September 25, 2024 • 27 mins
In this interview, productivity expert Chris Bailey shares tips for focusing on what matters.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is a longer one, and it is part of
my series of interviews with people talking about how they
take their days from great to awesome. Today, I am
excited to have a conversation with Chris Bailey. Chris is
the author of several productivity books, including The Productivity Project,
(00:33):
hyper Focus and How to Calm Your Mind. He lives
in Canada, writes about a variety of topics, podcasts and
all that. So Chris, go ahead and introduce yourself to
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, how's it go When you say good morning? I
want to say good morning, Laura. I feel if I
listen to this podcast, I would be talking back to it.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well maybe people do, I don't know. In their car
it will say good morning back.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
But it's a two way podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Totally. Totally.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah. So my name is Chris and I'm your Canadian
productivity pal. I guess this is just like this topic.
I'm a huge nerd about some people like you, like you,
you know, some people have normal interest like I don't
even know cooking, literature, sports. I've always been into this
(01:25):
idea though, of becoming as productive as possible every day.
And maybe it's partly because I want to extract more
out of what limited time we have every day. Maybe
it's the fact that I'm a fundamentally lazy person and
just want more time to lay on the couch after
(01:45):
work and relax and listen to songs on repeat one whatever,
whatever the reason, I've been into this idea of productivity
for quite some time. And my whole approach is just
productvity is about intentionality.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's not about doing more and more and more faster, faster, faster.
This's a recipe for stress, for burnout, for anxiety, for
all this noise in our head in our life. But
I think productivity is about doing the right things deliberately
and with intention And it's that idea of intentionality that
(02:24):
should lie at the core of how we're productive, how
we become more productive, and you know, so we can
invest in kindness along the way for ourselves, for others
and you know, have a have a happy day, happy life.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Sounds good to me. I mean, were you into this
in school as well, like you know, young teenage Chris,
Like sitting there with your planner in high school. I mean,
was it like that.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I remember, and this this is kind of sad to
admit on some level, but I remember when we were
growing up, my friends and family would be on the beach,
like playing volleyball and stuff, but I would half of
my suitcase would be books. It would be productivity books.
It would be you know, just things to digest and
(03:11):
dissect and connect with one another. And this opens up
a whole other discussion of like how much productivity advice
is worth consuming. If you spend all day consuming productivity advice,
there goes all your time. You're not going to be that.
But like there there is that point of diminishing marginal
returns with this stuff. But I don't know if I
(03:33):
hit it back in high school, you know, so I
would always be obsessed with this, you know, investing in
these strategies again for that kind of laziness idea. I suppose,
how can I get great grades while putting in a
minimal amount of effort so I have more time for
the things that are more enjoyable to me. And so
(03:56):
it's very much And I remember picking up a copy
of Getting Things Done as a young teenager. That kind
of set off this whole journey. For me, the driest
book in the store probably, but for me, I just
ate it up to it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Should be trade. Yeah, and you kind of turn this
into your own job then, like as a twenty something
you undertook this productivity project where you tried out all
these different strategies and wrote about that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so that kind of We can fast forward from
high school up until the point when I graduated from
university over a decade now and over a decade ago now,
and I received a few full time job offers at
the time, but I remember thinking, like, there's ever a
(04:48):
time to do something that I actually find meaningful to me.
Might not be meaningful to other people, but it was
meaningful to me. It was then, so I declined the jobs,
which looked like a ridiculous decision to most of the
people in my life, but it just felt right, and
I declined them to spend a year of my life
(05:10):
trying to devour as much as I possibly could about
productivity advice because you know, you know this, you weighed
through a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of
advice out there, and not all of it is worth
our time. Some is fun to read, about some is
fun to you know, try on for size some, but
a lot of it just makes us busier instead of
(05:32):
actually allowing us to move things forward in a meaningful fashion.
And so I thought, okay, I'm going to spend a
year and try to get my sifter out. And you know,
as if I was on that beach again reading these books,
you know, filtering out the golden nuggets of productivity advice,
the stuff that actually allows us to earn back time,
(05:54):
and you know, separate those nuggets of wisdom, of advice
of research from the things that are just fluff and
don't necessarily allow us to earn back time. And you know,
I experimented with basically as much as I could get
my hands on. I wrote about it on my website
(06:16):
at the time, which was called a Year of Productivity,
and that eventually led to the book that you mentioned
that the Productivity Project, where I kind of, you know, said, Okay,
these are the tactics that are worth your time. Not
all of them are, but a lot of them are.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well, let's talk about one that you still use now.
I mean, if you're going to choose one that, like
you know, you've stuck with because you found it useful?
