#1840 Efficient Or Just Busy? - Harps

of course not. But I think in general terms, you and I, when it comes to doing the things that we want to do with work, with projects, with our health, with creating certain outcomes on planet us, whatever those outcomes are given the option to be inefficient or efficient, all of us are going to choose efficient. Because I have a pretty busy diary most days, most weeks, most months.

You know that include seven podcasts a week minimum. There's seven of these seven new projects, and then there's often one, two or three podcasts that I do on somebody else's show. And then of course there's my research, my PhD that you know is drawing to a close, thankfully. Then there's all my corporate speaking work, which is I guess, on average, two times a week one hundred times a year, give

or take. And then there's public workshops and events, and there's online stuff, and there's face to face stuff, and then there's a bit of coaching and a bit of consulting, and then there's a bit of lifting weights every day, seven days a week. And then there's my commitment to walk kind of about ten kilometers a day. And then there's the old people that I love the most, my mum and dad, who are eighty five years I hate it when people say young. Let's just say eighty five

years old, because that is exactly what they are. And you know, so I've got a I don't have to of course, I want to spend time with them, look after them, love them, make sure they're okay. So that's something that needs to be factored in high on my

priorities every day and every week. And so you know, when you put all of that together, and trying to get some quality sleep and trying to eat some quality food and also prepare quality food because I live by myself, and then have a bit of fun and a few laughs and you know, lift heavy shit with my mate and all of that and be a good human. It's very easy with so many variables and so many things

and so many factors to be inefficient. And so I think, and I've said this before, I think we can have but I think a lot of us do have, if not all the time, a lot of the time or some of the time, but we do have this tendency to kind of operate on autopilot, to live kind of unconsciously and do the thing that we did yesterday and the day before and the week before and the month before, and do that thing not because it works well, or not because it's optimal, or not because it's efficient, but

just because we are in the habit. We are in the unconscious habit of doing that thing that way. So I think it's good to, as I always say, to maybe put up our operating system, our day to day operating system, up on the old hoist, the metaphoric hoists, so that we can walk around and have a look at it and see what's working, what's efficient, what's inefficient, what's optimal, what's suboptimal, what kind of results we're getting. So I guess efficiency is it's getting the most output

from the least input. And that doesn't mean we're not trying it just means what is the best what is the best return on investment physical, mental, emotional, time, skill, knowledge, whatever, What is the best ROI that I can get doing this thing now, whether or not that is you know, time or energy, or money or effort or resources or all of those other things. It's about doing things well

with minimal minimal what minimal waste? I guess. So, in simple terms, efficiency is, for example, I'm going to give you some examples so we're clear, and then I'm going to give you some strategies along the way, and then I'm going to give you some questions that you can ask yourself and then operationalize off the back of that, so that you might if you feel like you're not always efficient or you are wasting like I said, time, energy, resources, skills,

that you might be able to think better, do better, create better. So it's lifting heavier with better form and less effort. That's an example of efficiency. I'm doing a better weight or a heavier weight perhaps, or maybe I'm lifting the same weight but with better form, and now I'm going to get best, better results and over time when I train well, So when the quality is high, not just the quantity, but when the quality is high. Now I'm getting the best return on investment because one

my body needs to adapt. I'm going to build more strength and there's going to be more muscle, or there's going to be more fitness or flexibility or range of movement or whatever fitness variable it is that I'm trying to stimulate to respond. Right, I'm going to get a better outcome because I'm doing it a better way. It's not junk training, it's not trash training, and it's not taking forever. Efficiency is solving a problem in five minutes

that used to take you thirty. It's having a ten minute conversation that creates more clarity than a fucking thirty minute waffle fest. You know those meetings where you go and sit in meetings. I don't sit in lots of them, fortunately because I work for me, but I do sit in enough of them where I'm thinking, fucking hell, we could have all done. We could have said all of this shit much more succinctly, much more quickly. We could have been in and out with more clarity, less confusion,

and less bullshit in one fifth of the time. And for a range of reasons that often doesn't happen. But I think for those of you who can control that, like if it's your meeting or it's your business, or you can somehow influence the way that that goes, or maybe you can even suggest bravely, I feel like we could be more efficient even if you're not in charge.

