March 19, 2025 • 32 mins
That beautiful leather-bound journal you bought with the best intentions? The one now gathering dust under a pile of books? You're not alone.
After 40 years of failed journaling attempts, Michael Bungay Stanier finally cracked the code to sustainable reflection—and it's likely nothing like what you've tried before.
Michael is the author behind the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Coaching Habit (which Brené Brown called "a classic"), with over 1.5 million books sold worldwide. Named the #1 Thought Leader in Coaching by Thinkers50, his insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company.
In this conversation, Michael shares:
- His surprisingly simple journaling breakthrough that eliminates the most common barriers to consistency
- A powerful weekly reflection framework that drives tangible results (not just empty introspection)
- The counterintuitive boundary system he uses to prevent work overload while maximizing impact
- Why he rejects popular "word of the year" goal-setting (and what he does instead)
Whether you're a serial journal abandoner or simply seeking more intentional reflection practices, Michael's practical approach offers a refreshing alternative to traditional journaling methods that actually sticks.
Key Quotes:
“One thing that is really helpful is just to know I don’t have to say yes right away.”
“I have failed to successfully journal since I was 16. I’m now 57, so I’ve been attempting to journal for 40 years.”
“If you just start asking yourself what you want day in and day out it just starts forcing a deep clarity.”
Connect with Michael via his website, Instagram, LinkedIn, or buy the Do Something That Matters Journal.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know that beautiful leather bound journal you bought with
the best of intentions, the one now gathering dust under
a pile of books. If you've abandoned more journals than
you care to admit, you're about to discover why. After
forty years of failed journaling attempts, Michael Bungay Stania finally
(00:22):
cracked the code to sustainable reflection with his do Something
that Matters journal and It's nothing like what you've tried before.
Michael is the Wall Street Journal best selling author of
The Coaching Habit, which Rene Brown called a classic with
over one point five million books sold. Michael was named
the number one thought leader in coaching by Thinkers fifty
(00:45):
and his insights have transformed our leader's work worldwide. I
am thrilled to welcome Michael back to How I Work,
where he reveals his deceptively simple approach to journaling that
actually sticks, his Monday morning richel that drives results, and
the unexpected reflection technique that prevents him from drowning in commitments.
(01:08):
If you've ever struggled to maintain a reflection practice, this
conversation might finally end your journal graveyard collection. Welcome to
How I Work. A show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
(01:32):
Michael is so prolific with his work and is clearly
in high demand all around the world, so I know
he would have to be pretty good at saying no
to work offers in order to avoid overload. So this
chat starts with Michael sharing his very practical tips on
how and when to say no.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I start by saying is just one of those skills
that a little bit like gratitude, turns out to be
a silver bullet or as close to a silver bullet
to happiness as you can get, even though silver bullet's
a terrible metaphor, so let's call it a warm, gentle
hug towards happiness. Which is this gift of being able
to say no. And I mean, I'll tell you I
(02:15):
am not particularly good at it, and I like unhappy people,
I like pleasing people. I'm the oldest child, so I've
got a strong sense of responsibility and show up and
do the thing. But at the heart of understanding no
is a commitment to what you're saying yes to, So
saying no is not just a look I'm just being
(02:36):
obstinate or selfish. It's I've got an idea of really
what matters, and my yes is meaningless unless my no
has some weight. And I'm going to just take a
rough guess here that there's not a single person listening
to this podcast or a single person participating in this podcast.
(02:57):
So that's you and me, Amantha, who's going The problem
with my life is I just don't have enough stuff
in it. The problem with my life is it's just
not crowded enough. Like everybody's got too much on the
yes's and so every time we make a commitment without
a no, we're pouring water into a full glass and
all you're doing is getting the floor wet, and you're
not really getting committed to the big thing. So I've
(03:20):
done a few things to try and build my capacity
for saying no, and a lot of it is structural stuff.
So it's actually not building my capacity for saying no,
it's building an infrastructure around me that allows me to
say no when there's parts of my body screaming to
say yes. So I'll give you an example. One of
(03:42):
the things that's really helpful is just to know that, look,
I don't have to say yes right away. And in fact,
one of the core things I keep trying to tell
myself is, Michael, slow down the rush to yes. Every
yes is precious. Your default should be no. Your default
shouldn't be yes. You're default should be no. So slow
down the rush to yes. So just you know, in
(04:04):
some ways this it's just being a little bit more
mindful about what are you committing to and how quickly.
What helps me do that is to have criteria about
what I'm saying yes to. And you know it's you
won't have criteria for everything in your life that you're
saying yes to. But as an example, I get asked
to come and give keynote speeches on a regular basis,
(04:27):
and every time I get a little inquiry, one part
of my fragile male ego gets stroked, and I'm like, see,
I know I'm getting old. I know I'm over the hill.
I know like I'm fading from people's memory. But I
still got it, Like I'm still like a person out
there in the world. And what happens is six months later,
(04:48):
I end up in some god forsaking part of the
world and the US or Canada or wherever am I
be going? What am I doing here? Who's responsible for
me giving this talk? And I'm like, I am, I said, yes,
this it's my fault. So here's how I work it
for my speeching and people can figure out their own
kind of version of this for whatever shows up for them.
But I have five plus one criteria for my speaking
(05:11):
and the rule is if they tick two of the boxes,
I'll have a conversation with them. So the five criteria
is they will pay my full fee. Now I live
in Canada and so the speaking fees in the North
America are ridiculously aret. I've tried to price myself out
of the market, so most people don't want to pay
(05:32):
the money because I'm like, my rack rate for a
speech is fifty thousand dollars, which is believe me, I
know how stupid that is. And when people go that's
a ridiculous amount of money, and I'm like, it is,
you should find somebody else. But so this is me
kind of building infrastructure to make create kind of resistance
to people wanting to even ask me in the first place.
(05:55):
But anyway, my five crade here pay my full fee.
It's a friend who's asking me. It's a cool organization.
It's in a cool location, it's more than a thousand
people in the audience. And if they're like, we've got
two out of five for you here, then I'll be like, Okay,
let me find out more about it. Let me find
out what's going on. So if I have a friend
(06:15):
calling up and going, hey, Michael, mate, come and speak
on the Gold Coast, I'm like, but I've got no money,
I'm like, okay, maybe. Or if it's you know, some
cool organization, let's say Apple Say, and they're like, hey,
come and speak. We can't afford to pay you very much.
And it's it's in a terrible, terrible part of the country.
(06:37):
It's in Alaska in the middle of winter. But we're
going to have two thousand people there. I'm like, okay,
well that's two out of five of my criteria. So
I'll have a conversation with them and I'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So can I ask, because I love that criteria and
as someone who does speaking and has to say no
for various reasons to quite a lot of speaking gigs,
how do you get to that criteria? What was your process?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I noticed all the things that made me sad when
I was giving a talk somewhere where I was like,
what am I doing? This is a terrible, terrible decision.
