Interview Transcription
Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.
Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen Tupper.
Sarah Ellis: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast. Each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and actions to help you develop in your career and be successful in this increasingly Squiggly world of work that we all find ourselves in right now. We're going to dive straight into this week's topic which feels like the right thing to do given it's on procrastination, so I feel like if we talked too much, we'd be kind of getting in our own way.
This was actually at topic that was requested from one of our listeners; someone on Twitter said, "I'm really struggling with procrastination, perhaps even more so since coronavirus, since lockdown. Really interested in some kind of ideas, hints and tips". It really made me pause for thought because actually, I think I found it harder as well, and I don't know whether that’s just because there are more distractions, maybe there's a bit less routine, maybe there's more to just cope with, you know, like just the amount of things that are going on in your head at any one moment in time. Perhaps it's just felt easier to let other stuff get in the way. What do you think, Helen, have you been procrastinating more or less?
Helen Tupper: I think that my emotions have influenced my actions more. So, I've had just more emotional stuff going on, like highs and lows and family distractions and thinking about our business and I think that's just provided a whole load of stuff that wasn't really getting in my way before. So, there's different work and I'm doing work differently, but I think the bigger impact on my ability to manage my procrastination has just been how I've been feeling about everything. It's felt like a different weight that's constantly fluctuating, so I think that's probably been my thing that's maybe been affecting how efficiently I've been getting stuff done over the last couple of months.
Sarah Ellis: What we thought we'd talk about today is why do we procrastinate, what gets in the way, five ideas to prevent procrastination and then we are going to finish with Helen's top five productivity hints and tips. And I have to say when I thought about doing procrastination, I almost thought, "Perhaps I should just do this by myself, I don’t really feel like this is something that Helen struggles from", if anything I think the opposite is her super strength,; she gets stuff done and her capability and capacity is incredible, it is amazing to watch and I often kind of look at her with admiration. So, it's reassuring to hear that even Helen sometimes finds procrastination a challenge.
Helen Tupper: I definitely procrastinate, like literally in front of my microphone, I've got five Post-it notes on the wall of stuff that I'm just procrastinating about, so I definitely procrastinate, I promise.
Sarah Ellis: Let's perhaps talk about, so why do we procrastinate, and I think this is a good starting point for you to recognise for yourself because then perhaps you can think about, "Well, which actions are mostly like to help me in terms of my own kind of style of procrastination", because I think we procrastinate for different reasons.
It can be anything from stuff that's hard, wanting things to be perfect, scared of the response we're going to get, overload, overwhelm, things are unstructured, don't have the meaning to you, perhaps they feel a bit boring, there's loads of distractions. What about you, Helen, when you're thinking about those times that you do procrastinate, what makes it hard do you think for you? What do you think is most likely to get in your way?
Helen Tupper: I think it is stuff that can't be done quickly, so I think I am really driven by getting stuff done and some things require, I don't know, half a day of effort let's call it, which doesn't sound like a lot, but to somebody who almost likes micro achievements, "I've sent that, I've completed that, I've ticked that off that list, I've got that done", like that feels like really good to me. When I have a list of those sorts of things and then I have a, "Okay, clear out your brain and your diary for half a day to do this thing that you've really got to think about", I find that hard sometimes to engage with. Even though weirdly when you do that hard thing, you'll have a greater sense of achievement at the end of it, but in the moment I'm like, "Do I get that really quick win or do I do that really hard slog?" I'm like, "Quick win, quick win".
So, I think I sometimes put the hard slog off even thought I know that it really fulfils me with more achievement afterwards, that's the thing for me. What about you?
Sarah Ellis: So, I was thinking about this, and I think I do procrastinate but in quite specific scenarios, so I am rubbish with anything where I don't care or it lacks a bit of personal meaning to me, or I just think, "Oh yeah, I'm not really interested in that", so I just don't do it. Sometimes those things actually do matter but anything that is admin related, and Helen's laughing because she has to live with this like day in, day out, but I have realised that I could live give you a list now of stuff that does actually matter and it is important, I just don't do it because I just think, "That's not for me". That's not a job that I want to do or kind of should be doing.