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Oh? Man, I feel as though I'm a broken record
because I repeat this one strategy so much basically everywhere
I go. But I do it every single day. I've
done it every single day for a decade. And it's
called the rule of three. So essentially, the idea is, so,
if productivity is about intentionality like that, that's that's an
(07:07):
idea that sounds sounds great. It's like, okay, that's great
in theory, but how do how does the rubber actually
meet the road, and how do we actually make progress
toward this ideal of what productivity should be? And for me,
that's where the rule of three comes in. So it
goes like this goes like this. At the start of
(07:28):
the day, you fast forward in your head to the
end of the day and you ask yourself, but the
time that this day is done, what three main things
will I want to have accomplished? And you know, you
do other stuff too. If if we did only three things,
most of us wouldn't have a job after much of a.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Three kids, right, yeah, sorry, other two and so you know,
there is the minutia of things to uh to keep
up with, but these become your three most important priorities, right,
So you know, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir,
talking to you if obviously, if everything is a priority
(08:13):
in your day, nothing is a priority.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's all. It's all equal to each other. So the
idea behind the ritual you can only pick three, and
so you have to weed out the things that are
most critical. So I like to do this across the
different contexts of my life. So I do three with work,
three at home. And so easiest to illustrate this with
(08:36):
an example probably my three work ones today. Enjoy a
few media interviews there today, Hello everybody, that's what we're
doing now, structure a speaking event that's coming up, and
spend one and a half hours just hunkered down writing
the next book that I'm working on. So there's email,
there's other stuff, but these three things are what I
(08:59):
want to to pour my heart into today. And with home,
oh there's a okay, this first one. I don't want
to get off on a tangent. We only got twenty
five minutes. But so my wife knows if she wants
to get me to go to something, she just has
to like make sure there's snacks where we're going. And
(09:23):
so there is a snack festival, a snack festival Laura
in Ottawa that we're going to later today. Well that's fact.
That's the first priority. Priorities can be fun. You know,
I'm going to devour a lot of snacks later today.
The second one is spent some quality time with her
(09:44):
after you know, we both had a big week with stuff.
And third is to wash our cat, Eleanor. And so
it's random, it's a poperie of things. But when the
day is done, these are the three things I want
to do and snacks and Eleanor will be washed. Oh,
life will be good. Life will be good. And so
(10:05):
the idea is, you know, you have these three daily priorities,
and you can do the rule every week too. So
how and so in those ways, our our longer term
goals can can filter and funnel down into our shorter
term goals. We can do it every month, we can
do it every every year, so that our intentions funnel
(10:27):
down and trickle down into where the rubber actually meets
the road on a daily basis. This is probably my
favorite tactic. Awesome, Sorry, I felt like I talked for
like ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
That's okay, But we're going to take a quick outbreak
and we'll be back with more productivity tips from Chris. Well,
we are back. This is one of the longer interview
versions of Before Breakfast. I am interviewing Chris Bailey, who
is a productivity expert the author of several books, including
(10:59):
The productivity Project, hyper Focus How to Calm Your Mind.
So we're talking his favorite productivity tips. I would love
to hear about your current morning routine, Chris, What are
you doing when you wake up? For people listening to
a podcast called Before Breakfast?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yes, yes, this would be kind of on message, wouldn't it.
So Okay, there's what we're chatting over. Videos. People can't
people can't see this, but this is what wakes me up.
Do they see this thing?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I see it, but you're gonna have to describe it.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yes, I will. Yes, we are in an audio medium,
I suppose. So this is it's shaped like a smartphone,
but it doesn't have it has an e ink screen,
and so this is an e reader that it's called
the book's palma b oh oh ex. I have no
(11:52):
affiliation with these people or anything, but this little device.
It runs Android. I'm usually on iPhone, but this is
my Android thing, and it has an alarm, it has
you can download apps. Remember it's an e reader screen,
So it's terrible. You don't even want to use the apps,
(12:13):
which is great, that's ideally what you want. But it's
got Bluetooth, it's got Wi Fi. And so this is
what wakes me up in the morning. I don't want
to be woken up by my phone because then I'll
be in bed for like half an hour, however long
I got, I'll be there. I'll just be like tapping around.
I'll be checking the news, I'll be doing this doing
(12:35):
I don't want any of that stuff cluttering my mind,
first thing, and so the only distraction that but I do.
I do like some of the functions of a smartphone, right,
like listening to music. There's a great sleep playlist that
I love on Apple Music, and Apple Music's available and androids,
(12:56):
and so I use this as kind of my sleep phone,
if we can call it that. This sounds kind of
pretentious to say.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's all right, you can have a sleep phone.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Okay, all right, I got your blessing, so I'll keep
running with it. So this wakes me up. It's got
the alarm, it's got the bluetooth functionality for headphones, and
so I can read a bit first thing in the
morning if I want, But I can't really do anything else.
