S5 Bonus 01: How To Be More Productive

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[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder, and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement, and structure. 

I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space. If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go.

YD: Hi everyone, we are taking June off to rest here at the Travel Media Lab Podcast, and we will be returning with fresh Season Six episodes for you in July. Until then, I'd like to share with you a few conversations that we regularly have in the Circle, our membership in which will help you get your stories published with ongoing support, encouragement, opportunities, and a community as you establish yourself in the travel media space.

In this bonus episode, I'm sharing with you a very important discussion we just had in the Circle this month. At the beginning of the month, we set a theme inside the Circle, and in May, our theme was productivity and use of time. We dedicated a whole hour to discussing how to become more effective, more productive, and we're sharing strategies and tips that help our members on this path. So, in today's episode, I share with you a part of that workshop. This whole workshop and all of our workshops and conversations in addition to all the support and community that we offer are available to you at any time when you join us over at travelmedialab.com/circle.

Before we get started today, I wanted to share with you a recent review we got on our podcast from Annika. Annika says, “This is a fantastic podcast for anyone interested in travel writing and photography. I particularly like that Yulia, like me, is not a native speaker, but with her multiple articles and big-name magazines, she proves doubters wrong. Great podcast to boost confidence, get practical advice and soak in the inspiration. Thank you, Yulia.” Thank you so much, Annika, for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Thank you. And if you're listening right now, and if you enjoy our podcast, I encourage you to go to your podcast platform right now and share your thoughts. I look at every single review we get. They're very, very important to me. Who knows, maybe next time I will be reading your review on the podcast. So, thank you so much for that.

Alright, let's get into today's episode, and just to note, the audio here may be a little bit wobbly. I was giving this workshop and talking to our members inside The Circle in a bustling cafe in Amman, Jordan. So, if you hear a bit of that background noise, that's where that comes from. But hopefully, this will be a useful and interesting conversation to you nonetheless. Alright, let's get it.

[EPISODE]

[00:02:36] YD: Alright, welcome, everyone to our monthly meeting. And for newer people in The Circle, this is the meeting where we set the theme for the month, and the theme for May is improving our workflows and thinking about productivity, thinking about, how do we maximize our time, how do we be the most effective with our time, when we pitch, when we research, when we write our articles, and I will share with you some thoughts that I have. But honestly, I want today maybe be a little bit more of a free discussion, because I think we all have different to share, right? We all have packs. We all approach productivity and workflow differently. So, I think if we also exchange how each one of us works, and what has worked for some of us, I think that will be beneficial as well.

And just to preview too, that next month's theme is yet to be determined, and I actually want you guys to come up with a theme. So, if there's something that you want to address, or something that specifically you want to cover, I will create a thread in the circle where we can drop those ideas, because I'm also kind of running out of things too — I know some of them, we can kind of keep bringing back, because some of the monthly themes are relevant, month in, but I figured I would give you guys this month in June for you to tell me what you want to cover. So, that's just a preview.

[00:04:04] V: Sounds good.

[00:04:05] YD: Awesome. Thank you, Vanessa. Alright, cool. So, what I want to start this conversation today with is this quote that I read somewhere, and it's from Annie Dillard, which, by the way, I don't know who Annie Dillard is. I should probably check or google her. She's probably a writer, but she has this quote, which really spoke to me which says, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And I just thought that was such an amazing quote, because it's true, right? It's like, how we spend every single one of our days, it adds up to something significant over time. If we spend every day really focused on what it is that we want to accomplish, pitching more, writing more, then at the end of the week, at the end of the month and the end of the year, we'll have a lot of things to show for it, because every single day we spent a little effort, right? We added the Little bit more.

So, I just really love that point. I think it's really accurately reflects, at least the way I think about workflow, and the way I think about productivity is that you don't have to work 12 hours a day. I think what's more important is that you work on it a little bit every day, and that a little effort every day, it adds up over a period of time. So, that's sort of the theme and the idea that I want us to think about this month.

The other thing is that, this is actually one of the most important things in reaching the goals that we have for ourselves. So, whatever it is, the goal that you choose for yourself, let's say for this year, one of the key secrets or key ways in reaching those goals is by having a very intentional use of our time. We have to be intentional with our time. We talk about this in the Circle a lot, especially for women, it's so easy to prioritize everybody else's time, right? Everybody else's needs, whatever else is going on in our lives is so much easier to prioritize that, than to prioritize ourselves, prioritize working on our own stuff. That's why we have to be really intentional and mindful with setting our time and making sure that we dedicate the time that we want to ourselves.