Helen Tupper: I should do that, she's introduced a "should".
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I know I should say that sounds bad, doesn't it? So that's definitely one where I just struggle a little bit with that, but I have come up more recently with a couple of techniques that I'll talk about that have helped me with that. Then I think exactly the same as you, sometimes perhaps not when it's hard, I actually really like focused periods of time to spend on something.
What I find hard is where there's lots of unstructured thinking to do, or there's lots of ambiguity, so if it's a topic or a subject area that I almost feel like I don't know where I'm going with it, perhaps I've not got my thoughts in order, yet, I find starting the activity hard, so I'll procrastinate. I was reading something actually that talked about lack of clarity can be a really big challenge when it comes to procrastination. If you don't have clarity on why you're doing something like, "What does good look like? What broadly the content of something is", it's very hard to then kind of start to make progress and we prefer to procrastinate versus kind of positively progress.
I was like a couple of times I've seen that in myself, and I think that's when you recognise that you have to have confidence sometimes that you discover the answers or the outcomes through doing rather than just thinking. I think I can stay in my head for too long basically, surprise, surprise.
Helen Tupper: I like that term though procrastinate versus positive progression.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: Also, not completion, like positive progression's quite -- it's like, just go a bit further. So, we have got five ideas to prevent procrastination or maybe to positively progress and I've found another one that isn't one of our five, but I thought it was a small thing, it was interesting. When we were looking at like the five different tips and what's been researched and what's known to work well, I stumbled upon some research that has been done by Exeter University and a couple of other bodies that said, "Actually, you can increase your productivity and reduce your procrastination by 15% by having a lean and green office".
What does that mean? It means take out all the rubbish that you've got in your desk, so you've got like clear desk policy, that kind of thing at home. Get rid of all the distracting bits and bobs and introduce some plants, who knew? Apparently, plants make --
Sarah Ellis: Do you know what though, I am totally on brand with this because honestly this last weekend, I've done a really big clean out. I think quite a lot of people have done like a bit of clear out perhaps over the last couple of months, I think it's an opportunity, you've had more time at home, so you realise you've probably got too much stuff. But also, because we're all having to work in different ways, I've had to have a clear out this weekend to accommodate myself and my partner both working at home.
So, I was like, "Right, I'm going to sort this stuff out", but the green thing, I really like plants. So, we've got more plants in our house than we had; it's really good to be surrounded by green and if I think about what I'm looking at sometimes where you're -- you know if you just look up from your laptop, I realised I was sort of looking at either a wall or my kettle. And I decided that I'd rather look at a plant or some flowers.
Helen Tupper: My friend bought me three different plants for my birthday, and they all arrived in a box, and it was the nicest present, and yeah but since then I have bought loads of different plants. But my husband, who's taken over my other office, so during this period of work I've converted our spare bedroom into my office, and he's got the actual office, I'd made that beautiful. There's loads of plants in there; he doesn't care.
Sarah Ellis: You had made that nice, yeah.
Helen Tupper: He doesn't care at all, so he's sat in that nice room with all of my beautiful plants, I think I'm going to steal them. I might do that after this podcast, I might go and --
Sarah Ellis: Do it.
Helen Tupper: -- steal my plants back. So, yeah, that's just a random idea but we have actually got five other ideas for you; would you like to go first, Sarah?
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so the first action that I think is really helpful is working out the opportunity cost of not doing something, and perhaps the positive consequences of taking action. So, this is kind of stick versus carrot thinking and both these things I find really useful. So, the opportunity cost is, "Okay, well if I don't do this now, I know that I am going to have to do it and perhaps I'm going to have to do it then at a time that's less convenient to me. Perhaps I'm going to have to do it on a Sunday night, or I'm going to have to do it at the same time as trying to look after my toddler, which is always going to be as nightmare". It's almost sort of telling yourself off, before you even kind of get to that point, which actually I do find quite useful.
