept, but I fundamentally believe that there is brilliance or genius or whatever you want to call it in all of us. And I think another way to look at it is just like inside of all of us there is some sort of fullest potentiality or there's something I would call like our best work. It's like a confluence of the thing that we are most called to put out into the world and the conditions that enable us to kind of share that in the most complete way. I think it's just like for each of us individually, we have to figure out what are those conditions and what is that thing and then, yeah, I think anybody has something that might be considered genius under the right conditions.
[25:12] Katie: Absolutely. And that's where maybe the role of potential, like you said at the beginning, but also the role about doing deep work can actually lead you to that. Because it's not through answering a few emails or doing posts for. Social medias or whatever sort of small tasks that you can really tap into that potential and also really find what it is you want to share. I mean, you probably had a similar experience when you came up with your concept.
[25:39] Taylor: Absolutely. Even when I was starting, I struggled to find the blocks of time to focus and move things forward and be like, cool, we need to come up with the first version of this software application. And I can still remember this one day where I went to a Starbucks, actually, and I was actually working with some sort of casual focusmate partners, but really just struggling and forcing myself to find the big blocks of time to do that focused work. Because nothing else was going to actually move the needle on putting this out in the world.
[26:22] Katie: Wonderful. I feel that it can be summed up in two key concepts here that you described. First of all, this whole aspect that you said about being kind and being accepting and realizing that we don't all function in the same way or in very conventional ways. And the second one is really finding the time to actually work on the important tasks on what really matters. And so a combination of both, both accepting that some days we'll procrastinate and some days it won't go exactly as planned, but also that overall we're aiming to achieve our potential work on the but big sort of milestones and that will lead you further.
[27:03] Taylor: Well said.
[27:05] Katie: Fantastic. Well, only a few minutes left. Is there anything else you'd like to add or share with anyone that will be listening to this interview that you feel is relevant regarding focusmate or regarding this general theme of focus and productivity.
[27:23] Taylor: I think we've hit on some awesome stuff. I'll just say that Focusmate is free to join, and we'd love to have anyone that feels resonance with what we've talked about today. We'd love to welcome you to our community.
[27:37] Katie: Okay, well, thank you so much, Taylor, for being here. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insights on productivity, on Focus, and if you want to find out more, please check out Focusmate.com. Thank you.
[27:51] Taylor: Thank you.
[27:53] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.