Michael: Welcome to My Thought Partner. We are here talking about time blocking. It's one of my favorite subjects. I don't know about if it's your favorite subject or not.
Nicole: No, I hate it, but it's okay. We'll talk about it.
Michael: Yeah, that's what we do. I'm Michael David Davis.
Nicole: I'm Nicole Davis.
Michael: And let's get to it.
Nicole: Okay, yeah.
Michael: Great.
Nicole: Time blocking. So listen, I feel like you can get on your high horse about it, right? Your soapbox, your pedestal. You love time blocking. You tell everyone who will listen about time blocking. Why do you love it so much?
Michael: I love it. I love it because it gives me back my time. My time is money, and it's more valuable than anything else, because you know what? You can't get back time, but you can make a lot more money. So the way I look at it is that if I don't have control of what's happening around me, then in essence, people are robbing me. Sounds silly, but that's what it feels like. It feels like people are taking out of my pocket anytime that I don't have something set aside. So when you ask me to do something around the house, I feel like I'm losing money.
Nicole: Yeah, no, I get that vibe.
Michael: Yeah. I don't feel like I've time blocked housekeeping or house cleaning sometimes. So then that's missing out on planning or events of that nature.
Nicole: Right. So, I mean, maybe talk a little bit about how you actually go about time blocking and how you find that to be an effective way to manage your time. What do you actually do?
Michael: It sounds simple, and it is simple. The challenge that I think I have, and a lot of people have, is sitting down and doing it, right? It's finding the time to time block.
Nicole: Yeah. But I think we're kind of talking around it. What is it?
Michael: Yeah. It's taking chunks of time and actually blocking them out from your calendar, and doing it without distractions, and making sure that when you're doing it, not only are you not distracted, but you're only focusing on that moment at hand.
So for instance, for me, what I like to do is, I like to start later on in the day, because I do a lot of my thinking and I do a lot of my planning and brainstorming early in the mornings. And so that might look like from 6:30 to 7:30. That is a specific time that is on my calendar that is not available to anyone else. Not that many people are doing business at that hour. But even with you, I'm hoping, like, "Hey, I want to have that time dedicated to just ideas and brainstorming of what might happen throughout that day, or later in the week, or maybe in the month."
And then that will progress into my workday, which is then maybe eight o'clock, nine o'clock. That's when I'm okay. So now I'm going to focus on and look at my emails, and that's the only time I'm looking at my emails. And when I'm doing that, I'm not looking at emails on my phone. I'm really looking at them on my laptop or desktop, whichever. And as I'm doing that, then I'm really responding. I'm prioritizing those emails. And as I'm prioritizing those emails, I might star them to look at them later. I actually will also snooze emails. So if I get an email in my inbox...
Nicole: I feel like you are going to another zone right now.
Michael: Yeah, it's great.
Nicole: It feels so good. But time blocking.
Michael: Yeah. Okay.
Nicole: So you're saying that from 8:00 to 9:00, you have a spot on your calendar that says, "I am checking and prioritizing email"?
Michael: Yeah. And let's really make it realistic. It's 8:00 to 8:30. So I say 8:00 to 9:00 to keep it simple, but, like you said, I will get really minute about it. So that 8:00 to 9:00 is really about my responses that need to happen. And maybe that is something on social. Maybe that is something on LinkedIn. Maybe that is something...
Nicole: So it's like housekeeping, right? Or tidying up before you start your day.
Michael: That's right. Yeah. So if any of those dust bunnies that have snuck underneath the dresser overnight, then yeah, I'm organizing those dust bunnies into the dustbin and determining if I'm getting rid of them, putting them in the recycling, or...
Nicole: Are you going to vacuum?
Michael: That's right. What's happening today?
Nicole: I got it. Okay. Cool.
Michael: And then that will progress further on. So then that will turn into meetings. So the meetings I might have from 9:00 to 11:00, and that might be four meetings at half-hour length. That might be one-hour meetings.