I was like, I don't want to be in this place.
I don't want to be in front of this audience.
I conned myself that this would be useful in some way.
And so the plus one criteria is this. I go,
(07:24):
if this was tomorrow, would I be happy about it?
And that's a super useful criteria for me, because present
day Michael sells future day Michael down the river time
and time again. Future day Michael now looks back at
past Michael and go, you are an a hole man?
What do you do sending me to this place? This
(07:46):
is a nightmare. So I try and bring future Michael
and present day Michael really close together, and I go,
if this was tomorrow, will I be up for it?
And if I'm like, oh, I can just feel in
my bones and I probably would be less excited than
I would, then I'd that I'm playing with other criteria,
which is for this year, I'm going I want to
do ten in real life speaking gigs this year, so
(08:09):
I've only got ten to spend. You know what am
I doing? I'm speaking to a friend of mine. Mike
mcallowitz the other day. He has a rule that he
has twenty glasses of wine to spend in a year,
so he's like, I'm not going to be drinking crappy wine,
and I'm probably going to be drinking good wine with
(08:31):
my wife, who's my favorite person in the world. So
when I'm out with Mike and I'm like, Mike, let's
have a cocktail, He's like, sorry, Matte, Like, you're a
good guy, but I'm not spending one of my twenty
glasses of wine with you because I've got other places
i want to spend that. And all of this I
think about understanding the opportunity cost and understanding there's a
limit to it, and setting these kind of criteria. You're
gaming yourself in just making it easier to say no.
(08:53):
And when you say no, you create space and capacity
for the stuff that you really want to say yes to. Now,
if you're me and Mantha, what that does is to
create a certain amount of anxiety. Like this month, I
sat down with my fancy journal and I did a
kind of what's coming up in the month ahead, and
I'm like, oh, I've got a pretty open month. Like
(09:16):
it I don't have a single client engagement. I've got
a few podcasts that I'm recording and a few podcasts
that I'm the host on and recording, and I've got
other commitments. But relatively speaking, I've got one small piece
of travel, which is an award ceremony I'm going to.
And part of me is like, this is exactly what
I've been planning. And there's one part of me that
(09:37):
goes my gorsh this is it. This is the start
of something terrible. This is the apocalypse happening. See, you're
sliding even further into irrelevance. So part of it is
also some deeper work, which is around understanding a deeper
reason why you might be saying yes, which is to
feel important, to feel filled up, to feel over committed,
to feel busy, and knowing that for some of us anyway,
(10:00):
and for me, there's a degree of work I need
to be doing to go. I actually got to get
used to building a life which is less crowded.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Now, Michael, you mentioned journaling, and I have heard you
say that you hate journaling. Can you tell me about
that and what has changed?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, it's more to say that I have failed to
successfully journal since I was sixteen, so I'm now fifty seven.
So I've been attempting to journal for as I used
to try and do it in high school. And when
I look back there, I'm like, I've got things like
bus tickets stapared into it. It's such a teenage boys
journal because there's absolutely no self reflection, there's no sense
(10:40):
of emotionalness. It's purely a kind of did this did
that sort of criteria, and not even interesting things. And
I've tried most of the journaling formats because there is
something about creating a space where you stop and you
reflect and you're able to kind of be provoked and
think about the day. And I found two types of
(11:01):
journals didn't work for me. One is the kind of
artist's way just free float and just write whatever comes
into your head. That's just a bit too loose for me. Equally,
there's a type of journal which is more of a
planet thing, which is like, okay, right down the day,
to write down your seventeen commitments, write down your phone
callse write down your vision, write down your three values
right down. First of all, I don't have time for this,
(11:24):
and secondly, it's too structured. I've got a freedom driver
that just makes me want to rebel against things like that.
So I have been looking for a journal that allows
me to make progress on the stuff I need to
do day to day. So it makes me present and
makes me focus for the day ahead, but also provokes
me to learn and to grow and become a wiser,
(11:47):
smarter person. So this is what people like me do.
I created my own journal, so I wort something called
that do something that matters journal, which is so nicely
send me up. You're holding it up from the screen,
and I've got mine in front of me as well,
and I find this one works for me. It's it's
three questions in the morning to check in and one
(12:07):
question in the evening or for the next morning if
you want to do that. So that's your kind of
daily movement, making progress, you know the progress principal by
Teresa and Marble, which is like people find meaning if
they make small, regular progress and stuff that matters to them.
And then kind of start of the week, end of
the week, middle of the week, there are more kind
(12:28):
of provocative questions to help you stop and lift your
eyes up off the page and reflect on who you
are and what's going on. To enable kind of growth.
So it's not just about the grind, nor is it
just about the deep self reflection. But it's a kind
of combination of the two.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I would love you to talk about some of the
questions that each shows for the journal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I love questions. I love them. I mean, if I'm
known for anything, it's the coaching. Have a book which
is like kind of my curated seven best coaching questions,
and you know earlier versions of that book. I tempted
one version of that book, which is here in My
Favorite one hundred and thirty two Questions. It was a
terrible book. It was so bad. I was like, oh
(13:11):
my god, this is unbearable and unreadable. It's purgent. But
I do keep my ear to the ground and collect
great questions. And so the three Morning questions. And I'm
really happy to give this because you don't I mean,
I'd like to love you to buy a journal, but
you don't have to. You can just kind of use
these questions and buy a blank journal and just use
them yourself. The first three questions are, first of all,
(13:33):
what do I notice? And I asked that question, Amantha,
because I am a heady sort of guy, and I'm
often kind of a bit into the future and a
bit distracted, and what do I notice is a way
for me to try and be present. What's going on
in my head, what's going on in my heart, what's
going on in my ass, what am I siteting out
of the window in front of me, what am I feeling?
(13:56):
It's a kind of a call to be present to
the inner and the outer way that's there right in
front of me. The second question is what do I want? Now?
Deep cut fans will know that what do I want
is one of the questions from the coaching habit, And
actually I've always when I've been teaching the coaching habit,
I've always said, this is the hardest question. It is
(14:18):
a hard question. But I heard somebody say, if you
just ask yourself what do I want? Day in and
day out, it just starts forcing a deep clarity about
what you're missing, what you're sad about, what you're longing for,
what's not working, what's calling you. And when we're talking
(14:40):
about what you want to say yes to, if it
stems from this deep awareness of what do I want,
that then makes the how to say no, for instance,
a little easier. And then The third question for the
start of the day is what's the one thing today?
And this question works for me because, again getting back
(15:02):
to our previous conversation, I love to be over committed.
I love a to do list that stretches to the
near horizon and is all read because I'm like eight
and a half years behind in my to do list,
and so I'm like, I'm going to remember what's the
most important thing today to do so that I don't go, look,
I was busy today and I did ninety eight things.