I have to get out of bed, and so my
routine is quite boring. I'm not gonna lie. It's quite
(13:31):
simple because I do so much travel for work, and
I find that when there's so much travel, I have
to reduce that morning routine to its most essential elements
so that it's portable. I can bring it on the
road with me. And there's enough travel in my life
that it disrupts most of the routines that I have
(13:53):
for better or for worse. Though, I kind of like
a lightweight morning routine for the flexibility. So let me
just visually. I go downstairs. Yes, I do a workout
pretty much every morning. I give myself. I have a
whole complicated kind of system where I give myself points
depending on the workout that I'm doing, so I get
a reward that I can redeem for things. I'm such
(14:15):
a nerd. So I do the workout this morning, for example,
I went for a run outside. Uh, then I shower,
then I eat a little something small than I just work,
And so it's simple but it's uh. I find I
have a lot of energy and a clear mind with
without my phone by my side. I see my phone
(14:35):
when I go into my office and it's on a
stand in here in my home office.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Gotcha. So you read a little bit, do a workout,
then start start your workday.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I want to. I want to start my day
connecting ideas, not just consuming things. I find it really
sets my mind up differently, that that these slow mornings
lead to more deliberate days, and I love the slow
(15:09):
mornings more than the really fast ones. It's not always possible, obviously,
but when it is, it's nice.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So you mentioned that you're on the road a lot.
I wonder if you have a few travel tips ways
that you can keep your life running when you are
on the road, that you would like to share with
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Oh yes, okay, this is something that everybody should do
if you travel on a frequent basis, especially so one
of my favorite strategies for travel is to have a
standard packing list. So there's an app called text Expander
that I use on my computer. So what you do
(15:49):
is you type a little snippet of text and so
for me, it's pack list all one word, and what
that does you can you store this text anywhere? Obviously,
what it does is that prepopulates kind of a document
for everything I could possibly ever want to bring on
(16:09):
a trip, whether I'm traveling internationally, whether I'm traveling domestically
for personal regardless of the context. And so what I
do after that is just delete the things that I
don't need to pack, and so it kind of overcovers
what I could possibly pack. And I don't want to
(16:30):
jigxy okay, And I probably will by saying this, but
over the last maybe five or six years, I have
not Now it will happen, but over the last five
or six years. Yeah, I hesitate to say this, but
I have never forgotten something that I needed on a trip,
(16:51):
but now I will.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
A great many things can be purchased in places that
you were traveling too.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
That is true.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, So it's not the end of the world of
one for toothbrush or flee that is true. Anything else
could come up or exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Cable organizers are another really hit. Do you have one
of these things?
Speaker 4 (17:12):
No? I don't.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It's like it's a thing that you open and it
has all of the cables that you could possibly need
neatly organized into their own little pockets. And whenever I
open this it costs like twenty dollars.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
I think.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Whenever I open this thing, I see it as like
this beautiful butterfly, you know, opening its wings, and there
there is the cable that I need. And everybody kind
of looks so, so, oh, what is that? Where'd you
get that thing? It's just a cable organizer. Every cable
you could possibly need fits into it. It's very cheap,
highly recommended. If your bag looks like spaghetti on the.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Inside, sounds good. Well, We're going to take one more
quick ad break and then I will be back with
a few more tips from Chris Bailey. Well, we are
back talking all things time management and productivity with Chris Bailey. So, Chris,
(18:14):
what is your biggest time management challenge right now?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Ooh, that's an interesting quest. I would say the pacing
of the different elements of my work. And so what
I find is that I write more clearly and more
effectively when there's a lot of space around what I'm writing.
So if I have a writing day, I can go
(18:40):
for walks. I can you know, just kind of wander
around town or around the house. Stuff like that. But
then you know, of course that's an ideal. Then you
have everyday life that is a much faster pace, you know,
then you kind of you know, come home, and other
(19:02):
elements of work too, they pull you faster, and there's
less space around those different elements. And so I find
that some projects in my day need a lot of
room to breathe, like book writing, for example. But you know,
if I look at last month when I was on
the road for quite a bit of it, there wasn't
(19:22):
a lot of space around the different things I had
to do. I had to be waiting for a flight,
or on the flight, or after the flight, trying to
get to the hotel. There wasn't a lot of space
around it. So I would say that some things need
room to breathe to do well, but there isn't always
that breathing room. That's probably my biggest challenge right.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Now, although I have to ask, because if you have
a writing day where you're just supposed to be writing,
and you're like, I can go for walks, I can
do all this other stuff. What prevents you only going
for walks and not actually getting around to writing the
thing in question?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
The fact that I need to. I always need a
lot less time to write than I think I do,
so for me, maybe you have a different ratio. I'd
be curious to hear. But the ratio is like two
to one. So I need like two hours of wandering
time for every one hour of actual writing time. So
(20:22):
if I wander for you know, let's say an hour,
and write for half an hour, I can write a
lot in that half an hour of time. I don't
have to write like vigorously or in a super focused
way or anything. We'll just you know, casually crank out
maybe five hundred words in half an hour, and you know,
having thought about the structure of those words for longer.