I don't know how many of you guys have done as part as the class that we've taught, that I taught before. How many of you have done – how do we become more intentional with our time? So, one of the things that I teach in the class, if you guys have – some of you have taken my class is doing a time study. Actually, just out of curiosity, have you done that time study, Vanessa, or Shirley or Barbie? Have you actually gone through and done a time study as part of the class?

[00:06:43] S: No, I didn't have time.

[00:06:45] B: Was it a part of the storytellers in action?

[00:06:50] V: I think did do it and I've tried to do like time blocking, but like this last month, I've traveled so much. That would be my question to you is how – it's fine if you're in a regular routine, and you're not traveling, but how do you want things pick up, and at what point do you start noticing, because you just can't catch up? Anyways, that would be my concern question.

[00:07:12] YD: Yes. And please hold that thought, because I want to talk about it, definitely. But I think, so maybe this will be useful for all of you then, this this idea of a time study. I really find this a really interesting look at how we spend our time, because unless we record it, and unless we track it, and unless we're really diligent, we're doing that for a set period of time, for a week, actually. So, in a class, I recommend to do it for a week.

Unless we do it, we actually don't have a good idea of where our time goes, and how we use it every single day, right? We think we have an idea. But honestly, if you put it on paper, and if you track it, that's the goal. That's the information that we need, to make actual changes in the way our time goes.

So, let me walk you through a little bit of what this time study is, how it looks like. And then you can decide if you want to do it this month or not. Of course, I recommend this for all of you, especially this month, if the theme is improving our workflow. But basically, here's the idea. So for one week, for seven days, you record in a journal or on a piece of paper, you record every single thing that you do during the day, starting with, you woke up, you brushed your teeth for 10 minutes, you had breakfast for from 6:30 to 7, let's say, you worked out from 7 to 8, you walk your dog from 8 to 8:10. So, in some ways, it's a bit anal. Sorry for that word, but it's a bit – it's painful to record every single thing that you do for a week.

But again, this is where the goal of this exercise and an obvious approach lies, because unless we record it and we track it diligently, we don't know where our time really goes. And if we're trying to free up some time, if we're trying to become really efficient with our time, then it's really important. So, the first step is you track that activity, right? So again, for seven days, every single day, you write down every single thing that you do. Then, at the end of each day, what you do is you rate it, you rate each activity in two different things. I'm putting this in the chat and for the replay people, I will also share this when I post the replay.

But basically, you rate it in two ways. You rate it in terms of hearts. One heart, two hearts, or three hearts, and that's about did you enjoy it? Did you not enjoy it? Or you know, 50/50? And you also rated in terms of stars. Is it aligned with my dreams and goals? Is it something that I can outsource or is if not aligned at all? So very simple three, three-step grade. Did I enjoy it a lot? 50/50. I didn't enjoy it at all. Is it aligned with my goals? Can I outsource it? Or is it not aligned? Again, every single activity that you do, you rate them. 

And then after you accumulate this data, after you accumulate seven days of tracking your data and rating it, what you want to do is you want to look at each of these days, and you want to think about how did your relationship with your time, of your day went in a day? You want to ask yourself some questions like, “Okay, what's working well here? Where am I efficient? What are some things that I'm doing every day that I have no business doing? What are some things that let's say, are so not aligned with my dreams and my goal, but I'm still doing them? And what can I do about it? Can I outsource it to somebody?”

You also want to look at when during the day you are most effective. And when I say most effective, you can interpret that question in many different ways. You can interpret it as in one hour, I can write five pitches. I can just feel like I'm flying. My creativity is just flying. New ideas are coming to me. Writing is so easy to me int that part of the day. This is a very important thing for us to know. I actually want to know, do every single one of you, do you guys know when that time is for you? If you don't, then you need to do this activity, for sure. Because this is actually one of the ways that I keep myself effective. I know that if I sit down to write a pitch, at four o'clock, in the afternoon, or five o'clock in the afternoon, I'm going to spend an hour or two hours and write a sentence. One sentence. It's going to be horrible, because at four o'clock in the afternoon, I'm tired, I'm sluggish, I want to take a nap. I don't want to write anything. I also know if I sit down to write it at 10 in the morning, right after I have my breakfast and coffee, I will probably write it in 30 minutes, because my brain at that time is just buzzing. It's ready, it's ready to go.