Or the more kind of positive carrot attitude would be to think, "Let's say I was writing an article about a topic, I know this topic is really important and if I don't write this article, I can't help people". So, you know the kind of the, "Well, what are you motivated by?" I'm really motivated by helping people with this topic on career development, and so by not doing it, even if I only help one person who reads it, that's still better than no people, which is where I am kind of today.
Helen Tupper: Yeah.
Sarah Ellis: That's a bit of like a visualisation technique so it's almost like telling yourself off on one hand and visualising on the other. Both of those things actually practically work really well for me. Probably particularly the visualising thing, I sort of think, "How good will I feel when I've written this thing?", so kind of almost quite a selfish thing, like personally I know I'll feel good, so imagining, like you said, that point where when you do something hard you feel, "Oh that effort was worth it" and you feel like you've made good progress and then the impact that that work can then have, even if it's just impacting on one person, I think just helps me to start just to take action. Otherwise, I just keep thinking and thinking and thinking.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, no it's not -- and it makes you -- I guess it just creates a bit more positive association with that thing. I'm looking at my Post-it notes on my wall and trying to convert them into a positive consequence from them, a few more carrots.
So, tip number two is something called the Pomodoro Technique. It's like a tomato timer and they actually do sell like tomato timers for this.
Sarah Ellis: I know I've seen them.
Helen Tupper: This is basically like breaking your days down into 25 minutes segments. So imagine your Pomodoro is your timer and the way it works is you choose a task to be completed, so your Post-it note equivalent or your email you've got to send, whatever it is; you set your timer to 25 minutes; and then you work on the task that you've got to do until the timer goes off and then you put a check somewhere so that you've kind of made a note that like, "Tick, I've done that thing now", and then you have a short break, five minutes that's all we're doing. So, I don't know, stretch your legs, go to the bathroom, grab a cup of water or whatever.
Then you come back to do your Pomodoro again so another 25 minutes, then you tick you have 5 minutes' break and then after you've done four Pomodoros, so four of those 25-minute segments with your 5-minute break, you can have a longer break. That's normally like 15 to 30 minutes, so maybe you do Pomodoro's in the morning and then maybe you have your lunch break or whatever it is.
But the idea is that it breaks that task up and it's almost more motivating because it's in those smaller chunks. You start to see how much how you're getting through because you've got all these checks and ticks and it's a way that you can not feel like you're just slogging it out, that you've got these sort of mini milestones that you're walking towards, and it creates momentum in your day. So, I know lots of people use the Pomodoro.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: I've not used it successfully actually, but I think it's just because I've not gone, "Today is going to be a Pomodoro day", and I've not really thought about it, but I might do it one day this week and just see how it feels to do it.
Sarah Ellis: So, action number three is this idea of swallowing the frog. Some of you might have heard of this before, it's quite a famous quote from Mark Twain, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning; and if it's your job to eat two frogs it's best to eat the biggest one first". I think we all kind of know what he's kind of getting at here, he's like, "If you've got that thing that's big and hard and perhaps you don't even really particularly want to do, that’s what you should start with".
There's almost like a waterfall of how you can think about what you should do in what order here, which is things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do, that's one; things you want to do and actually need to do, two; things you want to do but don't actually need to do, three; and then things you don't want to do and don't actually need to do, which is four. I would have thought for four like don't bother, like take them off the list.
But I was thinking how often I do three first, so things you want to do but don't actually need to do. That should be third in your list of thinking of those things, because they're things you want to do, and they're probably not mission critical or however you think about them. If it's Helen they're perhaps quite fast to do, so they're quite quick; or if there's something like me, perhaps it doesn't mean that personally I enjoy doing, too often those things kind of rise to the top of the list versus I think finding their place in the right moment in a day or in a week.
So, it doesn't mean you don't do them, it just means, "Are you doing the right things in the right order?" Sometimes I do reflect on this and think, "Actually, I knew that, let's say I'd got a podcast interview on a Tuesday, I knew that last week. Perhaps I didn't prepare for that as soon as I should have done, and I did some things before that that actually could have waited".