(15:23):
I can say I did the thing today that moved
the project forward that matters most to me, to make
sure that that worked because I made that choice. So
it's a reminder of focus on the important stuff. I
read recently, I think probably Oliver Berkman said you should
consider your to do list more like a menu than
a obligation. And I'm like, oh, that's so good, because
(15:46):
I create a what's that jacket that ties you up?
You know jacket, a straight jacket. My to do list
can be a straight jacket, and what's the one thing
today can be a bit of a release from that.
And then the final question, which I tend to answer
the next morning, but some people answer at the end
of the day comes from Austin Kleon who introduced it
(16:07):
to me, and it's what's the best thing that happened today?
And it's a gratitude question really in disguise, because it
forces you to go, well, what am I remembering and
celebrating and happy about from the day? And it's not
what did you do or what did you crush? Or
what boxes did you tick? Not every day is about productivity.
(16:30):
Some days, I like the best thing about today was
gazing out my window and noticing that spring is just
whispering and arrival here in Toronto because we've been digging
out snow for months now or whatever it might be.
And for me, as somebody who is perpetually charging into
the future and not that good at kind of being
(16:51):
delighted about the present, it keeps bringing me back to
the present and being grateful and kind of actually, as
I get into my journals building up a record of
all the good things in my.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Life, I was going to ask, do you look back
on your journal? Is that part of your ritual as well?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
It's not so much, that's just not part of what
nourishes me. And looking back, I've too many things calling
me forward in the future that make it that meant
that hard. But even just this recognition of in this moment,
this was what was good about the day. And it's
true that occasionally I'll look slightly back in the journal
if I'm kind of like this morning, for instance, it's Monday,
(17:30):
the third of March here in Canada. I spent like
an hour reflecting on what I'm thinking about the month ahead,
and in part that was looking back over February and going,
what do I notice from February? What happened? What am
I celebrating. So there's a little bit of that look
back that happens there, but it's not a kind of
regular thing. Some people love to kind of like dig
(17:52):
deep into their journals and flick through them, and that's
not for me.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
What it reminds me of is so my partner is
a very consistent You've probably seen that one sentence a
day journal where you write a few sentences over five
years and then every year is a different row. If
you like, I love that.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's so clever. It's such a clever construction.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It is, isn't it. So I got us both one
about nearly two years ago, now I have written about
fifteen entries. He has written several hundred, and what's truly great.
He's a very generous journaler in that he'll often talk
about what's happened in both our days. He'll be like,
I did this, and here are the key beats to
(18:34):
the day, and then A did blah blah blah. That
it was funny. We were looking back on it last night,
and I was in such a low point for work,
and I remember just viscerally how that felt, just with
even one or two sentences he read out, and there
was something quite joyous in going, wow, I've done a
(18:55):
one eighty. I feel completely different. And so I understand
and like that. Some people don't like looking back, but
I personally found that so useful, just for that sense
of progress over the year.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
That's so good. I can absolutely see how that would
be great, because I think it's true that we tend
to homogenize our past, kind of blend it all into going,
oh no, it was all seven out of ten, And
in fact, there's ups and downs, and you'll forget those
unless you have an opportunity to reflect like that.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's so true. It's like some of the details that
were written there, even about Frankie, my daughter. I'm like,
that day just would have disappeared from my mind. How
do we not captured that one sentence that summed up
that day beautifully?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Clearly? The journal to buy here is the one LA
Day five year journal. But if you're also like a
second journal in your life, you can consider. But I
mean I know that because when I was writing this journal,
I just bought all sorts of journals to coming on
what do I like and what do people doing? And
I think that is one of the really good ones.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
We will be back with Michael soon, and when we return,
he'll be sharing his Monday morning journaling ritual, why he
rejects the popular word of the year approach for something
far more effective, and the monthly reflection practice that keeps
his work and life aligned while preventing burnout. If you're
(20:19):
looking for more tips to improve the way you work
can live, I write a short weekly newsletter that contains
tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can
sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha
dot com. I really like how you talk about weekly
(20:41):
and monthly rituals for journaling. And I might add that
one sentence a day one does not include that, so
definitely don't get that one. But I would like to
talk about what you do at the beginning of the
week and what you do at the beginning of the
month that is different. So let's start with a weekly focus.
And indeed, it even says weekly focus in your journal,
tell me what you do differently at the beginning of
(21:02):
the week.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I've tried to build in cycles into the journal, so
different rhythms that kind of ebb and flow through it.
So you've got your daily like Monday through Friday. Basically
you've got these four questions that you used to check
in with at the start of each week. There's a
little section for you, like your weekly focus, and it's
just useful to look out ahead and go, well, what's
(21:24):
their week ahead look like, and what's beckoning and what's
calling me and what I need to know about that.
And the other thing that I invite people to do
is at the start of the week to go deep
on a question. So for instance, I, you know, I
was writing my journal this morning and it's like the
go deep question, and there's sixteen weeks in the journal,
(21:45):
so there's sixteen different questions to provoke you around this,
and the question I answered is what are you loyal to?
So this is what keeps you there even when the
sensible thing is to leave. Loyalty can be what's required.
Loyalty can also mean sticking around too long. What's your
deep commitment? So you know, here's what I wrote email boo,
(22:06):
because I'm like, I am trying with my assistant to
extract me from email, and I'm finding it very hard
to let go of that. Been too busy and overwhelmed,
and I'm committed to avoiding the hard things. So this
is like, obviously I've been I was fueled up on
an espresso, so I was trying to go deep on myself,
which is like, where is my loyalty? Which is part
(22:29):
of how I show up in the world. I'm a
good loyal person. I'm paying a price for that, and
I could have, you know, depending on the day, I
could have gone somewhere else entirely, which is like, I've
got a loyalty to my fifteen closest friend because I'm
the one who will ring them up and chat with
them and have those conversations. But for me to this morning,
it was really helpful, just to go I've got a
deep commitment to avoiding some stuff or sticking with stuff
(22:52):
that feels too comfortable for me. That's a helpful thing.
And every sort of every week there's a kind of
new question to provoke you to go a little deep
and kind of shake you up a little bit. And
then the journal is also designed on a six week cycle,
which is something I stole from kind of lean production.
And the guys at thirty seven Signal they're the ones
(23:13):
who wrote Rework.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
It's called Yeah, it doesn't have to be crazy at
work or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
That's it. Yeah, And they have a podcast called rework
as well, and so they run a sas technology company.
But they've always been quite contrarian around how they work.
They're like, probably most of the common sense at work
is terrible, so what do we think is actually good?