So, this is a very, very important knowledge for every single one of us to have like, when am I the most effective? When do I write best? When did I come up with ideas best? And then you structure your day accordingly. So, for this time study exercise, this is one of the most important things to reflect on, right? When am I the most effective. Also, we want to look at where do you spend more time than you thought you did? So again, unless we track it, unless we write it down, we might not realize that we spend sitting where we thought we spent 10 minutes pitching, or we thought we spend one hour answering emails. It turns out we spend three hours answering emails because we're also scrolling social media or something. So, sometimes we're not aware of these behaviors that we have, unless we literally are very, you know, putting them on paper.

I will also put these questions in the replay. So, you guys don't have to write them down right now. But again, it's important that you first have the data, you write it down, and then you spend some time reflecting on this data. What we want to do here, again, the goal of this exercise is to get self-knowledge about yourself, right? What do you do with your time? Where does your time goes? Where are you effective? Where are you not effective? Where are you effective? Where are you not effective? And where can you free up some time? Because I often hear this from a lot of you guys that you don't have time, right? You don't have time to pitch. When I say you said I think in WhatsApp just now that you spent, you sent two pitches this month or something, because you were traveling – sorry, this week, sorry. 

[00:13:23] V: I sent two this morning, but I hadn't sent anything for almost a month.

[00:13:29] YD: Exactly, right? And time was a big part of that, right? It's time and it's priorities. It's setting priorities for what we do. So, this time study is really important for that purpose. Again, if you don't already know, when are you the most effective during the day, then you definitely should do this time study to learn this.

The other thing that is also important, so we looked at time, right? We looked at recognizing where we might be losing it, where are some opportunities for outsourcing some of the tasks that we have so that we can free up some time. We looked at when are we most effective. The other thing that I want to share with you today and then I want to actually open it for discussion, is that I've recently started doing this hack that I want to share with you. Because what I've recognized for myself in the past several months is that I have become very fragmented in my days, extremely fragmented. What I mean by that is that I somehow fell into a behavior where I am reactive most of the day. An email comes in, I need to answer it. A WhatsApp comes in, I need to answer it. On social media, somebody messages me, I need to answer it. And I think that actually most of us are behaving this way these days. We are very reactive to what's happening to us in a day.

The problem is that when you are reactive, you don't have any space or any time to dedicate to deep creative work. And this creative work is what's going to propel us forward. I'm not just talking about pitches, by the way. Pitches and writing, yes, for sure. But actually, as creative entrepreneurs. For example, I need to think about what to do with Travel Media Lab going forward. I need to think about different conferences. I need to think about new content, maybe new workshops where you guys, new ways to reach new people also. 

You might be thinking about similar things for your business, right? Shirley, you and I had these conversations about where can you be reaching people. So, this is all deep creative works. It's work that needs concentrated time. Time to sit down, time to brainstorm, time to think, right? But when you are being reactive all day, you don't have that.

The problem is that every time a disruption comes in, it's actually, I've read a study about this, a brain study. Every time we get distracted on email, or social media, something happens in our brain that we lose, immediately lose the capacity for deep creative work, and we need so much time to get back into it, which is kind of crazy, right? So, you get distracted, and then you will need another 30 minutes to an hour to get back into that space of deep creative work. When I read that, I was struck, actually, because this is so inefficient. You think you just take your phone and just scroll on social media for five minutes. But what you're doing is you're actually losing a lot more time to get back into that, again, that space of deep creative work. I've learned this about – I've noticed this about myself, probably at the beginning of the year, in January. I've just learned – I just realized that I'm spending so much time reacting to everything and all the big projects that I have, that I want to make big progress on, they weren't being done, because I spent the whole day reacting.

So, what I did then, I did something very, very simple, you guys. I just can't believe how simple it is. I got rid of Gmail on my phone, and I don't open Gmail on my computer first thing in the morning. Before this is my habit, as I sit in front of the computer, I open Gmail, and then it's always there. So, a new email comes in, I always see that it's there and I feel the need to respond to it. Now, what I did is I said to myself, that I will only check emails between four and five every single day. Because again, this is the time when I'm most sluggish, right? So, I don't want to write at the time, I don't want to pitch, I don't want to do any state of work, because I'm very sluggish. But for email, it's perfect, right? It's all the admin works. And that's what I did. I blocked that time on my calendar.