I think it's almost thinking ahead to kind of all of the different outcomes or the work that you're doing and just working out, are you doing the right things in the right order, and if you're ever not just asking yourself, why; what's getting in the way; and what could you do differently? For me personally, one of the things I've started to do better is look a week ahead, two weeks ahead, which I think I used to do more when I was in organisations than I do now we that run our own company, but I've got back into that discipline of thinking, "Okay, so not only what is coming up this week, but what is coming next week, so what do I need to do this week to make sure I have a good next week?" does that makes sense?
Helen Tupper: No, it does, but I'm also thinking of a real fun exercise that I might do in my office today. I think what you've described there with those things you don't want to do, things you need to do, that kind of thing, that's basically a 2x2 Matrix, Sarah.
Sarah Ellis: Inevitably.
Helen Tupper: Inevitably and I'm imagining putting on my wall, like I put that little grid on my wall with some like washy tape, I could take all of my Post-it notes, because each one of those would be a quadrant, take all your Post-it notes and put them into the boxes. So, you could see if you've --
Sarah Ellis: A good idea.
Helen Tupper: I might do that; I actually think that would be really fun. I mean I'm basically putting off something else I should probably be doing, but I think it would be quite insightful for me and for other people, so I might do that as a career tip on Instagram.
Shall we go onto tip number four?
Sarah Ellis: Let's.
Helen Tupper: So, tip number four is getting things done, also known as the GTD method by David Allen. There's quite a lot within that method to be honest, but there's one element of it that is particularly simple and impactful, it's almost like getting the smallest things done first. He talks about when you have a new task that comes in, so an email or a question or an action that you've got to take, whatever it is, if you can do it in less than two minutes, get it done straightaway and it's a really easy rule that can increase your productivity, especially if you get quite a lot of those quick tasks.
I find this quite helpful when my to-do lists, I look at them all and I've got quite a lot on there, and it all seems quite big. I get a bit lost with like where to start, but actually within that list of things to be done, some stuff will take an hour or two hours or whatever it would be, and some stuff is literally like, "Get in touch with this person, send this on", and it's those things that actually if I did all those two-minute tasks quite quicky, or if I did them as soon as they came in they probably would never make the long list in the first place so they wouldn’t distract me from the longer things to be done; but equally, even if I saw my list had got of some of those mixed in there, if I just took 20 minutes, I would get ten things done in that time, if each one of those tasks took two minutes, so I could clear out my longer to-do list very quickly with just 20 minutes of concentrated effort.
I think the idea is more, if it takes less than two minutes just get it done in the first place, don't even put it on the list, just get it done; but I think if you are a bit of a creature of habit and you've added them to your list, then recognise that you've got some of those two-minute tasks on there and just take 20 minutes, you'll get ten things done and your list will look a lot better because it will have the more meaningful things on there.
Sarah Ellis: David does a really good talk for DO Lectures, which is free to watch, so I watched that, and I think it's really interesting hearing him talk about all the work that he's done with lots of individuals and organisations on getting things done, so I'd really recommend that.
The other thing I recognise as you were describing this idea of do things straightaway and quickly, is I've worked with a lot of people actually who are very, very good at this. So, if they say to you, "I'm just going to introduce you to this person", let's say you met them that afternoon, by the time you get home they've done that task. Or if they say, "We're going to send you this document because we think it'll be really helpful for you to read", while you're going to queue to buy a coffee, they've sent it to you. What I like about that, it doesn't actually even make it onto their to do list, they just do it, if that makes sense.
I think that's really smart and the people I've seen actually do this are people who are incredibly busy, they're often in very, very senior roles, but they recognise the value of doing what they say they're going to do. Sometimes I get quite annoyed with myself that I say I'm going to do something and I do usually, eventually, do that thing, but sometimes it takes me way longer than it needs to because it's made it only the to do list, it's then not been prioritised because it's probably not as important as lots of other things, but then perhaps somebody then has ended up waiting like two or three weeks for something that would have been really easy to do in the moment. Because I don’t think that's me at my best, is naturally doing something quickly in the moment, where this is really a good example, I think, of done is better than perfect; just do that task.