Nicole: So, but can I ask a question? Because here's where I get squirrely with time blocking, right, is that I feel that when I time block, I inevitably then have to move it somewhere else, right? Because I have a client that calls and says, "Hey, can I meet with you from 10:15 to 11:00?" And if I already have that blocked off, I just feel like I'm doing a lot of calendar manipulation. Sure, I like the idea of it. It's just the actual execution gets weird for me. So can you—you're like my favorite.
Michael: She's my worst. She's my lovely, love of my life, but she's my worst client. But you bring up a very valid point. I love that conversation with our clients, because it's one of those things where this is the whole point of time blocking. It's so that you don't have to manipulate things. Because if you think about life when you're not time blocking, you're typically juggling everything.
And when you're juggling things, it is that instance like, "Oh, I am checking my emails," and all of a sudden now I'm getting a phone call from a client who needs something urgently, or you have your boss or somebody that's demanding your time, which, because you have this appearance of an open schedule, you will shift and prioritize in your brain: "Oh, I can do this now," right? And so what happens is we tend to say we can do it now all the time. And while that list is getting longer, now you don't know how much time you can allot to those tasks.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think that brings up another good point, right? Something else, or a reason that I am resistant, maybe we'll say, to time blocking, is that it's not always that easy for me to estimate how long things are going to take me to do. So I think maybe my version... Can I offer up a different version?
Michael: Okay.
Nicole: So I think my version of time blocking is I use a Google Calendar. And so it's using tasks on my calendar instead. And so I add all of my tasks on there, and I put them right on the calendar. You can have a cute little list on the side. I'm not into that, because I can't see it all the time. So I'll put my tasks on my calendar, and I assign them to a time, but it's always just a task. It's not taking up 30 minutes or an hour or whatever.
And so that way for me, at the end of the day, I can see, boop, boop, boop, everything's kind of crossed off or checked off or what have you. And so I know that I got those things done, but I guess I don't feel as compelled to get them done in that specific time. And that also allows me to kind of move things around and reprioritize them, right, based on what I really want to get done or what I need to get done.
Michael: So let me ask you this. Challenging, right? So we have the MDD and the NRD way of doing things, right?
Nicole: You are the MDD.
Michael: I'm the MDD. You are the NRD. You're the nerd of this environment. And I'm just the MD squared. So I'm the rule breaker. You're the rule follower.
Nicole: Oh, yeah.
Michael: Hands down, right?
Nicole: Totally.
Michael: If it can be broken, I'm going to break it. She's going to make sure that...
Nicole: No, I'm going to make this system, and we're going to follow that system.
Michael: Right. So knowing that about you, and that you like to follow those systems, how is it easier for you to create tasks?
Nicole: Because, dude, I like a system. I like a schedule. I like the rules. I like everything to fit into a nice little box. If I can't get it done during that time, right, then it crushes my little worker bee soul.
Michael: But you just said if you can't get it done that time. So if you're not time blocking, how do you know that it's going to get done?
Nicole: No, that's what I'm saying, is that if I time...
Michael: Oh, you're trying to prevent yourself from being set up for failure.
Nicole: Yes, exactly. So if I time block myself 9:30 to 10:30, and let's be real, if I have a client who's like, "You know, lady, this is on fire," I'm not going to be like, "I don't know, grab a bucket." I'm not going to do that, or "Turn on the garden hose."
Michael: She does talk to clients much later in life than I do. If it's 10 o'clock at night, it's not unknown for her to send out those emails to make sure people are soothed and satisfied. I am not that person. I'm like, if it's that urgent, then it shouldn't have been waiting until this late at night. I will take care of it.
Nicole: Yeah. Look, I don't do well with boundaries. So, which is a good point, because that's time blocking.
Michael: Is that right? It is setting boundaries so that people can respect the time that you do have.
Nicole: Yeah. But I don't think it's that people don't respect my time.
Michael: I mean, you don't respect your own time.