So now, every single day, during the day, I don't check my email at all. It’s not on my phone, and I don't open it on my computer. I only do it. I open it at four o'clock when it's time to check it, and then I do it in a batch. So, everything that comes in between now and last day, I process it. And then I have zero distraction, basically, the rest of it. Imagine how much time this is and I've seen this. I've seen the difference in myself. It has freed up so much time and so much space, brain space, for me not to have that disruption, and then attack my projects one by one. One by one, priority wise, what I need to accomplish every day, I make a lot more progress on it, because I'm not being distracted by this. That's the other hack that I wanted to share with you guys. I thought it was just brilliant. It was very useful for me.

Alright, so again, very unstructured conversation today. But the two big things, one is time, right? Where do we use it? How do we use it? When are we most effective? And the second one is email and social media. By the way, I haven't conquered social media yet, but I do – before I was I would just mindlessly always get on it. When I feel bored or when I feel like I need a break, I would always get on it. Now, I'm much more mindful and I actually use it as a break now. So, let's say I work for like an hour or 45 minutes, then I feel like my attention is getting lost, then I will go on social media for like 10, 15 minutes, and then I will get back into working. So, that's how I try to manage that now and yeah, I just find it so –

Alright, let me read here the comments. Trevor says, “Love it. I still needed to hear this.” Love that. Katie says, “Tthat's why I used to be most creative on an airplane. Airplane mode has three uses.” Yes, I love it. I don't know, I recently read that about that disruptions and what it does to our brain capacity, and that just shocked me to be honest. That's when I was like, “Okay, I need to change the way I do it, because I'm just being too distracted.” Okay, so these are what I wanted to share with you guys. Thoughts, questions, reflections. Who is going to do the time study again? Awesome. Do you guys know when you are the most effective during the day? When is your best time to write, to pitch? Do you know this about yourself?

[00:20:03] YD: Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Katie, Shirley, Vanessa.

[00:20:10] V: Well, for me this morning, I had trouble. I woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep. So, it's quiet. There are no emails popping in. So that's when I had those – so those of you that are with Pitchwhiz, I don't know, they've changed platform. So, I was checking out the new platform and saw some opportunity. One of them is for BBC. I might share that one in the group there. I think people, they're doing their 50 reasons to love the world. They're looking for people and stories for that. I'll share that. But yeah, it kind of got my juices flowing without those distractions. And yeah, so that was morning for me, even though I'm not really a morning person, but I fall back asleep just because I have ideas and to get them down, helps me.

[00:20:52] YD: Shirley, Katie, Charlotte? Do you guys know your effective times? Most effective times?

[00:20:57] K: Mine used to be night and but I feel like so much has changed in my life over the last seven years. Now, I don't really know. So, it'll be interesting to do this and figure out because I can't do night anymore. It'll be interesting to figure out when that is. So yeah, I'm excited.

[00:21:13] S: Mine is like 10 AM to 4 PM. And then 10 PM till 2 AM.

[00:21:20] YD: Wow, you have to two during the day. That's really cool.

[00:21:25] S: Well, that day one is like day job. That's what I can get the most done with that, and then creatively it has to be at night.

[00:21:32] YD: That makes sense. I cannot do night. I do not function well at night. I have no brain power. So, that's awesome that you're able to do that. Charlotte, you’re prepping for a date night. That is amazing.

[00:21:46] C: Yes. Sorry. Doing everything at once. I find once I'm in the deep work, I can work for hours and hours now as usually. But it really depends on the day, like some days, I can work like that. But then other days, I'm not productive at all. But then it's the type of work that you want to do sometimes, as you say, like, I can't remember who said it. But if you're just wanting to write down some ideas, or doing some research or reading or things like that, that aren't like, I don't know, it's all the other stuff, isn't it, as well. So, yeah.

[00:22:17] YD: It's a good observation too, that even sometimes you can have – you know that your most effective time of the day is, let's say, at 10 o'clock in the morning. But sometimes you are even sluggish at 10 o'clock in the morning, right? Because sometimes it also varies day by day. So, that's a good observation as well.

[00:22:39] C: One thing I do though, is, if I've got a lot of tasks, I've been trying to use a Pomodoro timer, which actually has really helped. That has really been very good for those days where I know, I'm feeling quite scatty when I wake up, and I need to focus on lots of things. That's been quite helpful.

[00:22:56] YD: Is Pomodoro always like 45 minutes and 15 or is different? It depends on –

[00:23:02] C: You can set it yourself. But usually, it's 25 minutes, and then you take a five-minute break, 25, five-minute break, but it depends what sort of work you're doing.