The last one, I think we might have referred to this before, certainly we've talked about this before on Instagram is how valuable going into monk mode can be. So, monk mode is inspired by people like Cal Newport who talks about kind of having digital detoxes, Bruce Daisley talks about it in his book, Joy of Work. Monk mode is genuinely turning everything off, so no interruptions, no notifications, no people interruptions and it doesn't have to be for long. When I do this, I do tend to do it for probably 90 minutes, 2 hours maximum. There's only one thing you're working on and basically you can't give yourself any reason or excuse to divert away from that one thing.
So, if you were trying to write a presentation, it doesn't mean you have to get it done in that time, it just means that's the only singular task that you can spend your time on. I think one of the important things that people sometimes forget or can feel difficult when you describe this, is thinking, "Yes, but I'm not an island. There are other people who need me or who I work with", and I personally do think if you're going to do this, you've got to let people know. Whether that's you're putting it in your diary, and you're literally blocking out 90 minutes and saying, "Writing X presentation, turning email off", or something so you're really kind of very transparently signalling to people; whether it's as easy as you're instant messaging people to say, "I'm just not around for the next couple of hours".
Helen and I actually, this is one that we do relatively regularly when perhaps we are struggling to get something done and we know it's important, we'll just send each other a message just going, "Going dark for a couple of hours, see you in two hours". It's not easy to do, I find it easier because I have all my notifications turned off all of the time, so I don't have to go through that process of turning things off. What is harder, I think, is not having your email on, not just quickly diverting to something different, because sometimes when you do this, I think other things pop up in your head.
If that happens for you, as it does for me, I always have a notebook to one side and I will just quickly scrawl them down so I don't forget them, because otherwise I find I get distracted by thinking, "Oh this thing's popped into my head, I do actually need to remember to do this, but I'm trying to focus on this one task, so if I quickly write it down and keep that list separate, it means that I know I'm not going to forget it and then I can focus again".
So, if you've not tried it, it's very different I think to something like the Pomodoro technique which I think is more about making progress with sets of amount of time, having lots of breaks; I think this is just more about single tasks where you know you’ve got something probably quite big that's got to be done and you really want to give it all of your time energy and effort, for me personally it works brilliantly.
Helen Tupper: I think you choose monk mode for the things that don't fit Pomodoro. You know the things that you're like --
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: -- well this is not a 25-minute task, I have to get it done but I need to protect that time for it in a slightly different way. Right, so let's just recap those five things and then I'll do my five tips, caveat, caveat: I think Sarah thinks I'm better at this than I actually am. But our five tips for you to try out are, the fist one was about making sure that you know the positive consequences of doing the task, the thing to be done, because that can be quite motivating; the second was the Pomodoro technique; the third was all about swallowing the frog; the fourth was about getting things done and the two-minute task; and the fifth was about monk mode.
Okay, here are my top five productivity tips, I don't know if they're ground-breaking everybody, but this is just what I do. So, my first one is, a clean slate works great,; so whether it is your to do list, whether it is your inbox, whether it is your desk, the quicker that you can make that a clean slate, the more motivating I find it. This morning, it's Monday, I've started a new notebook, there is still about ten clean pages in my old one, but I've realised it just looks a bit messy and it makes me feel messy, so I've just started a nice clean notebook this morning.
My desk is clean this morning. Sometimes when I find my inbox a bit overwhelming, I will create a massive archive folder, and I'll stick everything in the archive just so my inbox looks clean. I know it's an artificial process, but there's something in my brain that goes, "Clean slate works great", so I can get stuff done.
What I've also realised on procrastination that's really helped me is that often, my done is very often somebody else's perfect. What I mean by that is when someone asks you to do something, you can overthink it, you can over-create it, you can spend too much as time on it. Often if I just get it done, it's good enough for somebody else, they're like, "Perfect, great", then they move on. Whereas I probably could have spent another day on it, or another two days on it unnecessarily. So, yeah, I've realised that very often, my done is someone else's perfect. Even if it's not, they just come back and say, "Can you do a bit more on this?" Because I've already done like 80% of the work by then, it's fine, I can get that bit done quite quickly, so that's my second one.