(20:45):
So yeah, it's yeah, it's what do you find the
ratio is?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Well, I definitely write quickly yecause I wind up writing
a lot of different things, and so generally it doesn't
take me much time to write something if I know
what I'm going to say and I have my material
for it, and I write a rough draft and then
I have other time where I go back and make
it better. But the good news is that maybe the
(21:10):
going back and making it better doesn't require as much
open space. And so that's something that could fit in
in a shorter block in different things. But I will
say I like the idea of, you know, thinking about
space to breathe around certain creative working processes. And I mean,
(21:30):
I'm very efficient, but when I've been at the final
editing stages of certain of my book projects, I do,
in fact need to get away from my house for
a couple of days so I can just sit with
it and like experience the whole book, like read through
the whole book or see exactly what how one chapter
follows in another without pausing because something else needs to
(21:51):
happen in between chapters. And you know, in the life
with five kids, there's a lot of other stuff going on,
so there's not manach opportunity for the schedule to breathe,
and so I desperately need those days away when I'm
at a certain stage of it in order to get
that mental space. So yeah, I definitely see the importance
(22:12):
of that.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, So, Chris, I wonder if you could talk about
something you have done in this past week that has
taken a day from great to awesome. That's kind of
our tagline here at Before Breakfast. Maybe you could talk
about those exercise points you give yourself and how that
makes your your day and your workout more awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yes, yes, so I have okay, and this is gonna
expose me as the nerd that I am. But I
have this whole habit point system with my basically my
entire life, and so for any positive habit I'm developing
or want to reward myself for. So back to back
(22:57):
up a little bit, my wife and I we got
this spreadshet we love. She's a big data person like
I am. We have our joint budget in there. We
have our personal budgets in there. So the way we
divvy up money we have, like most of it goes
in the joint but we have a bit for the
personal stuff. And I don't allow myself access to any
of this money. But what this money becomes is a
(23:21):
reward for following through with the positive habits that I
want to have. So I'll give myself eight points, which
is eight dollars for sticking within my calorie allowance for
the day. I'll give myself six points for going for
a run. I'll give myself three points for getting my
daily steps in if I lift weights either that day
(23:45):
or three times in the last seven days, I'll get
another three points. If I weigh myself, I get a point.
If I do yoga on a day, I get two points,
And if I don't have caffeine, I get one point
because I find that that's a habit that really helps me.
And so my budget is a result of the positive
(24:06):
habits that I have developed, and then I can spend
it on whatever the heck I want. Usually takeout food
as kind of a counterbalance.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
All within your calorie limit for the day.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Then yeah, so you get less points. So some days
you want to stock up on points, but then other
days you want to just blow right through whatever points
you've accumulated. So this is my little system habit points.
It's a nice like self reward for any behaviors that
you want to reinforce, whether it's working out, whether it's
(24:37):
any other habit. It's basically bribing yourself, and I do
it every single day.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
That's fun. So instead of just being like, okay, my
personal budget is five hundred to six hundred dollars a
month or whatever, it's like, Okay, I'm going to earn
that by doing these little things, and then yeah, you
spend it as I as I wish to do.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
That's funny you say five hundred to six because my
budget every month is five hundred and fifty dollars because
I can.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Do math in my head.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Chris, Yes, oh, look at you.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I assumed your point totals were in fact all of them,
of the things you added up, and so yes, put
it in my head.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
So there I go. Whatever falls away I put towards,
you know, mortgage, the mortgage or something just something that
isn't a reward for me and is kind of boring.
Whatever I don't earn.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Excellent, Chris, Well, this has been great. Why don't you
tell our listeners where they can find you? Well, I'm
in Ottawa, show up at U door in general, Chris,
on the on the internet, in bookstores. Where can where
can we find you?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
You don't want my address? Yeah, so my website is
Chris Bailey dot com. My books you've been kind of
plugged them a few times throughout this, but they're The
Productivity Project, hyper Focus and How to Calm Your Mind.