Nicole: That's the other thing. I don't think that's true either. But I think it's just, if I say to myself, "I'm going to get these things done from 9:30 to 10:30," and then for some reason something comes up that I cannot get those things done, because my client is my priority. I want to make sure that they have what they need. If they can't get to their learners, if they can't forward something to their own clients and take care of the business that they're operating, that messes with me.
So then on top of that, to be like, "Well, I can't talk to you, because I made a commitment to myself that I was going to do this." I don't know. It just messes with my head.
Michael: I mean, it is a very strong and valid point, but going back to that concept again, when you're blocking it off, let's say, you mentioned that you have a challenge of, you're not good at estimating the time of how long something might take you. So then you can really generalize time blocking. So you can look at the calendar and time block it and say that maybe for two hours, you are dedicating that to client troubleshooting, no matter what, right?
Because again, I imagine if I had five or seven, even three clients want me at the same exact time, they have the same urgent issue in their world, because they're apart from each other, but in their world, it's urgent now. I can't both satisfy all those clients at the same time, and yet also be mentally refreshed and prepared and have done the research I need so that I can answer those questions or needs at times. So then I would dedicate a timeframe.
Now, part of this time blocking is you really do need to set the expectations with people. And so, because if you're going to say—I think it doesn't work otherwise.
Nicole: It doesn't work otherwise.
Michael: That's right. Yeah. Because if you don't say, all right, so, client or friend or family member, colleague, whomever, "I'm going to be available from 11:00 to 2:00." They don't really need to know the reason why you're available, but you're going to just say, "I'm available to you." And then that makes them under—you don't have to say, "Hey, I'm only available for fixing your problems from 11:00 to 2:00," right? That sounds like, what is that about? It's just more like, "I'm available." But go ahead. Yeah, please.
Nicole: I know. There's always something. So maybe I just do alternate time blocking.
Michael: Okay. And I didn't know. Tell me more. What is that?
Nicole: Well, I mean, I'm obsessed with Calendly, right? And so for me, I just send my 30-minute Calendly link out to all my clients and say, "Grab time with me." And so Calendly kind of—I mean, I know we're not plugging apps. We're not sponsored by them, but it's a great tool.
Michael: And we'll tell you all about different tools too that we love using.
Nicole: Yeah. But I mean, you can set your parameters there, right? So you can't book with me within the next hour. It has to be at least an hour buffer before you can book with me, so I can wrap up whatever I'm working on. They can kind of see the time that I have available, right? So maybe I'm time blocking and I didn't even know. Or I'm not really. I know I'm not. I'm anti-time blocking.
Michael: I think the resistance for time blocking is people. They're saying that—your way more valid point than me saying, "I'm going to be militaristic about this, and I'm going to say that this is what it is." Now there is that flexibility, but I have the ability to look at my calendar weeks out in advance and go, "I know I had the flexibility on Tuesday at this time or Friday at this time," because there's chunks of time saved for that.
Where if I'm looking at my calendar and all I'm seeing are meeting invites from different clients or different needs, but I don't know what I'm going to do for planning, because look, we have to plan different activities, right?
Nicole: Right.
Michael: Yeah, totally. At that time, self-care, there's all kinds of things that are around in there. And if I look at my calendar and I'm like, "Oh, I've got this, you know, 4:00 to 5:00 open," then I go and book it. And that might've been in the unconscious part of my mind, that was set for me to actually go take a walk or something to recalibrate. Now I've just robbed myself of that, right?
But I think a lot of us are already doing that time blocking, right? But we're doing it on an unconscious level, which then I think also leads into everyone's frustration, because in my mind, I thought I was going to go have a snack at three o'clock after I got done with this client phone call or this meeting.
Nicole: Totally.
Michael: And then three o'clock happens. You have said, "We got to meet with somebody at three o'clock, because I just called about something urgent," and now I'm pissed.
Nicole: Now I am angry. I'm hungry. I'm hangry. It's not cute.
Michael: You robbed me of my time. But because we are client serving, or because we are people that want to make sure others are taken care of, right? And I think the majority of people in any environment are like that.
Nicole: We'll do it.