And the way that they produced work is they do
a six week sprint and then a week or two
(23:41):
to reset and recalibrate and figure out what's next, and
then they go, right, here's what I'm working on for
the next six weeks, and they work that and we've
used that cycle in a membership group. We have which
is people working on their big projects. We have six
chapters a year, six weeks and breaks in between, so
(24:02):
the journal reflects that, which is like, figure out what
your six week goal is, what your big thing is
for the six weeks, and then go for that and
commit to that. So you're continually creating these layers of
context for your daily check in. You've got your weekly context,
you got your six week context, which helps you stay
focused on what's the point of all of this? What
(24:25):
am I actually working towards?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Okay, so I want to talk about your monthly ritual
because you mentioned sitting down at the beginning of March
and thinking about things or reflecting on things. What do
you do each month?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Well, I do a few things. I try and remind
myself the rules I'm playing by, you know, things like
you're doing this for the joy of the work, and
you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
You know how, at the start of the year, the
bloom has gone completely off New Year's resolutions, Like everybody goes,
(24:58):
that's uncol Now, don't make a new this resolution, You're dead.
But everyone's like, I've got a word of the year. Well,
I've got to I've actually got to be in my
bonnet about a word of the year, because I think
a single word is typically a bit too simplistic, a
bit too vague, a bit too jazz handy. It's like
when you go and see corporate values and they're like,
(25:19):
here are five very banal things as corporate values, and
you know what's the point of that? Honestly, some words
of the year strike me like that as well. So
my thing is to get two words for the year,
because two is more than twice as good because when
you have two words, they're in relationship with each other,
and ideally your two words want to be in tension
(25:40):
with each other, so there's a kind of push pull
around that. So my two words for twenty twenty five.
One is artisanal, meaning I want to create beautiful stuff,
you know, the stuff that like an artist makes where
you're like's there's a magic to them, and there's a
there's a uniqueness and a specialness to that thing. So
(26:01):
I want artisanal. And then the second word is ballsy,
meaning I want to be brave and I want to
be loud, and I want to be courageous and I
want to go for it and I want to be ambitious,
and I really like how those two words don't fit
that neatly together. So I'm reminding myself of some of
my key things and my principles around that, and then
(26:23):
I'm reminding myself of what my key projects are, because
one of the things I've learned is once I lose context,
once I lose the big picture, my life deteriorates into
emails and to do's, and so I keep needing to
find reasons to pull myself out and surface. And hence
the weekly and the monthly and the six weekly kind
(26:43):
of cycles because they keep forcing me to hold a
wider perspective, going what is going on here and what
does matter to me? And what are the things I'm
trying to nurture, so you know, for this year, I
go look. One of my projects is Change Signal, which
is a podcast news letter about change management in organizations,
and the key driver for that is a beautiful podcast,
(27:07):
a newsletter, and growing the audience for both of those things.
That's one of my kind of core projects. And then
another one of my projects is basically today, Amantha Mark's
the ninth birthday of the Coaching Habit. It came out
on the twenty ninth of February twenty sixteenth, which means
in a year's time almost exactly, it'll be the tenth
birthday of The Coaching Habit and we're going to put
(27:29):
out a special edition. It's a hardback. I'm'm going to
write a new chapter. We're going to do some other
cool things as part of that. So part of it
is around Coaching Habit ten. How do I set myself
up for a really successful, fun year in twenty twenty
six championing this book, which has been a kind of
life changing book for me. And then one of my
(27:49):
projects is to be in the best shape of my life.
So I'm like, okay, so what does that actually mean?
And so there's a bunch of things around exercise and
and I have old man's knees, so trying to get
my knees to work, you know, and kind of other
kind of boring stuff around that. And my fourth project
of four is learn to love Toronto, because I've lived
(28:11):
here for twenty years and I've kind of fallen out
of love a little bit with the place. So I
need to get back into love with this place where
I live. And so part of it is me going
on are my key projects? And how does my month
look in terms of where I'm committed to these projects
or not? And what's in my calendar which isn't about
those four projects? And what shall I be thinking about
(28:32):
or doing about that?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I love that?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
How long?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like, practically speaking, do you sit down and think about
these things every month?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Like?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Is it just a quick half an hour? Is it
a day? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I have seventeen days. I spend the first seventeen days
of every month just planning the No, I'm kidding. I
spent an hour doing that this morning, because this is
what I did this morning around that, and so I
went to yoga, did a yoga class, went to my
favorite coffee shop, and just spent an hour sitting and reflecting.
(29:04):
I had my phone with me, so I was kind
of looking at calendar, looking forward, looking back. I had
my journal with me, So I don't spend a lot
of time. I don't write a lot. I'm a fairly
quick processor around some of that stuff. But an hour
is enough for me to feel grounded about, Oh yeah,
I know what I'm doing and I know why I'm
doing it.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
The final thing I wanted to ask, is you like
to coincide with the launch of your journal. You put
out an e book that was fifty two brilliant Questions,
and I love that as a lot of questions. I
would love to know one or two or three that
are like your absolute favorites that you find yourself coming
back to a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, it was such a fun exercise because I was like,
I was just writing to people who I know in
the coaching world and kind of be ongoing what is
your best question? Why do you like it so much?
And it had a real mix. Some of them are
familiar ones the people have heard before, you know, things
like if I had no fear, what would I do?
And that can be really liberating, although I prefer a
site version of that, which is, if I didn't care
(30:03):
about the consequences, would I still do this anyway? Because
I don't know how to get over fear. Like fear
is just part of you know, it's part of our
nervous system. So having no fear, I feel like it
feels like you're lobotomized. Yeah, no fear. But if you're
like I don't care about the consequences, what does that
look like? Can be really powerful. One of the questions
(30:26):
is what does it mean to be fully committed to this?
And for me that's particularly powerful. But you know, I
think perhaps the one that is the one that I
really love is from a guy called Frankie Thoroughgood. And
Frankie was this young guy in his thirties, but he
had this kind of early wisdom to him. He's a
seeker and he's a questioner, and he's just accumulated a
(30:49):
kind of a grace and a presence to him which
I really admire. And his was the final question in
the book, and it was who do you love and
who loves you? And you know, before we hit record, Amantha,
you're saying last year is difficult for work, but it's
fantastic on a personal level because you're getting married and
(31:11):
you've found your person, and it is amazing what that
means when you find your person, when you feel loved.
You know, this year, I get to celebrate thirty years
married with my wife, which is impossible because I'm still young,
God damn it. But I'm like, I'm just very lucky
to have somebody who I love and who loves me.
(31:31):
And as I sometimes say about marriage, a good marriage
is when you both feel that you're getting the better deal.
And I definitely feel like I'm getting the better deal.