[00:23:10] YD: Yeah, that's really helpful. And by the way, Toggle, so Charlotte mentioned in the comments to use Toggle tracker. That's a great one as well. I use it too, and you can do the time study that I mentioned by hand. You can write it by hand, or you can use Toggle, actually. That's a great suggestion. And then you don't have to calculate, it's all there for you. Yeah, it's free. So, that’s a great thing.

Vanessa, you had a question when we started the discussion about, you sort of have a handle on how to be effective and productive when you have a routine. How do you do that when you're traveling? When your routine goes out of the window, right? And I'm actually a perfect case study for it right now, because I've been traveling – I've been Jordan for the last three weeks, but I've also been traveling for the past five days. And for the past five days, I was in Egypt, and my routine went out the window. So, I will tell you that for me, and I think there is no silver bullet, right? There's no one right answer on how do you manage it.

For me, it's about two things. One is back to knowing when you are the most effective. So, if I know that today, I need to write a pitch, and I know that I can write at 10 o'clock in the morning, you better believe that after breakfast, at 10 in the morning, I'm going to sit down and write a pitch. Even if let's say we need to go somewhere or we need to do something, I will do my best to work around that and to guard that time and to say, “Guys, give me an hour, I need to write my pitch and then we go snorkeling or and then we go do whatever else we need to do.” So, you're guarding that time as much as you can. Of course, it's not always possible, right? 

Sometimes like you're at a conference or you're at a place that’s being managed by someone else and you don't own all of your time. So, sometimes it's not possible. But the best you can, I would say that you try to maneuver around that. If you know that your best writing time is in the morning, then try to find a pocket of time in the morning where you can write. That's one.

The second one, I recently started doing, I recently started using a practice that may be helpful for you guys too. This practice is actually something very simple. I have a lot of projects that I'm running now. Actually, I think, way too many projects. I work on NFTs now. I have Travel Media Lab. I do pitching. I do like just so many things. And I started feeling again that first of all, I'm very scattered. A lot of my most important projects are not getting done, because they're not urgent, but the urgent are taking over the whole day. Plus, add to it that I'm traveling, I have no routines, and it's a mess. It's really a mess.

So, what I started doing is I started writing out all the two items that I have in a simple Excel spreadsheet to do items, and I mark them — I marked them as is it a straight strategic project? Or is it an admin project? Is this something that's more admin related, that sometimes it's urgent, but it's not important? Or is it something that's really strategically important? I rank them like that and then I assign a due date to each one of these. And that is basically a very simple sorting formula in Excel, where I just sort, and I say, “Okay, if I want to see what's coming up with due dates, what do I need to do today? And then in those things that I need to do today, what is strategy and what is admin?” 

So, to your question, Vanessa, of how do you start saying no to something for me, this is how I do it. If I see something that's on the to do list today, and I know that I'm traveling today, realistically, I only have one hour of work today, not five or not 10. I look at my to do list and I say, okay, so today, I have to say two strategic things that I need to do. And let's say five admin things, right? What should I do? And then I make a decision, that you know what I'm going to do this strategic thing, because that's actually more important than the admin things. I can push the admin things. I can do them later. I can, whatever. So, that's how I found that balance between progressing forward and trying to do something when you're traveling, when your routine goes out the window. Does that make sense?

[00:27:24] V: Yeah. I'm like you, I do too many things. So, it's that juggling act and trying to prioritize, and I can go to conference, and they're just talking about being a travel agent, and there are people that do that full time. But yeah, when you're trying to do different things, and now I feel like I've let that go. So, I'm trying not to beat myself up over it and trying to figure out, yeah, can I do all of this? Because all the things I want to do and yeah, that's my challenge at the moment. Things are picking up in travel, in general.

[00:27:57] YD: Yes. That's where I think color coding and prioritization work really well. Because even visually, it lets me see the different things that I have to do, right? Is it important, but not urgent? Is it urgent, but not important? And then I realized actually, and it goes back to knowing yourself and knowing your time and how you structure it. I actually realized that I spend a lot of time on admin stuff. It's not important, like in the big picture scale, but it's urgent, right? So, to have a conversation with yourself, well, again, how can I outsource some of that? How can I free up more of my time to spend on those really important big picture things rather than the admin thing? So, for me, the simple acts of color coding my task has helped quite a bit. So maybe something like that, to try it for you as well.