Michael: And so what happens is you do that again and again.
Nicole: And then you just build up that big ball of resentment within yourself. Yeah, I get it. I get it.
Michael: And then you're let down, right? At the end of the day, you're tired, you're more fatigued, you're exhausted. So really, who are you hurting if you're not doing some sort of time blocking, right?
Nicole: Yeah. I mean, look, I think as with most things in life, it's about balance. And so, personal opinion, I don't think you can wholly be in a camp of time blocking, and "I'm sticking to my time blocks, and that's it." Just like you also can't be wild and free with your calendar. Also, there has to be some sort of happy medium in there that really works for you. And so I think we have exhausted this topic. I mean, maybe not. I know you could talk about it for 23 hours.
But I think the other thing that we want to talk about, so we wanted to talk about kind of prioritization, but also realistic goal setting. And so thinking about kind of how do you set some of those goals for yourself, whether that is related to how you prioritize things in your day, and how you set some of those goals for yourself during the week, or over the coming month, quarter, year, what have you. So what are some of your thoughts on that goal setting?
Michael: Let's go back to your tasks, right? You mentioned how you like to set tasks for your day. So for me, when I look at that concept or idea, we use different apps. There's all kinds of tools that are out there. I will tell you, what helps me operate in a block of time is setting time to do those tasks, right? To sweep those dust bunnies, or determine how I'm going to vacuum it.
Nicole: I know. We all know you love time blocking. We got it.
Michael: But hold on. Look, this is going to work. It's going to tie in with you. So when I'm looking at my tasks, right, and I will create this list, and I see that when I'm looking at that task to prioritize those things, I'm now going, "All right, what is today's immediate task that I need to get done to impact?" Right?
If it's deadline driven, that's obviously going to be the priority. If it is something that needs to be done by the end of the day, right, I can hopefully look at that task and assume this might take me 30 minutes, it takes me an hour, and I can know where to put that in my day. I can also look at that and go, does this need to be done at the end of the week? Is this something I need to do at the end of the month? Or is this something that needs to be done at a quarter?
So based on that task list, my whole principle of when I create a task list is to only create a task list that I'm going to complete for the day. And the reason being, it doesn't mean that you need to complete all the tasks...
Nicole: Tasks are so different.
Michael: Yeah, at the end of the day. But it's because you want that sense of accomplishment, right? You want that reward, given that you are actually completing and fulfilling an entire day's worth of work. So I have five things on a 10-task list. Five of those things are, I've got to get done today. That stays on my task. Those other five things, I'm going to move them to where, okay, it needs to be done at the end of the week. It's Monday. By the way, I'm a Monday person. We can talk about that at another time.
Nicole: Like monday.com? 'Cause I want to talk about that.
Michael: Oh, yeah. That's it. It works. It's just that way. But then I can put those and shift them over to Tuesday, right? So it's going back to the same concept of when I see certain emails, I will snooze them. I will respond. Now let me tell you, right, I will always respond to an email within 24 hours. I will, but I will say, "Hey, let me look into this. Let me dive a little deeper." But I will put that as a snooze in my email box, especially if you have Gmail, that will then remind me the next day in the morning, so that I have to go to that. That becomes a priority.
Nicole: That is a nice feature. I actually didn't even know about that until you showed me that.
Michael: So the goal, though, for me, and what I try to get people to understand, is that you want to create tasks that are completion. You're able to complete them in a day, right? You want to feel like you have done something fulfilling, so that when you're done, how good does it feel when you get to go, "I completed everything today"? It doesn't mean that you're neglecting the other things. You're just putting that priority, like you're talking about.
Nicole: Okay. So when you talk about prioritizing things, though, are you just prioritizing based off of deadline, or based off of, you had mentioned, where things fall in the week or where they fall in the month? What kind of internal checklist are you using to help you kind of rank those things that you're going to complete that day?
