A guide to using time wisely to find more of it ⏰

I'm really looking forward to today's episode, everybody, and that is because I've been on my own personal journey in this space. So what I'm talking about is time management. In my twenties, I was just a workaholic where it was more and more and more, and I thought that was the only way to achieve anything or get ahead, and no matter what I was achieving, I was never really satisfied. I was definitely burnt out. I definitely didn't have any balance whatsoever in taking care of myself or

My kids, or if I was at work, I'd.

Be thinking that, no, this is these are these really important years in my young kids' lives. So it's something I've been working on a lot, and I'm definitely not there and' a work in progress like we all are.

She really is the bee's.

Knees when it comes to time management, and it doesn't matter if it's trying to make your company more efficient or make your individual life more efficient, more enjoyable, and get the time in for your health. So I can't wait for.

Us to all learn together. After that, we're going to change tactic.

We're going to go with our segment that you're all loving, hate it, or rate it.

I'm currently training for a marathon and someone suggested that I should get ankle weights.

Do you think they're worth it?

I've been using the sauna at my local pool a fair bit this winter. Am I wasting my time and money? Or is the sauna actually doing something for me.

I've recently been talking to a friend about her weight loss. She's lost about twenty five kilos over the last year or so. The products that they use, which is am Way, I'm just wondering if you can rite it for me.

But now it's time to learn about time management. This is a wood life.

Let's get into it now.

I discovered our guest today by discovering her incredible podcast actually, which is called the How I Work Podcast. We are joined in the studio today by the incredible Amantha Imba.

Welcome to the Woodlife.

Thanks for having me. Sam.

I'm going to give you a little bit of a rundown because you're the founder of behavioral science consultancy firm Inventium, and this company works with Apple, Google. I mean, you're not going to work with little companies like mine. Look at all these big dogs that you're working with. You've also authored the book, which is the new book called time Wise, and you're an organizational psychologist. But what does an organizational psychologist actually do well?

Ultimately, I think about how we can use our time more wisely and more deliberately and get more done and get more meaningful things done with the hours that we all have in the day, which is exactly the same.

You know, this show is about how we can make people's life better in general, but I also know from being the fitness industry for twenty two years that the biggest reason people say that they cannot work out is they say they simply don't have time. So I know you're going to help people when we chat today, both in more general terms about how they can.

Improve their life.

But i'd love I'd love you to sort of start with what's your advice from an exercise perspective to help people make sure? In my world, it's only twenty eight minutes a day, let's call it a half an hour slot every day to move their body in some way. What advice can you give to people to help them find that time.

Well, a couple of things that I do myself personally, but also I recommend to people that I speak to. So firstly, with exercise, I book a meeting with myself to exercise.

So my exercise.

Regime, I guess regime that makes it sound like I'm under attack or something, But anyway, so what my exercise schedule looks like is that I work out with the trainer three times a week, five minute sessions, and then I'll do one home workout forty five minutes.

And I booked them as meetings with myself.

And I know for me, I used to be a first thing in the morning exerciser because it's just easier to not procrastinate with yourself because you're still in a bit of a sleep paze and you just drag yourself to the gym and you do it. But I found that I like breaking my work day up because I do work from home. Now it's nice to kind of go really hard with work for a few hours and then have exercise. Is this really nice break in my day.

And I got this.

Tip from Touria Pit when I interviewed her on how I work, and she was noticing with her young son hack of Eye, that she would be playing with him and you know, doing something that she wasn't particularly into, like playing with lego, and in her mind, you'd be like, oh, I have to play with my son, or I have to take him to the park, or I have to you know, pat him to sleep or whatever. And when you use that self talk, I have to and many people use that about exercise. I have to exercise, I

I'm not having shoulder surgery.

My body is working perfectly well, and so I use that all the time rather than thinking I have to I get to.

I often say to people that exercise should be a celebration of what your body can do, not a punishing for what it can't or thinking about what it can't. And I absolutely believe in that. And yeah, I think sometimes when we have an injury, we we really are understand and appreciate what we are capable of once we get back on our feet, that's for sure. You mentioned just then procrastination, and you said sometimes is good in the morning because we almost don't have time to realize

That's got to be helpful for people.

Absolutely, I don't know anyone that would say I never procrastinate.

Oh good, because I was I was thinking, I bet you don't.

That's absolutely true.

But I think where people get procrastination kind of a bit mixed up is that people go, I'm such a procrastinator. They beat themselves up for it, They label themselves a procrastinator, and they think that therefore they're bad at thinking about how they use their time, or they're unproductive, and they make these assumptions. But really what procrastination is, it's not

Work, you know, like exercise can be.

And so firstly recognize it as this is about you managing your emotions. And often with procrastination, if we can just push through that hump of negative emotions that we're experiencing, we can often get through that urge to procrastinate. So one great strategy that I heard that I love. It's

He's saying, start the task, start the time, start the.

Timer, and if at the end of the time, you're still not wanting to do it, which I mean, I love that, And I tell me with exos all the time, just to five minutes, you'll never stop.

In fact, you'll always do more.