[00:28:46] V: Yeah, I'm also, I like the idea of outsourcing. I feel like my work comes in waves. So, there's a time when I'm busy and times where I'm not so busy. So, trying to figure out – try to find someone that could work with that, that they don't need necessarily steady work, just they can still do it when I need more help.

[00:29:06] YD: You'd be surprised, actually, Vanessa. You'd be surprised how many people would be interested in that kind of work. It's more like a project-based, time-based kind of work. I mean, there's many – don't let that stop you. The fact that your work is cyclical, and you're worried that later on, you might need to scale down or something. There are a lot of people that are looking for all kinds of work. So, maybe look into that. I found that the – you guys know that will work, for example, in Travel Media Lab, where I work Trista who was helping – she's helping with a lot of admin that I used to do, and it's really wonderful. She's doing a great job. For me, it's again, it's back to freeing up space in your brain space, to all this other type of work that I need to do. Because if I think about creating pages for the podcast, for example, I'm not thinking about more important strategic things. So, I really believe in outsourcing the stuff that is not important, but urgent. Any other thoughts or ideas or hacks that you guys want to share with us? 

[00:30:16] V: I think Barbie has one that she put in the comments.

[00:30:19] YD: Yeah, the cube timer. What is that Barbie?

[00:30:22] B: It's just literally a square and it has 15 minutes on one side, 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 60 minutes, and I use it like the Pomodoro Technique. Whatever side of the cube is up, that's how much time you have. So, you can alternate between how much time you need for tasks. If I want to go through my emails, I'm going to give myself 15 minutes.

[00:30:42] YD: Is that an app?

[00:30:43] B: Nope, it's a physical cube. It's just a square cube. You just flip it to whatever time you need. So, you don't need your phone. You don't need to set anything. You just say, you just turn it on and say, “Okay, if side 15 is up, you have 15 minutes go.”

[00:30:57] YD: Good idea. That sounds –

[00:30:59] V: My concern is always that I love these little gimmick things and apps, and then like, I'm all excited and I start and then I just – I drop it within a certain amount of time and go back to my bad habits and whatnot. But I will try some of these is. Because they say, it takes at least 30 days to develop a new habit. Yeah, and it’s probably – but the trouble is, I get so many – like I've got another trip coming up at the end of the month. So, all these disruptions that make it tougher.

[00:31:27] YD: Yeah. I think it's like with anything modestly. Actually, this is, for me, I started meditating couple years ago, and now I see almost everything through that lens. In meditation, one of the most important things you can learn is when you're meditating, and you suddenly find yourself back in this world, you bring yourself back into the present moment, right? And then five minutes later, again, you find yourself in this world that again, you bring yourself. To me, this is actually a similar practice. So, you know what you need to do. 

Let's say you found a practice for yourself that you want to keep at, and every time you, let’s say, drop it or stop it, gently bring yourself back to it. The thing is that with meditation, these things happen less and less often now. I still find myself in these swirling thoughts, and I still gently bring myself back. But as I keep practicing, it's happening less and less, right? So, this is the idea and I truly believe that it's like that with any behavior pattern or practice that we want to establish. The practice of it is the most important thing. And yes, we will fail at it. And yes, we will drop it. And yes, we will go back to our old ways, but it's about noticing it, and then bringing it back and trying it again, and going with it. And again, dropping it, and bringing it again. So, at least that's how I look at things now. I find it really useful. Katie, any – sorry, Vanessa, you want to say something?

[00:32:55] V: No. It’s good advice. Yeah, I've tried to do meditation, too, and that's another thing that takes practice.

[00:33:03] YD: For sure. I mean, that's, I think, like with anything in life, right? We talk about this all the time. Fishing. You get better at fishing, the more you do it, the more practice you get, the better you get. The more articles you write, the better you get in writing. The more you do meditation, the better you get at meditation. It's like that's with everything. And again, for me, I think what matters more is that you do a little bit every day, rather than you try to do a lot one time a month. This is where the power comes.

So, sort of to bring it back to where we started this conversation, how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our life. This to me is where the power is, what we do every day. That's what matters. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the year, it rolls into something significant. But the trick is to do a little bit every day. That's where the power is. So, I guess to sort of to leave us for this month, I want you guys to think about that. I want you guys to think about your days through this lens, through this, let's say more mindful lens, since we're talking about meditation. What do I do with my days? How are my days going? Am I spending a lot of time in my day or maybe not even a lot. Am I spending some time in my days working on what I want, advancing my goals, advancing my dreams. Or am I spending a lot of it reacting to things that come in to me, right?