They're available in oh, I think we're in forty one
(25:58):
languages wherever books are, so in the language of your CHOOSINGCA,
you can have it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Awesome. We'll be sure to check that out. Chris, thank
you so much for joining us, and thank you to
everyone for listening. I would love to have your feedback
on this interview series. Whatever you would like to hear
more about different people you'd like me to have on
that would be great. For those suggestions, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
(26:25):
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(26:53):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is a longer one, and it is part of
my series of interviews with people talking about how they
take their days from great to awesome. Today, I am
excited to have a conversation with Chris Bailey. Chris is
the author of several productivity books, including The Productivity Project,
(00:33):
hyper Focus and How to Calm Your Mind. He lives
in Canada, writes about a variety of topics, podcasts and
all that. So Chris, go ahead and introduce yourself to
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, how's it go When you say good morning? I
want to say good morning, Laura. I feel if I
listen to this podcast, I would be talking back to it.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well maybe people do, I don't know. In their car
it will say good morning back.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
But it's a two way podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Totally. Totally.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah. So my name is Chris and I'm your Canadian
productivity pal. I guess this is just like this topic.
I'm a huge nerd about some people like you, like you,
you know, some people have normal interest like I don't
even know cooking, literature, sports. I've always been into this
(01:25):
idea though, of becoming as productive as possible every day.
And maybe it's partly because I want to extract more
out of what limited time we have every day. Maybe
it's the fact that I'm a fundamentally lazy person and
just want more time to lay on the couch after
(01:45):
work and relax and listen to songs on repeat one whatever,
whatever the reason, I've been into this idea of productivity
for quite some time. And my whole approach is just
productvity is about intentionality.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's not about doing more and more and more faster, faster, faster.
This's a recipe for stress, for burnout, for anxiety, for
all this noise in our head in our life. But
I think productivity is about doing the right things deliberately
and with intention And it's that idea of intentionality that
(02:24):
should lie at the core of how we're productive, how
we become more productive, and you know, so we can
invest in kindness along the way for ourselves, for others
and you know, have a have a happy day, happy life.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Sounds good to me. I mean, were you into this
in school as well, like you know, young teenage Chris,
Like sitting there with your planner in high school. I mean,
was it like that.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I remember, and this this is kind of sad to
admit on some level, but I remember when we were
growing up, my friends and family would be on the beach,
like playing volleyball and stuff, but I would half of
my suitcase would be books. It would be productivity books.
It would be you know, just things to digest and
(03:11):
dissect and connect with one another. And this opens up
a whole other discussion of like how much productivity advice
is worth consuming. If you spend all day consuming productivity advice,
there goes all your time. You're not going to be that.
But like there there is that point of diminishing marginal
returns with this stuff. But I don't know if I
(03:33):
hit it back in high school, you know, so I
would always be obsessed with this, you know, investing in
these strategies again for that kind of laziness idea. I suppose,
how can I get great grades while putting in a
minimal amount of effort so I have more time for
the things that are more enjoyable to me. And so
(03:56):
it's very much And I remember picking up a copy
of Getting Things Done as a young teenager. That kind
of set off this whole journey. For me, the driest
book in the store probably, but for me, I just
ate it up to it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Should be trade. Yeah, and you kind of turn this
into your own job then, like as a twenty something
you undertook this productivity project where you tried out all
these different strategies and wrote about that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so that kind of We can fast forward from
high school up until the point when I graduated from
university over a decade now and over a decade ago now,
and I received a few full time job offers at
the time, but I remember thinking, like, there's ever a
(04:48):
time to do something that I actually find meaningful to me.
Might not be meaningful to other people, but it was
meaningful to me. It was then, so I declined the jobs,
which looked like a ridiculous decision to most of the
people in my life, but it just felt right, and
I declined them to spend a year of my life
(05:10):
trying to devour as much as I possibly could about
productivity advice because you know, you know this, you weighed
through a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of
advice out there, and not all of it is worth
our time. Some is fun to read, about some is
fun to you know, try on for size some, but
a lot of it just makes us busier instead of
(05:32):
actually allowing us to move things forward in a meaningful fashion.
And so I thought, okay, I'm going to spend a
year and try to get my sifter out. And you know,
as if I was on that beach again reading these books,
you know, filtering out the golden nuggets of productivity advice,
the stuff that actually allows us to earn back time,
(05:54):
and you know, separate those nuggets of wisdom, of advice
of research from the things that are just fluff and
don't necessarily allow us to earn back time. And you know,
I experimented with basically as much as I could get
my hands on. I wrote about it on my website
(06:16):
at the time, which was called a Year of Productivity,
and that eventually led to the book that you mentioned
that the Productivity Project, where I kind of, you know, said, Okay,
these are the tactics that are worth your time. Not
all of them are, but a lot of them are.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well, let's talk about one that you still use now.
I mean, if you're going to choose one that, like
you know, you've stuck with because you found it useful?