That's exactly right, and that's the theory because often if you've pushed through something for ten minutes, yeah, you've got into flow and you've pushed through that negative emotion, which generally only lasts for a few minutes. It's a great strategy, whether it's with exercise, whether it's with a hard task at work, whether it's something in your personal life like maybe getting through a whole lot of paperwork or bills

I'm getting a struggle time on my desk and it's going to get labeled and everything. I'm going to steal that one. I absolutely love it.

I've spoken on this show before, man through about people always so to me say how do you get this work I'm drowning here or I'm struggling here, and how do I get this work life balance sorted? And the first thing I say to them is, I don't like, please don't think I have work life balance sorted.

But it's this vogue term.

Now, what are your thoughts around work life balance and what advice do you have to people? Out there that are striving for this, you know, idealistic work life balance.

I don't love the term work life balance, despite the fact that people use it yeah, because it implies that we need to balance the horribleness of work with the joy of life, and it's not necessarily like that. I much prefer the idea of work life integration, where how do you integrate your work life into your non work life, but also vice versa, And the reality is a lot of people do have a lot more flexibility now in how they work, where they work, from the hours that

But I also realize that that's quite rare.

So I think one place to look can be going, do I actually like my job? I got this great piece of advice from Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist hots the Work Life podcast bit of a hero of mine, and something he recommends is, you know, we go to the doctor or the dentist for an annual checkup, or maybe the dentist a couple of times a year.

And that's just kind of normal. We all do that.

But how often do we actually stop and give ourselves a life checkup where we take a step back and go, Am I in the right career? Do I like my job? Do I like my co workers? Am I in an organization where I really love the culture? And actually proactively checking in with yourself rather than waiting for years to pass and realizing that you've sunk all these years into a career that is actually draining you of energy, and where you do strive for work life balance because work

I think it's really easy.

To just keep doing the same thing in life, whether that be with regards to health and fitness, or with regards to your relationship or the way you're parenting or the way you're working, and.

Just get on autopilot.

So really that life check up is about going how can I get off autopilot and really asking yourself, is this thing still serving me?

What's not working? What is working? And what could I change to make this better?

First of all, I love that concept. How often do we put something off for years and then when we do it within about three days, we think to ourself, why did I do that sooner? Oh my god, why was it building up in my head with such enormity?

And then when I.

Did it, it's like, oh yeah, I love that once or twice a year, having a having a life check up that we that we just don't do. And I think for so many of us we're paralyzed by fear and we know and.

It is scary.

You know, you should be fearful because it is scary. It's you only get one life and you don't want to stuff it up. But I think it's far worse to go through life unhappy and feel like you're stuck than not trying different things and trying to change tac.

That's for sure.

It reminds me of this great piece of advice I heard from Phil Libbon, and he is the founder of ev note I don't know if you use evnoe note taking. When I had him on How I Work, he was talking about decision making and he said, for him, one of the game changing pieces of advice that he has taken on board around decision making is, you know, we spend so much time deliberating on these really seemingly hard decisions like should I leave a job?

For example.

But he said, for him, what he thinks about whenever he's faced with the hard decision is is this a complicated or complex decision that requires a lot of thought and has a lot of variables and so forth, or is.

This just an unpleasant decision?

And unpleasant decisions you know the answer, but you still take so much time to get there because they're all just under this hard decision umbrella, if you like, and hard decisions presumably need lots of time to figure out. But what Phil does now is he will recognize that actually the majority of decisions that he makes are just unpleasant decisions, so they don't actually warrant a lot of time. They just need you to move through that unpleasantness and

That's ever though, which I have used, not with a great deal of success.

I discovered it a few years ago.

I thought it was going to change my life, and it didn't necessarily work for me. But I think it's because I'm a bit more old school. I'm a list maker, whiteboard guy. But what is your take on making lists?

So I love a good to do list, and I mean in time wise. My new book, there are several chapters dedicated to different ways.

Of doing it to do list.

But I actually think one of one of the best pieces of advice I can give around it to do list is that, I mean, the thing about it to do list is that you're always adding to the list. And you're never actually getting to the bottom of the list because there's always more things to do. And I think for most people that can feel really overwhelm. And I think, you know, particularly you know myself as a parent.

It's quite demoralizing because you do fifteen things and still feel like you've achieved nothing.

Yeah, yeare's still ten things left.

Absolutely absolutely so.

A strategy that I love, which comes from Rachel Botsman, is she does something calleder to don't list. So every month she sits down and she reflects on the month that has just gone and she thinks about, what are the things that I did that really drained me of energy or that I just felt deflated from and she puts that on her to don't list.

Like, for example, from.

Memory on Rachel's to don't list, she's got things like I don't do meetings before eleven am, I don't check my email first thing in the morning, I don't meet with this person period, and so like from that, I started creating my own to don't list ritual, where literally every so the first Monday of every month. Between four and five o'clock, I have a meeting with myself that is my to don't list meeting where I sit down and I reflect on the.

Month just gone. I'm like all of the things that the energized me.

Like you know that there was a couple of months ago where I love my friends. My friends are like my family as an only child, friends of the family that I choose, and so I take.