So I really think we can talk about productivity and
efficiency and all of this and self growth, but if
you can kind of crack your heart open and love
somebody and be loved, those are both learned skills. By
(31:52):
the way, those are things you can work on to
get better at. That feels like a really good question, Michael.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
It is always such a joy to chat to you
on microphone or off microphone. Thank you so much. You're
always such a generous and helpful sharer. So I thank you,
and I'm sure you'll be back for twenty twenty six
to talk about the coaching habit. I hope.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I hope so too, but that would be lovely. But
thank you. Whether you set me up, you make me
sound better than I actually am. So thank you for
such a lovely conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I hope you love this chat with Michael as much
as I did, and I highly recommend his do Something
that Matters journal. If you want to check this out
or find out anything else about Michael, I will provide
a link in the show notes. If you like today's show,
make sure you get follow on your podcast app to
be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
(32:43):
recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people out
of the cool And Nation
You know that beautiful leather bound journal you bought with
the best of intentions, the one now gathering dust under
a pile of books. If you've abandoned more journals than
you care to admit, you're about to discover why. After
forty years of failed journaling attempts, Michael Bungay Stania finally
(00:22):
cracked the code to sustainable reflection with his do Something
that Matters journal and It's nothing like what you've tried before.
Michael is the Wall Street Journal best selling author of
The Coaching Habit, which Rene Brown called a classic with
over one point five million books sold. Michael was named
the number one thought leader in coaching by Thinkers fifty
(00:45):
and his insights have transformed our leader's work worldwide. I
am thrilled to welcome Michael back to How I Work,
where he reveals his deceptively simple approach to journaling that
actually sticks, his Monday morning richel that drives results, and
the unexpected reflection technique that prevents him from drowning in commitments.
(01:08):
If you've ever struggled to maintain a reflection practice, this
conversation might finally end your journal graveyard collection. Welcome to
How I Work. A show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
(01:32):
Michael is so prolific with his work and is clearly
in high demand all around the world, so I know
he would have to be pretty good at saying no
to work offers in order to avoid overload. So this
chat starts with Michael sharing his very practical tips on
how and when to say no.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I start by saying is just one of those skills
that a little bit like gratitude, turns out to be
a silver bullet or as close to a silver bullet
to happiness as you can get, even though silver bullet's
a terrible metaphor, so let's call it a warm, gentle
hug towards happiness. Which is this gift of being able
to say no. And I mean, I'll tell you I
(02:15):
am not particularly good at it, and I like unhappy people,
I like pleasing people. I'm the oldest child, so I've
got a strong sense of responsibility and show up and
do the thing. But at the heart of understanding no
is a commitment to what you're saying yes to, So
saying no is not just a look I'm just being
(02:36):
obstinate or selfish. It's I've got an idea of really
what matters, and my yes is meaningless unless my no
has some weight. And I'm going to just take a
rough guess here that there's not a single person listening
to this podcast or a single person participating in this podcast.
(02:57):
So that's you and me, Amantha, who's going The problem
with my life is I just don't have enough stuff
in it. The problem with my life is it's just
not crowded enough. Like everybody's got too much on the
yes's and so every time we make a commitment without
a no, we're pouring water into a full glass and
all you're doing is getting the floor wet, and you're
not really getting committed to the big thing. So I've
(03:20):
done a few things to try and build my capacity
for saying no, and a lot of it is structural stuff.
So it's actually not building my capacity for saying no,
it's building an infrastructure around me that allows me to
say no when there's parts of my body screaming to
say yes. So I'll give you an example. One of
(03:42):
the things that's really helpful is just to know that, look,
I don't have to say yes right away. And in fact,
one of the core things I keep trying to tell
myself is, Michael, slow down the rush to yes. Every
yes is precious. Your default should be no. Your default
shouldn't be yes. You're default should be no. So slow
down the rush to yes. So just you know, in
(04:04):
some ways this it's just being a little bit more
mindful about what are you committing to and how quickly.
What helps me do that is to have criteria about
what I'm saying yes to. And you know it's you
won't have criteria for everything in your life that you're
saying yes to. But as an example, I get asked
to come and give keynote speeches on a regular basis,
(04:27):
and every time I get a little inquiry, one part
of my fragile male ego gets stroked, and I'm like, see,
I know I'm getting old. I know I'm over the hill.
I know like I'm fading from people's memory. But I
still got it, Like I'm still like a person out
there in the world. And what happens is six months later,
(04:48):
I end up in some god forsaking part of the
world and the US or Canada or wherever am I
be going? What am I doing here? Who's responsible for
me giving this talk? And I'm like, I am, I said, yes,
this it's my fault. So here's how I work it
for my speeching and people can figure out their own
kind of version of this for whatever shows up for them.
But I have five plus one criteria for my speaking
(05:11):
and the rule is if they tick two of the boxes,
I'll have a conversation with them. So the five criteria
is they will pay my full fee. Now I live
in Canada and so the speaking fees in the North
America are ridiculously aret. I've tried to price myself out
of the market, so most people don't want to pay
(05:32):
the money because I'm like, my rack rate for a
speech is fifty thousand dollars, which is believe me, I
know how stupid that is. And when people go that's
a ridiculous amount of money, and I'm like, it is,
you should find somebody else. But so this is me
kind of building infrastructure to make create kind of resistance
to people wanting to even ask me in the first place.
(05:55):
But anyway, my five crade here pay my full fee.
It's a friend who's asking me. It's a cool organization.
It's in a cool location, it's more than a thousand
people in the audience. And if they're like, we've got
two out of five for you here, then I'll be like, Okay,
let me find out more about it. Let me find
out what's going on. So if I have a friend
(06:15):
calling up and going, hey, Michael, mate, come and speak
on the Gold Coast, I'm like, but I've got no money,
I'm like, okay, maybe. Or if it's you know, some
cool organization, let's say Apple Say, and they're like, hey,
come and speak. We can't afford to pay you very much.
And it's it's in a terrible, terrible part of the country.
(06:37):
It's in Alaska in the middle of winter. But we're
going to have two thousand people there. I'm like, okay,
well that's two out of five of my criteria. So
I'll have a conversation with them and I'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So can I ask, because I love that criteria and
as someone who does speaking and has to say no
for various reasons to quite a lot of speaking gigs,
how do you get to that criteria? What was your process?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I noticed all the things that made me sad when
I was giving a talk somewhere where I was like,
what am I doing? This is a terrible, terrible decision.
I was like, I don't want to be in this place.
I don't want to be in front of this audience.
I conned myself that this would be useful in some way.
And so the plus one criteria is this. I go,
(07:24):
if this was tomorrow, would I be happy about it?
And that's a super useful criteria for me, because present
day Michael sells future day Michael down the river time
and time again. Future day Michael now looks back at
past Michael and go, you are an a hole man?
What do you do sending me to this place? This
(07:46):
is a nightmare. So I try and bring future Michael
and present day Michael really close together, and I go,
if this was tomorrow, will I be up for it?