Where can I carve out more time? How can I guard more? How can I be more effective with my time? All of these questions, and just keep practicing at it. Keep being mindful at our time and how we use it and keep practicing and keep getting better. That's my thoughts for today. Barbie says, “Yeah, I needed to hear this today.” I love it, Barbie. I'm so glad that it's useful. It's true for all of us, right? The distractions, the reactions to things, this is very real. This is a problem of common – this is the problem with current days, I think, of current lifestyles. This is how we live our lives now. We are reacting to something all day long.

[00:35:05] B: Yup, I read the same thing you did that said, every time you switch tasks, you lose at least 30 minutes of productivity and I have eight software developers. Right before I went on vacation, I changed their – the way they work. And I said, “Okay, between 10 and 4, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I'm not going to schedule any meetings for you guys.” Because they weren't being productive enough. There were too many distractions. And I got back from vacation. They're like, “Oh, my God, no meetings between 10 and 4 on those three days is a game changer.” So, it is absolutely true.

[00:35:37] YD: Yeah, exactly. It goes back to guarding your calendar and putting things on your calendar and blocking time on your calendar, and then sticking to it, right? Because again, it's so easy for us to deprioritize our own things. It's so easy. We can always say, “You know what, I'll do it later. I'll do tomorrow.” But we have to prioritize what we want to work on you guys, because no one else is going to do it for us. I'm sorry, but no one else is going to tell you, go work on your stuff now that you need. No one. So, it's so important that we prioritize this. By the way, use The Circle too.

Vanessa, you said earlier that sometimes it's so easy for you to get back to your, let's say bad habits. You guys, this is one of the powerful things about The Circle that we can use each other. And we can say, “Hey, for this week, let's commit you and I”, let's say two people in a group, let's say that we want to try something new. Let us commit to it, for a week, for two weeks. Let's keep each other accountable and you don't even have to make it more official for the big group. You can do it just between two people, and say let's try something. Let's try a new practice together.

I actually want you guys to lean on each other more as well, because I truly think this is the power of this group, is when we lean on each other, when we help each other. So, other encouragement for you. If you want to try a new practice, if you want to try something, use the group. We were all very likeminded people here that we can help each other. This is an invitation for you, if you want to try something like this.

[00:37:13] K: Okay, well, then I'll put this out there. Last year, I tried something called mono tasking, and it's where a bunch of like creatives, whether they have their own freelance graphic design, any type of creative business on their own, gets on a Zoom, you do five minutes, where you set your intentions of what you're going to work on for 50 minutes, and then everyone you're on camera on Zoom, but you are silent and you're working. So, you don't have to look at everyone else. You can like minimize Zoom and not see everyone else working. But you know that you're on camera. So, you aren't going to pick up your phone and scroll social media. And then you set what you're going to do in that 50 minutes. And then at the end, the last five, you kind of recap with each other of what you got done, and that – I need to get back into doing that. Because that was so helpful on, I would schedule all those out and I would just be like one-hour time blocks couple days a week, and it was amazing what I could get done. So, if anyone else ever wants to try that, got a Zoom account, we can always schedule a couple of those out.

[00:38:11] YD: Katie, you know what, we used to have this meeting in The Circle. We used to have this meeting which used to be – I forgot what we used to call it full-working hour or something which was exactly that. Because I know the power of that. This is super powerful. We stopped it because not enough people showed up every time. We had maybe one or two people show up and then it sort of fell off. But in the original, like when we started the Circle, this was one of the meetings we had, because I completely agree with you. This is huge. This is very powerful. So, I'm not going to make it official. Maybe let's use it as a test. This is a great idea. 

So, if somebody wants to join Katie, and do – however many you guys want, and just do that, I agree with you. This is a very powerful thing. Because you make a date with your productivity, basically, and you use that time in a very structured way. And yeah, that's awesome. I love that. So, Katie, maybe you want, put a post up in The Circle later on and let's see if you guys can – I'm not going to manage it. It’s going to be like part of the schedule or anything, but if you guys want to try this out, I’d welcome it, because it's a great idea.

[00:39:20] K: Do you want it in The Circle or you want it in the WhatsApp group?

[00:39:23] YD: Let's put it in The Circle. Yeah, in the discussion space.

[00:39:27] K: Okay. Yeah, I can do that.

[00:39:30] YD: Awesome.