Michael: That's a great question, because that goes back into the whole, my ideas and brainstorming in the morning. There's always this internal mindset of a clock. A lot of the priorities is based upon where you are in your life, right? And so if you have somebody that is a leader, you have a manager, you have some sort of boss that's breathing down your neck, obviously you're trying to prioritize what's going to get them off of you, right? How do I keep this person from annoying me or bothering me? Whether that's a persistent client, or whether that is somebody that is a spouse. I mean, you name it, where it is in your life.
Nicole: Easy.
Michael: That's fair enough.
Nicole: Yeah. Easy. Check that off the list.
Michael: But I think that priority, you have to look internally and say, what does matter to me, and how does it impact me? Not how it impacts somebody else, but how it impacts me. And that me part of that being, it will impact me if that client's not happy, because they're going to continually come back to me. Or it's going to impact me because my boss is going to keep bothering me.
They went from emails. Now they're texting. Now they're calling me, right? And I can't stop. So that's kind of how I shift that priority. Not just deadline, but how it's going to affect my ability to enjoy breathing calmly while someone else is not interfering.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think maybe another way of looking at it, I also think about how those tasks impact me, and kind of my happiness or my feeling of success. But I also look at my energy level throughout the day, and when do I need to crank certain things out? And a lot of times we'll end up really trying to tackle the things that need a lot of brain power earlier in the day, because I am a morning person. Like, I am not pleasant to be around in the morning, because I'm so pleasant in the morning.
Michael: Well, I mean, I think we're very similar in that energy. We live those morning times to just dive in deep and get the things, like task-oriented things, done really quickly.
Nicole: And so for me, trying to write a proposal at four in the afternoon is not going to happen. It's just not going to be a good product. I'm going to dread it. And so I really try to shove as much of that stuff that is tough for me early in the day, and then give myself a reward. And my rewards probably don't look like everyone else's, but my reward is building out some sort of Excel template, or digging deeper into some data around something.
Because for me, that kind of stuff feels more soothing, or it's more interesting to me to dig into data rather than produce a proposal or write a grant application or something like that. So that's kind of how I will prioritize some of those things. I do, maybe similar to you, start at the deadline and then kind of look, okay, so working from that deadline, when does it absolutely have to be done? And then when do I need to plug that in during my day to make sure that I can really give it my best attention?
Michael: Well, and I think you made a perfect example, is that again, when we're saying the prioritization part of it, and I'm focusing on it, it's got to be about you, or how I look at me. I think you hit the nail on the head. You have to trust yourself to know when you are most efficient in your day, right? So whether you are somebody who works on a day in a corporate level, or somebody that works on a third shift, maybe you're in the emergency care or in the hospital system, right? And you're working 24-hour shifts and those types of things.
So those types of environment, you're a pilot, right? There's a very systematic way that, when you're taking the most beneficial part of your energy, but that's something that you have to identify, right? So I think that if you know that you're more productive—like, we're the kind of people who are productive during the day—but if you're more productive in the afternoon, then that schedule might flip differently for you than it does us.
Nicole: Yeah. Well, and what's interesting is you kind of will find those people that you work with as well. It's maybe a little tough, honestly, for us sometimes, because we are both high energy during those same times. And so we both want to get our own stuff done during that time, which makes it hard for us to collaborate sometimes, right?
Michael: For sure.
Nicole: I'm like, "No, I got to crank this thing out." You're like, "I got to crank this thing out." What's interesting for me is that a lot of times in my professional career, I've actually found myself working really closely with people who are night owls. And so I will crank something out in the morning, and then kind of tag them in, and they'll work on it at 11 o'clock at night. And then it's ready for me in the morning, and then I can tag back in.
And so that's really nice when you find those people who do kind of have that opposite energy pattern from you. We just don't happen to be those people.
Michael: I think the nice thing is that you hit it right on the head. And I think that is, you're finding the people. So you're not only trusting yourself, but then you're also finding the people that you can almost adopt them into your time blocking system or your prioritization system. Because I think it's impossible to do it alone, but in order to do it more efficiently alone, you have to have full control of your availability, right?