My third tip is all about the concept of micro rewards, so this is about small, nice things I do for myself when I've got something that I didn't really want to get done, done. It very often takes the form of food, so dark chocolate is always a winner. I'll celebrate and screw up my Post-it note that I've finally got that thing done and I'll go and have a bar of -- not a bar actually, normally like a square of chocolate. In the day it might amount to a bar, but I just find that as like a nice little thing to do for you.
The fourth tip I have is inspired by a software solution actually, it's called Focusmate, and you can Google it and find it. Focusmate is a software solution where you put in something you want to get done and how long it might take you, so I might say, "Write an article: one hour", and it matches you up online with somebody that you don't know who also wants to get something done in an hour and that might be like, "Hi Ben, I'm Helen and I'm doing this", and Ben would be like, "Oh hi, I've got a report to write", and then you both have an hour to write. It's quite interesting of the psychology of it, being conscious that you're sort of working to the same pace to get to an outcome at the same time as somebody else makes you more --
Sarah Ellis: That sounds horrendous.
Helen Tupper: You can either do it online, or my point here is that you can have a focusmate that you actually know about. So, if Sarah and I were saying, at 9.00am we might have a chat and say, "Okay, well let's get back together at 12.00pm. If you've written this and I've written that, then we can talk about it". It's that idea that somebody is sort of holding you accountable because maybe they're working on something at a similar time, for a similar length with maybe a similar outcome to you that's kind of motivating.
The last one is the one makes Sarah cringe, but it works for me, and it's called the Goalden Hour where Goalden is spelt G-O-A-L-D-E-N, everybody, the Goalden Hour. The point here is that we all have time in the day when we are better suited to getting stuff done. For me, actually it's first thing in the morning, so as soon as I can -- my kids have had their breakfast and I can get them doing whatever it is they're doing with whoever they're doing it with, I can then take an hour. Ideally like 8.00am to 9.00am; that's my perfect window of time for me, that's like my goalden hour.
It's before my brain starts moving on to other stuff that I should be doing that day, whether it's the two-minute tasks that we talked about, or for me for monk mode, that's the time when I'm at my most productive; so work out when your goalden hour is in your day. Any things that you really want to get done, get it done in that time and you're more likely to achieve it; it being in the morning also sets me up quite well for the day as well.
Sarah, I don't know if they're rocket science but that's stuff that practically works for me.
Sarah Ellis: I do think you're being very humble about it, but I've worked with lots of people over lots of years and I do think you are -- let's imagine there is a curve, you're probably in the top 20% of productive people that I've spent time with. So, I think you're worth listening to.
Helen Tupper: Well, thank you.
Sarah Ellis: So, if you've listened to today and you think you've got a topic that you'd like us to cover, you can get in touch with us by just finding us on Instagram, where we're
@amazingif or you can email us at
getintouch@amazingif.com. We always really like to hear the kind of topics that would be really helpful for you, particularly right now.
Next week we've got a really interesting episode which is on being an ally at work, so I'm interviewing Leyya Sattar and Roshni Goyate who are the founders of a company called The Other Box and their kind of mission is to educate and empower people to work and live more inclusively. They are real experts on allyship, being an ally at work, what that means, how that shows up.
It's a really good example I think of a topic where Helen and I talked about we could probably cover this; I just know that this episode will be so much better from having experts and actually hearing kind of other people's points of view, what it is, what gets in the way and what we can all do, and I think it's a really important topic for us to kind of really start thinking about. I think it's kind of a newer -- it's been talked about a lot more I think over the past kind of six, seven months, but it's a newer area of work and one that I think we'll only hear more about. So, hopefully it feels really useful.
Helen Tupper: Thank you so much for listening this week, we hope too many of you haven't procrastinated by listening to this podcast, but if you have you now have hopefully the ideas, inspiration and motivation to go get your stuff done and we'll back with you next week. Bye, everyone.
Sarah Ellis: Bye everyone.