But I feel like we take sixty minutes to do ten to fifteen minutes of work, because sometimes that's just true, and sometimes we need to be brave enough to say it. Efficiency is writing an email once that answers ten people's questions. It's about writing. In my case, it was about writing a global or a generalized auto reply to the myriad of emails that I would receive. So one of the things Melessa. If you don't know who Melessa is, she

runs my life. She's amazing. She's my business partner, business manager,

much smarter than me, et cetera, et cetera. Melissa would spend some days four or five hours responding to all the emails that would come through my website, and without being rude, a lot of those were people wanting something for free essentially, or people are asking me a question that with respect, I just don't have the time or energy to be able to answer deeply personal things sometimes and things that it's not It's not my role to do that. It's not my role to sort through seven

hundred emails a week and dispense personal advice. My gift to the world, if it's a gift, is what I'm doing now, which is sharing my thoughts and ideas and my knowledge and my inspiration in a way where speaking of efficiency, I can reach a lot of people at once. Me spending thirty minutes like I am right now talking to thousands of humans like I am right now or who will hear it eventually, is way more efficient than me grinding away with one on one responses that come

through my email. So what I did was I wrote a really thoughtful, really comprehensive email where I basically answered every potential question and set everything clearly so that people would know this is not a personal advice column. This is not you know it is what it is. Love you all, thank you for your support. But I can't be a personal advisor or counselor, or nutrition coach or

fitness coach. So if you want personal advice, there's a lot of people who can do that, but I'm not that person, right And that just that one email reduced Melissa's work in that space by ninety eight percent. It's about efficiency. Is about a ten minute zoom call instead of a two hour round trip in person meetings that I have I often so before and events I have pretty much every event, one hundred events a year what's called an event briefing. And people will want to will

often want me to come to them. Now I live twenty five thirty minutes out of the city in Melbourne, they would want me to drive into the city quite often, find a park, go and find them, sit with them, have a conversation that we could have honestly had on the phone, but way more conveniently, and still being able to see each other and interact and all of those

things on zoom. So when it's possible, which is most of the time, I would say to people, love to meet with you, love to answer your questions, love to sit with you and look at you and connect with you. But rather than me spend two hours out of my day, can we spend ten to fifteen minutes on a zoom call. And if it takes twenty or thirty that's also okay.

And ninety nine percent of the time they go, oh yeah, sure, of course, of course, but you need to be able to with these things, recognize that you do it politely. There's no real advantage for either of us on either side with me sitting in a room across the table versus me sitting at the desk where I am, and

then sitting at a desk. There might be one or two things, to be honest, but in general terms, it really doesn't make any difference, and it saves everyone a lot of time and it's a lot more efficient, especially for me. It's about efficiency, is about doing a thirty minute workout of compound movements in the gym. Sometimes sometimes I will go in and I will do something like deadlifts and chin ups and push ups and maybe a version of squats or leg press. I'll do four exercises.

I'll do them pretty much back to back. There'll be minimal recovery. I'll hit pretty much every major muscle group in my body. I'm building strength, my heart rates up, so there's a cardio component to it. I'm training effectively efficiently, I'm using good technique, I'm not chatting, I'm not wasting time. And obviously I don't do this all the time, just sometimes when I really need to be in and out. But I can do a thirty minute session that would equate to what a lot of people would do in

seventy five or sixty minutes. But we just need to make sure that we know what we're doing and we're optimizing everything once we get into that environment. It's about For me, efficiency is about the guy that does my garden doing my garden. Because the guy that does my garden awesome me. Shit he can do in sixty minutes with his skills and his tools and his knowledge and his experience and his energy. He can do in sixty minutes what I will do not very well in three hours.