And so if my availability, and our availability, is competing based on our priorities of what we have due to our respective industries and clients, and going into the personal life, how do we prioritize each other still? Because we do both work from home. We do both work in different environmental things. There are some overlaps, but ultimately we have to have very different trains of thoughts of things.
You know, you're very system oriented, and I'm more, I have to come up with the ideas, and then also how to work with clients and bring those ideas together, where at that point I can go, "Oh my gosh, hey, I'm tagging you in. How can you look at that and solve that?"
Nicole: Well, you're very big picture, right? I mean, you kind of see how it's all going to fit together long-term, and you have the big ideas, and I'm sometimes the Eeyore.
Michael: That's right. I joke, she's my dream killer. But like, "Oh my gosh, I want to do this, this, and this." And Nicole's like, "Yeah..."
Nicole: So let me remind you of that thing that you still haven't done yet. Can I bring you back to reality? I'm like, "Oh, but it's like, let's break this down one piece at a time." And so I think that that's part of the balance that we find in each other, right? But that can also be points of friction and points of stress, of, you're like, "No, no, no, let's go on this big journey. I have this big idea. We can do it." And I kind of want to take one bite at a time.
Michael: And that really is why I have to survive in a time blocking environment, because I have to give myself that freedom to allow the brain to work, and give myself that time. But once that stops, I have to shift that focus so that I can actually do the tasks that are associated. Because if I don't, I will spend days in the world of, "Ah, look at all these beautiful things that are not happening yet in life," right? And I won't get them done. And so I will drown in my own expertise.
Nicole: He will ideate forever. And, like, "Let's start. Let's just do something."
Michael: So that's how that time block works for me.
Nicole: Yeah. All right.
Michael: We're going to wrap this for the second, and we'll be back in the second half.
Let's do this. Are you recording? I'm recording. Great. Both of us, our best selves in this moment. I'm just having fun.
Nicole: I feel like we talked about a lot of stuff, but what is the common thread? Like, what are we trying to let people know in this, the first podcast? What are we trying to let people know?
Michael: I mean, I think the whole idea of concepting should be taken...
Nicole: I think the whole idea of what?
Michael: What'd I say?
Nicole: I think you said the whole idea of concepting.
Michael: Okay. Wait.
Nicole: Okay. So what are we trying—like, who cares, right? What are we trying to communicate in this?
Michael: Why should you care about little chat?
Nicole: Well, about any of the stuff that we were talking about. I mean, so I think if we go through kind of all the things, it's time blocking, it's prioritization, it's maybe low-key goal setting, but I don't think we're talking about big goal setting. It's just kind of, how are you navigating your time and prioritizing the things that you need to accomplish?
Michael: I just realized, by the magic of videos, TV and magic, I'm wearing my glasses now. I wasn't before. So let me get these off for you guys. All right. It really helps, right? It makes it easy to see. Okay.
To me, I'll tell you, to me, again, what I find the most valuable, and people that go from a world of almost an unstructured day, giving yourself that ability to give you—it's really about giving you back your freedom. And it really is about managing your stress.
Nicole: So if you have someone who—I mean, I think we all do time blocking to a certain extent, right? So if someone is looking to make a change, maybe, or just kind of shift the way that they attack their schedule, or approach their day or their week, what are maybe three things that you would want people to know that they could try out this week when it comes to time blocking and prioritization? Just to put you on the spot.
Michael: No, yeah, please do put me on the spot. She's never done this in our lives before, ever.
So I think when I think about that concept of—and I will say it, I mean, this has all been kind of driven by my own self desires and needs. And it was because of the ability for me to have almost no control of how... If you would put me on the spot and say, "What are you doing today?" or "What are you going to get accomplished?" If I had a supervisor, somebody in a previous corporate world, and say, "What did you get done today?" That would almost be a hard answer for me to go, "Well, I did..." I would find myself fumbling for a response, right? Kind of like now.
Nicole: Yeah. I'm like, "I would like for you to prioritize an answer." That's correct.