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Oh? Man, I feel as though I'm a broken record
because I repeat this one strategy so much basically everywhere
I go. But I do it every single day. I've
done it every single day for a decade. And it's
called the rule of three. So essentially, the idea is, so,
if productivity is about intentionality like that, that's that's an
(07:07):
idea that sounds sounds great. It's like, okay, that's great
in theory, but how do how does the rubber actually
meet the road, and how do we actually make progress
toward this ideal of what productivity should be? And for me,
that's where the rule of three comes in. So it
goes like this goes like this. At the start of
(07:28):
the day, you fast forward in your head to the
end of the day and you ask yourself, but the
time that this day is done, what three main things
will I want to have accomplished? And you know, you
do other stuff too. If if we did only three things,
most of us wouldn't have a job after much of a.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Three kids, right, yeah, sorry, other two and so you know,
there is the minutia of things to uh to keep
up with, but these become your three most important priorities, right,
So you know, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir,
talking to you if obviously, if everything is a priority
(08:13):
in your day, nothing is a priority.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's all. It's all equal to each other. So the
idea behind the ritual you can only pick three, and
so you have to weed out the things that are
most critical. So I like to do this across the
different contexts of my life. So I do three with work,
three at home. And so easiest to illustrate this with
(08:36):
an example probably my three work ones today. Enjoy a
few media interviews there today, Hello everybody, that's what we're
doing now, structure a speaking event that's coming up, and
spend one and a half hours just hunkered down writing
the next book that I'm working on. So there's email,
there's other stuff, but these three things are what I
(08:59):
want to to pour my heart into today. And with home,
oh there's a okay, this first one. I don't want
to get off on a tangent. We only got twenty
five minutes. But so my wife knows if she wants
to get me to go to something, she just has
to like make sure there's snacks where we're going. And
(09:23):
so there is a snack festival, a snack festival Laura
in Ottawa that we're going to later today. Well that's fact.
That's the first priority. Priorities can be fun. You know,
I'm going to devour a lot of snacks later today.
The second one is spent some quality time with her
(09:44):
after you know, we both had a big week with stuff.
And third is to wash our cat, Eleanor. And so
it's random, it's a poperie of things. But when the
day is done, these are the three things I want
to do and snacks and Eleanor will be washed. Oh,
life will be good. Life will be good. And so
(10:05):
the idea is, you know, you have these three daily priorities,
and you can do the rule every week too. So
how and so in those ways, our our longer term
goals can can filter and funnel down into our shorter
term goals. We can do it every month, we can
do it every every year, so that our intentions funnel
(10:27):
down and trickle down into where the rubber actually meets
the road on a daily basis. This is probably my
favorite tactic. Awesome, Sorry, I felt like I talked for
like ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
That's okay, But we're going to take a quick outbreak
and we'll be back with more productivity tips from Chris. Well,
we are back. This is one of the longer interview
versions of Before Breakfast. I am interviewing Chris Bailey, who
is a productivity expert the author of several books, including
(10:59):
The productivity Project, hyper Focus How to Calm Your Mind.
So we're talking his favorite productivity tips. I would love
to hear about your current morning routine, Chris, What are
you doing when you wake up? For people listening to
a podcast called Before Breakfast?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yes, yes, this would be kind of on message, wouldn't it.
So Okay, there's what we're chatting over. Videos. People can't
people can't see this, but this is what wakes me up.
Do they see this thing?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I see it, but you're gonna have to describe it.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yes, I will. Yes, we are in an audio medium,
I suppose. So this is it's shaped like a smartphone,
but it doesn't have it has an e ink screen,
and so this is an e reader that it's called
the book's palma b oh oh ex. I have no
(11:52):
affiliation with these people or anything, but this little device.
It runs Android. I'm usually on iPhone, but this is
my Android thing, and it has an alarm, it has
you can download apps. Remember it's an e reader screen,
So it's terrible. You don't even want to use the apps,
(12:13):
which is great, that's ideally what you want. But it's
got Bluetooth, it's got Wi Fi. And so this is
what wakes me up in the morning. I don't want
to be woken up by my phone because then I'll
be in bed for like half an hour, however long
I got, I'll be there. I'll just be like tapping around.
I'll be checking the news, I'll be doing this doing
(12:35):
I don't want any of that stuff cluttering my mind,
first thing, and so the only distraction that but I do.
I do like some of the functions of a smartphone, right,
like listening to music. There's a great sleep playlist that
I love on Apple Music, and Apple Music's available and androids,
(12:56):
and so I use this as kind of my sleep phone,
if we can call it that. This sounds kind of
pretentious to say.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's all right, you can have a sleep phone.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Okay, all right, I got your blessing, so I'll keep
running with it. So this wakes me up. It's got
the alarm, it's got the bluetooth functionality for headphones, and
so I can read a bit first thing in the
morning if I want, But I can't really do anything else.