And not only that, I can pay him a decent hourly rate for him. But while I'm paying him that Ali rate, I'm doing other shit and making a better HOLI rate. So bibbity Bobby boo. He's happy. I'm happy. I don't have to do the thing that I don't really like doing. I'm not great at it. I love being in the garden. I love looking at the garden. And some of you are going.

camps and all the things that we do. If there's fifty things that need to be done, there's at least twenty five of those things that Melissa is better at than me, at least probably thirty five, probably forty five, let's be honest. And now that doesn't mean she does forty five and I do five. But what that means is we both of us go all right, these are

all the things that we need to do. Also, Tiff works with us as well, who's amazing, and we go all right, Well, between Tiff and Melissa and Fatty Harps, who's going to do what who's going to do what? So the question is what is the best use what is the best use of Tip? What is the best use of Melissa? And what is the best use of me? And so the question that I ask myself a version of this question every day is based on what I want to do, be, create and change today. What's the

best use of me? What's the most efficient use of my time? Knowledge, skills, energy? And then when I ask with a question like that, what it does? It gives me clarity, It gives me focus, it gives me intention, and off the back of all of that, it gives me a plan and a timetable. Now I have, essentially I have a to do list because at the start of the day I jumped into it consciously, thinking critically. I didn't just jump into another groundhog day doing what

didn't work yesterday, last week, month, here. I started the day with a good intention and the intention is was is today. I want to be efficient and effective. I want to get the most out of me, the most out of my energy. I want to get the most out of my day, my relationships, my conversations. I want to get the most out of everything. How do I do that? How do I get the most out of Melissa in this working relationship? How do I get the most out of me? How do I get the most

out of Tiff? Now, also with those questions comes what does Tiff want to do? Melissa want to do? What does Craig want to do? And of course the other stuff. It's not just all about efficiency. It's about purpose, it's about having fun, it's about having a laugh. But today specifically we're talking about efficiency. And so the challenge for us is to figure out what is the operating system or what is the paradigm, or what is the protocol or the process? Pick any of those big sciency words

that works best for me. It's best for me. So I might even say, well, how do you listener? How do you study most effectively? Now, if you're like a lot of people, sitting down with a big fat book or staring at a screen full of words for an hour is probably not the most effective way for you. I don't know what it is for you, But for some people, the most effective way to study is to listen.

For some people it's to read a little bit and then write stuff down, then highlight some of the stuff they wrote down, then go over those notes later not nates notes, and then to read another bit to read it out loud perhaps rather than when I read stuff out loud, it goes in more, by the way, even when and I recall it better, even when I'm by myself.

If I really want to remember something or I want to lock it in, I read it out loud because when I'm reading it out loud, I'm much more present and much more focused versus I can literally read something on a screen while be thinking about while I'm thinking about something else, But when I'm reading something out loud, I can't do that because I'm totally present. So one of the things that I used to do I don't do as much anymore, but a version of it sometimes.

But in my first degree, there was no AI. There was the Internet was there, but it was really really fundamental. But what I used to do was and I'm just giving you an example of efficiency. When I first started my first degree, I could not study, I couldn't concentrate. It was all bloody. It was terrifying, it was arduous, it was uncomfortable, It was inefficient, it was ineffective. It was all of that. So what I learned over time, for me. And again, remember we're always trying to figure

out how do I work optimally. What I figured out for me was if I read. Let's say I'm reading a paragraph of something in a book or on a on a screen. So I'll read the paragraph and I'll try to comprehend it, and then I would I mostly started with books first time round, not online as in, you know. The stuff that I needed to read and absorb would be generally through books or papers. Then I would read whatever it is i'm reading again, I would read it with a highlight or I've literally got two

highlighters about six inches from my hand right now. I still use highlighters all of the time. I would read the stuff in the paragraph. I would read the paragraph I should say. Then I would highlight the stuff that for me was the most important stuff I thought I needed to know, remember and recall. And I would do that for hours. And I would sometimes do ten or fifteen minutes. Then I would go get a drink, Car'd do another ten, fifteen minutes, I'd do some squats and