Michael: But because of that, right, I think that's the same thing. I just never wanted to be in a position of not knowing how to answer the question when someone said, "Hey, so what did you get done today? What did you accomplish?"
And so taking that ability and time blocking it into the life, and putting those tasks in those dedicated non-distraction times, I was able to then, at the end of the day, if someone came to me and said what did I get done, I can go, "Actually, I was able to finish A, B, C, D. I have tomorrow, we're going to get E and F taken care of. And I have also the next three clients that we're going to have a conversation with. It's going to be resolved."
And I was able to project, probably, when deals would get done better. I was able to—you're giving me a blank look.
Nicole: Go ahead. Okay. Because the question was—let's hear it—if someone wants to start shifting the way that they tackle their week, what three things would you tell them to try this week in order to do that?
Michael: As you can see, this is why I had to time block, because there's so many hours in my life. Okay. I would say the three things to start with is, first of all, trust yourself, right? Trust yourself to understand that you can do this, right? You got to trust yourself that you can get it done. The second thing is to commit to yourself to actually getting it done, right? Because if you don't trust yourself to do it, you'll never get it done. And then if you're saying, "You know what, I trust myself. I can get this done. It's not going to be perfect," right?
Nicole: Yeah. Then you got to commit to doing it, 'cause if you don't do it—so, trust, commit.
Michael: Yep. And then the third thing is that reward yourself for completing it. Like, you got to give yourself that little bit of, like, "Hey, I got this done."
Nicole: And it's a good feeling. Okay. My turn.
Michael: Yeah. Go for it.
Nicole: Yeah. Okay. So the MDD version is trust yourself, commit to yourself, reward yourself.
Michael: Yes. Right.
Nicole: God, this is going to be so indicative of who we are in life. So, because you're all in the clouds.
Michael: That's right. But I mean, look, she has the tangible real.
Nicole: I'm like, okay, I'm all about "here are three concrete things." So to me, it would be first, maybe observe and document your energy levels. I really think that that's a huge part of how you tackle your schedule and tackle your week. And so look at when do you find yourself being really energized? What types of tasks really energize you? What are the things that you end up doing when you don't really know how to fill your time? Like, what are those things?
And I think I mentioned it before, but for me, it's always a data project, or it's designing something in Canva. For me, I can just kind of turn off my brain, and I just enjoy looking at all the templates and all the graphics and stuff, right? So find those things, and find those times. So that's the first thing, is to identify things about energy. What energizes you, and when do you have the most of it?
Second thing I would say would be to start time blocking. So try it out, right? I think the problem when people try to start something new is they try to go full tilt into it. So try time blocking two days this week. So to me, that's enough to kind of see, hmm, what do I like about this? What is working? And so take those things that you learned from your energy exercise and apply those to time blocking two days out of the week. Guess what? I don't even think they should be two back-to-back days, because that can also feel overwhelming. Like, "Oh, this new system."
Michael: And definitely don't do it on a Monday or a Friday, because your brain is probably elsewhere on either two of those days.
Nicole: That's fair.
Michael: Yeah. Right. Do it on a day that's least stressful to you.
Nicole: Yeah. And so then, so energy levels, try it. Do, like, a toe in the pond. And then, I mean, I think the third thing to me would be then reassess and plan for next week, right? So reflect on what you did. What did you like? What did you not like? What went well? What was a dumpster fire? And then pivot accordingly for next week.
Because I think at the end of the day, no one is an actual expert on this stuff. You are your own expert. You are the expert of yourself. And so I think those are the things that you have to learn and maybe, to your point, gain confidence in, and then apply for yourself, of what's actually going to work for you. 'Cause you're the only one who knows.
Michael: All right. So I say, this is team MDD right now: trust, commit to it, and then reward yourself, right? And team NRD is—what did I say?
Nicole: Were you listening?
Michael: Look, man, this is tough. She's like, "This is really tough."
Nicole: You know, I'm an active listener.
Michael: That's right. So it is to, oh, initialize. It's not that. Oh my gosh.