And if I'm like, oh, I can just feel in
my bones and I probably would be less excited than
I would, then I'd that I'm playing with other criteria,
which is for this year, I'm going I want to
do ten in real life speaking gigs this year, so
(08:09):
I've only got ten to spend. You know what am
I doing? I'm speaking to a friend of mine. Mike
mcallowitz the other day. He has a rule that he
has twenty glasses of wine to spend in a year,
so he's like, I'm not going to be drinking crappy wine,
and I'm probably going to be drinking good wine with
(08:31):
my wife, who's my favorite person in the world. So
when I'm out with Mike and I'm like, Mike, let's
have a cocktail, He's like, sorry, Matte, Like, you're a
good guy, but I'm not spending one of my twenty
glasses of wine with you because I've got other places
i want to spend that. And all of this I
think about understanding the opportunity cost and understanding there's a
limit to it, and setting these kind of criteria. You're
gaming yourself in just making it easier to say no.
(08:53):
And when you say no, you create space and capacity
for the stuff that you really want to say yes to. Now,
if you're me and Mantha, what that does is to
create a certain amount of anxiety. Like this month, I
sat down with my fancy journal and I did a
kind of what's coming up in the month ahead, and
I'm like, oh, I've got a pretty open month. Like
(09:16):
it I don't have a single client engagement. I've got
a few podcasts that I'm recording and a few podcasts
that I'm the host on and recording, and I've got
other commitments. But relatively speaking, I've got one small piece
of travel, which is an award ceremony I'm going to.
And part of me is like, this is exactly what
I've been planning. And there's one part of me that
(09:37):
goes my gorsh this is it. This is the start
of something terrible. This is the apocalypse happening. See, you're
sliding even further into irrelevance. So part of it is
also some deeper work, which is around understanding a deeper
reason why you might be saying yes, which is to
feel important, to feel filled up, to feel over committed,
to feel busy, and knowing that for some of us anyway,
(10:00):
and for me, there's a degree of work I need
to be doing to go. I actually got to get
used to building a life which is less crowded.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Now, Michael, you mentioned journaling, and I have heard you
say that you hate journaling. Can you tell me about
that and what has changed?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, it's more to say that I have failed to
successfully journal since I was sixteen, so I'm now fifty seven.
So I've been attempting to journal for as I used
to try and do it in high school. And when
I look back there, I'm like, I've got things like
bus tickets stapared into it. It's such a teenage boys
journal because there's absolutely no self reflection, there's no sense
(10:40):
of emotionalness. It's purely a kind of did this did
that sort of criteria, and not even interesting things. And
I've tried most of the journaling formats because there is
something about creating a space where you stop and you
reflect and you're able to kind of be provoked and
think about the day. And I found two types of
(11:01):
journals didn't work for me. One is the kind of
artist's way just free float and just write whatever comes
into your head. That's just a bit too loose for me. Equally,
there's a type of journal which is more of a
planet thing, which is like, okay, right down the day,
to write down your seventeen commitments, write down your phone
callse write down your vision, write down your three values
right down. First of all, I don't have time for this,
(11:24):
and secondly, it's too structured. I've got a freedom driver
that just makes me want to rebel against things like that.
So I have been looking for a journal that allows
me to make progress on the stuff I need to
do day to day. So it makes me present and
makes me focus for the day ahead, but also provokes
me to learn and to grow and become a wiser,
(11:47):
smarter person. So this is what people like me do.
I created my own journal, so I wort something called
that do something that matters journal, which is so nicely
send me up. You're holding it up from the screen,
and I've got mine in front of me as well,
and I find this one works for me. It's it's
three questions in the morning to check in and one
(12:07):
question in the evening or for the next morning if
you want to do that. So that's your kind of
daily movement, making progress, you know the progress principal by
Teresa and Marble, which is like people find meaning if
they make small, regular progress and stuff that matters to them.
And then kind of start of the week, end of
the week, middle of the week, there are more kind
(12:28):
of provocative questions to help you stop and lift your
eyes up off the page and reflect on who you
are and what's going on. To enable kind of growth.
So it's not just about the grind, nor is it
just about the deep self reflection. But it's a kind
of combination of the two.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I would love you to talk about some of the
questions that each shows for the journal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I love questions. I love them. I mean, if I'm
known for anything, it's the coaching. Have a book which
is like kind of my curated seven best coaching questions,
and you know earlier versions of that book. I tempted
one version of that book, which is here in My
Favorite one hundred and thirty two Questions. It was a
terrible book. It was so bad. I was like, oh
(13:11):
my god, this is unbearable and unreadable. It's purgent. But
I do keep my ear to the ground and collect
great questions. And so the three Morning questions. And I'm
really happy to give this because you don't I mean,
I'd like to love you to buy a journal, but
you don't have to. You can just kind of use
these questions and buy a blank journal and just use
them yourself. The first three questions are, first of all,
(13:33):
what do I notice? And I asked that question, Amantha,
because I am a heady sort of guy, and I'm
often kind of a bit into the future and a
bit distracted, and what do I notice is a way
for me to try and be present. What's going on
in my head, what's going on in my heart, what's
going on in my ass, what am I siteting out
of the window in front of me, what am I feeling?
(13:56):
It's a kind of a call to be present to
the inner and the outer way that's there right in
front of me. The second question is what do I want? Now?
Deep cut fans will know that what do I want
is one of the questions from the coaching habit, And
actually I've always when I've been teaching the coaching habit,
I've always said, this is the hardest question. It is
(14:18):
a hard question. But I heard somebody say, if you
just ask yourself what do I want? Day in and
day out, it just starts forcing a deep clarity about
what you're missing, what you're sad about, what you're longing for,
what's not working, what's calling you. And when we're talking
(14:40):
about what you want to say yes to, if it
stems from this deep awareness of what do I want,
that then makes the how to say no, for instance,
a little easier. And then The third question for the
start of the day is what's the one thing today?
And this question works for me because, again getting back
(15:02):
to our previous conversation, I love to be over committed.
I love a to do list that stretches to the
near horizon and is all read because I'm like eight
and a half years behind in my to do list,
and so I'm like, I'm going to remember what's the
most important thing today to do so that I don't go, look,
I was busy today and I did ninety eight things.
(15:23):
I can say I did the thing today that moved
the project forward that matters most to me, to make
sure that that worked because I made that choice. So
it's a reminder of focus on the important stuff. I
read recently, I think probably Oliver Berkman said you should
consider your to do list more like a menu than
a obligation. And I'm like, oh, that's so good, because
(15:46):
I create a what's that jacket that ties you up?
You know jacket, a straight jacket. My to do list
can be a straight jacket, and what's the one thing
today can be a bit of a release from that.
And then the final question, which I tend to answer
the next morning, but some people answer at the end
of the day comes from Austin Kleon who introduced it
(16:07):
to me, and it's what's the best thing that happened today?