I have to get out of bed, and so my
routine is quite boring. I'm not gonna lie. It's quite
(13:31):
simple because I do so much travel for work, and
I find that when there's so much travel, I have
to reduce that morning routine to its most essential elements
so that it's portable. I can bring it on the
road with me. And there's enough travel in my life
that it disrupts most of the routines that I have
(13:53):
for better or for worse. Though, I kind of like
a lightweight morning routine for the flexibility. So let me
just visually. I go downstairs. Yes, I do a workout
pretty much every morning. I give myself. I have a
whole complicated kind of system where I give myself points
depending on the workout that I'm doing, so I get
a reward that I can redeem for things. I'm such
(14:15):
a nerd. So I do the workout this morning, for example,
I went for a run outside. Uh, then I shower,
then I eat a little something small than I just work,
And so it's simple but it's uh. I find I
have a lot of energy and a clear mind with
without my phone by my side. I see my phone
(14:35):
when I go into my office and it's on a
stand in here in my home office.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Gotcha. So you read a little bit, do a workout,
then start start your workday.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I want to. I want to start my day
connecting ideas, not just consuming things. I find it really
sets my mind up differently, that that these slow mornings
lead to more deliberate days, and I love the slow
(15:09):
mornings more than the really fast ones. It's not always possible, obviously,
but when it is, it's nice.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So you mentioned that you're on the road a lot.
I wonder if you have a few travel tips ways
that you can keep your life running when you are
on the road, that you would like to share with
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Oh yes, okay, this is something that everybody should do
if you travel on a frequent basis, especially so one
of my favorite strategies for travel is to have a
standard packing list. So there's an app called text Expander
that I use on my computer. So what you do
(15:49):
is you type a little snippet of text and so
for me, it's pack list all one word, and what
that does you can you store this text anywhere? Obviously,
what it does is that prepopulates kind of a document
for everything I could possibly ever want to bring on
(16:09):
a trip, whether I'm traveling internationally, whether I'm traveling domestically
for personal regardless of the context. And so what I
do after that is just delete the things that I
don't need to pack, and so it kind of overcovers
what I could possibly pack. And I don't want to
(16:30):
jigxy okay, And I probably will by saying this, but
over the last maybe five or six years, I have
not Now it will happen, but over the last five
or six years. Yeah, I hesitate to say this, but
I have never forgotten something that I needed on a trip,
(16:51):
but now I will.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
A great many things can be purchased in places that
you were traveling too.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
That is true.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, So it's not the end of the world of
one for toothbrush or flee that is true. Anything else
could come up or exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Cable organizers are another really hit. Do you have one
of these things?
Speaker 4 (17:12):
No? I don't.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It's like it's a thing that you open and it
has all of the cables that you could possibly need
neatly organized into their own little pockets. And whenever I
open this it costs like twenty dollars.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
I think.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Whenever I open this thing, I see it as like
this beautiful butterfly, you know, opening its wings, and there
there is the cable that I need. And everybody kind
of looks so, so, oh, what is that? Where'd you
get that thing? It's just a cable organizer. Every cable
you could possibly need fits into it. It's very cheap,
highly recommended. If your bag looks like spaghetti on the.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Inside, sounds good. Well, We're going to take one more
quick ad break and then I will be back with
a few more tips from Chris Bailey. Well, we are
back talking all things time management and productivity with Chris Bailey. So, Chris,
(18:14):
what is your biggest time management challenge right now?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Ooh, that's an interesting quest. I would say the pacing
of the different elements of my work. And so what
I find is that I write more clearly and more
effectively when there's a lot of space around what I'm writing.
So if I have a writing day, I can go
(18:40):
for walks. I can you know, just kind of wander
around town or around the house. Stuff like that. But
then you know, of course that's an ideal. Then you
have everyday life that is a much faster pace, you know,
then you kind of you know, come home, and other
(19:02):
elements of work too, they pull you faster, and there's
less space around those different elements. And so I find
that some projects in my day need a lot of
room to breathe, like book writing, for example. But you know,
if I look at last month when I was on
the road for quite a bit of it, there wasn't
(19:22):
a lot of space around the different things I had
to do. I had to be waiting for a flight,
or on the flight, or after the flight, trying to
get to the hotel. There wasn't a lot of space
around it. So I would say that some things need
room to breathe to do well, but there isn't always
that breathing room. That's probably my biggest challenge right.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Now, although I have to ask, because if you have
a writing day where you're just supposed to be writing,
and you're like, I can go for walks, I can
do all this other stuff. What prevents you only going
for walks and not actually getting around to writing the
thing in question?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
The fact that I need to. I always need a
lot less time to write than I think I do,
so for me, maybe you have a different ratio. I'd
be curious to hear. But the ratio is like two
to one. So I need like two hours of wandering
time for every one hour of actual writing time. So
(20:22):
if I wander for you know, let's say an hour,
and write for half an hour, I can write a
lot in that half an hour of time. I don't
have to write like vigorously or in a super focused
way or anything. We'll just you know, casually crank out
maybe five hundred words in half an hour, and you know,
having thought about the structure of those words for longer.