Nicole: The second one is time blocking. Shut it down.
Michael: Third one was reevaluate.
Nicole: First one was assess energy. Assess your energy. To me, that's like trusting yourself. But it's not.
Michael: Okay.
Nicole: So it's assessing your energy, different types of day, different types of tasks. And then, yes, try time blocking. Try it maybe two days out of the week. They don't have to be back-to-back days. According to this one, they don't have to be Mondays and Fridays either. I love that I get my own take, and he still contributes to my take.
Michael: Whatever. That's crazy.
Nicole: And then the last thing, yes, is assess, reevaluate, and plan for the next go. Because you're your own expert.
Michael: I'm proving it right here. So team NRD is, oh my gosh, it's that first one.
Nicole: It's painful. Like, it's painful.
Michael: It really is to you, isn't it?
Nicole: I already said it. They've heard it 23 times.
Michael: Yeah, they have. They've heard it. They retained it.
Nicole: You have not. It's fine.
Michael: So team MDD or team NRD, or what is your version? Is there a hybrid version out there that incorporates both of those in there? We'd love to know about that.
Nicole: There's 100% a hybrid version. And by the way, let me just reiterate, there's the version for you.
Michael: There is. And so that version is also valid and extraordinary and wonderful. We're going to take this further next week, believe it or not.
Nicole: What more is there to say?
Michael: There's so much more.
Nicole: There's no way there's more to say.
Michael: Look, you think it's—we just touched the basics. But next conversation will be about kind of finishing up what you're saying, the assessment, right? We're going to look at what it was that maybe you accomplished, and the things that you assessed in that, because now we're going to really get into the concept of how to make it easier, right? And streamlining that process, and how can you do that?
And there's even one thing that we left out almost completely, we said in the very beginning, and that is removing distractions. And believe it or not, those two are really tied close in together, because the distractions are what make it hard.
Nicole: It's tough. Well, and by the way, distractions are just built into our everyday lives at this point, with the pinging and the phone and the laptop and the doorbell if you're working from home, or your dog barking at something, or...
Michael: The whole reason why we started this podcast is so we can spend non-distracted time together. That was my elusive goal behind us, that we got dedicated one-on-one time that hopefully you guys will get to enjoy as well. That'll be, the next conversation will be distractions, distractions, and what will it be? I don't know. Let's see. [inaudible] All right. We'll see that in the next conversation. Look forward to hearing you from then.
Nicole: Looking forward to what?
Michael: Yeah, that's horrible. That was so bad. All right. So Nicole's the expert at wrapping things up. As you can tell, I'm the human being that will just talk way too long about too many ideas. Nicole, what are we taking away today?
Nicole: So, I mean, take some of these principles, try them out, see what you think. And then next week we're talking about cutting out distractions, which is really hard given, I think, just kind of the world that we live in at this point. A lot of us are still working from home. There are a lot of distractions. You've got significant other, you've got dogs barking out the window, you've got your phone, you're getting pinged on Slack, and everything else.
So it's just kind of taking some of these principles and then applying them one step further to really eliminate some of those distractions. So we look forward to hearing—speaking of our dogs in this crate and being a huge distraction right now.
Michael: So, and streamlining the process.
Nicole: And streamlining the process. Streamlining what process?
Michael: Streamlining the process of what they accomplished, like in the fact of doing those two days.
Nicole: Oh, so they're only going to do what I recommend, not what you recommend.
Michael: I don't have any.
Nicole: I love that. Yeah.
Michael: 'Cause look, let's really break it down. People listen to you. They come to me for the show and the pizzazz, but they only really stick around to listen to Nicole. That's why it's team MDD or team NRD. I don't even know how to say that quickly anymore. It's so bad.
Nicole: Yeah. Okay. Next week. Have a good one.
Look forward to what?
Michael: Looking forward to hearing from you again. Okay.
Nicole: There should be some sort of ending, I think, because "looking forward to hearing them again"... Yeah. We'll just keep doing it. Like everybody who...