push ups. I do another ten. I'd just do what. Sometimes it'd be seven, sometimes it'd be twenty four. Right, there's no set protocol, but it was as long as I've felt I was present and I was absorbing as well as I could. Now, I'd do that for hours on and off in my little installments, and then at the end of the study session, I would get out. I had a digital recorder, so this is before we had recorders in phones, but I had a digital recorder,

and I would record all the highlighted stuff into my recorder. Right, so now I'd read it multiple times, I'd highlight highlighted it is that the word highlighted, highlighted, and then I'd read it, so I'd read it, and now I can listen to it. And then what I would do is wherever I would be going, if I was going for a walk, if I was going for a drive, if

I was heading somewhere. Not all of the time, but a lot of the time, I was listening to the stuff that I'd read, that i'd highlighted, and that I'd recorded, because for me, that helped lock it in, so I could literally hear the same information five, ten, fifteen, twenty times without doing the thing that I hated or didn't enjoy, which was sitting looking at a book in a room where there are so many other awesome things I could be doing other than looking at this fucking book in

this fucking room and trying to remember this shit that I'm trying to remember. So for me, that was a way of becoming more efficient and more effective. But you need to find out your efficiency protocol every day. I suggest that you start with a clear focus, a clear intention, and they're from there, you know, and asking me what do I need to do today, Like what's the most efficient use of me time, energy? All that. Then off the back of that, build a plan for the day.

If not do it the night before, what do I want to do tomorrow? What's the best use of me tomorrow? Cool? Then you get up, you've already got to do, list, your timetable, your plan, and then you jump into it.

And I think, also also speaking of efficiency, we need to learn to say no to the things that don't align to the things that don't align with our purpose and our mission and our goals and our intentions, and to protect the time that we have doing what matters, because it's so easy just to go down a rabbit hole of bullshit. Now, by the way, rabbit holes I think are fine, but maybe we need to go. You know what, I'm done. It's five o'clock in the day. I'm done. I don't need to be more productive or

efficient today. I'm just going to fuck off and have fun. I'm gonna lift shit, I'm going to eat some shit. I'm going to watch some Netflix, and I'm gonna I'm going to jump online and look at two hundred motorbike reviews as is often my way or whatever. Right, But we know that we're doing that and we're okay with it. We're not doing it because we got distracted. We're not doing it because we're being inefficient. So I want to give you some questions that you can hear and then

potentially write down and then potentially operationalize. Question number one, is am I efficient? Am I busy? Am I both? Or am I neither? Am I efficient? Just busy, both or neither. Sometimes we're busy and also efficient. Sometimes we're busy and inefficient, and sometimes we're not busy, but we're really efficient. Which that's kind of a beautiful scenario, isn't it.

Where we're really we're really being effective with all of the things that we have at our disposal to do the work, to create the outcome and questions that I've already mentioned. I'll just repeat, what's the best use of my time? Etc? Am I best person for this task? You know? Should someone else do this? Also, here's a good question, when am I most efficient? I think everybody has, for want of a better term, I've never heard this term. I'm making it up as we go, an efficiency window. Right,

we have a time of the day, not everyone. I mean, some people are awesome in the morning, then they lag in the day, and then they have a bit of a bloody a burst at night. Melissa seems to be like that. Melissa seems to come to life after six

She's like a fucking efficiency vampire. I don't know what that is about, but knowing how your body and your brain and your mind and your nervous system and your focus and your attention and your efficiency are all intertwined, I know for me, I tend to be better before three o'clock, two o'clock in the morning. I'm often sometimes I feel fucking amazing. I feel literally smarter in the morning. I feel literally and well. We do know that people score higher and lower on IQ tests at certain times

of the day and under certain circumstances and conditions. That's a really interesting topic for another day. But because by the way, your IQ as a measure is a variable, that's not a constant. So which is why depending on a bunch of variables, you could do the same IQ or the same kind of quality of IQ tests, not the same questions, but the same style of IQ test ten times and you would be scored potentially at ten different levels of IQ depending on a myriad of things. Anyway,