(20:45):
So yeah, it's yeah, it's what do you find the
ratio is?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Well, I definitely write quickly yecause I wind up writing
a lot of different things, and so generally it doesn't
take me much time to write something if I know
what I'm going to say and I have my material
for it, and I write a rough draft and then
I have other time where I go back and make
it better. But the good news is that maybe the
(21:10):
going back and making it better doesn't require as much
open space. And so that's something that could fit in
in a shorter block in different things. But I will
say I like the idea of, you know, thinking about
space to breathe around certain creative working processes. And I mean,
(21:30):
I'm very efficient, but when I've been at the final
editing stages of certain of my book projects, I do,
in fact need to get away from my house for
a couple of days so I can just sit with
it and like experience the whole book, like read through
the whole book or see exactly what how one chapter
follows in another without pausing because something else needs to
(21:51):
happen in between chapters. And you know, in the life
with five kids, there's a lot of other stuff going on,
so there's not manach opportunity for the schedule to breathe,
and so I desperately need those days away when I'm
at a certain stage of it in order to get
that mental space. So yeah, I definitely see the importance
(22:12):
of that.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, So, Chris, I wonder if you could talk about
something you have done in this past week that has
taken a day from great to awesome. That's kind of
our tagline here at Before Breakfast. Maybe you could talk
about those exercise points you give yourself and how that
makes your your day and your workout more awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yes, yes, so I have okay, and this is gonna
expose me as the nerd that I am. But I
have this whole habit point system with my basically my
entire life, and so for any positive habit I'm developing
or want to reward myself for. So back to back
(22:57):
up a little bit, my wife and I we got
this spreadshet we love. She's a big data person like
I am. We have our joint budget in there. We
have our personal budgets in there. So the way we
divvy up money we have, like most of it goes
in the joint but we have a bit for the
personal stuff. And I don't allow myself access to any
of this money. But what this money becomes is a
(23:21):
reward for following through with the positive habits that I
want to have. So I'll give myself eight points, which
is eight dollars for sticking within my calorie allowance for
the day. I'll give myself six points for going for
a run. I'll give myself three points for getting my
daily steps in if I lift weights either that day
(23:45):
or three times in the last seven days, I'll get
another three points. If I weigh myself, I get a point.
If I do yoga on a day, I get two points,
And if I don't have caffeine, I get one point
because I find that that's a habit that really helps me.
And so my budget is a result of the positive
(24:06):
habits that I have developed, and then I can spend
it on whatever the heck I want. Usually takeout food
as kind of a counterbalance.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
All within your calorie limit for the day.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Then yeah, so you get less points. So some days
you want to stock up on points, but then other
days you want to just blow right through whatever points
you've accumulated. So this is my little system habit points.
It's a nice like self reward for any behaviors that
you want to reinforce, whether it's working out, whether it's
(24:37):
any other habit. It's basically bribing yourself, and I do
it every single day.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
That's fun. So instead of just being like, okay, my
personal budget is five hundred to six hundred dollars a
month or whatever, it's like, Okay, I'm going to earn
that by doing these little things, and then yeah, you
spend it as I as I wish to do.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
That's funny you say five hundred to six because my
budget every month is five hundred and fifty dollars because
I can.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Do math in my head.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Chris, Yes, oh, look at you.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I assumed your point totals were in fact all of them,
of the things you added up, and so yes, put
it in my head.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
So there I go. Whatever falls away I put towards,
you know, mortgage, the mortgage or something just something that
isn't a reward for me and is kind of boring.
Whatever I don't earn.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Excellent, Chris, Well, this has been great. Why don't you
tell our listeners where they can find you? Well, I'm
in Ottawa, show up at U door in general, Chris,
on the on the internet, in bookstores. Where can where
can we find you?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
You don't want my address? Yeah, so my website is
Chris Bailey dot com. My books you've been kind of
plugged them a few times throughout this, but they're The
Productivity Project, hyper Focus and How to Calm Your Mind.
They're available in oh, I think we're in forty one
(25:58):
languages wherever books are, so in the language of your CHOOSINGCA,
you can have it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Awesome. We'll be sure to check that out. Chris, thank
you so much for joining us, and thank you to
everyone for listening. I would love to have your feedback
on this interview series. Whatever you would like to hear
more about different people you'd like me to have on
that would be great. For those suggestions, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
(26:25):
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(26:53):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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