And it's a gratitude question really in disguise, because it
forces you to go, well, what am I remembering and
celebrating and happy about from the day? And it's not
what did you do or what did you crush? Or
what boxes did you tick? Not every day is about productivity.
(16:30):
Some days, I like the best thing about today was
gazing out my window and noticing that spring is just
whispering and arrival here in Toronto because we've been digging
out snow for months now or whatever it might be.
And for me, as somebody who is perpetually charging into
the future and not that good at kind of being
(16:51):
delighted about the present, it keeps bringing me back to
the present and being grateful and kind of actually, as
I get into my journals building up a record of
all the good things in my.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Life, I was going to ask, do you look back
on your journal? Is that part of your ritual as well?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
It's not so much, that's just not part of what
nourishes me. And looking back, I've too many things calling
me forward in the future that make it that meant
that hard. But even just this recognition of in this moment,
this was what was good about the day. And it's
true that occasionally I'll look slightly back in the journal
if I'm kind of like this morning, for instance, it's Monday,
(17:30):
the third of March here in Canada. I spent like
an hour reflecting on what I'm thinking about the month ahead,
and in part that was looking back over February and going,
what do I notice from February? What happened? What am
I celebrating. So there's a little bit of that look
back that happens there, but it's not a kind of
regular thing. Some people love to kind of like dig
(17:52):
deep into their journals and flick through them, and that's
not for me.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
What it reminds me of is so my partner is
a very consistent You've probably seen that one sentence a
day journal where you write a few sentences over five
years and then every year is a different row. If
you like, I love that.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's so clever. It's such a clever construction.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It is, isn't it. So I got us both one
about nearly two years ago, now I have written about
fifteen entries. He has written several hundred, and what's truly great.
He's a very generous journaler in that he'll often talk
about what's happened in both our days. He'll be like,
I did this, and here are the key beats to
(18:34):
the day, and then A did blah blah blah. That
it was funny. We were looking back on it last night,
and I was in such a low point for work,
and I remember just viscerally how that felt, just with
even one or two sentences he read out, and there
was something quite joyous in going, wow, I've done a
(18:55):
one eighty. I feel completely different. And so I understand
and like that. Some people don't like looking back, but
I personally found that so useful, just for that sense
of progress over the year.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
That's so good. I can absolutely see how that would
be great, because I think it's true that we tend
to homogenize our past, kind of blend it all into going,
oh no, it was all seven out of ten, And
in fact, there's ups and downs, and you'll forget those
unless you have an opportunity to reflect like that.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's so true. It's like some of the details that
were written there, even about Frankie, my daughter. I'm like,
that day just would have disappeared from my mind. How
do we not captured that one sentence that summed up
that day beautifully?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Clearly? The journal to buy here is the one LA
Day five year journal. But if you're also like a
second journal in your life, you can consider. But I
mean I know that because when I was writing this journal,
I just bought all sorts of journals to coming on
what do I like and what do people doing? And
I think that is one of the really good ones.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
We will be back with Michael soon, and when we return,
he'll be sharing his Monday morning journaling ritual, why he
rejects the popular word of the year approach for something
far more effective, and the monthly reflection practice that keeps
his work and life aligned while preventing burnout. If you're
(20:19):
looking for more tips to improve the way you work
can live, I write a short weekly newsletter that contains
tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can
sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha
dot com. I really like how you talk about weekly
(20:41):
and monthly rituals for journaling. And I might add that
one sentence a day one does not include that, so
definitely don't get that one. But I would like to
talk about what you do at the beginning of the
week and what you do at the beginning of the
month that is different. So let's start with a weekly focus.
And indeed, it even says weekly focus in your journal,
tell me what you do differently at the beginning of
(21:02):
the week.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I've tried to build in cycles into the journal, so
different rhythms that kind of ebb and flow through it.
So you've got your daily like Monday through Friday. Basically
you've got these four questions that you used to check
in with at the start of each week. There's a
little section for you, like your weekly focus, and it's
just useful to look out ahead and go, well, what's
(21:24):
their week ahead look like, and what's beckoning and what's
calling me and what I need to know about that.
And the other thing that I invite people to do
is at the start of the week to go deep
on a question. So for instance, I, you know, I
was writing my journal this morning and it's like the
go deep question, and there's sixteen weeks in the journal,
(21:45):
so there's sixteen different questions to provoke you around this,
and the question I answered is what are you loyal to?
So this is what keeps you there even when the
sensible thing is to leave. Loyalty can be what's required.
Loyalty can also mean sticking around too long. What's your
deep commitment? So you know, here's what I wrote email boo,
(22:06):
because I'm like, I am trying with my assistant to
extract me from email, and I'm finding it very hard
to let go of that. Been too busy and overwhelmed,
and I'm committed to avoiding the hard things. So this
is like, obviously I've been I was fueled up on
an espresso, so I was trying to go deep on myself,
which is like, where is my loyalty? Which is part
(22:29):
of how I show up in the world. I'm a
good loyal person. I'm paying a price for that, and
I could have, you know, depending on the day, I
could have gone somewhere else entirely, which is like, I've
got a loyalty to my fifteen closest friend because I'm
the one who will ring them up and chat with
them and have those conversations. But for me to this morning,
it was really helpful, just to go I've got a
deep commitment to avoiding some stuff or sticking with stuff
(22:52):
that feels too comfortable for me. That's a helpful thing.
And every sort of every week there's a kind of
new question to provoke you to go a little deep
and kind of shake you up a little bit. And
then the journal is also designed on a six week cycle,
which is something I stole from kind of lean production.
And the guys at thirty seven Signal they're the ones
(23:13):
who wrote Rework.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
It's called Yeah, it doesn't have to be crazy at
work or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
That's it. Yeah, And they have a podcast called rework
as well, and so they run a sas technology company.
But they've always been quite contrarian around how they work.
They're like, probably most of the common sense at work
is terrible, so what do we think is actually good?
And the way that they produced work is they do
a six week sprint and then a week or two
(23:41):
to reset and recalibrate and figure out what's next, and
then they go, right, here's what I'm working on for
the next six weeks, and they work that and we've
used that cycle in a membership group. We have which
is people working on their big projects. We have six
chapters a year, six weeks and breaks in between, so
(24:02):
the journal reflects that, which is like, figure out what
your six week goal is, what your big thing is
for the six weeks, and then go for that and
commit to that. So you're continually creating these layers of
context for your daily check in. You've got your weekly context,
you got your six week context, which helps you stay
focused on what's the point of all of this? What
(24:25):
am I actually working towards?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Okay, so I want to talk about your monthly ritual
because you mentioned sitting down at the beginning of March
and thinking about things or reflecting on things. What do
you do each month?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Well, I do a few things. I try and remind
myself the rules I'm playing by, you know, things like
you're doing this for the joy of the work, and
you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
You know how, at the start of the year, the
bloom has gone completely off New Year's resolutions, Like everybody goes,
(24:58):
that's uncol Now, don't make a new this resolution, You're dead.