Friendships really seriously.

And you know, there was one friend that I would catch up with every so often, and I just was reflecting on that because I caught up with them recently. I just thought, I'm leaving a lot of those catch ups feeling quite exhausted, and you don't really want that when you've caught up with a friend. And so that made it onto my to doun't list, don't proactively reach out to this person to catch up, which I had been doing.

And you know, the.

Payoff had been feeling quite exhausted and deflated after I catch up. So you know, it's not just something that's good for work, but it's just good for life. Thinking about what de energizes you in life and what do you not want to do.

I call them energy vampires, and we have them in all fasts our life, but every time we catch up with them, you know you do you feel? You feel physically and mentally exhausted. I think, first of all, I'm going to read your book because there's obviously a lot more to it from a practical advice perspective, and the fact that you've got multiple chapters on writing lists intrigues. They're a really big list maker, and I bet you I'm doing it really badly. What's your take on writing

I think it's whatever you do best, and I certainly haven't come across research that says one is better than the other. Certainly, what is motivating about a list is being able to tick something off and so you get that, you get that dopamine hit, whether it's pen and paper or whether it's technology.

Look, one thing I will.

Give with to do lists is that where a lot of people get it wrong is that they'll just have the one to do lists. And I'm more talking in the context of work, although this can apply to life as well. You put all your tasks on the one list and our brains are naturally lazy, so they're going to go for the quicker, simplest task every time because then we get to that dope meet it more quickly.

I actually love that, and I think your spot on hitting that big thing first when you've had a good breaking and you've had a workout, you've had a coffee, and you're.

Ready to rock and roll.

It's never They're never as big as you think either. You know, it's amazing once you start them how quickly all they.

Can all open up.

So, man, this is I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of our listeners because I've had conversations with a lot of them around around the time management and finding the time, particularly finding the time.

To work out.

And I give them advice not as good as your advice, but a lot of parallels there, and there's there's lots of nodding, and then at the end of that conversation, Yeah, but I just I still don't have the time. What do you say to these people?

I think that having a mindset shift is really helpful.

Most people, to use a sporting.

Analogy, play their life like they're playing defense. They're responding to things, they're playing whack a mole with all the things that are coming in at them during their day, but instead think about how could you start to play offense, you know, how could you start to be proactive with scheduling in reflections and thinking about what are the things that are just not serving you and proactively eliminating that.

So if you're listening out there and you do feel like you're continually reacting to things, as you said, let's get on.

The front foot.

So as I introduced you, ma'ither, and this wasn't me just pumping your tires up. I came across you because your podcast, which is called for all of you out there how I Work.

I absolutely love it.

And I'm going to read your book as well, which for those that didn't catch it, is called time Wise. And thank you so much for coming on the Woodlife.

Thank you so much, Sam, It's been an absolute pleasure.

Amantha is one of those guests that you know is actually going to benefit your life. I mean, as she said, we all just have the same man of ours in our day, but some of us just use a little bit better than others. Now, we're going to go to that little segment that week all hate it or Rate It.

Here we go, let's get into it.

Hi, Sam, this is Tanya. I've recently been talking to a friend about her weight loss. She's lost about twenty five kilos over the last year or so. She put me onto her health coach, and I've got further information about the products that they use, which is Amway to help them actually lose weight. All they do is walk and they take these products and they have this health coach. I'm just wondering if you can rate it for me.

Thank you. Hmmm.

I'm holding my tongue a little bit because I don't want to be too harsh, but that's just red flags everywhere for me. I'm really I don't want to burst your bubble if this is something that you're excited about. But I hate this stuff. I hate Amway, I hate

So I was going to buy my tongue.

I didn't really buy it, but that's my just absolute, honest, personal opinion. Of course, everyone to their own and how they do things, but I would be steering well clear.

Hey Sam, I'm currently training for a marathon and someone suggested that I should get ankle weights.

They're about fifty dollars.

Do you think they're worth it? Hmm, Alex.

I don't mind ankle weights for ab training if you just want to put a bit of resistance around your lower body, if your leg raises or different sort of floor pilates based movements, But for marathon training banging around while you're running, I'm not really a fan. I think anything that's sort of shifting the weight to an area that's not going to be there when you're actually getting

Hey, Sam, So, I've been using the sauna at my local pool a fair bit this winter, but I don't actually know what it does. It just feels nice to get warm around my swim time. I guess, am I wasting my time and money? Or is the sauna actually doing something for me? I guess I don't really even know why I'm there.

So the first thing I'm going to say to that, Taylor is don't underestimate that it makes you feel nice as a waste. I think that's really important. I think anything that enhances your overall wellness or workout or exercise experience is already a good thing, So that's a tick. The other thing with saunas is, without knowing all of the details to the particular sauna that you've got there at your swimming pool. You're not going to sweat out fat or any of these crazy things that people might

As always, there's a.

Link in the show notes where you can actually send me a voice question, so i'll hear from you hopefully get you on the show.

Cheers, guys, have a great week.

I'll be back Monday for another motivational moment and I'll see then.