[00:39:29] C: Sorry, I don't know if you can hear me. But there's one called Writer's Hour, as well, which is quite a good way to test it out if you haven't done it before. I've joined a couple of them. But it’s quite weird when there's loads of people you don't know. So, I would be up for doing it with people I know. It would be a bit nicer.

[00:39:48] V: Sure.

[00:39:50] YD: You said you joined – where did you joined Charlotte? Where it was this?

[00:39:52] C: It's called Writer's Hour.

[00:39:55] YD: By the way. I know the guy who runs it. I know the guy who runs it. It’s a small world. But he moved to London from the US. He used to be a consultant. He quit his job and he became a writer. It's a long story, but he's an amazing guy. It's him and this other girl that run it, and they're just so wonderful. But yeah, it's a small world. That's awesome. That's really awesome. It's really cool.

[00:40:21] V: I’d definitely be up to try it, too. So yeah, we start a little thread.

[00:40:26] S: I'll learn to shift my productivity hours to morning when all of you guys are also are on like me.

[00:40:34] V: Yeah, I'm usually a night owl. But yeah, becoming a mother, definitely, like Shirley was saying it shifts a lot of things. And then you're stuck up early. But yeah, it's still – 

[00:40:44] C: You don’t have a choice.

[00:40:46] V: Exactly. Yeah. And I also do get sluggish in the afternoon. But again, like Charlotte, I think when I'm in a zone, then I sometimes can lose track of time and not even eat and you're just like, you’re just being more productive. But I've also learned to sometimes turn my notifications off on my phone. I turned them off at night. I tried to – I used to plug it away from my bed, so it wasn't the last thing or the first thing I did in the morning. But yeah, I slipped back into that bed and having it near me.

[00:41:14] YD: The notification thing is super powerful. And again, it goes back to that, like, are you reacting to things or are you being proactive? Charlotte is saying that her notifications are always off. Mine, too, by the way. I only have now text messages and I even switched off WhatsApp notifications. I don't have any things coming into my phone and it's done wonders for my brain space again, because like you just feel – I used to feel so much urge just to react to everything right away. Slack, all those things. Yeah, I didn't know. Sorry, you guys, I hope today was useful. It was a bit scattered and it was a bit distracting with all these things happening around me, and in the job as well. But hopefully, it was still useful to you and a good discussion, because I think it's actually one of the most important things, one of the most important discussions that we can have, to be honest.

[00:42:09] V: And it's always good reminders, like even though I've heard a lot of this before and even during the conference, there was a whole productivity session, but it's like, “Oh, yeah. I think we always need good reminders.” So, we can have this session again, probably in six months, and it wouldn't be out of place.

[00:42:27] YD: When I post the replay, I also post – I haven't read this book myself. But I listened to a podcast episode with the guy who wrote the book, and I'll link to the podcast episode too, guys. He's brilliant. Actually, he references a lot of what we were talking about, how you lose that time when you switch tasks and all that. It was an excellent conversation. I'm sure you've heard of the book. It's a famous book. I can't remember right now, but it's really useful. So, I'll post that too so you can check it out – 

[00:42:57] K: I love that book. James Clear. Yeah, that's Atomic Habit.

[00:43:02] YD: Yeah, I think so. I think it is. But don't quote me on it. Because it might not be.

[00:43:06] K: If it's James Clear, it's Atomic Habits.

[00:43:09] YD: Awesome. Alrighty, guys. Well, this is it for today. So again, just a reminder that for this month, for May, let's be more aware of where our time goes. Let's be more mindful how we use our time. I encourage you to do the time study, if you haven't yet. Again, I'll share it in the replay and we're going to try this thing with Katie, which is awesome. So, thank you for that, Katie. Thank you for volunteering to do that. That's awesome.

[00:43:41] V: Thanks, Katie.

[00:43:43] K: Yeah, I have found great success with it before and I know I need to get back into doing it. So, thank you all for wanting to join as well.

[00:43:49] YD: Awesome. Very cool. Well, have a good rest of your week everyone and I'll see you in WhatsApp. I'll see you on our call next week.

[OUTRO]

[00:43:59] YD: Thanks again for listening to our bonus episode on productivity today. I hope you found the ideas we discussed here relevant and inspiring to you. If you're looking for support, opportunities, and community in the travel media space, consider joining us in the Circle where we have conversations like this one you just heard on a regular basis. Visit travelmedialab.com/circle to learn more. Thanks again for listening and stay tuned for another bonus episode coming your way next week.

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