But everyone's like, I've got a word of the year. Well,
I've got to I've actually got to be in my
bonnet about a word of the year, because I think
a single word is typically a bit too simplistic, a
bit too vague, a bit too jazz handy. It's like
when you go and see corporate values and they're like,
(25:19):
here are five very banal things as corporate values, and
you know what's the point of that? Honestly, some words
of the year strike me like that as well. So
my thing is to get two words for the year,
because two is more than twice as good because when
you have two words, they're in relationship with each other,
and ideally your two words want to be in tension
(25:40):
with each other, so there's a kind of push pull
around that. So my two words for twenty twenty five.
One is artisanal, meaning I want to create beautiful stuff,
you know, the stuff that like an artist makes where
you're like's there's a magic to them, and there's a
there's a uniqueness and a specialness to that thing. So
(26:01):
I want artisanal. And then the second word is ballsy,
meaning I want to be brave and I want to
be loud, and I want to be courageous and I
want to go for it and I want to be ambitious,
and I really like how those two words don't fit
that neatly together. So I'm reminding myself of some of
my key things and my principles around that, and then
(26:23):
I'm reminding myself of what my key projects are, because
one of the things I've learned is once I lose context,
once I lose the big picture, my life deteriorates into
emails and to do's, and so I keep needing to
find reasons to pull myself out and surface. And hence
the weekly and the monthly and the six weekly kind
(26:43):
of cycles because they keep forcing me to hold a
wider perspective, going what is going on here and what
does matter to me? And what are the things I'm
trying to nurture, so you know, for this year, I
go look. One of my projects is Change Signal, which
is a podcast news letter about change management in organizations,
and the key driver for that is a beautiful podcast,
(27:07):
a newsletter, and growing the audience for both of those things.
That's one of my kind of core projects. And then
another one of my projects is basically today, Amantha Mark's
the ninth birthday of the Coaching Habit. It came out
on the twenty ninth of February twenty sixteenth, which means
in a year's time almost exactly, it'll be the tenth
birthday of The Coaching Habit and we're going to put
(27:29):
out a special edition. It's a hardback. I'm'm going to
write a new chapter. We're going to do some other
cool things as part of that. So part of it
is around Coaching Habit ten. How do I set myself
up for a really successful, fun year in twenty twenty
six championing this book, which has been a kind of
life changing book for me. And then one of my
(27:49):
projects is to be in the best shape of my life.
So I'm like, okay, so what does that actually mean?
And so there's a bunch of things around exercise and
and I have old man's knees, so trying to get
my knees to work, you know, and kind of other
kind of boring stuff around that. And my fourth project
of four is learn to love Toronto, because I've lived
(28:11):
here for twenty years and I've kind of fallen out
of love a little bit with the place. So I
need to get back into love with this place where
I live. And so part of it is me going
on are my key projects? And how does my month
look in terms of where I'm committed to these projects
or not? And what's in my calendar which isn't about
those four projects? And what shall I be thinking about
(28:32):
or doing about that?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I love that?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
How long?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like, practically speaking, do you sit down and think about
these things every month?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Like?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Is it just a quick half an hour? Is it
a day? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I have seventeen days. I spend the first seventeen days
of every month just planning the No, I'm kidding. I
spent an hour doing that this morning, because this is
what I did this morning around that, and so I
went to yoga, did a yoga class, went to my
favorite coffee shop, and just spent an hour sitting and reflecting.
(29:04):
I had my phone with me, so I was kind
of looking at calendar, looking forward, looking back. I had
my journal with me, So I don't spend a lot
of time. I don't write a lot. I'm a fairly
quick processor around some of that stuff. But an hour
is enough for me to feel grounded about, Oh yeah,
I know what I'm doing and I know why I'm
doing it.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
The final thing I wanted to ask, is you like
to coincide with the launch of your journal. You put
out an e book that was fifty two brilliant Questions,
and I love that as a lot of questions. I
would love to know one or two or three that
are like your absolute favorites that you find yourself coming
back to a lot.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, it was such a fun exercise because I was like,
I was just writing to people who I know in
the coaching world and kind of be ongoing what is
your best question? Why do you like it so much?
And it had a real mix. Some of them are
familiar ones the people have heard before, you know, things
like if I had no fear, what would I do?
And that can be really liberating, although I prefer a
site version of that, which is, if I didn't care
(30:03):
about the consequences, would I still do this anyway? Because
I don't know how to get over fear. Like fear
is just part of you know, it's part of our
nervous system. So having no fear, I feel like it
feels like you're lobotomized. Yeah, no fear. But if you're
like I don't care about the consequences, what does that
look like? Can be really powerful. One of the questions
(30:26):
is what does it mean to be fully committed to this?
And for me that's particularly powerful. But you know, I
think perhaps the one that is the one that I
really love is from a guy called Frankie Thoroughgood. And
Frankie was this young guy in his thirties, but he
had this kind of early wisdom to him. He's a
seeker and he's a questioner, and he's just accumulated a
(30:49):
kind of a grace and a presence to him which
I really admire. And his was the final question in
the book, and it was who do you love and
who loves you? And you know, before we hit record, Amantha,
you're saying last year is difficult for work, but it's
fantastic on a personal level because you're getting married and
(31:11):
you've found your person, and it is amazing what that
means when you find your person, when you feel loved.
You know, this year, I get to celebrate thirty years
married with my wife, which is impossible because I'm still young,
God damn it. But I'm like, I'm just very lucky
to have somebody who I love and who loves me.
(31:31):
And as I sometimes say about marriage, a good marriage
is when you both feel that you're getting the better deal.
And I definitely feel like I'm getting the better deal.
So I really think we can talk about productivity and
efficiency and all of this and self growth, but if
you can kind of crack your heart open and love
somebody and be loved, those are both learned skills. By
(31:52):
the way, those are things you can work on to
get better at. That feels like a really good question, Michael.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
It is always such a joy to chat to you
on microphone or off microphone. Thank you so much. You're
always such a generous and helpful sharer. So I thank you,
and I'm sure you'll be back for twenty twenty six
to talk about the coaching habit. I hope.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I hope so too, but that would be lovely. But
thank you. Whether you set me up, you make me
sound better than I actually am. So thank you for
such a lovely conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I hope you love this chat with Michael as much
as I did, and I highly recommend his do Something
that Matters journal. If you want to check this out
or find out anything else about Michael, I will provide
a link in the show notes. If you like today's show,
make sure you get follow on your podcast app to
be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
(32:43):
recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people out
of the cool And Nation
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