I'm getting off efficiency. Here are some more questions for you to think about. Is there a simpler, faster, or smarter way to this? Here's another e what's eating up my time and or energy without producing meaningful results? Where am I being busy rather than effective? Am I focused on the right things or just doing the easy and or urgent things? What mental clutter is slowing me down or making me second guess myself? Where am I overthinking? And what am I overthinking that I should just take

action on. How much of my day is spent doing things that don't actually matter to my goals and values. Like I said before, I think there's a time where that's okay. But I like to like, for example, as I record this, it's one seventeen. I have another podcast at two o'clock with a guy called Perry who we've had on the show before, and I want to do another solo one after Perry. So my intention this afternoon

is to do three podcasts now. In order for me to be efficient and effective and get that done, I needed to get a lot of stuff done before. I needed to organize my food, my coffee, my walking, and I needed to block out around four hours to get these three podcasts done so that I could be effective and productive and efficient. And I think that day to day there will be times when it's absolutely understandable and fine for you to go from nine till midday. I'm

in the zone. I'm flying, no distractions, I'm down the hole. I'm doing what I need to do, batten down the hatches, captain productivity. But between midday and three or midday and two, I'm taking it easy and I'm going to go have lunch with my missus or my bloke or my kid or whatever it is. Or I'm going to watch an hour of Netflix, or I'm going to do a workout, or I'm going to go for a walk along the river, or I'm going to watch some funny shit and laugh.

It doesn't matter. I don't think that well. I know that the idea of being every day, all day efficient, productive and effective is not a great plan because it's not healthy. But I think it's just deciding when and how we're going to be most effective and most efficient. Could this task be automated, delegated, or deleted? That's a great question. Am I doing this out of habit, obligation or actual purpose? In other words? Does it? Is it

moving the needle? Is this something that I do because I've just always done it and I'm kind of psychologically, emotionally, behaviorally addicted to it. It's just what I do. It's my unconscious kind of pattern. Or am I intentionally consciously doing something which is productive? Let's still a couple more of them were jam Am I clear and direct? Some communication stuff? Am I clear and direct? Am I using one hundred words when ten would be fine? What do I need to say? And how can I say it

with empathy and awareness and kindness? Of course? But how can I say it as succinctly as possible? So one they get what I'm talking about? There's no confusion, there's no mystery? And two we're done quite quickly? Have I said what I actually mean? Am I clear? Am I speaking in bloody metaphors and analogies that they don't understand? Or am I being thoughtful but also direct so they don't need to solve any kind of verbal mystery we're

telling them, we're sharing directly. Could I prevent future confusion or current confusion by being clearer in this moment? And let's do a few about energy and effort? Is this effort giving me growth? Is the effort? Is the psychological, emotional and physiological energy that I am spending on this? Is it growing me? Or is it exhausting me? Is it wearing me out? Is it moving the needle in a positive or a negative way? Two? More? Am I

working hard on the wrong thing? Last one? What one change would make the biggest difference to how I feel or how I perform this week? I think the idea

is to realize that we do so much. In conclusion, the idea is to think about how much stuff that we do on autopilot without, as I said earlier, without really being conscious, without really thinking critically, and without having I guess a bigger picture awareness of what we're doing that's great, that's effective, that's efficient, and what we're doing that's maybe somewhere closer to the end of the scale. And as always, this is about us thinking better and

doing better and being better. This isn't about self loathing or hating on ourselves. This is about recognizing that all of us. I don't think there's anybody listening to this that wants to be more inefficient. And with that in mind, the question is, well, then, how do I become more effective and efficient and productive? How do I get the best ROI return on investment without killing myself or wearing what's the best plan, what's the best strategy, what's the

best use of me and my time? All of those things, but none of that, none of that in movement. That development, that growth, that efficiency is going to happen if we keep doing what we've been doing.